My Lincolnwood Story- John Rossi
Item
Title
My Lincolnwood Story- John Rossi
Subject
“Being so close to the city, you could do things when you were 13 or 14 years old, that you couldn’t do in the other suburbs. Like take a bus to the Cubs game.”
John Rossi is interviewed by his daughter, Juli. He talks about his childhood in Lincolnwood, his various jobs growing up, playing baseball, and participating in community traditions such as seeing the Lincolnwood Towers holiday decorations and the annual Halloween bonfire in Proesel Park.
The views and opinions expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Lincolnwood Public Library, including its Board of Trustees and staff.
TRANSCRIPT:
Julie Rossi 0:00
Today is April 23rd--Right? Yeah--2019. My name is Julie Rossi and I will be interviewing my dad, John Rossi, for My Lincolnwood Story. So, hi, Dad.
John Rossi 0:13
Hi, Julie.
Julie Rossi 0:14
How are you?
John Rossi 0:15
I'm good.
Julie Rossi 0:15
[Laughs] Good, good, good. So I guess we're just gonna talk about what it was like when you were growing up in Lincolnwood.
John Rossi 0:22
I guess so.
Julie Rossi 0:24
So how old were you when you moved to Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 0:26
Just over one. So we moved here in October of 1954.
Julie Rossi 0:32
Do you know why your parents picked Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 0:34
My Grandma, Grandma Berger, my mom's mom, owned some lots in Lincolnwood, for some reason. And my grandfather died six years earlier, and they decided to build a house on one of those lots.
Julie Rossi 0:46
Your grandmother on which side?
John Rossi 0:48
The grandmother that lived with us.
Julie Rossi 0:49
Oh, that's right. Grandma Berger. Right?
John Rossi 0:52
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 0:52
And she lived upstairs.
John Rossi 0:53
Yeah, she lived upstairs. So they built the house on Keystone.
Julie Rossi 0:57
That's awesome. I love that house. So when they first moved to Lincolnwood, it was you and Nonnie and Poppy--
John Rossi 1:07
I was a year old. Uncle Dick was like eight and a half and Auntie Betty was almost eleven. So I was the baby.
Julie Rossi 1:14
And then where did Uncle Dick and Aunt Bettie go to school?
John Rossi 1:16
Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:17
Both of them?
John Rossi 1:17
Both went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:19
I don't think I realized that.
John Rossi 1:20
Yeah, they both did. That's where they started when we moved here. So there were a lot of kids at that time who went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:26
Really?
John Rossi 1:27
Yeah. My understanding now is Queen doesn't have any kids from Lincolnwood. But at the time, there was tons of us. My whole block went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:35
Okay. [Laughs] And you did too.
John Rossi 1:38
Well I did for first grade; I went to kindergarten at Todd Hall here in Lincolnwood.
Julie Rossi 1:43
What is it?
John Rossi 1:44
Well, one of the buildings is called Todd Hall. That's where I went to kindergarten, which was cool. I got to go with some kids that I would have never met, but a lot of the Queen of All Saints kids went to kindergarten here.
Julie Rossi 1:55
Okay. That's kind of neat.
John Rossi 1:59
Yeah, there was a lot of building going on I guess when we moved in. I don't remember that that much. There was a few empty lots on our block. We used to play in the house behind my house. Our house was under construction, so we played in there all the time. And then one of my friends fell in a hole once and cracked his head open, so they wouldn't let us play there anymore.
Julie Rossi 2:16
[overlapping] Wait, what?
John Rossi 2:16
[Laughs] When I was five or four, one of the kids that lived behind us fell in a hole in the empty house -- when they were building the house behind us -- fell into the basement. There was no walls. There was just ladders and he fell off the ladder.
Julie Rossi 2:29
Didn't you have some neighbor who had birds? Joe-- ?
John Rossi 2:34
No, Joey? He still lives on Keystone.
Julie Rossi 2:36
Does he still live on Keystone?
John Rossi 2:37
[Laughs]
Julie Rossi 2:39
That's crazy.
John Rossi 2:40
We won't drop any names.
Julie Rossi 2:41
Okay, no names. That's totally fine. So you moved here when you were one. And then what did Poppy do when he first moved to Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 2:51
He worked Downtown. He was a photo engraver. He worked behind the Sheraton on Michigan Avenue--off of Michigan Avenue. Now there's all condos and high rises there. It was a little two shop building. But believe it or not, the funny thing was, he used to get a ride from one of our neighbors to work every day. And then he used to come home, someone would drive him home and drop him off on the Edens Expressway--not at an exit, just pull over to the side and drop him off. And we would sit on on Cicero, and he would come up the hill and hop in the car and we'd drive home. [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 3:22
So he just like made his own bus stop.
John Rossi 3:24
Yeah, they stopped in the middle of the expressway. They would pull over on the shoulder, and he would get out.
Julie Rossi 3:29
It's just exactly something that Poppy would do.
John Rossi 3:31
They didn't get off the expressway.
Julie Rossi 3:35
"Just pull over here." I can see him just diving out of the car while it's still rolling.
John Rossi 3:38
I don't remember when the Edens was built. It was built before I remember, but it was probably built when I was like five or six.
Julie Rossi 3:45
He worked Downtown, and then didn't he eventually work in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 3:51
No, he never worked here.
Julie Rossi 3:52
He never worked in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 3:54
No. When we moved in, there were so many people moving in here.
Julie Rossi 3:58
Right.
John Rossi 3:58
It was the baby boom. Everybody had kids. There was like thousands of people. What happened was Poppy got involved in this whole baseball thing. My dad was a big baseball fan.
Julie Rossi 4:09
He was like the baseball coach. We called him Poppy Coach. That's true. Like it's not even an exaggeration. Everybody called him Poppy Coach.
John Rossi 4:16
Well, they had so many little league teams, and they didn't have enough teams. And so Uncle Dick was nine the next year or 10 or something, and he tried out for a team and didn't get picked. So my dad went and they had tryouts at Lincolnwood School which is right over there.
Julie Rossi 4:30
So Poppy started a team just so Uncle Dick could play baseball?
John Rossi 4:34
[overlapping] [inaudible] the son of a guy my dad went to high school with, they lived in Lincolnwood --
Julie Rossi 4:38
I thought you weren't gonna say names.
John Rossi 4:40
Oh, you're right, I'm sorry.
Julie Rossi 4:41
[Laughs]
John Rossi 4:41
They didn't get put on a team, and so they went over and complained to my dad, to Poppy, that they didn't make a team and "we're as good as those guys, but they said if we got a coach they'd give us a team." So, Poppy started coaching and he coached for like 40 years.
Julie Rossi 4:43
Poppy, by the way, is Richard R. Rossi, and there is a park named after him, called Richard R. Rossi Park. Is the park on Keystone?
John Rossi 5:01
On Keystone. 7000 block of Keystone. [Laughter] The park that you guys went to when you were kids and threw kids out of because you said it was your park.
Julie Rossi 5:09
[overlapping] Because we were like, "this is my grandpa's park. You guys can't come here."
John Rossi 5:13
So that's how he got involved in baseball. And the rest is history.
Julie Rossi 5:16
And he was involved in the [American] Legion here too, right?
John Rossi 5:21
Yeah, a lot of the World War Two vets were in the Legion. So he was involved in the Legion, then he coached baseball. Eventually he got into the park--I guess the Park and Recreation board, which was like a subcommittee of the trustees. And then in the '80s, he became a village trustee, which he was for like 15 or 20 years. The guy who had no political--like couldn't tell you who the vice president was--became a village trustee. If it wasn't a sport, he didn't know it.
Julie Rossi 5:54
But he knew every single baseball player ever.
John Rossi 5:58
Yeah. But he got into the running of it. And he was basically in charge of it. He was on the zoning commission all the time.
Julie Rossi 6:03
Okay.
John Rossi 6:04
So when they built the library, it was a big deal. When they built the Lincolnwood Town Center, it was a big deal because those were things that were changing.
Julie Rossi 6:11
And then Poppy knew everybody because he coached all of their little league teams.
John Rossi 6:15
Yes, he did. Yes he knew everybody.
Julie Rossi 6:18
So my dad will look at old pictures of little league teams or something like that. Didn't you say that there was something on your Lincolnwood Facebook group?
John Rossi 6:26
Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. When I was a kid, for a boy that was born between like 1945 and 1965, in my little world, baseball was king. And that was what we did. We'd play in the streets, before I had a mitt, I played with the older kids. Uncle Dick played all the time. All my friends played, and then it just grew. The best thing about living in Lincolnwood was how small it was. So you could ride your bike anywhere. And I don't know if they still have it--they had a big summer camp at the big park, which is now called Proesel Park. And you would go there for first through eighth graders going into second and going to eighth is what it used to be. And if you went there every morning, what the boys did was play baseball for two and a half hours. That's all they did. And the girls would--
Julie Rossi 7:21
So it's barely a camp.
John Rossi 7:22
And then we went home at lunchtime, then some of us came back in the afternoon because they had arts and crafts and stuff that most of the boys didn't like.
Julie Rossi 7:28
So it was just like supervised baseball kind of?
John Rossi 7:30
Yes. It was like twelve-inch softball. And Uncle Dick was a counselor when I was there.
Julie Rossi 7:34
Did that -- was that --
John Rossi 7:35
It was horrible. [Laughter] He was going into high school and I was going into second grade. He was a junior counselor, then he became a full counselor. Yes. And I had to be in his group one year where he was my baseball instructor.
Julie Rossi 7:51
And then he became a teacher.
John Rossi 7:52
When he got out of college, Uncle Dick taught at Lincoln Hall for like seven or eight years. Yes, he did. And Nonnie, your grandma, started working at the village hall. So yeah, we're all over the place. Auntie Betty and I didn't do anything. Well, then I worked at the village hall during the summer. I picked up the garbage.
Julie Rossi 8:06
But didn't you say Auntie Betty got married at the Purple Hotel?
John Rossi 8:09
She did. Her reception was at the Purple Hotel. [Laughter]The Lincolnwood Ritz.
Julie Rossi 8:15
Which is gone now. Right?
John Rossi 8:17
Yes.
Julie Rossi 8:18
We were driving around looking for a place to eat, and he's like, "I think the Purple Hotel is over here." No, it's not. It's gone.
John Rossi 8:23
It's gone. They knocked it down a while ago. So anyway. But yeah, Lincolnwood--what I loved about living here, and I probably didn't appreciate it at the time, was well there wasn't a lot of traffic because there were no streets.
Julie Rossi 8:37
What?
John Rossi 8:38
Well, there are no main, busy streets like Devon was the southern border. Touhy wasn't really the northern border, but it was kind of. There was a couple blocks north of Touhy that were in Lincolnwood. And then on the east side, it was McCormick. On the west side, it was Central. So Pratt was the only kind of halfway busy street that went through the whole town. But there was no cars on it because they couldn't cross the canal on McCormick and it ended at Central. So you could ride your bike anywhere. There was not a lot of cars to worry about. It was Nirvana. It was great for a kid, which I didn't really appreciate at the time. There was just not a lot of cars, now there's a lot more traffic, but it was just different back then. Between Devon and Touhy was where Lincolnwood was, and that's where we always were. I started riding my bike. We'd ride our bike to that day camp every day, and there'd be thousands of kids riding away from there every afternoon. At Lincoln Avenue, they finally had to have a policeman stop the traffic.
Julie Rossi 9:38
Like the great summer camp migration?
John Rossi 9:40
Yeah. And you know what it cost? Like $3 or something for six weeks.
Julie Rossi 9:44
Of course it did.
John Rossi 9:45
Yeah, it was unbelievable. It was something to do every day. And most of the kids you knew went there. I knew a lot of the kids I met in town were because of the camp or little league.
Julie Rossi 9:57
After camp days, when you got a little bit older, where did you hang out?
John Rossi 10:02
I actually--
Julie Rossi 10:04
Parking lots?
John Rossi 10:05
No.
Julie Rossi 10:05
[Laughs]
John Rossi 10:07
When I was in like seventh and eighth grade, I actually had a job, kind of, working. I sold subscriptions to the news--
Julie Rossi 10:14
You were a newsie?
John Rossi 10:14
Yes.
Julie Rossi 10:14
I did not know that you were a newsie.
John Rossi 10:16
[overlapping] -- which was a local newspaper for Niles Township. And they paid us a quarter for every news subscription and 15 cents for renewal. And we would just go door to door. We would ride our bikes to the news office, which at that time was by Niles East High School, and there'd be like eight or ten boys that are 12, 13, 14 years old. And this guy would put us in this big convertible with all 10 kids in there--this was really safe--and then just drive us to neighborhoods in Morton Grove, Niles, Lincolnwood, or Skokie and just drop us off for three hours. And we would walk door to door, split up the blocks, and ring doorbells and talk to ladies, talking them into buying subscriptions. It probably would be child abuse today [laughs] if they did that.
Julie Rossi 11:01
Yeah, I don't think they could do that.
John Rossi 11:02
And at the end of the day, if you sold a couple subscriptions, you'd make a couple bucks. And it was the money we needed to spend or, you know, hang out.
