The last 25 years Oakwood Residents have seen more changes as technology moves us into the new century. Phones that had moved from party lines when my family first moved into the Illk house to private lines now have been moving to a phone in every pocket and are slowly moving toward phone calls being rare as we move to texting and new forms of communication. Oakwood originally allowed a 4 digit phone number when dialing in town and suddenly as of this year all ten digits have to be dialed for all phone calls.
Twenty Five years ago Oakwood had a video rental for VHS tapes in the ice cream shop on the corner of 150 and main and now you can rent DVDs at a Redbox in front of the ‘new’ McDonalds… and even that is all ready moving the way of the dinosaur as everyone gets high speed internet in their home and starts streaming movies on demand. Television shows are even moving the same way as people tire of commercials and move to watching shows on demand.
Social Media has become a thing as the last 25 years have passed. Twenty Five years ago the internet was just in it’s infancy as we were hearing ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and moving through Napster and then MySpace. Facebook has come and now we see Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and so many more.
We now have a new library, in the 1980s, Oakwood had no library and as a new bank was built the old bank was used a library before finally being razed and used as a building site for the new libary that stands today. The new bank has also been through changes, first serving as a community meeting location in the basement which is now closed to the public.
The village hall has been through changes and is just this year moving to a new building being located where the Oakwood Market stood for generations.
The water
The High Schools Name
The Truck Stops
Phones have changed
War and the people lost
Fed Gov Shut down
Blizzards and Ice Storms?
Pokemon Go
Cameras and now security cameras everywhere
Radio and Streaming
No Commercials?
9/11
Oklahoma City
Columbine
BLM
Hurricane Katrina
Y2K
2012 End of the World
Columbia Explosion (2003)
SpaceX
4th of July?
the parades?
Easter Egg Hunts
The new Park South of 150
Caseys
The fire station
2017 Oakwood High School Baseball team making it to the elite eight in the state
Illinois state Queen,
State cross country champ,
State wrestling champ,
Bobby Pierce in NASCAR Truck Series at El Dora Speedway.
Maybe some success stories of local people like Bobby Pierce and Cameron Lee and Dylan (sp) Fletcher.
Also people in remembrance like Ryan Katcher.
The Bike Path
