TWELVE It was a smooth ride back home. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds and brightened the snow-covered fields. The mileposts clicked by in a steady beat. There were plenty of reasons to stay in McKinley, not the least being Maddy Miller. I also wanted to talk to Adam Prokop, who was Billy’s […]
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Summertime . . . and the working is easy
When you step into the gallery of the Illinois Senate these days, you’ll likely find some unexpected items: Coke bottles on the floor, a roll of toilet paper, and maybe a few paperback novels or magazines. “We eat out on the floor because it’s like an office,” explains Ryan Needham, a 19-year-old senate page and […]
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“Our darkest time”
When Paul Findley was a student at Illinois College in the early years of World War II, he read a book called Union Now by Clarence K. Streit, a New York Times reporter who had covered the fall of the League of Nations. Streit advocated the joining of democracies in the North Atlantic, not in […]
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The highway side
ELEVEN “Do you hear that?” Maddy asked. “Listen. Far away.” We were in her bed, down the hall from Billy’s room. Nobody said anything for a while. In that middle-of-the-night quiet, I could hear Maddy breathing, feel my own heart beat. And then I heard it, far, far away, barely a whisper moving through the […]
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End of a scene
In 1995, Carlinville high school chums Christopher Yeager and Mike Frizzo decided to start a rock band. They came up with a suitably cryptic name–October’s Perpetual Agony–and Frizzo owned all the necessary equipment. But they still faced a problem: Yeager couldn’t play an instrument. “Mike had to show me how to make a bar chord,” […]
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The highway side
What you missed:Private eye Nick Acropolis finally meets Sheriff Archer outside of the Sawyer County Courthouse in McKinley. Archer asks for the pictures Nick took in the impounded semi trailer. Nick hands over a roll of film, and the sheriff says he’s also heard the investigator is looking for the missing son of Maddy Miller, […]
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Who Killed Joel?
Julie Rea has told this story hundreds of times. But no matter how many times she tells it, the story never makes sense. She was asleep in her own bed when she heard a child scream. This child sounded more terrified than her son Joel ever did, no matter what kind of nightmare engulfed him. […]
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The highway side
What you missed: Private eye Nick Acropolis is sent to McKinley by attorney Shelly Michalowski to investigate the case of a trucker charged with smuggling cocaine. Nick meets a truck stop waitress, Peggy Miller, who hires him to look for her missing son, Billy. Nick then stumbles upon the trucker’s semi trailer. The police have […]
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Marc Sigoloff’s last shot
SCENE ONE: SCREEN DREAMS Marc Sigoloff has always loved movies. As a boy, he fell for Snow White and the Three Stooges, an unlikely pairing of concepts, starring 1960 Olympic figure skater Carol Heiss and the Stooges’ final replacement for Curly, Joe DeRita. In 1967, at the age of 11, Sigoloff was “completely overwhelmed” by […]
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The other ball game
The bat meets the ball with a hollow thwack. On the home team’s bench, a cheer goes up as the grounder skips past the visiting players’ outstretched hands and across the field’s outer boundary line. If you close your eyes, you could almost imagine yourself at a baseball game. But then comes a sound you […]
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The highway side
What you missed:Private eye Nick Acropolis is sent to McKinley by attorney Shelly Michalowski to investigate the case of a trucker charged with smuggling cocaine. The trucker, Jesse Lopez, proclaims his innocence, but the judge seems to believe otherwise, warning Lopez that a guilty verdict would result in a sentence of 30 to 120 years. […]
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Little press on the prairie
Etched into endless fields of corn and beans, Illinois 41 runs south from Galesburg to U.S. 136, where it ends just east of Macomb. Two-thirds of the way down its 45-mile length, 41 veers west for a mile or so, forming the main street of Prairie City, one of the hamlets that characterize western Illinois. […]
