A Good, Old-fashioned Music Store

Skokie, Illinois is a punchline to most people who have watched the Blues Brothers, but it has a magical quality for me.

It's where I discovered a small charter Waldorf school for my daughter's early childhood education that shaped me as a parent as much as it shaped her as child. It's where I took cello lessons from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's first female first cellist Alice Lawrence Baker in the 1980s. And it's where I've stumbled on a tiny treasure trove of sheet music called Music Unlimited.

From the street, this store is invisible. Sandwiched between a Martial Arts storefront and a dry cleaner business, Music Unlimited doesn't have a well-lit sign above the shop indicating it's there. However, it's name is discreetly displayed on its window, and if you walk up to the window and look in, you'll see a modest, dated room jam-packed with sheet music.

The walls are lined with bookcases carrying sheet music for piano and an entire section is devoted to musicals. In the center of the room are those old-fashioned trays one used to see holding LPs in record stores. At Music Unlimited, however, the trays hold sheet music for popular music one might hear on the radio.

"A music store organized by musicians for musicians," a sign on the window reads.

In addition to piano and voice, the store claims to carry sheet music for woodwinds, brass, and, of most interest to me, string instruments.

Squeezed up against the window is a metal green filing cabinet with a type-written label for the top drawer that reads: "Cello." Next to the filing cabinet is another, taller filing cabinet with a similar label that reads: "String Quartets."

I am dying to get inside this store and browse through those drawers. The store was closed for New Year's when I drove over yesterday, and I could only stand at that plain, unadorned window
and look in. It was like standing at the front of Lewis's magical wardrobe and knowing a wonderland lay beyond.

I haven't even gone in and I am enchanted already.