Dave Hoekstra's Website

Dave Hoekstra has been a Chicago Sun-Times staff writer since 1985. He has contributed pieces to Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader and Playboy magazine. He has written books about the Farm Aid movement, travel and kick ass country music. His latest book is about minor league baseball in the Midwest. He likes sunsets over cool waters. To contact Dave please send email to: [email protected]

[davehoekstra]

Thinking of Christmas

Dec. 25, 2013--

Christmas Day may seem like a bad time to introduce your Mother to hospice care. Do you hear what I hear?

But my brother and nephew have Dec. 25 obligations in Nashville, Tn. so we usually don’t celebrate Christmas until Dec. 26 when they come to Chicago. Medicare for Mom’s tool box of pills runs out at the end of the  year and the results from her echocardiogram come in on Dec. 26.

Mom’s dementia has gotten worse over the last few months. Her 92nd birthday was Dec. 10 and that was a fleeting moment. Forgetting birthdays isn't such a bad thing. Baseball poet Satchel Paige asked, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old  you are?"

She has trouble distinguishing her right from her left and the gotcha moment was Thanksgiving when she fell in my former bedroom of their west suburban home. The caregiver and I took one of those wide beige leather belts you use to move furniture, wrapped it around my Mom’s waist and lifted her up off the floor.   I knew it was time.

Mom still knows who we are and she loves posing for the camera. There is a calm radiance about her pure smile. 

She likes to eat ice cream.

On a good day she can still crack a joke and then I feel guilty about our recent decision. She has at least a half-dozen health issues and on a bad day I think I’ve waited too long. Over the last couple weeks I’ve visited with Rich the hospice social worker. I told Rich I try not to get too high and not get too low. He says that is a good approach.

Rich has coached me on the next transition. When the snow has cleared on Christmas Day I will hold my Mother’s hands as she once held mine. Her eyes are filled with a trust I was too self-absorbed to  recognize as a younger man. I will speak to her in soft questions, which gently opens the door for her thoughts. There will be love in the room. 

These steps will be supported by the arrival of my brother and nephew as it has been by visitors she has seen in recent days. The modest house rings true with a caring choir. Good family and friends are a year round thing.

I’m not going to be filing a journal or Tweeting about my Mom’s decline like NPR’s Scott Simon. I respect dignity and privacy too much. I also try to live in every moment of this journey and not to be distracted by outside forces. That is often very difficult, but I try. But if there is a note I can share with a wandering reader along the path of this holiday season than it is worth it.

The course of action , I am told by the social worker, is basic:

Gather all information. And then make decisions with love. And isn’t that the best Christmas gift of all?

[davehoekstra]

Time flies at the Golden Apple

Nov. 4, 2013--

I am that guy.

I’m the guy who sits alone at the Golden Apple on Saturday night. He always carries a newspaper or two. One newspaper has the latest stories, the other one may be from last Sunday. That guy is always trying to catch up.

He sits alone in a booth because he can spread out his newspapers. That’s important.  He looks at the empty seat across from him and sees shadows. They can torment him. I used to look at that guy from a distance and think, “I’m glad I’m not that guy.” Suddenly last weekend I became that guy.

He talks about the Cubs even though they haven’t played a meaningful game since Memorial Day. Speaking of summer, don’t get that guy talking about the weather. You know you are that (old) guy when you start discussing five-day forecast projections with strangers.

That guy can get awfully fussy.

He orders the same thing from the menu which is a bowl of chicken noodle soup (first please), Greek chicken with rice and vegetables. Garlic toast on the side. That guy gets impatient if there’s any kind of delay. 

When the Mexican cooks screw up his Greek chicken and that guy fidgets, the waitresses turn their heads back and forth like salt and pepper shakers. There are too many guys like that guy on a Saturday night at the Golden Apple.

The Golden Apple has never closed its door because of guys like this. The Greek diner is open on the family holidays of Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter.  When he was a younger guy, that guy came into the Golden Apple after a few too many tequila shots on his summer time birthday.

Annette Hubbard has worked the Apple Sat. night shift the last 16 yrs.

