Park Forest--Dreams Past and a Dream Reborn by Alan Fried December 29, 1997
When you walked through certain neighborhoods in Park Forest, the air would grow breathlessly still and the sunlight would shimmer in a strange and almost magical way. Almost magical, because Park Forest is not a product of fantasy but of science fiction. And I always thought of those quiet places as a doorway into another dimension, what Robert Heinlein called the door into summer. When I was growing up there in the 1950s, I thought it was the Village of Tomorrow, I remember I was getting a free cookie in the Park Forest Bakery, located across from Wayne Howorth's music store, when I first heard about Sputnik being launched. For the rest of America, the launch of Sputnik meant American kids would begin getting an education in science and math. But not for Park Forest schoolkids like me. We were already getting a great education.
Our parents, the middle managers from Armour Star and the bird colonels from Fifth Army, were seeing to it that we would learn in modern classrooms, that our teachers would be well-trained and that we would have plenty of books. We were a model community and we were studied like a sociological prototype. Social scientists came to examine the curves in our streets and the rhomboid designs on our storefronts and predicted social trends based on our behavior. After I went away to college, I was amazed to learn that other kids had not taken a battery of sociological and psychological tests as part of their elementary school work. For kids growing up in Park Forest, that was the norm. We received plenty of publicity. The Organization Man was written about us, Look Magazine studied our attitudes about racial discrimination and the village was designated an All-American town.
The next decade, the 1960s, would be hard for America. War, assasination, the bared fangs of racial intolerance would reveal the cold, mechanical side of scientific thinking. Suddenly, progress had a downside and Park Foresters did more than watch it, from afar, on our new color television sets. We became involved, and perhaps, we became a little disenchanted. Like most of my friends, when I graduated from that great and good education in Park Forest high schools, I left for Chicago and then the world beyond.
Now I have a super-scientific link to my old hometown. I read The Star on the Internet and I hear from schoolmates who have looked up my e-mail address. I look at the new plans for downtown Park Forest with a pang of nostalgia but also with a smile. It may not be exactly my dream, but for some smart, science (and science fiction) loving kids back in Rich Township, the door into summer is re-emerging from the mist and the dream is being reborn.