Julie Rossi 11:08
To buy chocolate shakes.
John Rossi 11:09
To buy chocolate shakes. Because then in high school, my friend's parents bought the Baskin Robbins on Touhy. So I started working there my freshman year in high school.
Julie Rossi 11:19
And you worked there forever.
John Rossi 11:20
No, I only worked at that store for a little less than a year because they got rid of it. And then what happened was I started working in the store in Edgebrook. And then I worked at the Baskin Robbins in Edgebrook on Devon until I went to college.
Julie Rossi 11:31
Right. And didn't you say that you were from Lincolnwood and you worked in Edgebrook, and all the guys that lived in Edgebrook worked at L-Woods?
John Rossi 11:40
There were many of my friends from Edgebrook [inaudible] that worked at Kenilworth Inn is what it was called. So we were crossing on the way to work [laughs]. So I worked at Baskin Robbins, which is a great job if you were--
Julie Rossi 11:52
--in high school, yeah.
John Rossi 11:53
I went to Loyola Academy. It was an all-boy high school, so who buys ice cream? Girls! [Laughter] So that's how we met girls.
Julie Rossi 12:04
So you hung out at Baskin Robbins.
John Rossi 12:06
I used to hang out at Baskin Robbins in high school a lot.
Julie Rossi 12:07
Did you even go there on your days off?
John Rossi 12:09
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 12:09
And you're all like, 'I'm just gonna go hang out at Baskin Robbins."
John Rossi 12:11
Well, we would meet there and then--
Julie Rossi 12:13
"In my sweet car." Didn't you have a sweet car?
John Rossi 12:16
I had a 1969 Mustang.
Julie Rossi 12:19
Yeah you did.
John Rossi 12:20
That was actually my mom's.
Julie Rossi 12:22
Damn straight.
John Rossi 12:22
That I drove all the time. [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 12:26
I love the idea of Nonnie just driving around in a '69 Mustang.
John Rossi 12:29
Yeah. It had a 351 engine, and I got a ticket going 97 miles an hour.
Julie Rossi 12:35
On the Edens? Were you going to pick up Poppy?
John Rossi 12:36
No, I was on the Indiana tollway. Coming back from college. Coming back from school.
Julie Rossi 12:36
Got this sweet ride, you're just goin' 97. Oh, wait a minute. Didn't you guys go to Windsor? But we're not talking about Windsor.
John Rossi 13:01
We got some more questions here.
Julie Rossi 13:03
Oh, sure. More questions. Let's see. Oh, I believe you wanted to talk about the Legion Hall dances?
John Rossi 13:11
Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's another thing. When I was in seventh grade, they started doing these teenage dances at Lincolnwood. At the Legion Hall. Every Friday night--I don't know what it cost to get in--they would have bands play. And a lot of big name--well, eventually, what became decent local bands would play there. And so from 7 to 11, every Friday night, they had these dances. And so I was at the end of seventh grade and I was a big kid. So I was 12. I wasn't even 13 yet. And they needed kids to work at the dances, and they wanted kids whose parents were in the Legion. So I started working there when I was like in May of my seventh grade year because I was 5'11.
Julie Rossi 13:55
Were you like a bouncer? [Laughter]
John Rossi 13:57
No, I hung up coats, and then we'd work behind the bar and passed out drinks. Passed out Cokes. There was soft drinks. So I worked there. And then I worked there all through eighth grade, and then by the end of eighth grade, the kids that I knew, that were my age were old enough to actually go to the dances.
Julie Rossi 14:12
Did you work there when he kids [inaudible]
John Rossi 14:13
[overlapping] Yeah, it sucked. Everybody in eight grade thought I was cool because I worked at the dances because I was really young to do that.
Julie Rossi 14:29
When you were working at the Legion Hall dances, were there also like American Legion members just like sitting around being all like, "Kids these days."
John Rossi 14:36
Yeah. No, your grandfather was a bouncer as well as many of the other Legion members.
Julie Rossi 14:41
But Poppy would be a terrible bouncer. He would just let everybody in.
John Rossi 14:43
No, he was a bouncer. Dr. Calahan, Mr. Serentakis, there was a lot of them that were bouncers.
Julie Rossi 14:48
Who are those guys?
John Rossi 14:49
They were other Legion members.
Julie Rossi 14:50
Okay. And they're all just friends?
John Rossi 14:53
And the boys who worked there were all Legion brats, like sons of legionnaires.
Julie Rossi 14:56
Legion rats?
John Rossi 14:57
Brats.
Julie Rossi 14:57
Oh, brats [inaudible]. I like calling you guys the Legions rats better.
John Rossi 15:02
But it closed when I was like a sophomore in high school.
Julie Rossi 15:04
The whole Legion or the dances?
John Rossi 15:05
The dances ended. There was a big fight and someone actually had a problem.
Julie Rossi 15:11
What?
John Rossi 15:12
Someone got stabbed.
Julie Rossi 15:12
[gasp] At the Legion?
John Rossi 15:14
Actually in the park. A kid in my class actually. He didn't get killed.
Julie Rossi 15:19
He got stabbed? By who?
John Rossi 15:20
Another kid.
Julie Rossi 15:22
What? What a jerk! What kind of knife?
John Rossi 15:24
Lincolnwood dances kind of turned into--the normal kids stop going there--it turned into all the like troublemakers. And it got worse and worse and worse.
Julie Rossi 15:33
And Poppy did a worse job bouncing.
John Rossi 15:36
Evidently. After the dance one night, one of the kids in my class got stabbed. He wasn't in my class. He had gone to grade school with me.
Julie Rossi 15:43
Where? Like, in the arm?
John Rossi 15:44
[overlapping] He was a Niles West student.
Julie Rossi 15:45
Like in the arm though?
John Rossi 15:45
In the side. He was fine. Then they ended the dances after that.
Julie Rossi 15:50
That sounds crazy.
John Rossi 15:51
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 15:52
Due to a local stabbing, the Lincolnwood Legion ...
John Rossi 15:54
Yeah, they ended it. But I worked there often. I worked there like, yeah, almost all the time it was open.
Julie Rossi 16:00
Really?
John Rossi 16:00
Yeah, pretty much. I was really happy when it ended. Because I didn't have to work there anymore.
Julie Rossi 16:05
Right. And then you got to get your job at Baskin Robbins.
John Rossi 16:08
[overlapping] Well, every Friday night was kind of a crap shoot. Because I used to have to work at Baskin Robbins a lot on Saturdays. So yeah, so it was kind of awful. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 16:17
Right.
John Rossi 16:18
So I mean, there were days I didn't. I mean, if I had a baseball game or something, I didn't work at the Legion that night.
Julie Rossi 16:22
How long did you play baseball?
John Rossi 16:24
I stopped when I was 16.
Julie Rossi 16:25
Okay.
John Rossi 16:26
I played much longer than my ability. But yeah, the baseball program in Lincolnwood was--I don't know how to explain it. Most of the kids I knew played but some didn't. But for a little town, from 1969 to 1974 had amazing success at the older level. It all started with a group of guys that were like my older brother's--your Uncle Dick's--age. So they were like, six to 10 years older than me in that group. And they were in a college team that did very well and won a central states championship. And a lot of those guys played in college.
Julie Rossi 17:05
But not like through their colleges.
John Rossi 17:07
No, it was a summer league--
Julie Rossi 17:09
[overlapping] Where did they go to college?
John Rossi 17:09
St. Joe's and Rensselaer. But not their college teams.
Julie Rossi 17:12
College level.
John Rossi 17:12
It's what they did while they were in college.
Julie Rossi 17:15
Right. Okay.
John Rossi 17:15
So all of us younger kids would go and watch them all the time. And it got to be that baseball became the Lincolnwood thing. And I know it's all because of, you know, it's mostly because of your grandpa, my dad, because your Uncle Dick wanted a place to play in the summer. So they started a college team for him. And he got all these guys that--
Julie Rossi 17:35
[overlapping] So he started like three different leagues. [Laughter]
John Rossi 17:38
Yeah, basically. And they got this league together. So what that did is the kids that were four to eight years, 10 years younger than them would watch them play and get really into this baseball stuff, and we'd play all the time.
Julie Rossi 17:53
Right.
John Rossi 17:54
And so in 1969, they started a big league, they called the Big League Program, which was 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds. It was a division of Little League. They also had a Little League and then a Senior League for 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds. So when I was still in the Senior League, they started this Big League.
Julie Rossi 18:12
Okay.
John Rossi 18:12
And the first year, the Big League--they picked an all-star team that went to the Big League World Series in Winston Salem, North Carolina, but I'm not sure how they did. I know they didn't win it. But then in 1970, the team from Lincolnwood went to Fort Lauderdale for the Big League World Series and won the whole thing. And it just snowballed and everybody wanted to play after that. Everybody wanted to go to Florida. Everyone had to try it. So then in '71--
Julie Rossi 18:37
And did Poppy coach that team?
John Rossi 18:40
He was like an assistant coach on the '70 team.
Julie Rossi 18:42
Okay.
John Rossi 18:43
He coached the '71 team.
Julie Rossi 18:45
Gotcha.
John Rossi 18:45
And the '71 team came in second place in the world series.
Julie Rossi 18:49
Okay.
John Rossi 18:49
'72 team didn't go anywhere. They lost in the regionals.
Julie Rossi 18:53
[overlapping] Bunch of losers.
John Rossi 18:53
But, the Senior League all-star team, the 15 year olds--
Julie Rossi 18:56
Okay--
John Rossi 18:57
Made it to the Senior League World Series which was way cool.
Julie Rossi 19:00
That is pretty cool--
John Rossi 19:01
That was actually a bigger deal because there were so many more Senior League teams than Big League teams.
Julie Rossi 19:04
[overlapping] Yeah.
John Rossi 19:05
So those guys were just behind me.
Julie Rossi 19:08
And didn't Poppy always say something to the team members?
John Rossi 19:11
I'm not sure. Well, then the '73 team won the Big League World Series, and the '74 team came in third in the national tournaments. So in five years, they were in the national tournament four times.
Julie Rossi 19:25
Which is awesome.
John Rossi 19:25
No, in six years, they were in it five times.
Julie Rossi 19:27
Right
John Rossi 19:27
That they made it through the states, the regionals, and then the World Series. It was incredible. Yeah. One of the guys that--I'm quoting a guy that's actually on Lincolnwood Time Machine--he'd sent me a message that said--
Julie Rossi 19:41
Which is a Facebook group.
John Rossi 19:42
Which is a Facebook group. And one guy said to me, "John, I remember your dad telling me, 'You're a world champion and nothing, no one will ever take it away.'" He goes, "I've thought about that for the last 50 years of my life that your dad told me that."
Julie Rossi 19:56
Yeah.
John Rossi 19:56
"He said that I was once a world champion."
Julie Rossi 19:59
Which is awesome!
John Rossi 20:00
Yeah, it is pretty cool.
Julie Rossi 20:01
That's cool.
John Rossi 20:02
So then after that, it's just like the younger kids just weren't into it. It kind of ended. And you know what it was that there was the population started to go down. There weren't as many kids anymore.
Julie Rossi 20:10
Right.
John Rossi 20:11
But little Lincolnwood was on the map with those first six years for doing. And I know that allegedly in Williamsport, Pennsylvania--allegedly,I don't know if this is true--at one time, there was a thing that they sent my dad--they sent Poppy--a letter saying he was one of the few coaches at that time to have won a world title twice.
Julie Rossi 20:32
Really?
John Rossi 20:32
Yeah, from 1970 and '73 I guess is what it was.
Julie Rossi 20:37
Wow, that's kind of cool.
John Rossi 20:38
Yeah. So one of my, like, bucket lists was to go to the Little League Hall of Fame someday and see that.
Julie Rossi 20:44
Oh, [inaudible overlapping]. Because is his name there then?.
John Rossi 20:47
I don't know if his name is. Lincolnwood's there, though.
Julie Rossi 20:49
I guess we're gonna have to road trip. [Laughter]
John Rossi 20:50
So that was a big deal. I mean, I was around one of those teams.
Julie Rossi 20:59
How long did he coach Little League?
John Rossi 21:02
From 1955 till probably 1975, -76.
Julie Rossi 21:10
Oh, okay.
John Rossi 21:11
You know when he stopped?
Julie Rossi 21:11
When?
John Rossi 21:12
When Jay started playing.
Julie Rossi 21:13
Oh, because then he went to all of went to all of Jay's games.
John Rossi 21:15
His oldest grandson. When Jay was eight--
Julie Rossi 21:18
[overlapping] His first grandchild. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense.
John Rossi 21:23
Yeah, there's an article in the paper, "The father of Little League baseball retires," and they had a picture of Poppy and Jay in it.
Julie Rossi 21:31
By the way, here's a park.
John Rossi 21:32
Yeah. No, the park came later.
Julie Rossi 21:34
Oh, no. The park came in like the late '80s.
John Rossi 21:35
It's because he was a Trustee. That's what the park came.
Julie Rossi 21:37
Yeah.
John Rossi 21:38
All the parks in Lincolnwood are bouncing here.
Julie Rossi 21:41
Bounce away.
