Socks in Time, twin futures and church bigots

• Socks in Time: When this endless winter's storms seemed to be chilling the bronze boy and girl leapfrogging each other in South Elgin's Footprints in Time sculpture, dedicated to 12 children and two police officers who died before their time, somebody decided the metal kids looked chilly. So one day a pair of warm, real-life cloth socks showed up on the girl's bare feet.

The socks were taken back off when spring made a tentative attack a couple of weeks ago. As the mercury plunged again, the socks returned. Now the feet are bare again.

"It wasn't us who did this," village Parks and Recreation Director Jim Reuter said. "We suspect they were put on by one of the families" of the deceased children.

• South Elgin's future: If you want a glimpse of what downtown South Elgin will look like decades from now, mosey downriver and watch St. Charles' First Street Redevelopment. The Village Center Master Plan that South Elgin approved last fall calls for much of its downtown to become the same kind of buildings that the First Street project is erecting. They will have businesses and offices in the first floor or two with condos above, high population density, off-street parking and little setback from the sidewalk. They will aim to create the feel of an "urban village."

One thing is different. St. Charles was able to do all this in the southwestern fourth of its downtown by working with one big development partnership during just eight years. South Elgin's downtown probably will be reborn a block or two -- even a building or two -- at a time, as a series of private developers (like the partners now interested in replacing The Painted Lady with row houses) step forward with ideas.

The business/condo building that replaced Tucker's food store is a smaller but home-grown example of the new downtown South Elgin.

• A church is not a building: An old Sunday school song says, "The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is a people." That seems to have been forgotten by the Speak Out Line caller who referred to my March 23 stories about the "Holy Hill" churches, apparently without having read them very carefully, and included some false information about the church I have attended since age 2.

The caller stated that "Faith United Methodist, it didn't go out of existence. It was taken over by Hispanics because of the illegal immigrant surge ..."

The "true facts": The building formerly occupied by Faith United Methodist at Highland and Center was sold in 1998 to an entirely different, Spanish-speaking congregation called Iglesia Carismatica Puerta de Sion. Faith Church, meanwhile, in effect merged with Plato Center United Methodist Church to form a new congregation called Cornerstone Church. Cornerstone built a new building in Plato Center and, while its numbers have grown considerably, its services still involve dozens of people who used to worship together in Elgin under the name "Faith United Methodist." Other than taking over Faith's old building, Puerta De Sion has no connection with Faith/Cornerstone and never did.

To be candid, it is easier to attract non-Hispanic "church shoppers" to a new building in Plato Center than to an old building in downtown Elgin. But I believe Cornerstone's increased success in attracting new members owes more to its worship style (informal, modern) and theological slant (more evangelical and Bible-based) have changed. And don't forget that secular businesses like Spiess and Ackemann's started having trouble attracting people to downtown Elgin long before the current flood of immigrants.