Jaime Thomas does not want to move.
She is barely settled at Lincoln-Way East High School. She is finding her way in her first year of high school. She thrives at choir, fills sketchbooks for art classes, devours imported Japanese comic books.
Jaime especially does not want to go to a tiny Wyoming town with a population equal to that of her school. She does not want to leave her friends in Mokena. She’ll maybe consider one bright possibility – riding a horse.
“I just don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. My friends don’t really ask about it too, ’cause I guess they know not to ask me ’cause either I get really mad or just like ” she said. “It’s hard to talk about it too.”
Everything will change. Everything has changed.
Jaime’s dad, Fred, needed a paycheck.
Pressmen aren’t in high demand anymore, so he went looking for work in one of the nation’s few growth industries – corrections. His search took him more than 1,000 miles from home, to Newcastle, Wyo., where he’s worked as a prison guard since October.
Sometime this summer his wife, Lisa, with Jaime and her brother, Michael, in tow, will follow him west, seeking new opportunities in a tough economy as Americans have done for years. They’ll leave the 24/7 pace of the suburbs for a one-stoplight town, where the nearest fast food joint is more than an hour’s drive away.
Lisa Thomas has been holding down her family’s fort, but she’s struggling to support them with her paycheck from the Park Forest Public Library.
And public jobs are being cut back, too, for librarians and teachers. Hours are shrinking. Furloughs are becoming the norm.
Lisa, 46, will make the best of her new hometown. She will find a house big enough for four, plus visitors from home. She will learn to plan her grocery outings to the “big” nearby town that has just a smidge more people than Mokena’s 18,000. She herself will find work, maybe in a new business. And Lisa’s allergies and asthma might improve in the cleaner setting.
But she will say goodbye to the bookclubs she’s cultivated at the library, to her own mother up the road in Palos Hills, to her brother and niece across the street, to Fred’s sister in New Lenox. She will keeping blogging “From Mokena 2 Wyoming ,” for them. At least she doesn’t have to sell their rented condo. She trusts the husband she describes as “sturdy” and gives the kids a pep talk. Jamie’s digging in her heels, while Michael is OK with the move.
“See guys, we’re part of the American fabric, what this country was founded on,” she told her kids. “We’re picking up and heading west.” They’re following in the path of the pioneers on a trail that’s all highway now.
“It is very American, what we’re having to do,” Lisa said. “Times got tough, Fred lost his job, we’re going to forge a new frontier as it were.”
‘Everybody knows everybody’
Fred Thomas shares a trailer with a co-worker in downtown Newcastle, three miles down the mountain from his assigned honor camp. He patrols hallways, checks inmates in and out of the low-security facility. He works the night shift – something he became accustomed to during his 30 years printing newspapers.
“I love it out here,” he said. “I have no traffic. Everything’s so laid back. Everybody waves, everybody talks to you. You have to be very friendly in tiny towns because everybody knows everybody.”
Fred, 48, had been laid off three times during his career before he took a buyout a year ago. This time, when he looked for work, he considered lithography. He took a test for the Will County sheriff’s office to do courtroom security. He saw a recruiting event for Wyoming ‘s state corrections department in Tinley Park, figuring he could practice for the Will County test.
Two things quickly happened: He failed the local test and Wyoming made him an offer.
Fred decided to forge ahead while his family prepared to uproot. He doesn’t like to talk about the distance from his kids. He’s shut that part of himself down.
“It’s very hard. I put it in a box and put it away in my head. If I sit and ponder it.”
Instead, he chats about a commute that takes just minutes through the timber, crossing paths with roaming cattle and eagles perched on fenceposts. He plans to buy a handgun so he can jog safely near mountain lion territory. He loves the outdoors, gardening and fishing.
High-jobless states targeted Wyoming ‘s corrections department had recruited in states with the highest unemployment rates. Michigan was at the top of the list, but Illinois also made the cut.
Eleven Illinoisans have taken jobs since September as a result of the recruiting events. Most of them went to a new prison in Torrington, while only Fred is in Newcastle.
Newcastle’s mayor, Greg James, also works at the honor camp with Fred. He teaches vocational skills to the inmates and moved to Wyoming from Utah 20 years ago to raise his kids in the wilderness, far from crime.
“We’re a very, very friendly community, very open to people coming in, very willing to help people get settled,” he said.
Fred’s family can choose from at least a dozen churches, several little restaurants and two grocery stores. The town’s public school is only five years old and holds just 225 students – a tenth of Lincoln-Way East’s enrollment.
The views also are stunning; Deadwood and Mount Rushmore are easy day trips away.
“If you’re accustomed to the suburbs and the city, it can be quite an adjustment,” James said.
There’s just one movie theater in town and no mall or big fast-food chains.
“It can be unsettling to know that a McDonald’s is an hour-and-a-half away.”
It’s not malls or junk food Jaime or her brother will miss. It’s the culture they suck up living so close to Chicago.
For Michael, happiness is seeing underground bands live.
At 18, he lives for punk rock shows, thrashing in the pit in T-shirts that scream out the names of his favorite bands. He and friends drive into Chicago to see local acts at small all-ages clubs. They line up for tickets to big summer festivals.
Michael blew off his prom to see a Distorted show. Michael’s boots are black combat, not cowboy.
But like his father, Michael loves the outdoors. He longs for a new start, too. He’d have enlisted in the Army this fall except he didn’t want to leave his mom and sister alone. And like his mom and sister, he’s constantly reading. He keenly feels his dad’s absence at home playing computer games or at Walt’s where they both had part-time jobs.
“I don’t want to think about it too much,” Michael said. “He’s my dad. I miss him.”
With high school long over, Michael’s ready to take a big step. Maybe study history. Roam around. With room to think under wide skies, he’ll try to figure it out.
“I’ll be going to college out there now. Maybe I’ll meet new people out there. Around here, it’s well, I don’t like it,” he said. “I’d just like a change of scenery.”
As published in the SouthtownStar, March 7, 2010, on pages 1 and 8.