I suppose my that-guyness  hit me when a young couple walked hand in hand down Lincoln Avenue past the Golden Apple’s window. They looked at that guy like he was a fish in an aquarium. They quickly turned away from the scene in the otherwise empty booth of sprawled out newspapers. Is that guy planning some kind of weird event? The Golden Apple is across the street from the beautiful St. Alphonsus church with bells that ring over regentrified blocks of mostly young people. That guy has been to a couple of splendid weddings at that church. Sometimes he thinks of the people he knew who got hitched there, encountered a rough stretch, but worked it out and don’t come to the Golden Apple anymore on Saturday nights.

My friend Annette Hubbard has worked the 2-11 p.m. shift for the last 16 years at the Golden Apple. She said 60 per cent of her customers are that guys, or I guess regular guys. Many of them prefer to sit on the diner counter stools. They don't hog an entire booth like I do.

I asked Annette what they argue about.

"What's on the television set (above the counter)," she answered. "Baseball, football, basketball.

"I switch to different stations after a little while."

That's just how relationships can work, which is why there's so many guys on a Saturday night at the Apple.

After dinner it is time to wind it up and reassemble the newspapers. Heaven forbid a bus boy takes your newspapers before you finish them.

That guy says goodbye to all the other guys, because, frankly, there are no female customers at the Golden Apple at 8 o’clock on a Saturday night.

You know you will see those guys again soon, the Cubs will still be losing, the soup will  be warm and church bells will be ringing for someone.

[davehoekstra]

Ripples of sunshine

Oct. 15, 2013--

If you are in rough current, you look for signs.

I live on the near West Side of Chicago where there are more coffee shops than grocery stores. More often than not  I’m served coffee to go by slow moving, glum characters listening to Morphine.

This is no way to start the day. On Monday morning I stopped at Swim Cafe for their fine coffee and oatmeal with brown sugar.

A new barista was behind the counter dancing to “I’m Coming Out.” She was in her inner disco zone as she was preparing a bagel.

I knew the dance-funk song but I had forgotten who had the hit. I looked it up when I got to my glum place of work----(Diana Ross, 1980; written by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers of Chic). Well, I was not hanging out at gay discos in 1980.

It was Ross’s second solo hit single and she had said the lyrics reminded her of getting out from Berry Gordy’s thumb.

I doubt the Swim woman was of age when  “I’m Coming Out” was a hit. But the innocence of the scene made me smile. To her, it was likely a throw away moment. But for me, as I witness  connections become increasingly difficult and spontaneity less appreciated, it stuck with me the most of the day. 

I miss signs of random expression. They don't even dance on the bar of the Matchbox anymore.

Where did our love go? (The Supremes, 1964). You could get written up at some places for dancing to “I’m Coming Out” while you work. Coffee shops are filled with folks burrowed in laptops or punching away on their iPhones. 

Her happy dance reminded me to continue to try to step out of myself.  The city’s seas are full of adventure. I need to remember that. And for the rest of the day I tried to smile at strangers.

[davehoekstra]

Open hearts

August 18, 2013--

Like the shadow of a strong tree, the tall Indian man crept up to me from behind.

I was struggling to get my ailing Mother into the front passenger seat of our car. She can no longer walk. She can no longer get out of her wheel chair without the aid of caregivers. I was alone.

I have been through every moment of the long parental winter. Taking away the car keys. Falls. Heart attacks. Emergency room visits. But this tall Indian man shed meaningful light on a struggling moment. “Let me help,” he said.

He moved with the help of a dark black cane. He gently set the cane down on the driveway of the medical center in West suburban Chicago.

. I propped my Mother’s legs into the car. She wore new white Reeboks that looked ready for a morning jog.  The man held her from under her arms and lifted her out of the doctor’s complimentary wheelchair. Together we were able to get my Mother comfortably into the car.

I thanked the tall Indian man and shook his hand. “I have nothing,” he told me. “I  lost everything in the accident.” 

He unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a five inch vertical scar. “I had open heart surgery,” he said. “I had to start all over again.

  “But part of that was learnng how to give with my heart.”

The tall Indian man told me he was 67 years old. He said he would be returning to see his doctor in another week. I did not ask him for his name.

I helped him with his cane and watched him walk alone to his car. I wondered about his family. But then in these bluest of moments, I learned it is possible for a stranger to become family.

And that is an unforgettable  lesson.

[davehoekstra]

Circle of Life

August 9, 2013---

It seemed so obvious in this coolest of recent summers, but maybe  I am a late bloomer. I grew up on a cul-de-sac in West suburban Chicago. It was the scene of a few joy rides, one no-parking situation during a Thanksgiving break party while my parents were away, and a couple of intense wiffle ball games with my younger brother.

