Rockford- 1955ish

Rockford was a great place to grow up. We lived in a colonial home, nee frat house, at 729 Paris Avenue. The neighborhood was established, with nice homes and well kept yards. Rockford was known as the Forest City for all of the trees covering the city. It was always shady in the summer. It was beautiful until the Dutch Elm disease took most of them .
As a young boy, I came to enjoy trains since that was basically how company came to visit. It was exciting to see trains come in from far off places and drop off our unknowing and soon to be unforgiving relatives who spent time with the Jensen "flying monkeys". We took them to exciting places like......Sinissippi Park and Starved Rock State Park. Truly rivetting for our guests to tell the folks back home.

DJ Comment: "Enjoy trains"?!?! Now there's the understatement of the century! Do you remember your model train layout in the basement? I'm not only sure that you do, but willing to bet that you can recreate it from memory! You had this mountain scenery in the one corner with a tunnel going through it....very cool and realistic. So RJ and I would occasioanlly put an old shoe in the tunnel and then wait for you to scream when your train derailed in there.