The Mall
A while back, my wife and I sat down with the kids to watch 1989’s “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”. We thought it was hilarious that within the first twenty minutes, the characters keep obsessively mentioning the shopping mall and that they want to go there, or that the person they are looking for is probably at the mall. It is one of the details that place this movie firmly in the eighties. I didn’t laugh quite as much as they did because, back then, I too spent a lot of time at the mall, specifically, Yorktown Center in Lombard, IL.
It was your standard issue mall built in 1968 and anchored by Carson Pirie Scott, Wieboldt’s, J.C. Penney, and Montgomery Ward. I can’t recall experiencing the delights of the interior of Yorktown for the first few years because my family tended to stay in the department stores. I distinctly remember a Friday night in Wieboldt’s as a little kid, laying lifeless on a pile of decorative area rugs while my parents shopped for clothes for us, at least that is what I can recall through my torpor. I had no idea there were record, candy, and toy stores only a few steps away. (There was also an outdoor mall a couple of miles down the road that featured a few high-end stores and beautifully landscaped grounds. It was called Oakbrook Center, but we only knew it as “Sears” because we never ventured past that anchor store).
As we got older, it became very important to my friends and I that we go to Yorktown and explore. We would somehow get our dad to drop us off at the library in downtown Downers Grove. We would then walk to the center of town, where we would catch the bus to the mall. Once there, we’d decamp at J.C. Penney with the rest of the riffraff and our adventure would begin. I don’t know why my dad didn’t just take us directly to the mall, or at least to the bus stop, but it probably made him feel just a little bit better to let us off at the library.
Once there, we learned that the quickest way into the interior of the mall was to enter through a long hallway called an arcade. We would run, yes, run through the arcade to finally emerge in basically, paradise. As cool as the shops were, the real reason to go there as a teen was to meet girls. What I would do with one if one were interested in me, which was doubtful, I had no idea. I was paper-thin with an Iron Maiden concert shirt hung on my bony shoulders and a kinky head of hair, which I tried to part down the middle. The hair would be straight on either side of the part for about one centimeter before it would erupt in a pile of frizz. If you can imagine Napoleon Dynamite without the glasses and none of the sex appeal, you are on the right track. If I somehow managed to connect with a fine lady, the following would be the best-case scenario for a romantic encounter: After the lucky girl decided to leave with me, I would drape my light blue puffy coat around her shoulders as we walked to the waiting bus. It would then be a quick jaunt to Downers Grove, where we would get out, walk a couple of freezing blocks to the library and wait for my dad to pick us up in his Chevette. He would take us home and allow us to sit on the living room couch with the lights on to watch the Muppet Show. This situation, not surprisingly, never played out. Girls were about as foreign to me as a quality cream rinse.
I don’t think the goal was ever to find a girl to have a meaningful relationship with, it was enough to just to get a wave or a “hi”. Then you could say to your friend, “Dude, she said ‘hi’ to me.” I never pursued anything more than a salutation because I would ruin it for sure. It was enough to hold onto that little feeling for a while. Even if your confidence was high and you were strutting along to music bleeding out of Musicland, some big kid would say something nasty to you because big kids are mean, and they would never NOT say something nasty to you. After that, you would feel kind of weird for a while. There is always something you should’ve said if you had thought about it sooner. It doesn’t really matter because there are always more big kids around the next corner. Hate those big kids.
Well, I’m going to wrap things up now. The sad thing is, I could go on much, much longer. Okay, so it’s almost time to start heading for the bus, but there are three things that I must do first:
Number one, go to Todd’s Corner. This was a shop that would iron the decal of your choosing onto any shirt you like. There were racks of shirts to choose from and a huge wall of decals to fit your particular lifestyle. Love that smell. These are the decals that I can remember getting through the years. “Bad Company” (with a pot leaf in the logo, which caused my classmates to think I was a stoner. I was not.) “Lynyrd Skynyrd” (I swear I was not a stoner), “I am a Wild and Crazy Guy”, Yosemite Sam, “Death Before Disco”.
Number two, the Gap dressing room. There was a pad under the carpet in the dressing room that would turn on a light above the outside door when someone was stepping on it to indicate that it was occupied. We would go in there, close the door, and jump up and down to make the light blink on and off – hilarious.
Number three, Fannie Mae. I would buy a brick of white chocolate to bring home as a souvenir from my adventure. I would pop it in the freezer and later that night, break it apart with a butter knife to eat while watching TV. See what you’re missing, ladies?
