Learning from Living in Naperthrill

I have read several times where Bob Odenkirk, the star of “Better Call Saul” and a fellow graduate (although years before me) of Naperville North High School hated living in Naperville and how he couldn’t wait to get out, to go to the city where people were creative. He felt that Naperville was a dead place. 

At first I was offended at what he said about my hometown but then I remembered something: I wanted to get out, too.

Naperville is very much “Pleasant Valley Sunday” at least on the outside: everything looks perfect but if you start peeking under people’s carpeting all the problems are there, they are just kept hidden.

My parents moved us there in 1974, when it was a sleepy barely suburb of Chicago, just about 40,000 people. Now it’s well over 140,000 and not only ranked one of the best places to raise a family but also one of the snobbiest places in the country.

I was always told there were several reasons for our move from Wood Dale and a big one was the schools were much better. A second one: that my dad could have a nice piece of property to garden. And the third was the proximity to his job in West Chicago.

We had a brand new house (pictured here not long before my mom sold it in 2010– her dogs Ginger and Daisy peeking out the front doors) they had built and a year later my sister Denise was born, completing the family station wagon with the six of us.

Around seventh grade, I began to have an itch for something more. I had this dream to move to California (obviously I never quite made it, landing in Albuquerque). I believed there was a bigger life outside Naperville. Yet it was also a different time because we weren’t as connected as we are today: there wasn’t social media and the internet for us to see what we think we might be missing somewhere else. The priest I work with on my spiritual direction once told me it’s hard for young people to make decisions about relationships and careers because they have too many options, because they have access to many more choices.

But what I also knew about Naperville– even then– was the great support I had to become that person who had dreams and worked toward them. Besides great friends, there were great teachers, people who helped me work toward my big dream of being a writer. I know that without Naperville I wouldn’t be who I am today.

So while I understand where Bob Odenkirk is coming from, I also know that being in the place we called Naperthrill taught me to dream and perhaps if I’d had access to more than I did, I wouldn’t have reached the heights I have today.