When I was growing up in Rock Island, we would cross the southside of Chicago two or three times a year to visit my parents' relatives in northeastern Indiana, but we never took the horrible I-80-294-94-90 bumper-to-bumper white-sky-and-concrete trap. Dad was too nervous to handle that much traffic, and besides, he absolutely refused to use toll roads, on principle. Instead, we got off I-80 just after Joliet, and took US-30 through the far south of Chicago.
1. Frankfort straddles US 30 between US 45 and Harlem Avenue, past white houses, green spaces, and a public library Median household income $83,000, quite a change from the poverty-stricken suburbs to the north.
Lincoln Way East is unusual among Illinois high schools for offering boys' gymnastics.
2. Matteson extends from Harlem Avenue to Govenors Highway. It's surrounded by parks, nature preserves, and country clubs. It had some regrettable racial tensions in the 1980s when the demographics changed: the black population increased from 10% to 50%. White residents responded with a campaign encouraging white people to move to town to "restore the balance." Today Matteson is 79% black.
Matteson doesn't have its own high school; students are channeled to Rich East, Rich Central, or Rich South, which also offer boys' gymnastics.
For college,they're close to Governors State University (no apostrophe), where they hold crossfit championships.
3.
Chicago Heights extends for two miles to College Grove. It is actually only a little worse off than Harvey, with 27% of the population under the poverty line, and there are some middle-class areas, like the neighborhood around Prairie State College and Marian Catholic High School. But as you head east, it gets more and more rundown, until at East End Avenue, it's all liquor stores, pawn shops, gun stores, storefront Pentecostal missions, and industrial blight. Mom would always say "Lock your doors and roll up your windows." She was afraid we would be carjacked.
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Prairie State is a community college with 12,000 students. I found a wrestler who won a state championship.
More after the break
4. Ford Heights extends for about a mile to just past the US 394 interchange and the Weatherstone Lakes Mobile Home Village. A mile is enough. Liquor stores, gospel ministries, broken sidewalks, abandoned buildings. It is poorest suburb in America, according to
Consumer Reports, a mean household income of $17,000, and with news stories about "mayor arrested for theft" and children being killed.
There is no high school in town; students go to Bloom Trail in Chicago Heights, where the sports team used to be the Trail Blazers, but is now the Blazing Trojans. Something about condoms being set on fire?
5. Lynwood. You only pass through a small part of the southern end, between Torrance Avenue and the state line, and it seems mostly rural. The Ho-Chunk Indiana Nation is planning to build a casino on an unoccupied plot of land near the 394.
Most Lynwood high school students go to Thornton Fractional High.
6. Dyer. If you continue on Highway 30, you hit Dyer just across the Indiana border, with the most egregious speed trap in the U.S. The speed limit changes from 45 to 25 for no apparent reason, with the sign hidden behind a tree.
Come again? I don't think so.
Well, maybe to watch the water polo team.
See also:
Beefcake on the Harrowing Highway Across Chicago's South Side
