I initially thought that one avenue into understanding change in Oak Park would be to look at how a community noted for being dry and a citadel of the temperance movement allowed liquor to be sold in restaurants and in a limited fashion as takeout in stores. The village government is very restrictive about who gets licenses. From the beginning it has been assumed that Oak Park will never have package stores or bars like the ones that used to ring its boundaries on Harlem, Roosevelt and North Blvds when I was growing up. Liquor is only sold in supermarkets. In addition, no bars would be permitted. Although "Poor Phil's" comes close to being a bar. I have to assume that the temperance ladies who at one time were a powerful force in the village were too old and society had changed too much to withstand the economic reality that good restaurants would not come to Oak Park unless they could sell liquor. This appears to be a pragmatic decision and not a moral one. Oak Park needed better restaurants if it was to become more attractive to young professionals and it needed these people to prevent Oak Park from becoming a place where only old people lived. In an interview with one of the reigning dowagers of the community who is well into her nineties, when I asked her about this change her response was "Oh my dear, the cocktail hour is now an institution in America." I am certain that at one time in her life, this woman was active in the temperance movement but people as well as time changes. While exploring this transformation seemed a good idea in the abstract it proved to be not worth exploring further.
Additionally, I thought the shift in attitude toward Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright would be revealing but I discovered the transformation happened too long ago to be useful. During my teen years - the 1950s - both of these gentlemen were considered by some to be immoral as they were adulterers and in general did not display behavior associated with the "Oak Park Way." Wright was the first to be rehabilitated in the 1970s when Prairie Style architecture became more and more popular. The restoration of Wright's home and studio and the creation of the historic district around his home brought hundreds of thousands of tourist dollars into Oak Park. Whatever some of the older generation of Oak Parkers might think about Wright's personal life, the village literally could not live without him.
Hemingway took a bit longer. I do not remember being assigned any of his works to read in high school. He had a kind of clandestine quality to him that made me read as much of his work as possible - suited my teen age rebellious needs. His restoration to the role of important native son was gradual. The summer of 1999 when I was doing initial fieldwork was Hemingway's centennial and the village went all out including spending a lot of money restoring his birthplace. There were many events including the inevitable "look-a-like" contest that I entered and lost. Hemingway left and never came back. He said little about his hometown and wrote less. He did called it "the Middle Class Capital of the World" but no one can locate a reliable source for his supposed quote that "Oak Park was a town of wide street and narrow minds."
In any case, Papa along with Frank Lloyd are now the public image that the village wishes to project to potential visitors as the front of the brochure at the beginning of these web pages can attest. A recent resident has cynically suggested that "Oak Park has made a cottage industry out of two adulterers." Given the drastic shift in moral attitude over the past 30 years, the comment is not far off. Their rehabilitation is a sure sign that Old Oak Park had changed into a much more tolerant place.
One can view these shifts in attitudes from an economic and moral perspective. They are clearly pragmatic in that both drinking in restaurants and the rehabilitation of Wright and Hemingway are an economic boom to the village - essential elements in the economic well being of the village. From a moral standpoint, one can ask whether the economic realities simply overrode any ethical considerations or whether these changes are indicative of a shift in moral values.