John Rossi 21:43
You know, Henry Proesel Park. Mr. Proesel was the mayor for like 50 years or something. I don't know. He might still be in the Guinness Book of World Records for having been mayor of a municipality the longest of anybody.
Julie Rossi 21:56
Really?
John Rossi 21:57
His grandkids went to school with me.
Julie Rossi 21:59
Okay.
John Rossi 22:00
Henry the third was in my classes. A friend of mine. But there was, you know, Richard Rossi Park--my dad, he was a trustee. Charlie O'Brien has a park.
Julie Rossi 22:12
I bet his park's not as good as Poppy's park.
John Rossi 22:14
[overlapping] G. G. Rowell has a park. These are all fathers of people I grew up with. And Les Flowers was the chief of police for a long time and there's a park.
Julie Rossi 22:22
Okay.
John Rossi 22:22
And they named all four of those other parks I think at the same time is when they dedicated all four of those to Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Rowell, my dad, and Les Flowers, chief of police. So it's pretty cool. The nice thing about like having your dad be so politically connected is I could never get in trouble.
Julie Rossi 22:37
Yeah?
John Rossi 22:39
I was going 55 miles an hour down Touhy one time, and someone pulled me over. And I went, "Oh, God, I'm gonna get--" It was like, I just got my license. And I thought I was gonna get in big trouble. And pulled out my license, and he said, "Are you Richard Rossi's son?" And I went, "Yeah." And he goes, "Okay, just slow down." [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 22:59
I didn't get any of those breaks growing up.
John Rossi 23:00
Actually, you know, I know Jay got a break one time for the same reason.
Julie Rossi 23:04
I'm sure uncle Dick got a break at the same time.
John Rossi 23:06
I don't know. He was already gone, you know, when Poppy got to be a trustee. He was married in '71. So, he wasn't around that much. The other thing that was unusual is people were--and probably a sign of the times--you know, because it was small, we knew a lot of people. When I was like eight, I went to Queen of All Aaints, so that was kind of far away from where we lived, I had to go home at lunchtime to have some drops put in my eye. I'd screwed up my eye. And of course, my brother was supposed to pick me up because he was off of school that day and he was in high school. Well, he never came. So I started walking home, and I got lost, which is normal when you're eight, you don't know not to get home. And some lady just picked me up and she said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm just looking for my parents' house." I said my name. She goes, "I know your parents and don't you know the Mancusos? They live over on the next block." She took me over to Mrs. Mancuso's, and I stayed there till they could get a hold of my mom to come and get me.
Julie Rossi 24:00
It was that kind of place.
John Rossi 24:01
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 24:01
You just get in a car with a stranger.
John Rossi 24:03
Exactly. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 24:04
Didn't even have candy.
John Rossi 24:05
No. And this woman, I've never met her in my life. I know what her name is: Mrs. Midwood. I met her son later on: it was Billy Midwood who was a little older than me. But yeah, I didn't know her at all. I was just walking down the street all by myself. And I think she saw this kid, an eight-year-old, in the middle of the school day that shouldn't have been walking down the street probably.
Julie Rossi 24:22
And now that would definitely be considered a kidnapping.
John Rossi 24:25
Yeah, well, maybe, or they wouldn't have let me leave the school.
Julie Rossi 24:28
Probably not. I guess that's more accurate. Yeah.
John Rossi 24:31
[Laughter] But at that time, they let us. When I was in first grade, I got in an accident at school. I knocked a tooth out in the bathroom. And my brother was in eighth grade. They called my mom and she wasn't home. She was out somewhere. So they just let me go with Dick--Uncle Dick. Like, "Okay, go home guys." I walked out of school and go, "What do we do now?" And he goes, "I don't know. We're not in school anymore." They just let us loose. It was a different world back then.
Julie Rossi 24:58
I feel like I would have been a lot out of school.
John Rossi 25:01
I don't know. We just took a bike out of the bike rack, rode home, and biked back the next day.
Julie Rossi 25:05
Yeah.
John Rossi 25:08
So I don't know. It just was a different type of play. But Lincolnwood was a small community. Everybody knew each other. It was great.
Julie Rossi 25:14
What were the holidays like in Lincolnwood? Was it like a magical fairyland in the winter?
John Rossi 25:18
The Lincolnwood Towers, people say it's nice now. It was unbelievable when I was little.
Julie Rossi 25:24
What are the Lincolnwood Towers?
John Rossi 25:26
They're an area--I guess it's west of Cicero, in between Pratt and Devon. When I was a kid, there was a lot of famous people who lived in there.
Julie Rossi 25:26
Who?
John Rossi 25:31
Jim Moran, which at one time was one of the Forbes 500, owned a car dealership, and had a TV show on WGN, and he lived in there. Andy Frain--there was Andy Rrain Ushers.
Julie Rossi 25:51
Oh.
John Rossi 25:52
Andy Frain lived there.
Julie Rossi 25:53
I worked for Andy Frain once.
John Rossi 25:53
[overlapping] And Auntie Betty went out with his son in high school.
Julie Rossi 25:54
Of course, she did.
John Rossi 25:57
Of course, she did. And some of the houses there were incredible. I know there's some of them still have the Christmas tree going through all the floors and the taxidermy reindeer. But there was there was--
Julie Rossi 26:13
We're talking Christmas decorations, right?
John Rossi 26:15
Yeah, Christmas. There was a choir and like an actual singing--not people but a recording.
Julie Rossi 26:21
I was thinking, like they hired children?
John Rossi 26:22
[overlapping] I don't know. Some kind of animatronic choir that would sing songs in front of a house. Queen of All Saints school had live animals and a manger when I was really little. It was just unbelievable. And I don't know what it's like now, but remember when you were little, we'd drive through the towers?
Julie Rossi 26:42
Yeah, even in the '80s, we would drive through the Towers. And it was just bumper to bumper traffic just going down like side streets, and everybody's just taking pictures of that crazy clock with Santa like going around in a circle like a cuckoo clock thing.
John Rossi 26:55
And the elves also?
Julie Rossi 26:56
Oh all the elves making--I don't even know if they were making candy.
John Rossi 27:00
There were a lot of like plastic. To these people, they were like Disney World decorations.
Julie Rossi 27:04
Yeah, they were straight up serious about their Christmas decorations.
John Rossi 27:08
And it's still pretty famous. But it's not anywhere as elaborate as it used to be.
Julie Rossi 27:11
Yeah, it was everything in the yard even in the '80s.
John Rossi 27:14
[overlapping] Like everything else, people move so they stop.
Julie Rossi 27:17
Didn't some of the houses like sell the decorations with the house?
John Rossi 27:20
Some of them did. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 27:21
Which is crazy--
John Rossi 27:23
Some of them do.
Julie Rossi 27:23
And kind of awesome.
John Rossi 27:24
Well, the house that has the Christmas tree that goes through all three floors ...
Julie Rossi 27:26
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:27
I know the people that grew up in that house.
Julie Rossi 27:28
Is that the same one with the fake deer?
John Rossi 27:30
Yes.
Julie Rossi 27:31
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:32
[overlapping] Obviously went with the house because they still have it.
Julie Rossi 27:34
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:35
That was the Boulder family when I was a kid.
Julie Rossi 27:36
Oh. Of course, you remember all of their names. Was it really just Christmas, or were there any other holidays? Like Fourth of July? Big Fourth of July things in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 27:48
Lincolnwood didn't even have a fireworks display.
Julie Rossi 27:50
Really?
John Rossi 27:51
No. The other big one was Halloween.
Julie Rossi 27:53
Okay.
John Rossi 27:53
Halloween, they--and I think they still do this at the big park--they would have a hot dog thing after trick or treating at night.
Julie Rossi 28:00
Okay.
John Rossi 28:00
So they had like a bonfire.
Julie Rossi 28:02
Was it like a Super Dog hot dog thing?
John Rossi 28:03
No. It was like an Oscar Meyer gross hot dog. [Laughter] There would be hundreds and hundreds of kids there after trick or treating that'd go to the park and have hot dogs. I know they did that for a long time after because I know Poppy had to go there all the time on Halloween night and do that.
Julie Rossi 28:21
As a trustee?
John Rossi 28:22
Well, he just liked doing it.
Julie Rossi 28:24
He'd just like going there and talking to people and telling stories.
John Rossi 28:28
Yeah, so they had that for a long time. And I guess the kids didn't have to be driven places. And I know the whole world was like that: kids could ride their bikes differently. But it was actually safer here because there weren't any--
Julie Rossi 28:38
It was even like that when I was a kid.
John Rossi 28:40
There weren't any big streets, though.
Julie Rossi 28:41
Like, I rode my bike everywhere.
John Rossi 28:43
Yeah, we didn't have to cross any main streets.
Julie Rossi 28:44
Yeah.
John Rossi 28:45
So it was a little bit different.
Julie Rossi 28:48
Yeah.
John Rossi 28:49
Yeah, it was nice.
Julie Rossi 28:50
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
John Rossi 28:53
A cartoonist.
Julie Rossi 28:53
I know you did. [Laughter] Tell me about the comic book shop where you used to go.
John Rossi 28:59
No, comic books were bought at drugstores back then.
Julie Rossi 29:02
It was just a drugstore?
John Rossi 29:03
Yes, Orlov's. It was right across, kitty corner from here.
Julie Rossi 29:05
Okay.
John Rossi 29:06
Which is now, I think it's a Walgreens or something. Yeah. Used to be Orlov's pharmacy. Yeah. My friends and I, we'd get off the bus and go stand there and wait for the comics to come out on Thursdays.
Julie Rossi 29:14
Just every Thursday.
John Rossi 29:14
Till they unpacked them and then buy a couple and bring them home.
Julie Rossi 29:18
[Laughter] And that's it, just go to that drugstore?
John Rossi 29:22
Or we'd go to the other drugstores later in the week to get other things, but yeah.
Julie Rossi 29:26
Did you guys trade comics ever with each other?
John Rossi 29:28
No.
Julie Rossi 29:29
It was like everything you bought was just yours?
John Rossi 29:30
Always, usually.
Julie Rossi 29:32
Yeah?
John Rossi 29:33
You know, I still have some of them.
Julie Rossi 29:34
I know you do.
John Rossi 29:35
I retired on them. Yeah, I thought I could be a cartoonist, but I found out I couldn't draw.
Julie Rossi 29:44
Right.
John Rossi 29:44
I met kids who could really draw. Then I decided no, I better not do this for a living.
Julie Rossi 29:49
I feel like when I was little, Nonnie had this--or maybe it was yours, I'm not sure--but it was like this big plastic thing that had a light shining under it so you could learn how to trace. And that was yours, and then Nonnie always let me play with it, so I could learn how to draw.
John Rossi 30:03
Yeah, when I was a little kid, they bought me that so I can learn how to draw.
Julie Rossi 30:05
Loved that damn thing. It was great. It didn't work, though.
John Rossi 30:09
Well, my mom went to the Art Institute.
Julie Rossi 30:10
I know--oh.
John Rossi 30:10
She was an artist. For one year.
Julie Rossi 30:12
I knew that she was an artist, but I didn't know she went to the Art Institute.
John Rossi 30:14
Yeah, she did.
Julie Rossi 30:15
Okay. She went to the Art Institute, and then when did she start working for the village of Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 30:21
When I was in college.
Julie Rossi 30:22
Oh, so way later.
John Rossi 30:23
Yeah. She only worked there for about 10 or 15 years.
Julie Rossi 30:25
She only worked there for 10 or 15? That's a long time.
John Rossi 30:28
She was probably in her mid 50s when she started there.
Julie Rossi 30:30
What was she doing there?
John Rossi 30:32
She actually started on just filling in for people who were sick.
Julie Rossi 30:37
Okay.
John Rossi 30:38
And then on vacation.
Julie Rossi 30:39
[overlapping] Probably just because all of her kids had moved out.
John Rossi 30:41
They taught her how to run like an accounting software. And then I'm like, "Are you kidding? You're like 65 years old. How are you going to learn how to do?" So she did some accounting thing after a while. Yeah, but she worked there for a while. Yeah, so she worked at the village, Poppy was a trustee, and Uncle dick taught at the school.
Julie Rossi 30:57
Yeah.
John Rossi 30:57
And I picked up the garbage during the summer in college.
Julie Rossi 31:00
Well, you didn't tell me. I forgot that you were a garbage man.
John Rossi 31:02
I was a garbage man.
Julie Rossi 31:03
Oh.
John Rossi 31:05
I worked for the village during the summers when we picked up our own garbage.
Julie Rossi 31:08
You were a newsie and a garbage man.
John Rossi 31:10
We actually decorated one of my friend's apartments with what we found in the garbage
Julie Rossi 31:13
And a garbage decorator.
John Rossi 31:14
Yes. If someone was throwing a couch out or a chair, we wouldn't pick it up. I'd tell we'll come back. We'd come back later and get it and bring it to his--
Julie Rossi 31:22
And just put it in his house?
John Rossi 31:23
His apartment, yeah.
Julie Rossi 31:26
We did stuff like that in college too.
