40 years ago

We mock you not. At least we don’t intend to. Whether ’tis nobler for today’s consumer to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous recession, or to huddle safely within a promising economic stimulus package, we still need to eat. These 1969 prices in a Calcagno’s Food Mart ad may seem unreal indeed. Today, even an approximation of them is devoutly to be wished. Any idea of what a sling costs today? Or even an arrow?

Chickens – whole fryers, 29 cents lb., cut up, 33 cents lb. … ReaLemon – 32 oz. bottle, 49 cents … Planter’s Dry Roasted Peanuts, 9 oz. jar, 45 cents … Musselmans’ Apple Sauce, 25 oz. jar, 27 cents …Homemade Italian Sausage, 79 cents lb. … Del Monte Pear Halves, 2 ½ size can, 39 cents … Campbell’s Pork & Beans, two 16 oz. cans for 25 cents.

From the Jan. 30, 1969, Forest Park Review

30 years ago

“You can see a lot just by observing.” – Yogi Berra.

You could even help solve a burglary. That’s how Mrs. O’Day (no first name given) spent 20 or 30 minutes one Saturday night in January of 1979. She noticed three figures removing property from her garage, and went out to confront the trio (teenagers 19, 17 and 14). They bolted and fled in their vehicle, and she chased them in hers. She was jotting their license plate number when a bullet from the passenger’s side of the suspects’ car passed over her head. That pretty much ended the chase, in favor of a phone call to the cops. Officer Martin Moy put out a bulletin on the police radio. Within the hour the young burglars were apprehended at 34th Street and Western Avenue in Chicago. Mrs. O’Day got plenty of “attaboys” for information gathering – and a warning slip for doing other people’s work.

From the Jan. 10, 1979, Forest Park Review

20 years ago

From time to time, even up ’til today, some readers of this newspaper have felt that Oak Park business, Oak Park news, Oak Park people and their doings pretty much belonged in Oak Park and not in the Forest Park Review. With the announcement that the Review – purchased two years before by the Wednesday Journal – would transfer its staff and operations from Madison Street here to Oak Park Avenue there, a few readers here got the sweats. Journal publisher Dan Haley answered this concern stating that with the move, all its publications would be under one roof, costs would be pared and news coverage in the Review would be even more exclusively Forest Park.

From the Jan. 18, 1989, Forest Park Review

10 years ago

Farewell to Bill Lichtenberg and Welcome Aboard, John Rice. We had a change of columnists, and it was a bloodless transition. Bill was given an “attaboy” here last week for seven years of keeping watch on things and people in the village. Then we had – and still have – John Rice, the very merry Kerryman only a generation or two removed from the auld sod. For 10 years he’s informed and regaled us with accounts both local and personal. Boasting of his Gaelic ancestry and (dare I say it?) Oak Park lineage, he’s often expressed a preference for living here.

He loves his wife, Diane, their four children and Coop, the dog – yet occasionally lets slip family secrets. Like trying to help one of his youngsters with homework only to run face-on into the New Math. He not only failed to help, but lost some credibility with the scholar, became vexed, retired early, couldn’t sleep and still quakes, anticipating a computer question.

From the Dec. 16, 1998, Forest Park Review