Rockford isn’t known for much that’s
good. It’s called “Screw City” for a reason.
The Stockholm Inn is very good, and
Maria’s Restaurant used to be good. The Ratskeller used to be good, too, and so
was the Sweden House. The Stockholm Inn is still in business. The others aren’t.
Rockford is known for having an
exceptionally high crime rate. It’s also known for having an exceptionally low
literacy rate. Anyone see a connection?
Rockford used to be known as the
“Second City”, second only to Chicago in size, culture, and amenities. Now
Rockford has diminished to the fifth or sixth largest city in Illinois.
Intelligent people abandoned the town in droves, and more leave every day.
Rockford is going downhill rapidly, and no one knows how to apply the brakes.
.
Rockford used to support a viable
community of writers, poets, artists, and musicians. Most have gone elsewhere,
although Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick and poet Christine Swanberg still remain
in town and only God knows why. New American Theater closed. The only live
theater in town is at the local community college during summer months and at
the restored Coronado Performing Arts Center when roadshows come to town. The
big box Metro Center—excuse me, the renamed BMO Harris Bank Center—has become a
venue for ice hockey and religious festivals and no longer includes a regular
schedule of musical performance by big name artists.
The annual 3-day and 3 raucous night
Labor Day “On the Waterfront” music extravaganza fizzled out and exists only in
memory.
Rockford used to have one of the
finest public libraries in the state. Instead of investing in maintaining the
library and increasing its collections, the city chose to build golf courses
and sports complexes. Soon the main public library building will be torn down
while a new indoor mega-sports center appears on the opposite bank of the Rock
River.
Rockford has no new bookstores other
than a few Christian booksellers and one pint-sized children’s bookstore.
Borders closed and Barnes and Noble moved out of town to nearby Cherry Valley. Toad
Hall, one of the best record and book memorabilia shops in the country, is
still on Broadway, but it has deteriorated into a ghost of what it once was.
Tomorrow is Yesterday has become more of a gaming haven than a comic book
emporium and changed its name to Top Cut Comics and then to Top Cut Central.
There is a Half-Price Books discount outlet that opened a few years ago. But they
carry only remainders and inventory acquired from bankrupted bookstores.
I left Rockford and I came back. I
left the first time when I went away to the University, but I came back to
attend Rockford College when John Bennett and Mary Dearing Lewis and Donald
Walhout were teaching there. I left the second time to enter the army and
complete my formal education. But, eventually, I came back.
Declining home values makes
Rockford affordable for low-lifes like me. Rockford’s escalating crime rate provides
daily inspiration for crime writers like me. Paranoia and superstition and
religious fanaticism fuel the fires of horror fiction. Rockford, Illinois, is a
wonderful place to observe entropy in action. In short, Rockford is the perfect
place to write.
Although I miss brick-and-mortal
bookstores, Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com make it easy to buy new and used
books from the same computer I use to craft my own fiction. Facebook and Skype
allow me to stay in touch with other writers throughout the world without
leaving my computer. I can easily access library databases and do research on
the internet from the comfort of my own home.
Because “A prophet is not without
honor except in his hometown and among his own relatives and in his own
household,” I do leave Rockford to make personal appearances and do book
signings all over the world. My novels and stories sell well in England and in
Europe and Japan and China. I can hop a commuter bus or airline in Rockford and
make connections to anyplace I want to travel. Or I can drive to Chicago’s O’Hare
and be there in less than two hours.
But I return to Rockford to write.
No one here knows or cares that I’m a writer. There are too few venues here to
bother about doing local autographings, and the local newspaper and radio and
television stations prefer to report on true crime and not the imaginings of
home-town boys and girls.
Crime runs rampant in Rockford.
Gunshots are a daily occurrence. No one here pays any attention to the voice of
one person crying in the wilderness.
Rockford is known as one of the ten
worst places to live in the nation. For a crime writer, it’s one of the best.
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