Ten Thousand Years in the Suburbs

About Jack Zimmerman, who moved to the suburbs: At the age of thirty, Zimmerman moved from Chicago to the suburbs determined to live the gamut of the suburban experience. He became a chauffeur for mouthbreathers, maintained a refrigerator full of microwavable chicken patties, taught Sunday school, and joined the Lions Club. He practiced lawn care and aluminum siding restoration. At last he knows the difference between soffit and fascia. But Zimmerman's writing transcends the suburban experience. He is a novelist in search of the novel and a middle-aged fat guy who has weathered more than one career change. He survived his son buying his first earring, job interviews in which he hears voices, and DisneyWorld. For ten years he has chronicled this life, two columns a week, in the Elmhurst Press. His writing has garnered two first place awards from the Illinois Press Association and free beers from local bartenders. But he wasn't always as you see him now. In a Lithuanian neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, he spent his early years listening to Charlie Parker, reading Down Beat, and playing trombone in his parents' basement. He heard a symphony orchestra for the first time when the Chicago Symphony came to his college in Quincy, Illinois. When the trumpet of Adolph Herseth floated above the orchestra, Zimmerman said, "Please, God, I've got to do this for a living." He's been broke ever since.