Take Me Back to Chicago




On August 23, 2003 Mom, myself, and Jill, who had flown down to Tennessee to help with the move, arrived in Rockford.  Now imagine if you will that you are a bird sitting on the top of the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago.  Now picture yourself taking flight and heading northwest.  Eventually you would come to a large metropolitan area. This area would be Rockford. The third largest city in the state of Illinois, and our new home.

Our first apartment in Rockford was a beautiful 2 bedroom victorian home located in the heart of the city.  Hardwood floors and a fireplace. We thought this first place was great.  Unfortunately we would only be there for a week.  The apartment turned out to be covered with poisonous lead paint, so we had to move.

The second place wasn’t great, but it had a roof and four walls, you can’t ask for more when your desperate.  It was located on the other side of the tracks, and so wasn’t in a great neighborhood.  Drive by shootings, prostitution, drugs, gangs, assaults, these were pretty much a daily occurrence in our new neighborhood.

On one occasion, just two doors down from our house the Chicago Street Gang had a confrontation with another gang, and it resulted in a drive by shooting.  The results were the house on the left of us was shot up, the house on the right of us was also shot up. The house on the other side of the right house was also shot up.  Two people died, and 4 others were injured.

On another occasion the woman who lived in the apartment above us was attacked.  She was hurt pretty bad, and almost died.  We’re not sure the circumstances of this event however and can only speculate on what actually conspired.

However even with all this stuff going on around us, we were never affected by any of it.  We did have a really good security force protecting us however. He wouldn’t have let anything happen to us.  It is after all pretty difficult to fight the strongest force in the universe.  Honestly would you want to go toe to toe with Jesus Christ?  I know I wouldn’t.

We stayed in this location for a little over 2 years when we decided to buy our first house.  This was a big step for us, and we were excited.  We looked at a couple of places, and we finally decided on one on the other side of the Rock River.  This would be a better neighborhood, bigger house, nice yard, and we would own it.  So here we are in 2005, but there’s more to the tale.  A few more things happened before we bought the house and they are important so I’m going to go back a bit and tell those stories first.

1. A Small History Lesson	2. Congratulations It’s A Freak
3. The First Five Years	4. It All Goes Up In Flames
5. School Daze	6. Say What?
7. A New Hope	8. Becoming A Sophisticated Redneck
9. A New Beginning – Literally	10. Back Into the Fray
11. They Like Me, They Really Like Me	12. 10011001
13. Let the Music Heal Your Soul	14. Taking My Sister to the Prom
15. My First Love, My First Broken Heart	16. From Zero to Hero
17. Livin’ On a Prayer	18. Moving On
19. Going Full Circle	20. The Rockford Files
21. Faith of the Heart	22. Partner, Friend, Lover, Wife
23. Turns Out She Was Right	24. A One-Legged Bear
25. Another Victim of the Game	26. Payin’ Bills with my Skills
27. A New Revell-ation	28. A New Page, A New Day
29. R We There Yet?