Hair slicked back from his morning shower, wearing an impeccable dark suit and lavender power tie, commuter Tim Hauschildt kisses his wife goodbye and leaves the house for the five-minute walk to the train station. It is just after 5:30 a.m.
A few moments later and a few miles away on the outskirts of town, Dick Stoxen fixes his first cup of coffee. Then, he trudges out the back door in dirty work boots to an adjacent farm shed where his tractors are parked. The scent of manure wafts by.
As Hauschildt sips a can of Diet Coke and dreamily watches hawks in flight above his moving train, Stoxen begins the laborious task of feeding the 1,000 head of cattle on his 1,000-acre farm. He and an assistant use a front- end loader and a mechanized feed spreader to dump thousands of pounds of chow into troughs before the hungry Holsteins.
Two hours later, Stoxen is onto his next set of chores across the way at his sod farm. And Hauschildt is in his office on Michigan Avenue, where he is manager of a private dining club.
So goes the early-morning routine for the executive and the farmer who live in Harvard, a small town 65 miles northwest of Chicago that is of two worlds: city and country.
Harvard, population 5,975, is undeniably a rural farm town, where the local radio station reports the livestock prices and where a large plastic cow called Harmilda is mounted on the ”Welcome to Harvard” pedestal at the city`s crossroads.
The McHenry County community is best known for its early June Milk Days festival, which celebrates Harvard`s historical claim as the ”Milk Center of the World.” With a moniker like that and a location too far west to even make it onto a Chicagoland map, Harvard`s connection to the big city seems tenuous at best.
But Harvard is also part of Chicago. It`s a suburb where the train station offers rush-hour express service to the Loop and where the mayor is a die-hard Bears and Cubs fan.
Every workday, more than 200 people from the Harvard area catch early-morning Metra trains to Chicago`s North Western Station. Some of them come across the Wisconsin border to do so. Harvard is the end of the line for the northwestern spur of the Metra/Chicago & North Western line.
According to 1990 census figures, another 500 Harvard residents drive more than 30 minutes to work, most to jobs in Chicago`s suburbs.
Hauschildt`s commuting schedule is grueling. The 5:48 a.m. train arrives in the city at 7:19. He then takes an express bus and arrives at work after 7:30. On a good day, he heads home on the 5:16 p.m., where he meets several fellow commuters in the bar car for rousing games of euchre. The train pulls into Harvard at 6:44. But when he has to work late, Hauschildt takes the 6:30, 8:30 or even 9:30 train. He likes to be in bed by 10. The alarm clock goes off at 4:30 a.m.
”If I can get six hours` sleep, I do real well,” Hauschildt said.
”It`s a tradeoff you take for living in the country.”
The fruit of his labor is an affordable house in a quintessential Middle American village. It has its own hospital, a downtown, a motel and that icon of small-town life – a Wal-Mart.
Cornfields spread out in all directions from town. Last hunting season Hauschildt shot a buck three miles from home. To buy a suit, however, it`s a much longer drive. There is no shopping mall within a half-hour drive.
Harvard`s economy is relatively diverse. There is light manufacturing, warehousing and distribution in town, in addition to agriculture and dairy production. The retailing base is solid, though the downtown area appears somewhat weak.
”Harvard is a self-sufficient town. Everything depends on the local economy,” said Dave Nelson, the city administrator.
That makes sense. Train connection aside, Harvard is far from the big city. To reach Harvard by car from Chicago, a 90-minute trip, you take the Northwest Tollway west to where the speed limit rises to 65 m.p.h. (which is a clue that we`re talking a long way from the Kennedy). Get off at the Marengo exit and take country roads the rest of the way.
Harvard, more than 30 miles past Schaumburg and only six miles from the Wisconsin border, is a 30-minute drive from Rockford and a bit more than an hour from Madison and Milwaukee.
”I think we have the best of both worlds,” said Noel Fischer, a real estate agent who owns Realty World-Fischer Inc. ”We have the peace and tranquility everyone needs in these times of high stress. But if we want to, we can take the train or hop in a car and go to Chicago for dinner or shopping or theater. Or we can go to Rockford or even to Milwaukee.”
The real estate market reflects the city`s remoteness. The average home resale price is $89,000 in the city but rises to $156,000 when the outlying areas are included, Fischer said. Prices have held steady during the recession.
There is no expectation that a housing boom is coming a la Schaumburg and other closer-in suburbs; the area is still too far out in the country. A 1990 study by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission predicts that Harvard will grow by less than 500 people by the year 2010, but city officials think that figure is low, partly because of new apartment developments in town.
”Unless we annex some land, we`re not looking for that real, real fast growth,” Fischer said. ”We`re not looking to become Crystal Lake. What we`re looking to see is nice steady growth that will enhance our lifestyle.”
At this point, there is only a modest amount of new-home construction, though there are a few single-family and duplex developments going up on the north side of town. A small three-bedroom planned for 10th Street is offered for $85,900.
The smallest homes for sale are on the market for $60,000 or so. Larger homes sell for $100,000 to $170,000. Outside of town, Harvard-area real estate agents also market what they call ”farmettes,” traditional homes on five or more acres of land, often suitable for horse enthusiasts. They can sell for $150,000 or more and are very popular.
”People want to get away from the hustle and the bustle,” said Arnold Wittmus, a former dairy farmer and real estate agent with Brickley Realty.
”It`s surprising the number of people from Chicago who come out here who want a little freedom and fresh air.”
