Written by by Joel Klaassen Tuesday, 25 January 2000 18:00

We hope you are as impressed with what Hillsboro has to offer as we are. Inserted in today’s Free We hope you are as impressed with what Hillsboro has to offer as we are. Inserted in today’s Free Press you will find our “Annual Report on the State of the City.” The press run is 9,000 copies. The insert features most of our turn-of-the-century businesses and what they have to offer. Without them, Hillsboro would not exist. If they can continue to operate profitably and grow, our town will prosper. But it will take a partnership between the residents of our trade area and our businesses to make it work. The challenge for businesses is to figure out what the consumers want, and then how to sell it to them—wherever they live—at a profit. Tremendous competition for our dollars comes from every conceivable direction today, which makes this challenge even greater than ever. This town—and the world—has changed a lot since I showed up here in 1955 at the age of 9. Then, we didn’t have a television. We made phone calls through the operator and our phone number was just two numbers. The swimming pool was brand new. We had five new-car dealers. You didn’t wear jeans to school. We used a manual typewriter…. I can also imagine what it was like in 1900, based on what I have read and heard. When you got sick, you just hoped to come out of it. No wonder drugs to bail you out. What is hard to imagine, though, is what it will be like in the year 2100. I won’t see it, but our baby grandchildren probably will. They might routinely live to be 100 or more. *** Nancy watches many of those weekly TV shows about lawyers and hospitals, like “Providence,” “ER,” and “Chicago Hope.” I can never remember when those shows are on, or who is in them. So I don’t even try. Sometimes I’m sitting there when one of those shows is on, and they sometimes show a skyline shot of the city the show is filmed in. One night Nancy was watching “Providence” and the skyline shot came on. She likes to see if I’m with it so she asks, “What city?” I said, “Chicago!” It was Providence. *** They say it is going to snow. They say it won’t be long now. Who are “they,” anyway?