Sweeny Report » Do all roads lead to Rockford?

Do all roads lead to Rockford?

September 26th, 2008 at 09:38am Chuck Sweeny

Artie and Pat Jones live in Hammond, La., and they ride the passenger trains frequently. When I meet up with them in the dining car, oops, the “Cross Country Café,” I learn that they’re on the way home from Ann Arbor, Mich., where their son is a lawyer.

Hammond, a city of 18,000, is home to Southeast Louisiana University, 50 miles from New Orleans. Nevertheless, the Joneses’ home suffered water damage after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and minor water damage at the hands of Gustav and Ike this September.

“We think maybe a small tornado came through; there are a lot of limbs down,” Pat Jones says. Both Art and Pat believe tonight’s presidential debate at Ole Miss should go forth. Both explain that there are too many important issues to discuss.

Pat says she’s relying on the debates to make up her mind about who will get her vote. Art doesn’t need a debate. He already knows. “The last time I voted for a Democrat was JFK,” he says. That was in 1960, and he explains that the reason had to do with him being Catholic, same as Jack Kennedy. “I’m leaning toward McCain,” he says. It is a strong lean. “I should tell you that I’m a registered Democrat, because in Louisiana, that’s what you have to be” to make your voice heard in local elections, he says.

As with all the people I have talked with so far on this trip, the Joneses are angry about the proposed $700 billion bailout of failed financial institutions that made risky mortgage loans that turned out to be worthless.

“I think we have a crisis, but when I get in a fix, nobody bails me out. I have to work my way out,” said Art, a retired auto parts salesman. He’s not for a bailout. Pat Jones said if there’s to be a bailout, the priorities should be vastly different from what’s currently on the table – a rescue of failed financial institutions. “Why don’t they just bail out the people in the foreclosed houses instead of making rich people richer?” she says.

Art is concerned with the Iraq war, the economy in general, and the price of gas. He can’t understand why the government bans drilling for oil in much of the continental shelf, “when we’ve been doing it on the coast of Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana for years, with no spills.”

Art says he has a connection of sorts to Rockford, Illinois. “My grandfather’s nephew was a priest in Rockford, his name was Father Joseph Guagliardo.” Maybe, he says, someone in Rockford has heard of him.

SCOTT MORGAN | RRSTAR.COM
Artie and Pat Jones of Hammond, La. eat breakfast Friday, Sept. 26, 2008, on the City of New Orleans Amtrak train between Chicago and New Orleans, La.