Category: The Rockford Files

When I started this column back in January 2001 (as a “Letter From Rockford”), the United States had just emerged from a presidential election that made this country look anything but united.  Red and Blue, until then simply convenient colors used by the television networks to designate which party’s candidate had captured the electoral votes...

This fall has been especially beautiful here in Rockford.  There is some truth, however, in the old adage that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” so I am not certain whether a year’s worth of rain and sun and cold nights with a moderately late first frost have all come together to provide...

According to the official website of the Lake Michigan Circle Tour, if we had stuck to the prescribed route, our excursion would have taken us approximately 1,160 miles.  Here on our 12th day out, however, we have just logged our 2,200th mile, and we are still 30 miles east of Rockford.  My obsession with lighthouses...

This town ain’t big This town ain’t small. It’s a little of both they say. And our ball club may be minor league But at least it’s Triple A. . . . We don’t worry ’bout the pennant much We just like to see the boys hit it deep There’s nothing like the view From...

The other day, driving through North End Commons (a neighborhood a bit north of the Chronicles offices and to the west of our house), I noticed a florist, a friend of mine, out in front of another flower shop, chatting with the owner.  The two businesses have coexisted now for over a year, though they...

Every city needs cemeteries, and not just for the obvious reason.  Like public buildings and monuments, they are a visible—and spiritual—link to the city’s past, a reminder that others have traveled the path that we trod, and still others will follow in our footsteps.  Placed prominently on the edge of residential or commercial areas or...

Every city is made up of innumerable stories, some overlapping, most not.  And, thus, every city needs many storytellers to provide a full account of its life, because—humans being finite—no one is likely to be able to encompass all of those stories in his work.  Few cities, however, are so lucky.  The best most cities...

Regionalism has been the chief buzzword of the Rockford Register Star for several years now, and, for once, on a rather limited level, I actually agree with the local Gannett paper.  There are certain problems facing Rockford that require coordination with surrounding communities and with county government, especially questions of land use.  This section of...

There’s a big brown cloud in the city, And the countryside’s a sin. The price of life is too high to give up, It’s gotta come down again. When worldwide war is over and done, And the dream of peace comes true. We’ll all be drinking that free Bubble Up, And eating that rainbow stew....

It’s been a rough three months for St. Mary’s Oratory here in Rockford.  First, over Labor Day weekend, some Republican members of the Winnebago County Board, in collusion with certain Republican county officials, hatched a plan to try to include St. Mary’s in the land-acquisition area for a new, $130-million county jail.  When the plan...

In late October, federal agents committed blasphemy against one third of the libertarian trinity of Microsoft, McDonald’s, and Wal-Mart.  In a coordinated raid on Wal-Mart headquarters and 60 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states, the feds arrest 245 illegal aliens, 235 of whom were working for a subcontractor who provided janitorial services for the chain.  (The...

When cities trumpet the glories of their downtowns, they normally talk about such things as the number and variety of restaurants and stores, easy access from other parts of the city, even the availability of parking places.  Here, however, we believe in “a different kind of greatness,” and I can see the ads now: “Come...

The chain saw screams as it hits the wood, then slides through the first few branches as if they were butter.  I toss them aside, and Jacob and Stephen each grab hold of one, dragging it, struggling, over to the gate and out onto the driveway.  It has been two weeks since the storm, but...

I want to speak to you today about war and empire. Killing, or at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq.  Although blood will continue to spill—theirs and ours—be prepared for this.  For we are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as...

Early in the morning factory whistle blows, Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes, Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light, It’s the working, the working, just the working life . . . One of the oddest ironies of our postindustrial age is that conservatives—true conservatives, not the various utopian...

It’s springtime once again in Rockford, when a young man’s fancy turns to bailing out his basement.  The old downtown and the residential neighborhoods built up through the 1940’s sit on clay soil, on top of rock.  The effect, when the spring rains come and the dry clay cannot absorb the water quickly enough, is...

Depending on whether you like them thin and greasy or thick and meaty, the two best purveyors of french fries in Rockford are Uncle Nick’s Gyros on East State Street and Altamore’s Ristorante on North Main.  Neither the mythical Uncle Nick nor the very real Alberto Altamore, I’m happy to report, has fallen prey to...

Rockford has long been a Republican city, which is not surprising considering that industry—at least through the 1980’s and, to a lesser extent, even now—has formed the basis of her economy.  Today, however, Rockford is becoming increasingly Democratic.  I do not necessarily mean that Democrats have begun to dominate city politics.  Even though the mayorship...

I stepped through the metal detector and walked down the long hallway to the old entrance to the Winnebago County Court-house, a monument to less security-conscious days.  In Room 502, I joined about 200 other citizens, waiting to do our civic duty.  Signing in, I received my badge: no name, just a number—Juror 11593.  I...

I suppose it was appropriate that I first heard the commercial just as we crossed into Winnebago County, returning from a whirlwind weekend trip to Michigan.  At first, the words didn’t register; it was only when I heard the voice of Kris Cohnor rather, Kristine O’Rourke Cohn, since it is an election year, after all—in...