A few weeks ago I took my Mother for a spin around the cul-de-sac court in her wheel chair. She is not doing well. The year-old twin granddaughters of Bill the Neighbor were in dual baby carriages in his front yard. The circle of life.

As your parents grow older, and then very older, you try to embrace the moment. Every moment past and present.

Last Friday I took my Mom to the doctor. She is suffering from dementia, she is not eating  and doesn’t get out of the house like she used to. She misses feeding the fleeting birds and tending to her rooted garden.

Going to the doctor has become a big deal for her, just as it was for me when I was a toddler. There is no end to the circle.

The sun seems to be setting earlier than usual on these early August evenings. But last Friday my Mother wore a snappy  turquoise argyle sweater and bright red lipstick. She looked sweet. I think she enjoyed the attention she had given to everyone else for most of her 91 years.

I always take technical notes at my parent’s doctor’s appointments but this was the first time I made personal observations.

I had helped lift my Mother from her wheel chair on to the examination table. After a generous visit from her doctor, my Mother slowly leaned over. She extended each of her shaking hands to the doctor. Her long fingers are curled. They are the hands of a coal miner's daughter, once so strong, now so thin and frail.

He held her hands as she asked, “Am I making progress?” Her EKG was fine. It was my heart that was breaking.

[davehoekstra]

Burt Hooton & America's Heartland

August 3, 2013---

FORT WAYNE, IND.---The highway flutters and spins out of downtown Chicago to rural central Indiana. You are looking for something, somewhere that tethers you to younger days. All the motels along Route 30 are sold out until you get to Warsaw, about 35 miles west of Fort Wayne. A ramshackle Super 8 has become an independent operation.

The night clerk is a heavy set woman sprawled out on a saggy sofa. She is watching a flickering television screen. With one hand she is playing a game on her laptop computer. It is her good hand. With the other hand she is swatting at flies with a green fly swatter. “You’re lucky,” she says. “Tomorrow we’ll  be filled with migrant workers.” 

You check in. You are in the area to check out Burt Carlton Hooton.

Hooton, 63, is in his first year as pitching coach for the Fort Wayne TinCaps, the Class A Midwest League affiliate of the San Diego Padres. 

You feel special ties to Hooton. You were 16 years old sitting in the Wrigley Field left field bleachers on April 16, 1972 when Hooton no-hit the Philadelphia Philllies with his “knuckle curve” in his first start of season. You kept score despite the cold and light drizzle. Cigars cost anywhere between 15 cents and 30 cents and you know this because you saved the scorecard. It is a memory. It was a dark afternoon that drew only 9,000 fans,  but there seemed to be clear sailing ahead.

Hooton was nicknamed “Happy” by Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda because he rarely smiled. 

And, indeed, in a 30 minute conversation before a TinCaps game, the only time he smiles is when you mention your night in Warsaw. The funky motel is about a mile from the 1911 home of speedy Chicago White Stockings outfielder-turned evangelist Billy Sunday.

There is a new hipster restaurant in Logan Square called Billy Sunday, but this was the original (born 1862, died 1935).

  Sunday lived in beautiful Winona Lake, which looks like a woody slice of Wisconsin in rural Indiana  He built his home in 1911 on Mt. Hood, which overlooks the lake. The home is open for tours, but closed on Sunday.

Winona Lake is a wonderful destination with bike trails, boating and the Boathouse restaurant. The lakeside restaurant was built in 1895 as boat storage space for a religious summer resort.

According to the comprehensive 1992 Roger Bruns biography “Preacher (Billy Sunday and Big Time Evangelism),"  the Winona Lake Year Book said the village centered around a Christian lifestyle “to shut out everything of doubtful tinge.” The village was linked to other cities through the Winona-Inter Urban Railway.

Bruns said the inside of the Sunday house featured photographs and paintings from Sunday revivals across America as well as a White Stockings team photo with only one clean shaven player.

Hooton has seen the highway marker for Sunday’s home from the bus tooling along Route 30.

What is he doing here?

“Started coaching in ‘88,” he deadpans. “Nine years with the Dodgers organization. Went to the University of Texas for three years. Went to the Astros, stayed 13 years with them. Was let go last year. Started looking for a job. And the Padres were the only ones who responded.” Hooton was the Astros pitching coach between 2000 and 2004.

