Word: rockford
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Some shopkeepers sensed an instant reaction last week. Helen Rickard owns the Olive Tree, a clothing and gift store in Rockford, Ill. "I find people coming through here and looking and saying 'Just browsing, thank you,' " she says. "It used to be that at this time of year they would at least try things on and put things on layaway to pick up as Christmas presents. But now everybody's apprehensive about turning loose their dollars." She estimates that her sales last week fell by 25% to 30%. "If it's a soft Christmas, I'm in trouble...
...cast's schedule constitutes idle luxury compared with life on the crew bus. At 7 on a Thursday morning, 31 hours out of Davenport's Adler theater and six hours out of the Coronado in Rockford, Ill., the crew bus sits at curbside in Peoria, a black bomb emitting oily blue smoke. The bus shudders intermittently as crew members wake and drop down out of their bunks. It shudders three times for Joe Burns, prop master: when he sits up and bangs his forehead on the bottom of the overhead bunk, when he flops back again on his pillow...
...rose over Rockford, Ill., last week, residents could not believe their ears. "At 4:35 a.m.," a local radio station reported, "a tornado hit the Rockford, Ill., weather office. The entire town of Rockford has been demolished. If you are in the path, go to a basement shelter." Gazing out their windows, the town's citizens discovered a placid dawn scene. Not even a tree branch was down...
...Rockford (pop. 140,000) was the victim not of a lethal twister but of glitches in new computer software used by the National Weather Service. The tornado alert was one of five test alarms that were incorrectly sent out to local radio stations last week. Few Rockford residents believed the warning anyway. They know their weather, and early-morning tornadoes are rare indeed. Says Rockford Mayor John McNamara: "We don't take tornadoes lightly here...
...SwedishAmerican Hospital in Rockford, Ill., is offering a clever gimmick to lure obstetrics customers: Dial-A-Dad, a service in which beepers are given to expectant fathers so they can be paged within a 30-mile radius when mothers go into labor...