Istood on the asphalt playground of my long-long-ago elementary school and tried to locate where basketball stanchions once stood. I looked across the grass field where I played baseball all day, every day during carefree 1960s summers. Then I glanced across the grass to my boyhood home, visible in the distance.

But then I did a quick 360 to make sure I was alone. Because my childhood neighborhood had changed. A lot.

So maybe it wasn’t a good idea to be there alone in fading sunlight. After all, a murder occurred nearby in 2023, and many of the tidy if smallish houses I recall from the old days looked borderline ramshackle now.

That brief playground scene was a moment in my two-day return to Rockford, Illinois, for a high school reunion.

The experience reminded me just how profoundly f

See Full Page