John Rossi 31:28
So anyway. Now all that stuff's licensed out. They don't have their own garbage men anymore.
Julie Rossi 31:34
And you can't just steal things from the garbage dump. Or from the garbage. Well, you can take these from the side of the road, but not like ... All I'm saying is that I've picked up furniture from the side of the road before.
John Rossi 31:45
Because my dad was a trustee, when all of us kids were out of the house, then the villagers actually plowed there snow a lot, which they never did when I was a kid. I would have liked that because then I wouldn't have to do it myself.
Julie Rossi 31:56
[overlapping] you wouldn't have to do it yourself?
John Rossi 31:58
But they did. They did it after, you know, all of us were gone and he was getting older, the village would come and do his driveway.
Julie Rossi 32:04
That's adorable!
John Rossi 32:05
I know.
Julie Rossi 32:06
That's so cute. That makes sense. It's a long driveway.
John Rossi 32:09
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 32:09
It was a long driveway.
John Rossi 32:10
There used to be a lot of factories behind the school, east of the school. [inaudible overlapping] Just thinking of other stuff that was around here that's gone. Well, I started thinking about that they threw out Oscar Mayer Weiner whistles. So the kids used to ride their bikes up there and go through the garbage, speaking of going through garbage.
Julie Rossi 32:27
Oh, God, you would just go through the garbage and take thrown out whistles and just use them?
John Rossi 32:30
Yeah. And then we would bring them home and wash them, and we'd have Oscar Mayer Weiner whistles.
Julie Rossi 32:33
You didn't wash them, and you know it.
John Rossi 32:34
Probably not. Well, when we got home, we had to wash them.
Julie Rossi 32:36
You would stick them in your mouths.
John Rossi 32:37
Well, we did, but by the time we got home, our moms made us wash them.
Julie Rossi 32:41
I'm like there's no way. You brought them home, and then Nonnie would yell like, "Where'd you get that?" And you'd be like, "I found it." "Did you wash it first?" "No."
John Rossi 32:47
No, she knew we got it from there.
Julie Rossi 32:49
[Laughter] Like there's no way you washed it.
John Rossi 32:54
Lincolnwood's a lot. We're sitting at the library. This was a Jewel.
Julie Rossi 32:57
Right.
John Rossi 32:58
Not a big Jewel but a Jewel. Where I bought all my baseball cards when I was a kid.
Julie Rossi 33:02
What were your favorite restaurants when you were a kid?
John Rossi 33:04
There weren't that many. People didn't go out to eat.
Julie Rossi 33:06
Really?
John Rossi 33:07
Like Burger King is about the most biggest restaurant I ever had. That's right.
Julie Rossi 33:09
Right. We drove past the Burger King, and my dad was like, "I used to ride my bike to that Burger King." And I was like, "Very cool, Dad."
John Rossi 33:15
Lou Malnati's took over a restaurant that was called Novak's.
Julie Rossi 33:21
What was Novak's?
John Rossi 33:22
Just a restaurant.
Julie Rossi 33:23
Okay.
John Rossi 33:23
And then it was the very first Lou Malnati's on Lincoln. And Novak's I guess didn't have a liquor license, or there was a waiting list to get liquor license. And my dad was on the zoning board at the time. So Lou wanted a liquor license.
Julie Rossi 33:42
Good old Lou.
John Rossi 33:42
And somehow my dad got him a liquor license, so we used to get free food at Lou Malnati's because he wouldn't have opened without that liquor license that my dad got for him. Uncle Dick had his rehearsal dinner at Lou Malnati's for his wedding.
Julie Rossi 33:54
I think there's some connection between Poppy and Dominic's?
John Rossi 33:57
Grampy, your grandpa. That's nothing to do with Lincolnwood, though.
Julie Rossi 34:00
No, no, but it's just a story. No? Okay, that's fine.
John Rossi 34:04
My grandfather was Dominic's first butcher.
Julie Rossi 34:06
The first butcher at Dominic's, which is gone now, so it doesn't matter anyway. Okay, let's see. So Grandpa--not Grandpa 'cause Poppy--Poppy's dad was the first butcher at Dominic's.
John Rossi 34:23
Right. Nothing do with Lincolnwood.
Julie Rossi 34:25
But where did he come from?
John Rossi 34:26
Italy.
Julie Rossi 34:27
Yes. Where in Italy?
John Rossi 34:29
That's got nothing to do with my Lincolnwood story.
Julie Rossi 34:31
It's part of your life.
John Rossi 34:32
I'm fighting with my daughter on this thing.
Julie Rossi 34:34
It's part of your life.
John Rossi 34:36
[inaudible] Godforsaken little town in the middle of Italy.
Julie Rossi 34:40
Okay, okay. And you actually went there?
John Rossi 34:41
I went there a couple years ago with one of my cousins. Yes.
Julie Rossi 34:43
Which is awesome!
John Rossi 34:43
It was neat. It was cool.
Julie Rossi 34:47
You didn't find any old like Rossi relatives, did you?
John Rossi 34:51
We found them after we left. They tagged us on Facebook.
Julie Rossi 34:54
Oh, right. They found you guys, which is kind of cool.
John Rossi 34:57
Right.
Julie Rossi 34:58
And Aunt Pat's gone back there.
John Rossi 34:59
She goes back there and stays with them.
Julie Rossi 35:01
But it's kind of neat that they moved over. What about like the Berger side of the family?
John Rossi 35:05
I don't know much.
Julie Rossi 35:06
No? Which is funny because Grandma Berger lived with you guys on Keystone.
John Rossi 35:09
Yeah, but Nonnie was an only child. So I didn't have a lot of cousins. All the cousins on that side were second cousins.
Julie Rossi 35:15
How long did Grandma Berger live with you guys?
John Rossi 35:16
My grandmother lived with us. I don't know. After I got married. She died the year I got married, so ...
Julie Rossi 35:26
'77?
John Rossi 35:25
28 years. Well, we moved in in 1954, and she died in 1978. 24 years. And she lived with us for 24 years.
Julie Rossi 35:26
That's crazy.
John Rossi 35:34
I did thought it was normal. One of my neighbors thought that she was our cleaning lady.
Julie Rossi 35:39
Really?
John Rossi 35:39
She didn't know she was our grandmother. She had a different last name.
Julie Rossi 35:43
Like a servant's quarters?
Julie Rossi 35:44
[Laughter] That's awesome.
John Rossi 35:49
Yeah, she was with us forever.
Julie Rossi 35:50
Which is crazy. Because I feel like Nonnie was cleaning constantly. Couldn't they just tell that like Nonnie cleaned?
John Rossi 35:55
Who knows?
Julie Rossi 35:56
Yeah. Okay. So let's see. So your jobs because I never even knew you were a newsie. So you were a newsie.
John Rossi 36:05
I was an newsie.
Julie Rossi 36:06
And then you were a bouncer. No, you were a coat checker.
John Rossi 36:10
And yeah, and I passed out pop.
Julie Rossi 36:12
And then you sold ice cream to ladies.
John Rossi 36:15
Yes.
Julie Rossi 36:16
Not ladies.
John Rossi 36:17
Girls.
Julie Rossi 36:17
To girls.
John Rossi 36:18
And everybody else.
Julie Rossi 36:21
And then you were a garbage man.
John Rossi 36:22
For the village.
Julie Rossi 36:24
And then you moved out of Lincolnwood. Right?
John Rossi 36:27
I moved. When I graduated college, I didn't live in Lincolnwood. But then right before I got married, I moved back for a few months.
Julie Rossi 36:32
Right.
John Rossi 36:32
So and then I left and got married.
Julie Rossi 36:34
What about Uncle Dick? What else did Uncle Dick do in Lincolnwood? Did he have any weird jobs?
John Rossi 36:37
He was a he was a counselor at the day camp for years.
Julie Rossi 36:39
It's so weird to me that he was a counselor and then he was a teacher because it's like such a normal trajectory for like a career path but not for Uncle Dick.
John Rossi 36:40
[Coughs] Excuse me. He was a counselor at the day camp for probably four or five years.
Julie Rossi 36:53
Okay.
John Rossi 36:54
And then when he got out of college, he taught at the school. Taught math, seventh and eighth grade math.
Julie Rossi 36:58
If you have to pick one thing -
John Rossi 36:59
Which wasn't bad wasn't good, because I was only like a freshman in high school when he started doing that.
Julie Rossi 37:03
Oh, okay.
John Rossi 37:04
So I knew a lot of the kids he had in class. It was awful.
Julie Rossi 37:08
Did those kids ever, like complain to you about Uncle Dick?
John Rossi 37:11
Constantly.
Julie Rossi 37:15
Of course they did.
John Rossi 37:18
He taught there, six or seven years.
Julie Rossi 37:21
Neat. Cool.
John Rossi 37:23
He liked it.
Julie Rossi 37:24
But you went to Loyola, right?
John Rossi 37:26
Yeah I went to political science in the Loyola. So I didn't go to Niles West. I didn't go to Lincolnwood school.
Julie Rossi 37:30
Did you still have friends that were going to Lincolnwood High School?
John Rossi 37:32
Tons of them.
Julie Rossi 37:33
Yeah.
John Rossi 37:33
You couldn't not - it was a small town. So yeah, playing baseball going to the camp your met kids from everywhere.
Julie Rossi 37:39
I guess that's true. Yeah.
John Rossi 37:40
It always surprised me when I met a kid when I was older who lived in Lincolnwood that I didn't know as a child.
Julie Rossi 37:45
Really? And you still know a lot of them, like, you still talk to them.
John Rossi 37:49
I thought I knew at least almost all - there are a lot of girls I didn't know. Because I wasn't really into girls.
Julie Rossi 37:53
Cause you went to an all boys school too.
John Rossi 37:54
Plus in high school. It was different because I had a driver's license by then. So I was leaving a lot. But I knew if I met a boy who had been here a few years, and I didn't know him. That was weird.
Julie Rossi 37:55
Especially with all the baseball stuff.
John Rossi 38:02
And baseball, soccer camp. Yeah, just having friends that went to Lincolnwood school going to their bar mitzvahs and stuff like that. It was just, yeah, met a million kids.
Julie Rossi 38:18
Which is awesome. Is there any favorite singular experience about growing up in Lincolnwood that you want to share? Before we go?
John Rossi 38:26
Do I want to share anything? Um, no. I don't know. I thought I thought I didn't appreciate this area until I left.
Julie Rossi 38:39
Yeah, that sounds... Yeah.
John Rossi 38:41
It was such the thing that and I don't know if it's like that now. And I have to think it's probably like that, because it was so small. And it had at one school. Three buildings, but one school, all the kids had to be at the same school. So the kids all know each other because they all were at this - good or bad - they all know each other. Now, I didn't go to that school. But I did -
Julie Rossi 39:02
Still knew everybody.
John Rossi 39:02
Knew a lot of kids from those schools. I think that - and then it was - being so close to the city, you were allowed to do things - well, or not be allowed - you could do things when you were 13, 14 years old, that you can't do in the other suburbs, like take a bus to a Cubs game or go downtown or just buy do things on your own.
Julie Rossi 39:28
Because of the ease of it as well.
John Rossi 39:29
You just knew what to do. You just knew where to go. You know, it's just, and I don't think I appreciated that. I know when I was when I was in high school. I wanted to live in an area where all the kids went to school together. And maybe it's because I went to a different school where you know, every kid you met you, they would know each other. Right? And so I thought moving out to Naperville was going to be more like that. But and it was I mean neighbor, you you lived in it. It's great. It was a great living in Naperville.
Julie Rossi 39:55
It was a wonderful place to be until I was about fourteen.
John Rossi 39:57
What I found out being in a big - those big high schools So far away from- that's more trouble kids getting, there's more trouble out there than there is around here because there's more for kids to do. Kids get in trouble and there's no doubt kids are gonna, you know, kids around here aren't going to get hurt in car accidents because nobody can drive fast. So I didn't appreciate what this area had to offer till I left. How does that sound? And I kind of wish I never did in a lot of ways.
Julie Rossi 40:25
Is that what you miss most about Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 40:27
Yeah, I miss the proximity to Chicago. I miss that the most.
Julie Rossi 40:30
Yeah, you come to Chicago to visit me all the time.
John Rossi 40:35
But the accessibility of the city is what I miss the most.
Julie Rossi 40:38
Well that's awesome. Cool. I think we got to wrap this up now.
John Rossi 40:42
Probably, they're gonna throw us out.
Julie Rossi 40:44
They're gonna kick us out of the library.
John Rossi 40:45
Hopefully nobody will ever listen to this.
Julie Rossi 40:46
Everybody's gonna listen to it. Everybody needs to listen to this.
John Rossi 40:52
Well thank you for interviewing me.
Julie Rossi 40:53
Thank you for having me interview you.
John Rossi 40:54
Did we cover all your stuff?
Julie Rossi 40:56
I'm - Yeah, sure. Why not? This was a general - I'm looking at it like a list of talking points. It was a general list. It's good. I think we did good. But thanks again.
John Rossi 41:05
Thank you.