One of Hooton's prize pupils is Chan Ho Park.

"When he first came to America he was 19, 20 years old," Hooton says. "He spoke no English. He was the first South Korean to make it to the big leagues. They brought him to Los Angeles right away but that didn't work out. So they sent him to San Antonio, where I was. I picked him up at the airport with him and his interpreter. It was so hard for him."

Even Park's Class AA games at San Antonio were broadcast back to South Korea. Hooton taught Park how to pitch and not to always rely on his high fastball. Hooton also told Park he needed to learn English.

"I remember him coming to me one day crying," Hooton says. "He felt his teammates didn't like him because they were kidding around with him. I said, 'Chan Ho, that means they do like you. When they don't like you they won't do anything with you'."

Park ended up pitching 17 years in the major leagues and his 124 wins are the most ever by an Asian pitcher.  Hooton and Park, now 40, still keep in touch.  "He will call me on Father's Day," Hooton says. "He will call me on Christmas. He has a house in Korea, a house in L.A. a house in Dallas and a house in Las Vegas he is trying to get rid of."

And Hooton was in on the ground floor.

Hooton is deploying the six-man pitching rotation at Fort Wayne. Padres farm director Randy Smith believes that two bullpen sessions help younger pitchers build muscle memory that better allows them to repeat their deliveries. The six-man rotation came into play late last year at Fort Wayne and high class A Lake Elsinore.

“Most of the pitchers are in their first full season of professional baseball, they come right out of high school or college and they’re not used to playing 140 game schedule,” he says. “They’re not used to pitching every five days, so to speak. The idea is to slowly indoctrinate them into full season professional baseball. It cuts down on their innings. We monitor the number of pitches they throw in each start (under 95) and in between starts. As they mature and grow, they will go back into a five man rotation in a higher league.”

“They (his pitchers) didn’t start any younger than I started,” says Hooton, who broke in with the Cubs at age 21.  “It’s just a different philosophy now. There’s much more money invested in the players now so you’re protecting your investment.”

Hooton was the Cubs second pick in the 1971 amateur draft out of the University of Texas where he was a three-time All-American. He made his first major league start nine days later. He struck out the first batter he faced--Lou Brock.

At the time, Hooton was only the third player to go straight to the major leagues without playing in the minors. “After my first start I developed tendonitis in my shoulder and pretty much sat for the rest of June,” he says. “They wanted to get me pitching on a regular basis so they sent me to Tacoma. I did quite well (he led the Pacific Coast League with a 1.68 ERA), came back to Chicago in September and stayed in the big leagues for the rest of my career.”

His no-hitter came in his fourth major league start.  “It was a cold day,” he recalls. “The wind was blowing in, which was a good thing. A couple balls were hit that might have gone out otherwise. It was right after a 13 day strike, I’m sure no one was sharp. I wasn’t sharp. I walked seven guys (and struck out seven).”

Hooton was self-taught on his knuckle curve, which he began throwing at age 14. The pitch is thrown like a curve ball, but flutters like a knuckleball. 

“I logically assumed you put your knuckles down on the seams of the ball to throw a knuckleball,” he explains while reaching for a baseball. “I heard them say to push it out. Every time I pushed it out I got rotation. I never could throw a regular knuckleball. First, I held it wrong. You hold that with your fingertips. So when I pushed it out, I threw it hard and it became a curve ball. From 14 on up it became my curve ball.”

Hooton said some young pitchers ask him to show them the pitch, but no one searches out Hooton like R.A. Dickey found a mentor in Charlie Hough. “Nowadays kids are looking for a quick fix more than anything else,” he says. “We live in a take-a-pill society where one pill cures everything.”

Hooton does not smile.

“We did not have a lot of pitching coaching when I started,” he says. “Actually I’m not real fond of the pitching coaching that I got. Fred Martin was the so-called (Cubs) pitching coordinator. Two months in the minor leagues, I didn’t spend a lot of time with him. I was one of those guys who had been better off if they left me alone.

“When I got to Chicago and did what I did in Tacoma--pitched 102 innings and struck out 135--, pitched the no hitter to start the season in ‘72--in three and a half years with the Cubs I had four different pitching coaches. They were all sinker, slider guys. I was a four seam fast ball, four seam curve ball. They started telling me I needed to throw sinkers and sliders. Well, three and a half years later I couldn’t get anybody out.”

