Laura Mazzuca Toops and John W. Toops Jr. met during a heat wave in July 1987 at the legendary northwest-side bar Bucket-o-Suds. “I was picking on one of the customers, verbally sparring, and she joined in,” John says. “Three or four or five of us were goofing around verbally until the place closed and we went off to breakfast, and one thing led to another.”
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To their surprise, Laura and John learned that they both lived in Berwyn–and liked it. John had moved to the western suburb that year after getting a job at a local bank. Laura, who grew up there, had been working as an editor and living in Evanston, but she bought a bungalow in her hometown in 1986 “because I was paying $1,000 a month in rent.”
John did most of the research, while Laura did the bulk of the writing. “I’m the male mom, the house dad, so I could do a lot of the phoning,” he says. “I’d flesh out an establishment and find out why it’s unique, why it should be in the book. Then I’d write it down and she’d edit the heck out of it….It was pretty much 50-50. Or maybe 70-30. But I drove when we went on our little adventures.”