John Rossi is interviewed by his daughter, Juli. He talks about his childhood in Lincolnwood, his various jobs growing up, playing baseball, and participating in community traditions such as seeing the Lincolnwood Towers holiday decorations and the annual Halloween bonfire in Proesel Park.
The views and opinions expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Lincolnwood Public Library, including its Board of Trustees and staff.
TRANSCRIPT:
Julie Rossi 0:00
Today is April 23rd--Right? Yeah--2019. My name is Julie Rossi and I will be interviewing my dad, John Rossi, for My Lincolnwood Story. So, hi, Dad.
John Rossi 0:13
Hi, Julie.
Julie Rossi 0:14
How are you?
John Rossi 0:15
I'm good.
Julie Rossi 0:15
[Laughs] Good, good, good. So I guess we're just gonna talk about what it was like when you were growing up in Lincolnwood.
John Rossi 0:22
I guess so.
Julie Rossi 0:24
So how old were you when you moved to Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 0:26
Just over one. So we moved here in October of 1954.
Julie Rossi 0:32
Do you know why your parents picked Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 0:34
My Grandma, Grandma Berger, my mom's mom, owned some lots in Lincolnwood, for some reason. And my grandfather died six years earlier, and they decided to build a house on one of those lots.
Julie Rossi 0:46
Your grandmother on which side?
John Rossi 0:48
The grandmother that lived with us.
Julie Rossi 0:49
Oh, that's right. Grandma Berger. Right?
John Rossi 0:52
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 0:52
And she lived upstairs.
John Rossi 0:53
Yeah, she lived upstairs. So they built the house on Keystone.
Julie Rossi 0:57
That's awesome. I love that house. So when they first moved to Lincolnwood, it was you and Nonnie and Poppy--
John Rossi 1:07
I was a year old. Uncle Dick was like eight and a half and Auntie Betty was almost eleven. So I was the baby.
Julie Rossi 1:14
And then where did Uncle Dick and Aunt Bettie go to school?
John Rossi 1:16
Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:17
Both of them?
John Rossi 1:17
Both went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:19
I don't think I realized that.
John Rossi 1:20
Yeah, they both did. That's where they started when we moved here. So there were a lot of kids at that time who went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:26
Really?
John Rossi 1:27
Yeah. My understanding now is Queen doesn't have any kids from Lincolnwood. But at the time, there was tons of us. My whole block went to Queen of All Saints.
Julie Rossi 1:35
Okay. [Laughs] And you did too.
John Rossi 1:38
Well I did for first grade; I went to kindergarten at Todd Hall here in Lincolnwood.
Julie Rossi 1:43
What is it?
John Rossi 1:44
Well, one of the buildings is called Todd Hall. That's where I went to kindergarten, which was cool. I got to go with some kids that I would have never met, but a lot of the Queen of All Saints kids went to kindergarten here.
Julie Rossi 1:55
Okay. That's kind of neat.
John Rossi 1:59
Yeah, there was a lot of building going on I guess when we moved in. I don't remember that that much. There was a few empty lots on our block. We used to play in the house behind my house. Our house was under construction, so we played in there all the time. And then one of my friends fell in a hole once and cracked his head open, so they wouldn't let us play there anymore.
Julie Rossi 2:16
[overlapping] Wait, what?
John Rossi 2:16
[Laughs] When I was five or four, one of the kids that lived behind us fell in a hole in the empty house -- when they were building the house behind us -- fell into the basement. There was no walls. There was just ladders and he fell off the ladder.
Julie Rossi 2:29
Didn't you have some neighbor who had birds? Joe-- ?
John Rossi 2:34
No, Joey? He still lives on Keystone.
Julie Rossi 2:36
Does he still live on Keystone?
John Rossi 2:37
[Laughs]
Julie Rossi 2:39
That's crazy.
John Rossi 2:40
We won't drop any names.
Julie Rossi 2:41
Okay, no names. That's totally fine. So you moved here when you were one. And then what did Poppy do when he first moved to Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 2:51
He worked Downtown. He was a photo engraver. He worked behind the Sheraton on Michigan Avenue--off of Michigan Avenue. Now there's all condos and high rises there. It was a little two shop building. But believe it or not, the funny thing was, he used to get a ride from one of our neighbors to work every day. And then he used to come home, someone would drive him home and drop him off on the Edens Expressway--not at an exit, just pull over to the side and drop him off. And we would sit on on Cicero, and he would come up the hill and hop in the car and we'd drive home. [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 3:22
So he just like made his own bus stop.
John Rossi 3:24
Yeah, they stopped in the middle of the expressway. They would pull over on the shoulder, and he would get out.
Julie Rossi 3:29
It's just exactly something that Poppy would do.
John Rossi 3:31
They didn't get off the expressway.
Julie Rossi 3:35
"Just pull over here." I can see him just diving out of the car while it's still rolling.
John Rossi 3:38
I don't remember when the Edens was built. It was built before I remember, but it was probably built when I was like five or six.
Julie Rossi 3:45
He worked Downtown, and then didn't he eventually work in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 3:51
No, he never worked here.
Julie Rossi 3:52
He never worked in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 3:54
No. When we moved in, there were so many people moving in here.
Julie Rossi 3:58
Right.
John Rossi 3:58
It was the baby boom. Everybody had kids. There was like thousands of people. What happened was Poppy got involved in this whole baseball thing. My dad was a big baseball fan.
Julie Rossi 4:09
He was like the baseball coach. We called him Poppy Coach. That's true. Like it's not even an exaggeration. Everybody called him Poppy Coach.
John Rossi 4:16
Well, they had so many little league teams, and they didn't have enough teams. And so Uncle Dick was nine the next year or 10 or something, and he tried out for a team and didn't get picked. So my dad went and they had tryouts at Lincolnwood School which is right over there.
Julie Rossi 4:30
So Poppy started a team just so Uncle Dick could play baseball?
John Rossi 4:34
[overlapping] [inaudible] the son of a guy my dad went to high school with, they lived in Lincolnwood --
Julie Rossi 4:38
I thought you weren't gonna say names.
John Rossi 4:40
Oh, you're right, I'm sorry.
Julie Rossi 4:41
[Laughs]
John Rossi 4:41
They didn't get put on a team, and so they went over and complained to my dad, to Poppy, that they didn't make a team and "we're as good as those guys, but they said if we got a coach they'd give us a team." So, Poppy started coaching and he coached for like 40 years.
Julie Rossi 4:43
Poppy, by the way, is Richard R. Rossi, and there is a park named after him, called Richard R. Rossi Park. Is the park on Keystone?
John Rossi 5:01
On Keystone. 7000 block of Keystone. [Laughter] The park that you guys went to when you were kids and threw kids out of because you said it was your park.
Julie Rossi 5:09
[overlapping] Because we were like, "this is my grandpa's park. You guys can't come here."
John Rossi 5:13
So that's how he got involved in baseball. And the rest is history.
Julie Rossi 5:16
And he was involved in the [American] Legion here too, right?
John Rossi 5:21
Yeah, a lot of the World War Two vets were in the Legion. So he was involved in the Legion, then he coached baseball. Eventually he got into the park--I guess the Park and Recreation board, which was like a subcommittee of the trustees. And then in the '80s, he became a village trustee, which he was for like 15 or 20 years. The guy who had no political--like couldn't tell you who the vice president was--became a village trustee. If it wasn't a sport, he didn't know it.
Julie Rossi 5:54
But he knew every single baseball player ever.
John Rossi 5:58
Yeah. But he got into the running of it. And he was basically in charge of it. He was on the zoning commission all the time.
Julie Rossi 6:03
Okay.
John Rossi 6:04
So when they built the library, it was a big deal. When they built the Lincolnwood Town Center, it was a big deal because those were things that were changing.
Julie Rossi 6:11
And then Poppy knew everybody because he coached all of their little league teams.
John Rossi 6:15
Yes, he did. Yes he knew everybody.
Julie Rossi 6:18
So my dad will look at old pictures of little league teams or something like that. Didn't you say that there was something on your Lincolnwood Facebook group?
John Rossi 6:26
Yeah. A lot of them. Yeah. When I was a kid, for a boy that was born between like 1945 and 1965, in my little world, baseball was king. And that was what we did. We'd play in the streets, before I had a mitt, I played with the older kids. Uncle Dick played all the time. All my friends played, and then it just grew. The best thing about living in Lincolnwood was how small it was. So you could ride your bike anywhere. And I don't know if they still have it--they had a big summer camp at the big park, which is now called Proesel Park. And you would go there for first through eighth graders going into second and going to eighth is what it used to be. And if you went there every morning, what the boys did was play baseball for two and a half hours. That's all they did. And the girls would--
Julie Rossi 7:21
So it's barely a camp.
John Rossi 7:22
And then we went home at lunchtime, then some of us came back in the afternoon because they had arts and crafts and stuff that most of the boys didn't like.
Julie Rossi 7:28
So it was just like supervised baseball kind of?
John Rossi 7:30
Yes. It was like twelve-inch softball. And Uncle Dick was a counselor when I was there.
Julie Rossi 7:34
Did that -- was that --
John Rossi 7:35
It was horrible. [Laughter] He was going into high school and I was going into second grade. He was a junior counselor, then he became a full counselor. Yes. And I had to be in his group one year where he was my baseball instructor.
Julie Rossi 7:51
And then he became a teacher.
John Rossi 7:52
When he got out of college, Uncle Dick taught at Lincoln Hall for like seven or eight years. Yes, he did. And Nonnie, your grandma, started working at the village hall. So yeah, we're all over the place. Auntie Betty and I didn't do anything. Well, then I worked at the village hall during the summer. I picked up the garbage.
Julie Rossi 8:06
But didn't you say Auntie Betty got married at the Purple Hotel?
John Rossi 8:09
She did. Her reception was at the Purple Hotel. [Laughter]The Lincolnwood Ritz.
Julie Rossi 8:15
Which is gone now. Right?
John Rossi 8:17
Yes.
Julie Rossi 8:18
We were driving around looking for a place to eat, and he's like, "I think the Purple Hotel is over here." No, it's not. It's gone.
John Rossi 8:23
It's gone. They knocked it down a while ago. So anyway. But yeah, Lincolnwood--what I loved about living here, and I probably didn't appreciate it at the time, was well there wasn't a lot of traffic because there were no streets.
Julie Rossi 8:37
What?
John Rossi 8:38
Well, there are no main, busy streets like Devon was the southern border. Touhy wasn't really the northern border, but it was kind of. There was a couple blocks north of Touhy that were in Lincolnwood. And then on the east side, it was McCormick. On the west side, it was Central. So Pratt was the only kind of halfway busy street that went through the whole town. But there was no cars on it because they couldn't cross the canal on McCormick and it ended at Central. So you could ride your bike anywhere. There was not a lot of cars to worry about. It was Nirvana. It was great for a kid, which I didn't really appreciate at the time. There was just not a lot of cars, now there's a lot more traffic, but it was just different back then. Between Devon and Touhy was where Lincolnwood was, and that's where we always were. I started riding my bike. We'd ride our bike to that day camp every day, and there'd be thousands of kids riding away from there every afternoon. At Lincoln Avenue, they finally had to have a policeman stop the traffic.
Julie Rossi 9:38
Like the great summer camp migration?
John Rossi 9:40
Yeah. And you know what it cost? Like $3 or something for six weeks.
Julie Rossi 9:44
Of course it did.
John Rossi 9:45
Yeah, it was unbelievable. It was something to do every day. And most of the kids you knew went there. I knew a lot of the kids I met in town were because of the camp or little league.
Julie Rossi 9:57
After camp days, when you got a little bit older, where did you hang out?
John Rossi 10:02
I actually--
Julie Rossi 10:04
Parking lots?
John Rossi 10:05
No.
Julie Rossi 10:05
[Laughs]
John Rossi 10:07
When I was in like seventh and eighth grade, I actually had a job, kind of, working. I sold subscriptions to the news--
Julie Rossi 10:14
You were a newsie?
John Rossi 10:14
Yes.
Julie Rossi 10:14
I did not know that you were a newsie.
John Rossi 10:16
[overlapping] -- which was a local newspaper for Niles Township. And they paid us a quarter for every news subscription and 15 cents for renewal. And we would just go door to door. We would ride our bikes to the news office, which at that time was by Niles East High School, and there'd be like eight or ten boys that are 12, 13, 14 years old. And this guy would put us in this big convertible with all 10 kids in there--this was really safe--and then just drive us to neighborhoods in Morton Grove, Niles, Lincolnwood, or Skokie and just drop us off for three hours. And we would walk door to door, split up the blocks, and ring doorbells and talk to ladies, talking them into buying subscriptions. It probably would be child abuse today [laughs] if they did that.
Julie Rossi 11:01
Yeah, I don't think they could do that.
John Rossi 11:02
And at the end of the day, if you sold a couple subscriptions, you'd make a couple bucks. And it was the money we needed to spend or, you know, hang out.
Julie Rossi 11:08
To buy chocolate shakes.
John Rossi 11:09
To buy chocolate shakes. Because then in high school, my friend's parents bought the Baskin Robbins on Touhy. So I started working there my freshman year in high school.
Julie Rossi 11:19
And you worked there forever.
