Springfield, Illinois

May 7, 2009

Friday Random Ten: Homecoming Edition

Well, the Illinois Police Officers Memorial was a great and humbling experience. Our honor guard performed admirably, the guys all looked sharp...but Springfield still sucks. More on that later.

I got back to the office around 4pm. We only had one detective working last night and he'd just gotten stuck with two reports on some idiot who repeatedly called his baby mama at work, threatening to kill her and blow up her employer. Guy's been arrested 35 times, so someone had to go looking for him. I volunteered to go along, after having been up since 5:30am, standing in formation at parade rest and attention for several hours, and driving 3 + hours back from Springfield. I finally made it home close to 9, where I collapsed into the loving embrace of MizBubs.

Here's what came up on the party shuffle this morning:

Adrenochrome—The Sisters of Mercy

Bertha Lou—Johnnie Faire

That Certain Female—Charlie Feathers

Ruf Aus Der Gruft—Kurt Weill

Eve White, Eve Black—Siouxsie & the Banshees

Slicker Drips—White Stripes

Have a Good Life Baby—Dusty Springfield

Tico Tico—Don Swan & His Orchestra

Foxy, Foxy—Rob Zombie

Burning Down the House—Tom Jones (with the Cardigans)

Headed down to Springfield

In a few hours I'll be driving down to Springfield to participate in the 2007 Illinois Police Memorial. The memorial is dedicated to Illinois police officers who have died in the line of duty.


In 2006, eight police officers in Illinois died in the line of duty. The first six officers all died from vehicle-related causes (Chambers and Gibbons were both killed by drunk drivers) and the last two officers, Cook and Wood, were both basically assassinated while sitting in their squad cars.

I encourage you to read a little about each of these individual officers, and please remember that for every Anthony Abbate there are tens of thousands of men and women who would willingly give their lives without hesitation to help another human being.

The links below are from the Officer Down Memorial Page:

Officer James Knapp, Cook County Sheriff's Police

Officer Eric Solorio, Chicago Police Department

Deputy Sheriff Elizabeth Edwards, Hardin County Sheriff's Office

Officer Jeremy Chambers, Cahokia Police Department

Sergeant Rodney Miller, Illinois State Police

Chief Deputy Brian Gibbons, Calhoun County Sheriff's Office

Officer Thomas Cook, Metra Police Department

Officer Thomas Wood, Maywood Police Department


Nationally, about half of all line-of-duty deaths are vehicle related--officers killed in crashes or struck by vehicles.

May 13-19 is National Police Week, and May 15 is Peace Officers Memorial Day. I'll probably talk some more about that in the next week or two.

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Springfield is not my favorite place to visit. There are no riverboat casinos (there's no river.) The one strip club is part of an overpriced franchise; it just seems to lack that locally-owned, independently run sincerity. And the food choices in town are limited, at least in my experience. The first time I was there everyone kept telling me to try the famous local dish, the "horseshoe." I did, and was not impressed--the "horseshoe" consisted of a badly-cooked hamburger served open-faced, with a bunch of standard frozen french fried piled on top, and the whole affair was smothered with some type of Velveeta-based cheese sauce.

So look, I believe that every place must have some redeeming feature, some hidden greasy spoon or dive bar that can provide the perfect low-end dining moment, and I resolved not to have another bad dining experience on this trip.

I reached out to prominent Springfield native Splotchy, and he agreed to help me out. I learned that Springfield claims to be birthplace of the corn dog, so with any luck I'll be taking a little bite of deep-fried history later tonight. He also pointed me toward a good barbecue place, so I got choices. Thanks, Splotchy!