One of the best all-time classic movies for me is “Forrest Gump.” It is an amazing tale of a simple man who sits at a bus stop and tells strangers about his interesting life.
DEMARIO BOONE
As Forrest tells his story, you find it’s like a meteor shooting through history — so many things are going on around his unique trajectory with him in a front-row seat.
I feel like my own personal trajectory while living in Peoria has given me a unique story to share from my vantage point. So please, take a seat on the bench while I share my own cosmic trajectory.
My story as a Peorian really started before I was born. My mother was 13 years old when she became pregnant with me so she was obviously afraid and didn’t want her parents to know and didn’t acknowledge it. In fact, there is an actual picture of the moment I am about to tell you about.
My grandparents and my mother knew Richard Pryor very well. When my mother and grandmother were going to take a picture with him, the comedic great looked at my mother (knowing how she normally looked) and asked, “Rhonda, are you pregnant?!”
She immediately said, “No,” and tried to quiet him so her parents couldn’t hear. So the first time I was even acknowledged existing was from Richard Pryor. Such a Peoria beginning.
My unique trajectory officially began in South Peoria in December 1981 (shy a month of Mom’s 14th birthday). I was able to see the tail end of a South Peoria heyday. Peoria felt like the center of the universe to me in the ’80s and ’90’s.
Back in the day
Caterpillar was still Big Yellow, OSF, Methodist and Proctor hospitals were standing strong, and serious youth violence was rare. My grandparents loved to gamble at the Par-A-Dice, and we all loved to do afternoon river voyages on the Spirit of Peoria.
We’d give a few bucks to Willie York as he would bestow some gems of his wisdom upon us on Adams Street. The Gus Macker was full steam ahead, Manual High School helped propel Peoria to a basketball hotspot in Illinois. Peoria seemed so much in the thick of things.
Over the years I attended South Side Catholic Community School (now closed), Blaine Sumner Middle School (closed) and graduated in 2000 from Manual High. Got my first job at 16 at Kroger Grocery Store in South Peoria (closed), and my second job was at JCPenney (hanging on). Even bought my first car, a 1991 red Chevy Cavalier (rust bucket) from Benedict’s on Farmington Road (closed).
I could hoop in the Gus Macker (Toilet Bowl champs!), play arcade games at Aladdin’s Castle at Northwoods Mall, go to Steamboat Days (too much cotton candy), see concerts of legendary artists at The Heart of Illinois Fair (Monica was there for her first CD), scream at the Peoria Jaycees haunted house (I took a date to look tough because I scouted it out before with my brother), go to Heritage Days (won a goldfish that lived a few days) and never had to worry about my safety. I was just a kid in the best city in the world.
My trajectory, though, in these 43 years has seen that great Peoria wonder spiral.
Here we are
Caterpillar pulled out its main headquarters, and the city is still reeling from that decision. Many hospitals here are now Carle Health and it seems that we may not be the tractor and bulldozer capital, but a medical mecca.
There is no more Spirit of Peoria (sold off) on the river. The steamboat that was once in the downtown Peoria silhouette, is no longer there.
The spirit of Willie York has left Adams Street while our city grapples with large amounts of homelessness and the possible criminalization of the destitute. Willie was just about as famous as the mayor and city council, but in this climate today I would have feared for his life.
No more Gus Macker. If there could be, the city would have to worry about the large number of youth it would bring. Would there be arguments, fights, shootings? Where we once could safely gather as both children and adults — a community in large numbers — for the hoopfest (worrying only about parking and avoiding Adams), we no longer can with certainty.
Peoria today is a far cry from those ’80s and ’90s. Teens fighting and shutting down the mall, children and adults fighting in a trampoline park, fireworks shows turning into turf takeovers by large groups of kids with a ticking time clock on violence, city festivals having to employ several police departments and empty out budgets just to go on with minimal incidents.
Instead of getting to the root of youth violence, many times we become numb to it and only throw money at trying to control the kids in public.
Are you still sitting on the bench listening to my Forrest Gump view of Peoria?
Let’s get off the bench …
Together.
NEXT MONTH: Path for Peoria.
— Demario Boone is Director of School Safety, Peoria Public Schools.