John Rossi 11:20
No, I only worked at that store for a little less than a year because they got rid of it. And then what happened was I started working in the store in Edgebrook. And then I worked at the Baskin Robbins in Edgebrook on Devon until I went to college.
Julie Rossi 11:31
Right. And didn't you say that you were from Lincolnwood and you worked in Edgebrook, and all the guys that lived in Edgebrook worked at L-Woods?
John Rossi 11:40
There were many of my friends from Edgebrook [inaudible] that worked at Kenilworth Inn is what it was called. So we were crossing on the way to work [laughs]. So I worked at Baskin Robbins, which is a great job if you were--
Julie Rossi 11:52
--in high school, yeah.
John Rossi 11:53
I went to Loyola Academy. It was an all-boy high school, so who buys ice cream? Girls! [Laughter] So that's how we met girls.
Julie Rossi 12:04
So you hung out at Baskin Robbins.
John Rossi 12:06
I used to hang out at Baskin Robbins in high school a lot.
Julie Rossi 12:07
Did you even go there on your days off?
John Rossi 12:09
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 12:09
And you're all like, 'I'm just gonna go hang out at Baskin Robbins."
John Rossi 12:11
Well, we would meet there and then--
Julie Rossi 12:13
"In my sweet car." Didn't you have a sweet car?
John Rossi 12:16
I had a 1969 Mustang.
Julie Rossi 12:19
Yeah you did.
John Rossi 12:20
That was actually my mom's.
Julie Rossi 12:22
Damn straight.
John Rossi 12:22
That I drove all the time. [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 12:26
I love the idea of Nonnie just driving around in a '69 Mustang.
John Rossi 12:29
Yeah. It had a 351 engine, and I got a ticket going 97 miles an hour.
Julie Rossi 12:35
On the Edens? Were you going to pick up Poppy?
John Rossi 12:36
No, I was on the Indiana tollway. Coming back from college. Coming back from school.
Julie Rossi 12:36
Got this sweet ride, you're just goin' 97. Oh, wait a minute. Didn't you guys go to Windsor? But we're not talking about Windsor.
John Rossi 13:01
We got some more questions here.
Julie Rossi 13:03
Oh, sure. More questions. Let's see. Oh, I believe you wanted to talk about the Legion Hall dances?
John Rossi 13:11
Yeah, you know. Yeah, that's another thing. When I was in seventh grade, they started doing these teenage dances at Lincolnwood. At the Legion Hall. Every Friday night--I don't know what it cost to get in--they would have bands play. And a lot of big name--well, eventually, what became decent local bands would play there. And so from 7 to 11, every Friday night, they had these dances. And so I was at the end of seventh grade and I was a big kid. So I was 12. I wasn't even 13 yet. And they needed kids to work at the dances, and they wanted kids whose parents were in the Legion. So I started working there when I was like in May of my seventh grade year because I was 5'11.
Julie Rossi 13:55
Were you like a bouncer? [Laughter]
John Rossi 13:57
No, I hung up coats, and then we'd work behind the bar and passed out drinks. Passed out Cokes. There was soft drinks. So I worked there. And then I worked there all through eighth grade, and then by the end of eighth grade, the kids that I knew, that were my age were old enough to actually go to the dances.
Julie Rossi 14:12
Did you work there when he kids [inaudible]
John Rossi 14:13
[overlapping] Yeah, it sucked. Everybody in eight grade thought I was cool because I worked at the dances because I was really young to do that.
Julie Rossi 14:29
When you were working at the Legion Hall dances, were there also like American Legion members just like sitting around being all like, "Kids these days."
John Rossi 14:36
Yeah. No, your grandfather was a bouncer as well as many of the other Legion members.
Julie Rossi 14:41
But Poppy would be a terrible bouncer. He would just let everybody in.
John Rossi 14:43
No, he was a bouncer. Dr. Calahan, Mr. Serentakis, there was a lot of them that were bouncers.
Julie Rossi 14:48
Who are those guys?
John Rossi 14:49
They were other Legion members.
Julie Rossi 14:50
Okay. And they're all just friends?
John Rossi 14:53
And the boys who worked there were all Legion brats, like sons of legionnaires.
Julie Rossi 14:56
Legion rats?
John Rossi 14:57
Brats.
Julie Rossi 14:57
Oh, brats [inaudible]. I like calling you guys the Legions rats better.
John Rossi 15:02
But it closed when I was like a sophomore in high school.
Julie Rossi 15:04
The whole Legion or the dances?
John Rossi 15:05
The dances ended. There was a big fight and someone actually had a problem.
Julie Rossi 15:11
What?
John Rossi 15:12
Someone got stabbed.
Julie Rossi 15:12
[gasp] At the Legion?
John Rossi 15:14
Actually in the park. A kid in my class actually. He didn't get killed.
Julie Rossi 15:19
He got stabbed? By who?
John Rossi 15:20
Another kid.
Julie Rossi 15:22
What? What a jerk! What kind of knife?
John Rossi 15:24
Lincolnwood dances kind of turned into--the normal kids stop going there--it turned into all the like troublemakers. And it got worse and worse and worse.
Julie Rossi 15:33
And Poppy did a worse job bouncing.
John Rossi 15:36
Evidently. After the dance one night, one of the kids in my class got stabbed. He wasn't in my class. He had gone to grade school with me.
Julie Rossi 15:43
Where? Like, in the arm?
John Rossi 15:44
[overlapping] He was a Niles West student.
Julie Rossi 15:45
Like in the arm though?
John Rossi 15:45
In the side. He was fine. Then they ended the dances after that.
Julie Rossi 15:50
That sounds crazy.
John Rossi 15:51
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 15:52
Due to a local stabbing, the Lincolnwood Legion ...
John Rossi 15:54
Yeah, they ended it. But I worked there often. I worked there like, yeah, almost all the time it was open.
Julie Rossi 16:00
Really?
John Rossi 16:00
Yeah, pretty much. I was really happy when it ended. Because I didn't have to work there anymore.
Julie Rossi 16:05
Right. And then you got to get your job at Baskin Robbins.
John Rossi 16:08
[overlapping] Well, every Friday night was kind of a crap shoot. Because I used to have to work at Baskin Robbins a lot on Saturdays. So yeah, so it was kind of awful. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 16:17
Right.
John Rossi 16:18
So I mean, there were days I didn't. I mean, if I had a baseball game or something, I didn't work at the Legion that night.
Julie Rossi 16:22
How long did you play baseball?
John Rossi 16:24
I stopped when I was 16.
Julie Rossi 16:25
Okay.
John Rossi 16:26
I played much longer than my ability. But yeah, the baseball program in Lincolnwood was--I don't know how to explain it. Most of the kids I knew played but some didn't. But for a little town, from 1969 to 1974 had amazing success at the older level. It all started with a group of guys that were like my older brother's--your Uncle Dick's--age. So they were like, six to 10 years older than me in that group. And they were in a college team that did very well and won a central states championship. And a lot of those guys played in college.
Julie Rossi 17:05
But not like through their colleges.
John Rossi 17:07
No, it was a summer league--
Julie Rossi 17:09
[overlapping] Where did they go to college?
John Rossi 17:09
St. Joe's and Rensselaer. But not their college teams.
Julie Rossi 17:12
College level.
John Rossi 17:12
It's what they did while they were in college.
Julie Rossi 17:15
Right. Okay.
John Rossi 17:15
So all of us younger kids would go and watch them all the time. And it got to be that baseball became the Lincolnwood thing. And I know it's all because of, you know, it's mostly because of your grandpa, my dad, because your Uncle Dick wanted a place to play in the summer. So they started a college team for him. And he got all these guys that--
Julie Rossi 17:35
[overlapping] So he started like three different leagues. [Laughter]
John Rossi 17:38
Yeah, basically. And they got this league together. So what that did is the kids that were four to eight years, 10 years younger than them would watch them play and get really into this baseball stuff, and we'd play all the time.
Julie Rossi 17:53
Right.
John Rossi 17:54
And so in 1969, they started a big league, they called the Big League Program, which was 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds. It was a division of Little League. They also had a Little League and then a Senior League for 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds. So when I was still in the Senior League, they started this Big League.
Julie Rossi 18:12
Okay.
John Rossi 18:12
And the first year, the Big League--they picked an all-star team that went to the Big League World Series in Winston Salem, North Carolina, but I'm not sure how they did. I know they didn't win it. But then in 1970, the team from Lincolnwood went to Fort Lauderdale for the Big League World Series and won the whole thing. And it just snowballed and everybody wanted to play after that. Everybody wanted to go to Florida. Everyone had to try it. So then in '71--
Julie Rossi 18:37
And did Poppy coach that team?
John Rossi 18:40
He was like an assistant coach on the '70 team.
Julie Rossi 18:42
Okay.
John Rossi 18:43
He coached the '71 team.
Julie Rossi 18:45
Gotcha.
John Rossi 18:45
And the '71 team came in second place in the world series.
Julie Rossi 18:49
Okay.
John Rossi 18:49
'72 team didn't go anywhere. They lost in the regionals.
Julie Rossi 18:53
[overlapping] Bunch of losers.
John Rossi 18:53
But, the Senior League all-star team, the 15 year olds--
Julie Rossi 18:56
Okay--
John Rossi 18:57
Made it to the Senior League World Series which was way cool.
Julie Rossi 19:00
That is pretty cool--
John Rossi 19:01
That was actually a bigger deal because there were so many more Senior League teams than Big League teams.
Julie Rossi 19:04
[overlapping] Yeah.
John Rossi 19:05
So those guys were just behind me.
Julie Rossi 19:08
And didn't Poppy always say something to the team members?
John Rossi 19:11
I'm not sure. Well, then the '73 team won the Big League World Series, and the '74 team came in third in the national tournaments. So in five years, they were in the national tournament four times.
Julie Rossi 19:25
Which is awesome.
John Rossi 19:25
No, in six years, they were in it five times.
Julie Rossi 19:27
Right
John Rossi 19:27
That they made it through the states, the regionals, and then the World Series. It was incredible. Yeah. One of the guys that--I'm quoting a guy that's actually on Lincolnwood Time Machine--he'd sent me a message that said--
Julie Rossi 19:41
Which is a Facebook group.
John Rossi 19:42
Which is a Facebook group. And one guy said to me, "John, I remember your dad telling me, 'You're a world champion and nothing, no one will ever take it away.'" He goes, "I've thought about that for the last 50 years of my life that your dad told me that."
Julie Rossi 19:56
Yeah.
John Rossi 19:56
"He said that I was once a world champion."
Julie Rossi 19:59
Which is awesome!
John Rossi 20:00
Yeah, it is pretty cool.
Julie Rossi 20:01
That's cool.
John Rossi 20:02
So then after that, it's just like the younger kids just weren't into it. It kind of ended. And you know what it was that there was the population started to go down. There weren't as many kids anymore.
Julie Rossi 20:10
Right.
John Rossi 20:11
But little Lincolnwood was on the map with those first six years for doing. And I know that allegedly in Williamsport, Pennsylvania--allegedly,I don't know if this is true--at one time, there was a thing that they sent my dad--they sent Poppy--a letter saying he was one of the few coaches at that time to have won a world title twice.
Julie Rossi 20:32
Really?
John Rossi 20:32
Yeah, from 1970 and '73 I guess is what it was.
Julie Rossi 20:37
Wow, that's kind of cool.
John Rossi 20:38
Yeah. So one of my, like, bucket lists was to go to the Little League Hall of Fame someday and see that.
Julie Rossi 20:44
Oh, [inaudible overlapping]. Because is his name there then?.
John Rossi 20:47
I don't know if his name is. Lincolnwood's there, though.
Julie Rossi 20:49
I guess we're gonna have to road trip. [Laughter]
John Rossi 20:50
So that was a big deal. I mean, I was around one of those teams.
Julie Rossi 20:59
How long did he coach Little League?
John Rossi 21:02
From 1955 till probably 1975, -76.
Julie Rossi 21:10
Oh, okay.
John Rossi 21:11
You know when he stopped?
Julie Rossi 21:11
When?
John Rossi 21:12
When Jay started playing.
Julie Rossi 21:13
Oh, because then he went to all of went to all of Jay's games.
John Rossi 21:15
His oldest grandson. When Jay was eight--
Julie Rossi 21:18
[overlapping] His first grandchild. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense.
John Rossi 21:23
Yeah, there's an article in the paper, "The father of Little League baseball retires," and they had a picture of Poppy and Jay in it.
Julie Rossi 21:31
By the way, here's a park.
John Rossi 21:32
Yeah. No, the park came later.
Julie Rossi 21:34
Oh, no. The park came in like the late '80s.
John Rossi 21:35
It's because he was a Trustee. That's what the park came.
Julie Rossi 21:37
Yeah.
John Rossi 21:38
All the parks in Lincolnwood are bouncing here.
Julie Rossi 21:41
Bounce away.
John Rossi 21:43
You know, Henry Proesel Park. Mr. Proesel was the mayor for like 50 years or something. I don't know. He might still be in the Guinness Book of World Records for having been mayor of a municipality the longest of anybody.