In May, 1975 Hooton was traded to the Dodgers for the forgettable Eddie Solomon and Geoff Zahn.  Hooton was acquired to replace Tommy John, who was on the shelf with now historic elbow surgery. 

“The pitching coach in Los Angeles was Red Adams, who was the best pitching coach I ever had,” Hooton says. “He told me to can the sinker and slider and pitch the way I wanted to. As soon as he told me that I won 18 games. That’s how coaches can hurt guys.

"I live by Red’s philosophy. The two things he taught me is that you can’t coach anybody who doesn’t want to be coached and the worst thing a kid can come up against is a coach who thinks he has to coach. You look and see what kids do well and try to build on that rather than telling them what to do. I’m not that smart.”

Look for two of my baseball stories in the upcoming anthology "From Black Sox to Three Peats (A Century of Chicago's Best Sports Writing From The Tribune, Sun-Times & Other Newspapers), edited by Ron Rapoport on University of Chicago Press.

[davehoekstra]

Getting quirky to Albuquerque--33 things to do on 66

June 26. 2013 33 things for Bill Linden to do on Route 66 (For his 66th birthday journey with Mrs. Bill from Chicago to Albuquerque, N.M. For more on the Mother Road visit the home page of this blog.) 1. Breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s, open since 1923  in downtown Chicago. 2. Golden brown chicken to go at Dell Rhea’s Chicken Basket, 645 Joliet Rd. in Willowbrook (adjacent to I-55) --first excellent neon sign photo op. This iconic restaurant has been in the same spot since 1963. The late Dell Rhea was an executive director of the Chicago Convention Bureau and was instrumental in bringing the 1933 World’s Exposition to Chicago. 

3. Twin Spin in Pontiac, Ill.---Pontiac car museum (I still drive a Pontiac) and the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame and Museum, 110 Howard St. downtown Pontiac. Check out my old friend Bob Waldmire’s 1966 Chevy bus-house. You would have liked this R. Crumb inspired artist. I visited Bob in this bus as he lay dying from colon cancer in November, 2009. One of the last things he asked me to do before I left was to feed his birds.

Route 66 is for free spirits.

4. Funk’s Grove, get some pure “maple siriup” in this wooded grove southwest of Bloomington. 5. Remodeled Dixie Truck Stop, McLean, Ill. Say hello to the MegaBus passengers on their pit stop. But don’t pick any up.

6. Have a homemade apple, blueberry, cherry, peach, rhubarb, boysenberry or sour cream pie at the Palms (opened 1934)  in uptown Atlanta, Ill. (pop. 1,649, just five minutes from the Dixie). Heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer--father of Jethro from “The Beverly Hilllbillies” is the biggest named celebrity to dine at the Palms--to date. Bill Thomas brought the Palms back to life and is one of the great ambassadors on the Mother Road. 7. Photo op with the Bunyon Giant, across the street from the Palms. In 2004 Thomas spearheaded a drive to relocate the 19-foot tall Paul Bunyon fiberglass statue from a Cicero hot dog stand on ‘66 to Atlanta.

8. Cozy Dog Drive In, 2935 6th St. in Springfield, the launching pad for Bob Waldmire and his family. They’ve been serving battered deep-fried hot dogs on a stick since 1950. The logo of weenies in love is irresistible--tee shirt time! 9. Say a prayer at Our Lady of the Highway, Raymond, Ill. (it can be seen between exits 72 and 63 on the west end of I-55 heading south). The shrine is a life-size marble figurine imported from Carrara, Italy. Late farmer Frances Marten installed this shrine in 1959. When I-55 was built in 1970 the state tried to remove the shrine. They failed.

10. Slow down and put your arm around your significant other.

11. Ariston Cafe, opened 1924 on old Route 66  in Litchfield. Don’t miss the prime rib of beef served on a hoagie with au jus. Good beer selection, too. Litchfield is a gem of a Route 66 town about an hour north of St. Louis.

12. Euclid Records, 19 N. Gore Ave. in the Webster Groves neighborhood just west of downtown St. Louis. Awesome collection of vinyl--you might find some Bobby Troup music here. I’m adding their phone number for my own future reference: 314-961-8978. 

13. Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, 6726 Chippewa St. (old ‘66)  in St. Louis. Have a concrete with tart cherries and hot fudge. A concrete is basically a shake so thick that it can be turned upside down without falling out of the cup. I know our friend and fellow gypsy Al Solomon loves this place.

14. Take time to remember Route 66 is not about an agenda. Let the moments come to you.

15. If you are tired, rest a spell at the newly restored Wagon Wheel Motel., 901 E. Washington St. (Old 66), in Cuba,  Mo., about 85 miles west of St. Louis. (Exit 208 on I-44). The Wagon Wheel is the oldest continuously operating motel on Route 66. The Wheel opened in 1935. The Chicago Daily Illustrated Times, the predecessor to our Sun-Times was six years old. The Wagon Wheel was one of my final road columns before the Sun-Times pantsed its travel section earlier this year.

. 16. Awesome photo op at the World’s Largest Rocking Chair in Cuba, down the road from the Wagon Wheel. And how big is it? It is 42-feet-1-inch tall, 20 feet-3 inches wide and weighs 27,000 pounds. Free.  Very cool grocery store and shooting range right next door.

17. Stop or sleep at the Best Western Rail Haven, 203 S. Glenstone (old ‘66) in Springfield, Mo. By now it is an eight-hour non stop drive from Chicago.  Elvis Presley stayed in room 409 at the Rail Haven. The Rail Haven got its name because of the quaint split rail fence that surrounds the property. There’s a nice outdoor pool for those hot summer days in the heart of the Ozarks. And don’t you go wandering off to Branson, down the road.

18. Amaze  your friends with the fact that Springfield is the “Cashew Chicken Capital of America.” There are more than 100 restaurants that serve cashew chicken in Springfield.  I never get tired of sharing this story as told to me by the wonderful Lou Whitney, bassist-vocalist for the Skeletons, a popular pop-soul band based in Springfield. Whitney moved to Springfield in 1970. 

Pensacola, Fla. chef David Leong migrated to “The Queen City of the Ozarks” after World War II. In the late 1960s a semi-truck plowed off of Route 66 into the kitchen of the now-defunct Grove Supper Club where Leong was working. Whitney told me this story in the summer of 2001. To demonstrate what happened, the 6’4” raconteur stood up from behind a desk in his downtown Springfield recording studio and threw himself against a wall.  Like Dick Butkus hard. Still standing Whitney said, “David was pinned against the wall and suffered minor injuries. He ultimately got a settlement.” Leong opened his own restaurant with the settlement and became the Ray Kroc of Cashew Chicken. His unique “Springfield” style consisted of Chinese oyster sauce, chives and/or chopped scallions.

19. Central Square in Springfield is where Wild Bill Hickok killed Dave Tutt in a shoot out after Hickok lost a poker game to Tutt.

20. Never bypass the 12 miles of Kansas on Route 66. (From Joplin, Mo. to Vinita, Okla.) I was once on a tour bus with Asleep at the Wheel on a Route 66 caravan and they did this. The residents of the few small towns along the way were pissed and vowed to never buy an Asleep at the Wheel record again.

21. Baxter Springs, Kansas has a sign advertising itself as “The first Cowtown in Kansas.” Don't miss the rainbow bridges, too.

22. The Will Rogers Memorial is in Claremore, Okla.  23. Play Bob Dylan on the car radio. Lately I’ve been listening to a “Shelter From the Storm” demo where Zimmy made every word count: “I was in another lifetime one of toil and blood When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud I came in from the wilderness a creature void of form.... But the spirit of the Mother Road restores your sense of totality. You understand your place in this traveling carnival of barkers, clowns and lion tamers we call America.

Here is Dylan's alternate version:

http://youtu.be/f8TayMIEUaM

24. Check out Cain’s Ballroom, 423 N. Main St., just off of ‘66  in Tulsa, Okla. even if you just walk by the place. Built from natural limestone, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys broadcast live from the ballroom from 1934 to the early 1960s. The Sex Pistols played here in 1978 and Hank Williams once passed out on a red vinyl couch in the office. I drove here once just to see Merle Haggard. Allow time in Tulsa. It is an underrated ‘66 town full of great architecture, shopping and diners.

