"Progress" comes to Clark and Addison

First appeared on July 11, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

A day spent at Wrigley is a day well spent. Forget Florida and its meandering rivers of traffic, or the great outdoors and its fabled tranquility, mosquitoes and near constant threat of bear attacks. Wrigley Field is another world, one you long to visit more and wish others knew less knew about.

So you stand shoulder to shoulder, sharing a prolonged silence with this mass of humanity fate has thrown together in a steel Velveeta box on rails. You avoid eye contact, conversation and interaction of any kind, best not to invite the one you suspect is seriously considering jabbing you in the stomach for your wallet.

Meanwhile the El goes on, listing from side to side while clacking down its tracks. As if you’ve traded an Abraham Lincoln for a ticket back in time, the alleyways and fire escapes of the Brownstones roll past. The homes huddling together and muscle of the trestle that splits them are ripped from a Sinclair novel. Your mind is busy tucking all these images away for later, as your nose has serious questions about the availability of warm water and soap in the Windy City.

For you, this is more than a train ride. It’s therapy. For nothing takes the sting out of a rant from your boss like reminiscing about Wrigley. Forget the overpriced vendors, long lines at the John and warm beer, the only souvenirs you’ll take home are the nostalgic sights and sounds. Lasting images such as the silhouette of downtown cast against an ocean blue sky, or a young father teaching his daughter how to jump a turnstile.

And when your stop arrives and the doors shoosh open, you turn to embrace a scene you didn’t want to leave in the first place. However, instead of an old friends smile or slice of Grannie’s Apple Pie, you’re greeted with something from a Third World Country racked by devastation.

Dump trucks lumber back and forth, navigating a minefield of port-a-potties. With all the synchronicity of a Broadway show, construction workers move seamlessly around each other. It’s the scourge of renovation. A cancer that threatens all you hold dear.

No matter the form, we as humans struggle with change. It’s in our DNA, just ask the boys over at Coca-Cola. Our lives become so choreographed and photocopied that change has a way of reaching out and slapping us every time. A flag goes up, a flag comes down. A presidential candidate who doesn’t tell us what we expect to hear. Renovating Wrigley is like putting lipstick on the Mona Lisa grumbles the old timer behind you.

For whatever reason, your mind is drawn to Millard Fillmore. A stuffed shirt who did little of consequence aside from sleep in the White House for four years, old Mill’s on record as saying one shouldn’t accept change as progress. And as you bask in the glow of the jumbo-tron that now towers over left-center, you know that no truer words have ever been spoken.

Your eyes used to marvel at the hand-operated scoreboard or wander along the bricks until they got lost in the Ivy. Now they’re blinded by 3900 square feet of LED. If this is progress, they can have it. You have satellite TV, microwaveable meals and a one-car detached waiting for you at home.

Not unlike a bad sunburn, we’re often reminded that progress for some is a kick in the shin for others. And yet, it remains our destiny. In the end you’re left to realize that perhaps, not unlike beauty, progress too lies in the eye of the beholder.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams