The People's Voice: The difference between houses and homes

Misperceptions abound. For instance, over the next couple of weeks, you likely won't see a column from me. This might lead you to think I've suddenly become lazy. That I ran out of ideas for columns. Not possible. There are too many interesting folks in the Sauk Valley to deplete my list.

No, the reality is that I've set out in earnest on a hunting-and-gathering mission. It's a journey to find out all I possibly can about not just the Silver City boxcar settlement, but the origin of Sterling's rich Latin-American heritage in the neighborhood surrounding Northwestern Steel and Wire Co.

But there's another misperception weaved into that mission statement: that Silver City was a Hispanic community. While there was a strong Hispanic presence, George Ransom took exception with my article on retired Army Col. Consuelo Castillo Kickbush, a former Silver City resident who recently spoke at Sterling High School about her experiences.

“It wasn’t just the Hispanics," said Ransom, whose objection was echoed by childhood friend Frank Aguilar. "We had a lot of transplants here, and we basically went through the same thing here."

Aguilar was quick to point out that the Wallace Street neighborhood, on the other hand, was almost exclusively Hispanic, leading me to expand the scope of the series a bit. I have a feeling that, as it goes along, there will be many unforeseen stories to tell. This excites me.

Ransom, who lives in Lyndon these days, embraces his roots and wouldn't trade the crowd he ran with as a youth, the Hispanics who became lifelong friends, for anything. That includes the dozen Castillos, who lived just off Avenue G in a double-boxcar, just like the half-dozen Ransoms.

"I kicked myself in the keister when I read your article on the colonel and realized I'd missed the event," said Ransom, who vividly remembers playing with one of the Castillo boys. "Every time we’d be around, her mother: ‘¿Quieres comer?’ You want something to eat? And there was always a pot of rice and beans going, and fresh tortillas.”

I sat down for about an hour with Ransom on Tuesday, the first of a few appointments I have on the books, and I plan to book several more. Only after I've done all my homework will I feel comfortable organizing a series of stories to offer an accurate scope of how the Sauk Valley became such an impressive melting pot.

But during my chat with Ransom, he revealed a rather tragic misperception – or perhaps more accurately, a lack thereof.

“There’s a lot of people who never knew Silver City was here," he said.

That includes his wife of 12 years, Jean, who grew up in the Woodlawn School area in Sterling and graduated from Newman Central Catholic High School before shipping off to college.

Ransom, then a divorcée courting Jean, a widow, via email, shared with me a letter she wrote that pointed out her mother's preferred method of scolding her four daughters and two sons when they stepped out of line.

"As we’re talking, she tells me her mother used to threaten her girls that, ‘If you don’t behave, you’re going to go live in a boxcar.’ And I told her I lived in a boxcar,” Ransom said. “Well, that was at the time that Silver City was there.”

The oblivion is widespread.

“The thing is, if you got north of a certain area in Sterling, or south in Rock Falls, you had no idea,” he said. “We weren’t mobile back then.”

But perhaps the greatest misperception is that the boxcar community was a tragedy – an inhumane settlement. In fact, the mill offered pay that workers couldn't find anywhere else, many of them making triple what they had made elsewhere. And its owner, P.W. Dillon, was downright beloved, a sort of savior for those twisting in winds and fields and, in fact, other boxcar settlements.

“It was a move up,” Ransom said. “And the majority of the people I know all made a good living. Their kids went to school and graduated from Newman or Sterling, and we’ve got a lot of college kids out of there, a lot of degrees.”

Ransom, his two brothers and his sister caught a ride to Sterling with a friend of the family in 1957, when he was 4. They'd been living in a boxcar at Bain Station in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when his father got word of great opportunity in Sterling.

Upon arrival, Ransom began forging relationships no one can ever fracture – with Ed Sandoval, who thought the Ransoms were rich because they had a double-boxcar. With Frank Aguilar, who I met at the event at Sterling High, and who has helped to put this series in motion. Ransom rattles off about a dozen names, which I'll get to in one of this series' installments, then he apologizes for not recalling more.

As Ransom reflects, it's often hard to discern which time frame he's talking about: the one that took place while his family lived in a boxcar with no running water, in which winters and summers were barely bearable; or the time when they lived in a house.

But the boxcar was a home. And that's my favorite misperception to set straight: There's a chasm between house and home that no money, no privilege can fill.

Wallace Street and Silver City were filled with homes, love and, yes, resilience. I can't wait to find out more about it over the next few weeks and share it with you.