Tracy, part one--the introduction

1993 was not the year to live on the West Side if you were white. Split by the chocolate water of the Rock River, the kids west of the river went to Auburn high school, while the kids on the other side went to Guilford, Jefferson, and Harlem. The Auburn kids were mostly black and latino, with a few tough white kids thrown in the mix. They were tough because they were poor. They were poor because their parents were mostly the uneducated, blue collar workers that made Rockford tick, and they were destined to stay poor since the education they got at Auburn was more about survival than it was about learning.
I was one of the few privileged white kids stuck on the West side. My mother was a chemist at Pierce Chemical and my father was an engineer at Sunstrand. We lived on the West side out of convenience. Pierce was way out west, and Sunstrand was close to the bypass, so my dad could be there in ten minutes if he timed it right. They made over 100K a year, so I was an easy target for all the Auburn kids, whether they were white or not.
I got my Grandma’s old T-bird when I turned 16. It didn’t have rims on it or a bumpin’ system, like most of the cars the kids at Auburn had. It was also paid for, so I didn’t have to have an after-school job. I parked it between the ghetto cruisers and old beaters, and it stuck out like a shiny, red thumb.
We lived in a house, not an apartment. Our house was not a HUD or Section 8. We didn’t live with my grandparents. We had an extra bedroom and a garage and a landscaped yard. We didn’t have a chain-link fence around the front yard. We didn’t have a pit bull staked out in the yard. We didn’t have plastic on the windows in the winter. I got a new winter coat every year. Not from the Salvation Army. Not a hand-me-down. A brand new winter coat from Marshall Field’s. Some of those kids I don’t think had ever even stepped foot inside Marshall Field’s, much less had a new winter coat.
My classmates made up for all their economic shortfalls with their quick tongues, calling me “Richie Rich” and “Princess” on good days, “Whitey” and “Gringa” among other things on the bad ones. My parents ignored my pleas to go to Boylan, the catholic high school on the Northwest side, since it cost money and the education I was getting at Auburn suited them just fine. The education at Auburn suited me fine, too, it was the threats that made me a little uneasy. My parents told me to just “Suck it up. It will make you stronger.” Mostly it made me a fast runner and a good hider, though.
I wanted to understand why the other kids hated me so. I wanted to understand why I could never understand them. Mostly, though, I wanted to live on the East side of the river, cavort with the kids who were like me, and not be the whipping boy for all the racial, social, and economic adversities the Auburn kids faced. Tracy was my window into their realities.