I grew up in Rockford, Ill. A smallish city, 160k in the city limits as of the last census, about 300k in the "metro area." I was lucky enough to get out of there -- went to public high school, a son of thoroughly middle-class parents who sacrificed a lot to pay for my education, probably more than I'll ever know, for which I'm eternally grateful. Rockford is a great place, or has been. About an hour from downtown Chicago, Rockford is the real Midwest, full of kind people with Midwestern accents, the children of Swedish, Norwegian, and German immigrants, long accustomed to hard work with little credit.
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