About The Author
Chuck Engels
Hi, My name is Chuck Engels and I am the author of these Carpentersville pages.
I lived in Carpentersville for 12 years (1963 - 1975) and visit as often as possible.
We moved to a house on Grenada Road, just down the street from the Di Simoni family, in 1963.
My parents were renting that house until they found a house to purchase, that happened the next year.
In 1964 we moved to 412 Amarillo Court and lived there until 1973, I later moved back to Grenada Road
and lived with the Di Simoni family for about a year in 1974 - 1975.
One thing that truly amazes me when I think back; how free we were as kids. My friends and I could ride our bikes 10 miles away from home.
No cell phones and still no worries. We would walk to the Meadowdale Shopping Center, the bowling alley, the Cinema and spend the whole day there.
My mom would say "be home by dark", that was it.
I loved growing up in Carpentersville, it was a wonderful time. I suppose it probably wasn't any different than most Mid West suburban towns back then .
The times were different, it's hard to realize just how different they were sometimes.
We lived within two blocks of all three schools; Kings Road Elementary, Perry Middle and Crown High.
My brother and I played Little League Baseball in the park that separated them all.
We walked to school all of my years growing up there, as did most of my friends, we went home for lunch too.
I was a crossing Guard (Safely Patrol in those days) and stood at the corner of Toro Circle and Amarillo Drive across from the entrance to Perry Middle.
We pitched tents in friends yards and stayed up all night. We would sneek to Mr. Donuts at 3am dodging the C'Ville Cops which wasn't hard to do back then,
they probably saw us just didn't really care. There weren't many troublemakers back then, which is why our parents didn't have to worry about us.
We weren't out getting into trouble, we weren't bored and we definitely didn't do anything illegal. Even with all we didn't have, ipods, computers,
the internet, Playstations, Nintendos, Game Boys, none of that and we still weren't bored, most of the time. The police didn't have to worry much about the kids in
Carpentersville, we respected them but most of all we feared our parents (it was a good healthy fear).
Back then we got in trouble for things like chewing gum in class. No one brought guns or knives to school, except maybe for 'show and tell' and then it was ok.
I remember back in 6th grade my grandmother had given me a book, 'The Wizard of OZ'. It was an original first edition, wasn't worth so much back then I guess.
I cut the center out of the book and loaded it with candy, the teachers at Perry Middle had a hard time figuring out where the candy was coming from for awhile.
That earned me a trip to see Mr. Rayka, who was then the vice-principal, not to mention how much I would love to have that book in one piece today.
In 1973 we moved to Wisconsin, Coleman, a very small town about an hour north of Green Bay.
I moved back to Carpentersville after being invited by the Di Simoni family to move in with them for my senior year.
That turned out to be my Junior year instead as I had lost a year after dropping out of the school in Wisconsin, that is another story for another time.
I spent the next year in Carpentersville but after all of my classmates had graduated it wasn't quite so much fun anymore.
Ended up moving back to Wisconsin for my Senior year which was now 1976 rather than 1975.
I went into the Army in June of 1976, spent time at Fort Sill, Oklahoma and Fort Ord, California.
Since then I have; gotten married to Criss Dickson (Crivitz High 1978) in 1979, we have had 4 children (Brandon 1983, Heather 1984, Brittany 1986 and Joshua 2001),
written a book, become a chef, a radio announcer, computer programmer, video editor, learned about the saving grace of Jesus Christ and have had a
wonderful life so far. Not that it was all easy, and Criss took the worst of it, but thank God we will celebrate 31 years of marriage in August 2010.
Even though we were married in Crivitz, Wisconsin my groomsmen were my brother Bruce and two guys from Carpentersville, Art Little (my best man) and Dave Maycroft.
Spent some time at the University of Wisconsin - Marinette and the University of Minnesota - Morris. Graduated from the
Trans American School of Broadcasting in Wausau, Wisconsin, that lead to my years in radio. Worked at KMRS Morris, KLQP Appleton, KBRF Fergus Falls,
all in Minnesota, writing commercials and doing on-air work. Then we ended up back in the restaurant industry before getting involved with the business of
moving freight all over the world. I've owned my own air freight company and been everything from operations manager to company president.
For the past 10 years I have been in the Information Technology department as a software developer and programmer, still in the transportation industry.
Although my love of media still hasn't changed, I get to do lots of video and camera work too.
We lived in Minnesota for over 20 years and had 3 of our 4 children there before moving to Geogia in 2001.
We currently attend Trinity Chapel Church in Powder Springs Georgia where I get to do many things in the media department.
Working with video, cameras, audio and lighting on a weekly basis. Criss works with the 2 year olds in the nursery and has done
that for many years along with being very involved in Vacation Bible School when she is able.
| Our children (2011); Brandon, Heather, Brittany and Joshua |
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| Our grandchildren (2011); Chaya, Aidan, Braelyn, Trinity, Cayla and Paige |
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To all of my friends that visit this site, I hope you have had a wonderful life. I have thought of many of you often and hope to someday see many of you again. If you have some time please stop by the comment page and drop me a short note, just to say you are alive and well.
One day it would be fun to walk the streets of Carpentersville again, hopefully soon.
Some of my favorite Carpentersville memories are;
There are so many memories of people and places, I hope to list them all somewhere on the site. Thanks for visiting my Carpentersville pages, I truly hope you enjoy your visit here and that these pages are able to bring back some good memories for you as well.
All the best,
Chuck
Here are some images from my past life in C'ville ...
