Wow, lots of Illinois, Elgin, Rockford and Northern Illinois University references surprisingly; Very cool stuff, I enjoy reading all the stories!
Rockford, and Winnebago County do still have some very nice parks and forest preserves, but it's not the same as when I grew up there. Friends and I romped through all those parks every chance we got. We lived near Kishwaukee St. and 5th Ave, (practically downtown) and rode our bikes to Atwood, Sinissippi, Page, Alpine, Rock Cut, and most all the rest of them.
As a kid, I almost cried when I heard the City would be tearing up Sinissippi Park to create the new Park District offices there.
At that time I was around 10 or 12 years old and I actually called the Park District to complain about it. They told me it was going to be "Beautiful". I told them they were ripping up the best part of the entire park, and asked why, if they needed more office space, they didn't just move into the old "Social Security" building downtown that was vacant.
When I was eight years old I had walked into that SS building and told them my name and they gave me a Social Security Card, no other questions asked, no big form to fill out, no birth certificate, no parents present. I was amazed at how beautiful that building was. A few years later is was empty and sat that way for many more. I walked and rode by bike by it often and wondered why.
Of course the Park District leaders didn't pay any attention to that suggestion. They had taxpayer money to spend and were determined to do it. Instead, they cut down hundreds of huge old growth hardwood trees and ground the hillside down to flat to build it all. I rode my bike there over the course of months to watch them do it. It was heart breaking. I truly loved that piece of forest.
25 years later I was working on a project with the Rockford Park District and the head of the department proudly told me that they were moving their offices into the "Historic Social Security Building Downtown". The same one I had recommended as a kid. Honestly, I was stunned when she told me that. We were standing outside in the parking lot of the very building I had begged them not to build. It was enraging for me to hear that, and yet amazing at the same time. All I could say in response was, "You probably should have done that a long time ago."
That "Beautiful" building they had torn up the park for was, by then, dilapidated, way over crowded, and even uglier than when it was when new. The big paved parking lot was warped, cracked, and even uglier still.
I don't know what they do with that building in the Sinissippi Park now, they should have torn it down, but every time I drove by it in the early `90's I cringed at it and the view of the bright orange "Symbol" the City placed across the road near the Sinissippi ponds and gardens. That "Symbol" was truly symbolic for me. To me, it was every bit as ugly as the "Progress" they made in managing the City and those wonderful parks over the decades since I was born.
Rockford was once a beautiful and thriving city, most all the streets were lined with trees that formed a green archway over them. Back then it was truly the "Forest City".
By the time I left in 1973 it was consistently rated
the worst of the United States' largest 300 cities to live in. It hasn't done much better since. The trees, the factories where people made a decent living, and the integrity of their elected officials, all died in the 60's and 70's. What was left in it's place was the battered and scarred corpse of a once beautiful place to live. It was as if grim reapers played a cheap trick on those that lived there. (that line is for all the locals and some friends we call the "Hometown Boys")
It took decades for me to convince my family to move from there, but in the end most of them did. In fact, all but one sister eventually followed me here, to the Ozarks, and everyone of them, including my mother, one of my stepmothers, my stepfather, and my grandmother, all said after leaving Rockford that they were never happier in their entire lives.
I don't go back to Rockford anymore. Probably never will.