Best Be Thankful For The City

I am writing this blog Thursday, November 15, @5:30pm as I drink coffee at the Water Street McDonald's in Decatur, Illinois. I just dropped my wife off at Grace Methodist Church for her 'staff relations' committee meeting. I'll wait here for a phone call to pick her up. Might be a spell; those Methodist can beat the dickens out of conversations. Kinda always envied my Catholic friends growing up because they seemed to get down to the nitty gritty and hit the road.

Driving to and from the Church on a week day rush hour traffic time, one cannot help but notice the plethora of autos leaving Decatur from various work places as thousands of folks head for suburban homes in Forsyth, Moroa, Mt. Zion and numerous other satellite burgs. All have a story and all have personal struggles and joys. I hope they pause at times to think how fortunate they are to have that nearby city with all kinds of business and industrial employment opportunities. From a personal experience, I recall many who lived in those peripheral villages outside my hometown of East St. Louis who seldom expressed kind words about our city but often found fault with it.

My wife and I grew up in that East Side river city but spent 39 years in more homogeneous pristine communities during my coaching career. All those towns had wonderful people and offered many positive amenities. We could not have asked for a better place to raise teenage children than that of Jacksonville, Illinois. With our children married and retirement from coaching on the horizon (20-years ago) it was time for both of us to return to those experiences and feelings of yesterday. We needed to scratch the itch and return to our roots of a more diversified, heterogeneous and 'yes' sometimes tumultuous environment....The City.

Decatur is a good city with solid hard working and caring people. For me it's like an old pair of shoes...It fits!

Yep, I hope the folks in those hundreds of autos heading out of Decatur to homes on the perimeter pause once in awhile and appreciate the city because should it 'fold' they lose big time. I know of what I speak, I witnessed it first hand.

The City
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Utb2EQM03oM