Join our Yahoo Group and keep us unified and united behind the our desire to make Northbrook the place that we all want to be.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iLoveNorthbrook/

This town has been the setting of virtually my entire life. My family moved when I was six months old to Greenbriar Lane, where we lived for 13 years, and then Cherry Lane until I left for college.  I attended Greenbriar, Northbrook Junior High and Glenbrook North schools. My memories of Northbrook fondly include 4th of July parades, V&S Variety Store and the old lion water fountain in the Village Green.

But one of my most cherished memories is The Creek. Many of you probably have never even noticed it, but you can spot it while walking down Cherry Lane across from Greenbriar School. There you’ll see some handrails protecting you from a fall into little more than a ditch, but to us kids, it was a creek. It started behind the home of the former Officer Friendly (aka Ray Weimer), runs behind a couple of yards until it turns directly east out toward Walnut. We spent many, many hours and days there. Sometimes, after a fierce storm, it held water, but most of the time, it was just dirt. But that dirt became the imaginative play yard for my brother Don and me. We were kings and queens there. Sometimes we shared our castle with our friends. But most of the time, it was just us.

It was especially fun when it snowed and we could run down the small hill and just “be.” We didn’t have video games. But we had The Creek. I drive by it every day. Sometimes I notice it, sometimes I don’t. But here I am, 30 years later and now I am raising my three girls just down the street. They know where Mommy used to live...sort of. My husband, George, has heard me mention The Creek. It’s still mine, although I haven’t been back there for 18 years. It’s still there; I wonder if it has given the kids in the neighborhood the same memories that it gave to Don and me.

My reason for creating this site is about more than me. It is for the other kids playing in their own secret hideouts. I want Northbrook to continue to be that place. I want Northbrook to be a place where our kids remember running around the neighborhood when the sun is starting to set in the summer. Feeling safe. Knowing that any neighbor is willing to help with a shovel and snow blower when we get hit with that snowstorm of the year. 

I know what it was like to be a child here. To play soccer on the Northbrook Park District soccer teams as an eight-year-old. To attend Glenbrook North as a varsity athlete. To watch all the changes, good and bad; to hope for the improvement that has eluded us and to lament the disappearance of what we once valued.

Think about all of the “Creeks” that all of us know about that no one else does. The opportunity here is endless. Let’s take us into the future with a dose of the past.

Kati Byrne Spaniak
spaniak@comcast.net