Shock of Gray by Ted C. Fishman

Author:Ted C. Fishman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

THE TWISTING FATES OF THE SCREW CAPITAL: ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS

ONE MIGHT SAY ROCKFORD IS NEAR CHICAGO. T HE CITY IS ABOUT ninety minutes northwest on the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway. Most Rockfordians, however, have spent much of their lives emphatically refuting the idea that their city is anything like Chicago. A Rockfordian might more naturally mention the cluster of world-class, but unheralded, aerospace companies in the city. Or the airport that covers more ground than O’Hare, but receives few passenger planes. Or a handful of cafés and a couple of chic restaurants offering promise to a downtown otherwise marred by empty storefronts.

Rockford is a hybrid of urban and suburban, where few buildings climb above ten stories. Single-family homes line neatly divided lots in neighborhoods that encircle active and dormant industrial buildings. The city has more than its share of baronial mansions to brag about, but then one might mention how much less than baronial their market value is today. There is the recently renovated Burpee Museum of Natural History that boasts a real T-Rex skeleton, which will be the centerpiece in the city’s new scenic riverwalk. The Rockford MetroCentre, an arena where the Rolling Stones played in 1981, now attracts some metal and country acts and monster truck shows. There are minor-league hockey and baseball teams, an art museum, a fine professional symphony, and repertory theater, the kinds of institutions that industrial midsized midwestern cities could have easily supported when they were richer. Up until now, Rockford has held on to the kinds of once-stalwart arts organizations that are struggling, or folding, all across America. There is still some old money in town, and an ever older audience to match.

When Rockford Hummed

For much of the twentieth century, Rockford was one of the richest twenty towns in America. Per capita, it may have had more millionaires than any other sizable metropolitan area. The city has ample charms and deep strengths, but they are the charms and strengths that the midsized powerhouse cities of industrial America achieved in good times gone by. Though incomes now fall below the national average, Rockford still attracts shoppers. The city is rimmed with every major big box retailer and restaurant chain in America, though it now has some big empty boxes and abandoned car lots. Much of the city still feels normal, eminently suitable for bringing up children—especially for parents with jobs good enough to underwrite private or parochial school tuition.

It is also a good place to grow old. It costs less in Rockford to buy a house, fix a car, hire a good lawyer, or get an immigrant to provide twenty-four-hour care at home than it does in more thriving cities. The community networks are strong. Church attendance is high and the city has an ethnic club, with clubhouse, for every group. There are separate clubs for the Poles, Italians, Germans, Mexicans, and the city’s Swedes and Norwegians, who still strongly invoke their separate ethnic identities. The clubs survive because the old-timers still fill them, but most feel the clubs’ days are numbered.

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