There is also some vacant land on the outskirts of Harvard for sale. On one plot with sweeping vistas across rolling farmland, there are several five- acre parcels offered for just over $40,000. The land is part of a farm estate called Marandy Farms that was broken up by the owner. Marandy itself, a large farmhouse built in 1838 that later became a territorial courthouse, is for sale for $350,000 on 17.5 acres.
Harvard traces its history to the first half of the 19th Century, when settlers came to the area to open trading posts and build homesteads.
In 1854, Elbridge Gerry Ayer and his wife, Mary, left their home in Massachusetts and bought 400 acres in the Harvard area, according to the Harvard Chamber Community Guide.
When the Chicago & North Western Railroad announced plans to build a routing center in the area, Ayer and two other developers offered free land in exchange for a stipulation that all passenger trains stop in the new town, which Ayer called Harvard after the village he came from in Massachusetts.
By the 1880s, Harvard had more than 1,600 residents and a healthy economy. A pickle factory with a 30,000-bushel capacity began operating in 1883. By 1885, nearly half of the cheese factories in the county were located in Harvard.
Harvard`s reputation as a dairy center was strengthened in the 20th Century. Three major dairies operated nearby: Bowman`s, Borden`s and Dean. Only Dean remains in operation in Harvard, however. Much of the milk industry left Harvard when the local dairymen switched to other forms of farming.
The reason, according to some: Milk prices started falling and the high labor costs associated with milking cows twice daily became burdensome. Others say the rising price of land doomed the dairies. Many of the farmers moved to Wisconsin.
That was not yet the case in 1941 when a local businessman, impressed by the large number of hard-working dairy farmers in the area, came up with an idea to honor them. The next summer the first Milk Festival was held with 5,000 people attending. There were vaudeville acts and speeches and free white and chocolate milk.
They paint the street white for Milk Days, and more than 80,000 people attended this year`s festival, which featured parades, concerts and a tractor pull. The tours of area farms were a hit. So was cow chip lotto. A bovine selected the winning numbers by making a deposit on a large grid. It took two hours for the cow to decide.
The biggest news of the festival, however, was made inadvertently by the Chamber of Commerce, which got caught in a country-meets-city fix. It authorized the design of a Milk Days poster featuring a farmer milking a cow from the left side, a notable breach of etiquette. Local farmers insisted that cows only allow themselves to be milked from the right side and anyone who tries to do otherwise is looking to get kicked in the head.
There are other attractions in town. Family-run Dacy Airport, opened in 1935 by John and Elsie Dacy, says it may be home to the world`s largest collection of antique biplanes. The family didn`t think it could succeed as a traditional airport, so it developed a specialty: housing, maintaining, buying and selling open-cockpit biplanes from the 1930s and 1940s, such as the elegant Stearman, which can sell today for anywhere from $75,000 to $250,000. While parades and festivals are interesting, the attraction of Harvard for the people who live there is just the opposite: the comfortably languid pace. There isn`t much traffic, for example, except for weekend backups on the road connecting to Lake Geneva, and the crime rate is quite low compared with Chicago`s.
”I like the small-town atmosphere and the slower pace and being able to talk to people on the streets,” said Chris Ferguson, a Milk Days organizer and assistant to the mayor.
Sandra Hauschildt, the Chamber of Commerce director and Tim`s wife, said one of the city`s most attractive attributes is the way residents eagerly get involved in community activities. The Milk Days committee never has trouble finding the more than 100 volunteers it needs. She said community and civic groups actively recruit newcomers to town.
”One of the things we`re very proud of is our hometown spirit,”
Hauschildt said. ”When people move to Harvard, one of the things everyone agrees on is they don`t want Harvard to change. So we issue them a little challenge: If you don`t want it to change, then you have to help so that it doesn`t.”
In a town where such pride reigns, then, it was particularly dismaying to residents to witness an ugly racial attack last year on Hispanics, who make up about 14 percent of Harvard`s population, according to the 1990 census, and who constitute much of the area`s migrant agricultural work force.
The shocking incident occurred in July, 1991, when a mob of rock-throwing youths attacked the home of 12 Hispanic farm workers.
To its credit, Harvard responded quickly by forming a human relations committee designed to set up programs to deal with racial issues and to find ways to bridge the language and cultural gaps between the groups. Among the programs already held: an information fair where Hispanics met with government, social service and business representatives, a Hispanic cultural celebration and a multicultural Christmas concert.
”We`ve tried to get some intermingling of the cultures so maybe we`ll have a better understanding of each other as human beings,” said Robert Iftner, Harvard`s mayor.
Iftner and many Harvard residents seem proud of their quick response to the problem, but the mayor, for one, is also nagged by doubts. He said he knows there are still some ”people who have bad feelings and who shout derogatory remarks.”
He`s also frustrated by what he sees as a lack of interest on the part of the Hispanic community to get involved in some of these healing activities.
Santiago Gonzalez, a member of both Harvard`s park board and the human relations committee who runs his brother`s Mexican grocery in town, agreed that not enough Hispanics are involved. He said it will take years, perhaps a generation, for whites and Hispanics to overcome their mutual mistrust.
”I would say there is still tension,” he said. ”It will take time to educate the community. It will take time to soak into their heads that this is a free country and they have a right to make a living here.”
But that doesn`t diminish Gonzalez`s overall view of Harvard. ”This is a good place,” he said.