Julie Rossi 21:56
Really?
John Rossi 21:57
His grandkids went to school with me.
Julie Rossi 21:59
Okay.
John Rossi 22:00
Henry the third was in my classes. A friend of mine. But there was, you know, Richard Rossi Park--my dad, he was a trustee. Charlie O'Brien has a park.
Julie Rossi 22:12
I bet his park's not as good as Poppy's park.
John Rossi 22:14
[overlapping] G. G. Rowell has a park. These are all fathers of people I grew up with. And Les Flowers was the chief of police for a long time and there's a park.
Julie Rossi 22:22
Okay.
John Rossi 22:22
And they named all four of those other parks I think at the same time is when they dedicated all four of those to Mr. O'Brien, Mr. Rowell, my dad, and Les Flowers, chief of police. So it's pretty cool. The nice thing about like having your dad be so politically connected is I could never get in trouble.
Julie Rossi 22:37
Yeah?
John Rossi 22:39
I was going 55 miles an hour down Touhy one time, and someone pulled me over. And I went, "Oh, God, I'm gonna get--" It was like, I just got my license. And I thought I was gonna get in big trouble. And pulled out my license, and he said, "Are you Richard Rossi's son?" And I went, "Yeah." And he goes, "Okay, just slow down." [Laughter]
Julie Rossi 22:59
I didn't get any of those breaks growing up.
John Rossi 23:00
Actually, you know, I know Jay got a break one time for the same reason.
Julie Rossi 23:04
I'm sure uncle Dick got a break at the same time.
John Rossi 23:06
I don't know. He was already gone, you know, when Poppy got to be a trustee. He was married in '71. So, he wasn't around that much. The other thing that was unusual is people were--and probably a sign of the times--you know, because it was small, we knew a lot of people. When I was like eight, I went to Queen of All Aaints, so that was kind of far away from where we lived, I had to go home at lunchtime to have some drops put in my eye. I'd screwed up my eye. And of course, my brother was supposed to pick me up because he was off of school that day and he was in high school. Well, he never came. So I started walking home, and I got lost, which is normal when you're eight, you don't know not to get home. And some lady just picked me up and she said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm just looking for my parents' house." I said my name. She goes, "I know your parents and don't you know the Mancusos? They live over on the next block." She took me over to Mrs. Mancuso's, and I stayed there till they could get a hold of my mom to come and get me.
Julie Rossi 24:00
It was that kind of place.
John Rossi 24:01
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 24:01
You just get in a car with a stranger.
John Rossi 24:03
Exactly. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 24:04
Didn't even have candy.
John Rossi 24:05
No. And this woman, I've never met her in my life. I know what her name is: Mrs. Midwood. I met her son later on: it was Billy Midwood who was a little older than me. But yeah, I didn't know her at all. I was just walking down the street all by myself. And I think she saw this kid, an eight-year-old, in the middle of the school day that shouldn't have been walking down the street probably.
Julie Rossi 24:22
And now that would definitely be considered a kidnapping.
John Rossi 24:25
Yeah, well, maybe, or they wouldn't have let me leave the school.
Julie Rossi 24:28
Probably not. I guess that's more accurate. Yeah.
John Rossi 24:31
[Laughter] But at that time, they let us. When I was in first grade, I got in an accident at school. I knocked a tooth out in the bathroom. And my brother was in eighth grade. They called my mom and she wasn't home. She was out somewhere. So they just let me go with Dick--Uncle Dick. Like, "Okay, go home guys." I walked out of school and go, "What do we do now?" And he goes, "I don't know. We're not in school anymore." They just let us loose. It was a different world back then.
Julie Rossi 24:58
I feel like I would have been a lot out of school.
John Rossi 25:01
I don't know. We just took a bike out of the bike rack, rode home, and biked back the next day.
Julie Rossi 25:05
Yeah.
John Rossi 25:08
So I don't know. It just was a different type of play. But Lincolnwood was a small community. Everybody knew each other. It was great.
Julie Rossi 25:14
What were the holidays like in Lincolnwood? Was it like a magical fairyland in the winter?
John Rossi 25:18
The Lincolnwood Towers, people say it's nice now. It was unbelievable when I was little.
Julie Rossi 25:24
What are the Lincolnwood Towers?
John Rossi 25:26
They're an area--I guess it's west of Cicero, in between Pratt and Devon. When I was a kid, there was a lot of famous people who lived in there.
Julie Rossi 25:26
Who?
John Rossi 25:31
Jim Moran, which at one time was one of the Forbes 500, owned a car dealership, and had a TV show on WGN, and he lived in there. Andy Frain--there was Andy Rrain Ushers.
Julie Rossi 25:51
Oh.
John Rossi 25:52
Andy Frain lived there.
Julie Rossi 25:53
I worked for Andy Frain once.
John Rossi 25:53
[overlapping] And Auntie Betty went out with his son in high school.
Julie Rossi 25:54
Of course, she did.
John Rossi 25:57
Of course, she did. And some of the houses there were incredible. I know there's some of them still have the Christmas tree going through all the floors and the taxidermy reindeer. But there was there was--
Julie Rossi 26:13
We're talking Christmas decorations, right?
John Rossi 26:15
Yeah, Christmas. There was a choir and like an actual singing--not people but a recording.
Julie Rossi 26:21
I was thinking, like they hired children?
John Rossi 26:22
[overlapping] I don't know. Some kind of animatronic choir that would sing songs in front of a house. Queen of All Saints school had live animals and a manger when I was really little. It was just unbelievable. And I don't know what it's like now, but remember when you were little, we'd drive through the towers?
Julie Rossi 26:42
Yeah, even in the '80s, we would drive through the Towers. And it was just bumper to bumper traffic just going down like side streets, and everybody's just taking pictures of that crazy clock with Santa like going around in a circle like a cuckoo clock thing.
John Rossi 26:55
And the elves also?
Julie Rossi 26:56
Oh all the elves making--I don't even know if they were making candy.
John Rossi 27:00
There were a lot of like plastic. To these people, they were like Disney World decorations.
Julie Rossi 27:04
Yeah, they were straight up serious about their Christmas decorations.
John Rossi 27:08
And it's still pretty famous. But it's not anywhere as elaborate as it used to be.
Julie Rossi 27:11
Yeah, it was everything in the yard even in the '80s.
John Rossi 27:14
[overlapping] Like everything else, people move so they stop.
Julie Rossi 27:17
Didn't some of the houses like sell the decorations with the house?
John Rossi 27:20
Some of them did. Yeah.
Julie Rossi 27:21
Which is crazy--
John Rossi 27:23
Some of them do.
Julie Rossi 27:23
And kind of awesome.
John Rossi 27:24
Well, the house that has the Christmas tree that goes through all three floors ...
Julie Rossi 27:26
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:27
I know the people that grew up in that house.
Julie Rossi 27:28
Is that the same one with the fake deer?
John Rossi 27:30
Yes.
Julie Rossi 27:31
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:32
[overlapping] Obviously went with the house because they still have it.
Julie Rossi 27:34
Yeah.
John Rossi 27:35
That was the Boulder family when I was a kid.
Julie Rossi 27:36
Oh. Of course, you remember all of their names. Was it really just Christmas, or were there any other holidays? Like Fourth of July? Big Fourth of July things in Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 27:48
Lincolnwood didn't even have a fireworks display.
Julie Rossi 27:50
Really?
John Rossi 27:51
No. The other big one was Halloween.
Julie Rossi 27:53
Okay.
John Rossi 27:53
Halloween, they--and I think they still do this at the big park--they would have a hot dog thing after trick or treating at night.
Julie Rossi 28:00
Okay.
John Rossi 28:00
So they had like a bonfire.
Julie Rossi 28:02
Was it like a Super Dog hot dog thing?
John Rossi 28:03
No. It was like an Oscar Meyer gross hot dog. [Laughter] There would be hundreds and hundreds of kids there after trick or treating that'd go to the park and have hot dogs. I know they did that for a long time after because I know Poppy had to go there all the time on Halloween night and do that.
Julie Rossi 28:21
As a trustee?
John Rossi 28:22
Well, he just liked doing it.
Julie Rossi 28:24
He'd just like going there and talking to people and telling stories.
John Rossi 28:28
Yeah, so they had that for a long time. And I guess the kids didn't have to be driven places. And I know the whole world was like that: kids could ride their bikes differently. But it was actually safer here because there weren't any--
Julie Rossi 28:38
It was even like that when I was a kid.
John Rossi 28:40
There weren't any big streets, though.
Julie Rossi 28:41
Like, I rode my bike everywhere.
John Rossi 28:43
Yeah, we didn't have to cross any main streets.
Julie Rossi 28:44
Yeah.
John Rossi 28:45
So it was a little bit different.
Julie Rossi 28:48
Yeah.
John Rossi 28:49
Yeah, it was nice.
Julie Rossi 28:50
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
John Rossi 28:53
A cartoonist.
Julie Rossi 28:53
I know you did. [Laughter] Tell me about the comic book shop where you used to go.
John Rossi 28:59
No, comic books were bought at drugstores back then.
Julie Rossi 29:02
It was just a drugstore?
John Rossi 29:03
Yes, Orlov's. It was right across, kitty corner from here.
Julie Rossi 29:05
Okay.
John Rossi 29:06
Which is now, I think it's a Walgreens or something. Yeah. Used to be Orlov's pharmacy. Yeah. My friends and I, we'd get off the bus and go stand there and wait for the comics to come out on Thursdays.
Julie Rossi 29:14
Just every Thursday.
John Rossi 29:14
Till they unpacked them and then buy a couple and bring them home.
Julie Rossi 29:18
[Laughter] And that's it, just go to that drugstore?
John Rossi 29:22
Or we'd go to the other drugstores later in the week to get other things, but yeah.
Julie Rossi 29:26
Did you guys trade comics ever with each other?
John Rossi 29:28
No.
Julie Rossi 29:29
It was like everything you bought was just yours?
John Rossi 29:30
Always, usually.
Julie Rossi 29:32
Yeah?
John Rossi 29:33
You know, I still have some of them.
Julie Rossi 29:34
I know you do.
John Rossi 29:35
I retired on them. Yeah, I thought I could be a cartoonist, but I found out I couldn't draw.
Julie Rossi 29:44
Right.
John Rossi 29:44
I met kids who could really draw. Then I decided no, I better not do this for a living.
Julie Rossi 29:49
I feel like when I was little, Nonnie had this--or maybe it was yours, I'm not sure--but it was like this big plastic thing that had a light shining under it so you could learn how to trace. And that was yours, and then Nonnie always let me play with it, so I could learn how to draw.
John Rossi 30:03
Yeah, when I was a little kid, they bought me that so I can learn how to draw.
Julie Rossi 30:05
Loved that damn thing. It was great. It didn't work, though.
John Rossi 30:09
Well, my mom went to the Art Institute.
Julie Rossi 30:10
I know--oh.
John Rossi 30:10
She was an artist. For one year.
Julie Rossi 30:12
I knew that she was an artist, but I didn't know she went to the Art Institute.
John Rossi 30:14
Yeah, she did.
Julie Rossi 30:15
Okay. She went to the Art Institute, and then when did she start working for the village of Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 30:21
When I was in college.
Julie Rossi 30:22
Oh, so way later.
John Rossi 30:23
Yeah. She only worked there for about 10 or 15 years.
Julie Rossi 30:25
She only worked there for 10 or 15? That's a long time.
John Rossi 30:28
She was probably in her mid 50s when she started there.
Julie Rossi 30:30
What was she doing there?
John Rossi 30:32
She actually started on just filling in for people who were sick.
Julie Rossi 30:37
Okay.
John Rossi 30:38
And then on vacation.
Julie Rossi 30:39
[overlapping] Probably just because all of her kids had moved out.
John Rossi 30:41
They taught her how to run like an accounting software. And then I'm like, "Are you kidding? You're like 65 years old. How are you going to learn how to do?" So she did some accounting thing after a while. Yeah, but she worked there for a while. Yeah, so she worked at the village, Poppy was a trustee, and Uncle dick taught at the school.
Julie Rossi 30:57
Yeah.
John Rossi 30:57
And I picked up the garbage during the summer in college.
Julie Rossi 31:00
Well, you didn't tell me. I forgot that you were a garbage man.
John Rossi 31:02
I was a garbage man.
Julie Rossi 31:03
Oh.
John Rossi 31:05
I worked for the village during the summers when we picked up our own garbage.
Julie Rossi 31:08
You were a newsie and a garbage man.
John Rossi 31:10
We actually decorated one of my friend's apartments with what we found in the garbage
Julie Rossi 31:13
And a garbage decorator.
John Rossi 31:14
Yes. If someone was throwing a couch out or a chair, we wouldn't pick it up. I'd tell we'll come back. We'd come back later and get it and bring it to his--
Julie Rossi 31:22
And just put it in his house?
John Rossi 31:23
His apartment, yeah.
Julie Rossi 31:26
We did stuff like that in college too.
John Rossi 31:28
So anyway. Now all that stuff's licensed out. They don't have their own garbage men anymore.
