GALENA, IL — Eleven nights running now, residents of this Jo Daviess County town have been jolted awake at 11:04 PM by what the police department described in its first three incident reports as “high-grade aerial fireworks,” and in its subsequent eight as “you know what these are.”
The Galena PD’s call log shows 47 separate complaints filed since June 28, all referencing the same unidentified address somewhere off Stagecoach Trail, all logged with progressively shorter dispatcher notes. By Saturday, the entry simply read “mortars again, same area, declining to roll.”
Chief Donna Verlander, who has been with the department twenty-two years, said officers made a tactical decision Sunday to stop driving out. “We’ve narrowed it down to one of about six houses on Quarry Bend Court,” she said. “Past a certain point, you aren’t investigating. You’re just letting somebody know you came out.”
Residents of Quarry Bend Court have, to a person, denied responsibility while exhibiting what neighbors describe as the wrong amount of confidence. One man at the end of the cul-de-sac answered the door Monday afternoon in a Cubs t-shirt, eating a popsicle, and told a reporter he hadn’t heard anything since Friday — which was, all parties acknowledged, the loudest night so far.
Karen Mosley, who lives two doors down from the suspected launch site and has not slept past 11:03 PM since June 28, said she has stopped calling. “At a certain point,” she said, “you’ve identified the problem, and the problem is a 54-year-old man who saved up.” Mosley’s golden retriever, Banjo, has begun stationing himself under the kitchen table at 10:50 each night with what she described as the resignation of a much older animal.
Galena’s municipal fireworks ordinance technically prohibits all consumer aerials inside town limits, a fact Chief Verlander acknowledged but said had been written “in a more optimistic era.” Violations carry a $75 fine, which she noted is approximately what one of the larger mortars retails for at the stand off Highway 20.
Asked whether the town planned further action, Mayor Phil Tedrick said the situation had reached “the part of the calendar where you just kind of ride it out.” Tedrick added that he was personally hoping the launcher would run out of inventory by the weekend, and that he possessed no information suggesting this would happen.
Helen Krause, 81, who lives on the next block over and grew up across the street from the old Galena depot, said she had filed exactly one complaint, on June 29, and considered her civic obligation discharged. “I told them what it was, and where it was, and they’re grown men,” she said. “I’m not going to keep calling about something everyone already agrees on.”
The Quarry Bend launches resumed Monday at 11:06 PM, two minutes later than the previous evening, which Karen Mosley said she took as a small kindness.