June 30, 2002, arrived with little fanfare, an odd ending to 13 years of judicial tyranny here in Rockford.  Perhaps that’s because the Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit officially ended on a Sunday; more likely, it’s because most Rockfordians didn’t realize the significance of that day (just as they never quite understood what has happened over the...

Family traditions often get started by accident—especially, perhaps, those that center on food.  On the second New Year’s Eve after we were married, my wife and I found ourselves trapped in our apartment in Vienna, Virginia, victims of a freak snow and ice storm that made the Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., streets downright dangerous, especially...

You cannot hope to bribe or twist / (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do / unbribed, there’s no occasion to. —Humbert Wolfe The June issue of Chronicles was literally on the press on May 7, when local radio talk-show host Chris Bowman announced that Bishop Thomas Doran of the...

In recent months, as horrifying allegations of homosexual and pedophiliac activities among Catholic priests in the United States have multiplied, the response of the American Church has been, to say the least, disheartening.  Remarks by Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston, Roger Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, and Francis Cardinal George of Chicago have clouded the...

The train winds its way slowly through the Tuscan countryside, stopping at every small station between Siena and Florence.  I don’t mind, because Tuscany in mid-March is like Rockford in mid-to late-May—an explosion of greenery, a profusion of brilliant yellow forsythia blossoms, a cavalcade of white and pink cherries in full bloom.  We pass small...

“We have an Islamic school in Rockford?” my friend said in surprise.  His reaction was typical.  Rockford, as the local Gannett paper never ceases to remind us, is stubbornly average—in population, ethnic composition, income level—with a few notable exceptions, particularly astronomic property taxes and abysmal public-school test scores.  The idea that there is a sufficient...

After 12 years under federal rule, Rockfordians are looking forward to the end of the People Who Care school-desegregation lawsuit on June 30, 2002.  If the district administration and the school board have their way, however, the fat lady may not actually begin singing for another ten years. One of the many elements that has...

The first time I drove to Rockford, on a cold, gray, slushy November day six years ago, I entered the city the way most people do.  Heading west on I-90, I got off at the East State Street exit, where I was greeted by a horrifying metal sign, in muted oranges, purples, and greens, welcoming...

When my wife and I were searching for a house in 1996, we had a few basic requirements: We wanted an older home with a decent-sized yard for our children; we wanted to live in an actual neighborhood, not a new, vinyl-sided ranch development; we wanted to be relatively close to Chronicles’ office; and we...

“Weapons—guns, knives, brass knuckles, cigarette lighters . . . ” The young man’s voice trails off. If he were not waving his metal-detector wand at us, I might think that he was offering to sell us a gun or two, not asking us if we were carrying any. “No, they’re all in the trunk,” Chronicles‘...

It may be several years before the results of Census 2000 are available in anyy usable form, but certain trends have already begun to emerge from the raw data. Most significantly, as Chilton Williamson, Jr., and Roger McGrath have pointed out earlier in this issue, the Hispanic population in the United States continues to grow...

The first call comes late on a Friday night. “Welcome back,” says Mark Dahlgren, the organist at St. Mary’s Shrine, who is nine months through the one year of probation he received for hugging a tree at Tom and Jan Ditzler’s farm (see “For Keeps! A Christian Defense of Property,” Views, April). “You probably haven’t...

After the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals officially declared that the Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit would come to an end on June 30, 2002 (see Letter From Rockford, June), many Rockfordians simply assumed that a return to local control would solve all of our problems. But even when court-ordered spending has ended, the Rockford school...

The Rockford school-desegregation lawsuit is finally over—or at least it will be, on Sunday, June 30, 2002. Yesterday—Wednesday, April 18—the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overruled federal Magistrate P. Michael Mahoney and granted the school district “unitary status” (the legal term for being, in the court’s words, “sufficiently desegregated to require...

“Why is the traffic stopped?” “Is that a cop car?” “Yeah, there must’ve been an accident.” “No, he’s directing traffic. They’re all waiting to get in the parking lot! The gym’s going to be packed!” “He’s not letting anyone else in,” Mary says, deftly turning the minivan around in the freezing rain. She pulls off...

News Item: “Motorola Inc. will close its only U.S. cellular-phone manufacturing operation, putting 2,S00 of 5,000 people out of work to ease sagging profits amid increased global competition. Employees who will remain at the 1.3 million square-foot plant that opened in 1996 will focus on research, marketing and other activities for the cellular market…” (“Motorola...

Back in November and December, while Republicans across the country were writing letters, calling in to talk radio, and even taking to the streets to protest Al Gore’s attempt to steal the election in Florida, their fellow party members in Rockford remained strangely silent. They must have found it disquieting when the Bush campaign kept...

I tune the radio to WLS, and the insistent voice of Tony Brown breaks me out of my trance. It’s Saturday, December 9, the day after a bitterly divided Florida Supreme Court stretched (and possibly broke) Florida law in order to allow a statewide recount of undervotes in the presidential election. My family and I...

October 26, 2000, dawned pretty much like every other day here in Rockford, Illinois. After ten years of living under the dictatorship of a federal magistrate, we had decided that nothing would ever change. And then something did. On that glorious Indian summer morning, the Illinois Supreme Court, by a vote of six to one,...