Julie Rossi 31:34
And you can't just steal things from the garbage dump. Or from the garbage. Well, you can take these from the side of the road, but not like ... All I'm saying is that I've picked up furniture from the side of the road before.
John Rossi 31:45
Because my dad was a trustee, when all of us kids were out of the house, then the villagers actually plowed there snow a lot, which they never did when I was a kid. I would have liked that because then I wouldn't have to do it myself.
Julie Rossi 31:56
[overlapping] you wouldn't have to do it yourself?
John Rossi 31:58
But they did. They did it after, you know, all of us were gone and he was getting older, the village would come and do his driveway.
Julie Rossi 32:04
That's adorable!
John Rossi 32:05
I know.
Julie Rossi 32:06
That's so cute. That makes sense. It's a long driveway.
John Rossi 32:09
Yeah.
Julie Rossi 32:09
It was a long driveway.
John Rossi 32:10
There used to be a lot of factories behind the school, east of the school. [inaudible overlapping] Just thinking of other stuff that was around here that's gone. Well, I started thinking about that they threw out Oscar Mayer Weiner whistles. So the kids used to ride their bikes up there and go through the garbage, speaking of going through garbage.
Julie Rossi 32:27
Oh, God, you would just go through the garbage and take thrown out whistles and just use them?
John Rossi 32:30
Yeah. And then we would bring them home and wash them, and we'd have Oscar Mayer Weiner whistles.
Julie Rossi 32:33
You didn't wash them, and you know it.
John Rossi 32:34
Probably not. Well, when we got home, we had to wash them.
Julie Rossi 32:36
You would stick them in your mouths.
John Rossi 32:37
Well, we did, but by the time we got home, our moms made us wash them.
Julie Rossi 32:41
I'm like there's no way. You brought them home, and then Nonnie would yell like, "Where'd you get that?" And you'd be like, "I found it." "Did you wash it first?" "No."
John Rossi 32:47
No, she knew we got it from there.
Julie Rossi 32:49
[Laughter] Like there's no way you washed it.
John Rossi 32:54
Lincolnwood's a lot. We're sitting at the library. This was a Jewel.
Julie Rossi 32:57
Right.
John Rossi 32:58
Not a big Jewel but a Jewel. Where I bought all my baseball cards when I was a kid.
Julie Rossi 33:02
What were your favorite restaurants when you were a kid?
John Rossi 33:04
There weren't that many. People didn't go out to eat.
Julie Rossi 33:06
Really?
John Rossi 33:07
Like Burger King is about the most biggest restaurant I ever had. That's right.
Julie Rossi 33:09
Right. We drove past the Burger King, and my dad was like, "I used to ride my bike to that Burger King." And I was like, "Very cool, Dad."
John Rossi 33:15
Lou Malnati's took over a restaurant that was called Novak's.
Julie Rossi 33:21
What was Novak's?
John Rossi 33:22
Just a restaurant.
Julie Rossi 33:23
Okay.
John Rossi 33:23
And then it was the very first Lou Malnati's on Lincoln. And Novak's I guess didn't have a liquor license, or there was a waiting list to get liquor license. And my dad was on the zoning board at the time. So Lou wanted a liquor license.
Julie Rossi 33:42
Good old Lou.
John Rossi 33:42
And somehow my dad got him a liquor license, so we used to get free food at Lou Malnati's because he wouldn't have opened without that liquor license that my dad got for him. Uncle Dick had his rehearsal dinner at Lou Malnati's for his wedding.
Julie Rossi 33:54
I think there's some connection between Poppy and Dominic's?
John Rossi 33:57
Grampy, your grandpa. That's nothing to do with Lincolnwood, though.
Julie Rossi 34:00
No, no, but it's just a story. No? Okay, that's fine.
John Rossi 34:04
My grandfather was Dominic's first butcher.
Julie Rossi 34:06
The first butcher at Dominic's, which is gone now, so it doesn't matter anyway. Okay, let's see. So Grandpa--not Grandpa 'cause Poppy--Poppy's dad was the first butcher at Dominic's.
John Rossi 34:23
Right. Nothing do with Lincolnwood.
Julie Rossi 34:25
But where did he come from?
John Rossi 34:26
Italy.
Julie Rossi 34:27
Yes. Where in Italy?
John Rossi 34:29
That's got nothing to do with my Lincolnwood story.
Julie Rossi 34:31
It's part of your life.
John Rossi 34:32
I'm fighting with my daughter on this thing.
Julie Rossi 34:34
It's part of your life.
John Rossi 34:36
[inaudible] Godforsaken little town in the middle of Italy.
Julie Rossi 34:40
Okay, okay. And you actually went there?
John Rossi 34:41
I went there a couple years ago with one of my cousins. Yes.
Julie Rossi 34:43
Which is awesome!
John Rossi 34:43
It was neat. It was cool.
Julie Rossi 34:47
You didn't find any old like Rossi relatives, did you?
John Rossi 34:51
We found them after we left. They tagged us on Facebook.
Julie Rossi 34:54
Oh, right. They found you guys, which is kind of cool.
John Rossi 34:57
Right.
Julie Rossi 34:58
And Aunt Pat's gone back there.
John Rossi 34:59
She goes back there and stays with them.
Julie Rossi 35:01
But it's kind of neat that they moved over. What about like the Berger side of the family?
John Rossi 35:05
I don't know much.
Julie Rossi 35:06
No? Which is funny because Grandma Berger lived with you guys on Keystone.
John Rossi 35:09
Yeah, but Nonnie was an only child. So I didn't have a lot of cousins. All the cousins on that side were second cousins.
Julie Rossi 35:15
How long did Grandma Berger live with you guys?
John Rossi 35:16
My grandmother lived with us. I don't know. After I got married. She died the year I got married, so ...
Julie Rossi 35:26
'77?
John Rossi 35:25
28 years. Well, we moved in in 1954, and she died in 1978. 24 years. And she lived with us for 24 years.
Julie Rossi 35:26
That's crazy.
John Rossi 35:34
I did thought it was normal. One of my neighbors thought that she was our cleaning lady.
Julie Rossi 35:39
Really?
John Rossi 35:39
She didn't know she was our grandmother. She had a different last name.
Julie Rossi 35:43
Like a servant's quarters?
Julie Rossi 35:44
[Laughter] That's awesome.
John Rossi 35:49
Yeah, she was with us forever.
Julie Rossi 35:50
Which is crazy. Because I feel like Nonnie was cleaning constantly. Couldn't they just tell that like Nonnie cleaned?
John Rossi 35:55
Who knows?
Julie Rossi 35:56
Yeah. Okay. So let's see. So your jobs because I never even knew you were a newsie. So you were a newsie.
John Rossi 36:05
I was an newsie.
Julie Rossi 36:06
And then you were a bouncer. No, you were a coat checker.
John Rossi 36:10
And yeah, and I passed out pop.
Julie Rossi 36:12
And then you sold ice cream to ladies.
John Rossi 36:15
Yes.
Julie Rossi 36:16
Not ladies.
John Rossi 36:17
Girls.
Julie Rossi 36:17
To girls.
John Rossi 36:18
And everybody else.
Julie Rossi 36:21
And then you were a garbage man.
John Rossi 36:22
For the village.
Julie Rossi 36:24
And then you moved out of Lincolnwood. Right?
John Rossi 36:27
I moved. When I graduated college, I didn't live in Lincolnwood. But then right before I got married, I moved back for a few months.
Julie Rossi 36:32
Right.
John Rossi 36:32
So and then I left and got married.
Julie Rossi 36:34
What about Uncle Dick? What else did Uncle Dick do in Lincolnwood? Did he have any weird jobs?
John Rossi 36:37
He was a he was a counselor at the day camp for years.
Julie Rossi 36:39
It's so weird to me that he was a counselor and then he was a teacher because it's like such a normal trajectory for like a career path but not for Uncle Dick.
John Rossi 36:40
[Coughs] Excuse me. He was a counselor at the day camp for probably four or five years.
Julie Rossi 36:53
Okay.
John Rossi 36:54
And then when he got out of college, he taught at the school. Taught math, seventh and eighth grade math.
Julie Rossi 36:58
If you have to pick one thing -
John Rossi 36:59
Which wasn't bad wasn't good, because I was only like a freshman in high school when he started doing that.
Julie Rossi 37:03
Oh, okay.
John Rossi 37:04
So I knew a lot of the kids he had in class. It was awful.
Julie Rossi 37:08
Did those kids ever, like complain to you about Uncle Dick?
John Rossi 37:11
Constantly.
Julie Rossi 37:15
Of course they did.
John Rossi 37:18
He taught there, six or seven years.
Julie Rossi 37:21
Neat. Cool.
John Rossi 37:23
He liked it.
Julie Rossi 37:24
But you went to Loyola, right?
John Rossi 37:26
Yeah I went to political science in the Loyola. So I didn't go to Niles West. I didn't go to Lincolnwood school.
Julie Rossi 37:30
Did you still have friends that were going to Lincolnwood High School?
John Rossi 37:32
Tons of them.
Julie Rossi 37:33
Yeah.
John Rossi 37:33
You couldn't not - it was a small town. So yeah, playing baseball going to the camp your met kids from everywhere.
Julie Rossi 37:39
I guess that's true. Yeah.
John Rossi 37:40
It always surprised me when I met a kid when I was older who lived in Lincolnwood that I didn't know as a child.
Julie Rossi 37:45
Really? And you still know a lot of them, like, you still talk to them.
John Rossi 37:49
I thought I knew at least almost all - there are a lot of girls I didn't know. Because I wasn't really into girls.
Julie Rossi 37:53
Cause you went to an all boys school too.
John Rossi 37:54
Plus in high school. It was different because I had a driver's license by then. So I was leaving a lot. But I knew if I met a boy who had been here a few years, and I didn't know him. That was weird.
Julie Rossi 37:55
Especially with all the baseball stuff.
John Rossi 38:02
And baseball, soccer camp. Yeah, just having friends that went to Lincolnwood school going to their bar mitzvahs and stuff like that. It was just, yeah, met a million kids.
Julie Rossi 38:18
Which is awesome. Is there any favorite singular experience about growing up in Lincolnwood that you want to share? Before we go?
John Rossi 38:26
Do I want to share anything? Um, no. I don't know. I thought I thought I didn't appreciate this area until I left.
Julie Rossi 38:39
Yeah, that sounds... Yeah.
John Rossi 38:41
It was such the thing that and I don't know if it's like that now. And I have to think it's probably like that, because it was so small. And it had at one school. Three buildings, but one school, all the kids had to be at the same school. So the kids all know each other because they all were at this - good or bad - they all know each other. Now, I didn't go to that school. But I did -
Julie Rossi 39:02
Still knew everybody.
John Rossi 39:02
Knew a lot of kids from those schools. I think that - and then it was - being so close to the city, you were allowed to do things - well, or not be allowed - you could do things when you were 13, 14 years old, that you can't do in the other suburbs, like take a bus to a Cubs game or go downtown or just buy do things on your own.
Julie Rossi 39:28
Because of the ease of it as well.
John Rossi 39:29
You just knew what to do. You just knew where to go. You know, it's just, and I don't think I appreciated that. I know when I was when I was in high school. I wanted to live in an area where all the kids went to school together. And maybe it's because I went to a different school where you know, every kid you met you, they would know each other. Right? And so I thought moving out to Naperville was going to be more like that. But and it was I mean neighbor, you you lived in it. It's great. It was a great living in Naperville.
Julie Rossi 39:55
It was a wonderful place to be until I was about fourteen.
John Rossi 39:57
What I found out being in a big - those big high schools So far away from- that's more trouble kids getting, there's more trouble out there than there is around here because there's more for kids to do. Kids get in trouble and there's no doubt kids are gonna, you know, kids around here aren't going to get hurt in car accidents because nobody can drive fast. So I didn't appreciate what this area had to offer till I left. How does that sound? And I kind of wish I never did in a lot of ways.
Julie Rossi 40:25
Is that what you miss most about Lincolnwood?
John Rossi 40:27
Yeah, I miss the proximity to Chicago. I miss that the most.
Julie Rossi 40:30
Yeah, you come to Chicago to visit me all the time.
John Rossi 40:35
But the accessibility of the city is what I miss the most.
Julie Rossi 40:38
Well that's awesome. Cool. I think we got to wrap this up now.
John Rossi 40:42
Probably, they're gonna throw us out.
Julie Rossi 40:44
They're gonna kick us out of the library.
John Rossi 40:45
Hopefully nobody will ever listen to this.
Julie Rossi 40:46
Everybody's gonna listen to it. Everybody needs to listen to this.
John Rossi 40:52
Well thank you for interviewing me.
Julie Rossi 40:53
Thank you for having me interview you.
John Rossi 40:54
Did we cover all your stuff?
Julie Rossi 40:56
I'm - Yeah, sure. Why not? This was a general - I'm looking at it like a list of talking points. It was a general list. It's good. I think we did good. But thanks again.
John Rossi 41:05
Thank you.
Collection
Citation
“My Lincolnwood Story- John Rossi,” Lincolnwood Historical Collection, accessed May 20, 2026, https://lpld.omeka.net/items/show/52.
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