25. The National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, Okla. (just west of I-35.)

26. When the stars come out, pull over in a field outside of town. Get out of the car. Lay down on the hood of your car and look up to the sky. Make sure a hush falls across the plains. Make a wish. It will come true.

27. U Drop Inn, 101 E. 12th St. (old 66)  in Shamrock, Texas, newly restored example of some of the best Art Deco on Route 66. The U Drop Inn opened in 1936 and was refitted to be featured in the town of “Radiator Springs” in the 2006 Disney animated film “Cars.” The U Drop Inn was on its last legs when I did the entire Mother Road in 1991. I believe today it is a visitor center and museum.

28. Amarilllo, Texas. I remember this for great thrift store shopping. Like we need more "stuff."

29. The Big Texan Steak Ranch, opened in 1960 at what is now 7701 E. I-40 in Amarillo. Eat a 72-ounce steak in an hour and it is free. Ironically, the steak ranch is just east of Memorial Park Cemetery. These guys should hook up with the big rocking chair back in Cuba.

30. Tucamcari, New Mexico--lots of motels and neon photo ops. Bonus points for being worked into the Lowell George road song “Willin’.” 31. Cuvero, New Mexico.  In 1991 I bought a turquoise ring at a Native American shop in this “ghost town.” I still wear it today to remind me of the circle of life (and to always check the air in your tires on a long road trip!). There is a quote in my new collection of oral histories “The Supper Club Book (A Celebration of a Midwest Tradition)” ---available at The Supper Club Book.com!!!t -which t is applicable to this ghost moment in Cuvero:

“No place is a place until things are remembered.”

32. Albuquerque--You have arrived. Remember to tell your passenger(s)  that Jim Morrison of the Doors lived in Albuquerque. As a four-year old in 1947 he witnessed a car accident in the New Mexico desert that seriously injured a  family of Native Americans. The imagery of “Crying Indians” haunted him the rest of his short life.

33. Don’t miss the beautiful restoration of the “Pubelo Deco” KiMo Theater, 423 Central Ave, N.W, for your trip will be something they make movies about. Stories with great songs, beautiful birds and happy endings.

[davehoekstra]

First Class Delivery--The Bullpen Cart

May 20, 2013-

Appleton, Wisconsin--

I grew up watching baseball relief pitchers of the 1960s like Don Mossi and Hoyt Wilhelm.

These guys looked so old I figured that was why the bullpen cart was invented.

Even should-be Hall of Famer Lee Smith trudged in the mound for the 1984 Cubs like he was heading for a tax audit. The Bullpen Cart-- or Car --has its roots in Chicago.

The cart debuted in 1951 at Comiskey Park when White Sox relief pitcher Marv Rotblatt was chauffeured to the mound. The cart was only used for White Sox pitchers.

After consulting with White Sox pitcher Billy Pierce, White Sox team historian Jeff Szynal said that Yankees manager Casey Stengel soon commissioned a sharp black Cadillac from a South Side funeral home for his pitchers. He did not want to be shown up by the White Sox. Szynal said White Sox GM “Frantic” Frank Lane came up with the bullpen cart idea.

Baseball needs more of this today.

The White Sox pulled the plug on bullpen transportation in 1981 when the team used a Chrysler LeBaron as the cart. The players didn’t like the LeBaron and neither did the fueled up Sox fans.

The LeBaron was pelted with full cups of beer as it tooled around the field, mostly without a pitcher as a passenger. The Bullpen Cart rode off into the sunset around 1986. After the New York Mets clinched the 1986 division title, fans streamed on the Shea Stadium field while a vendor bogarted the Mets’ bullpen cart for a joy ride around the outfield.

 From the author's ugly card archives

Now, Rob Zerjav, President-GM of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers has made an important save.

He brought back the Bullpen Cart.

I actually drove to Fox Cities Stadium in  Appleton, Wis. to see the cart in action.

The cart was made by Colorado-based CaddyWorks. It is an EZ-Go Golf Cart retrofitted with a sphere baseball fiberglass body. The cart is about six feet tall and weighs  nearly 1,000 pounds.

Tim Hall is owner/investor of CaddyWorks. He designed and built the electric cart.

“The source for my design does stem from the ‘70s bull pen car but was arrived at through a chain of steps and tries,” Hall wrote in an e-Mail. “These are hand built to order and we want it this way to keep with the tradition of work ethic and good foundation. I have wanted to build a modern version of the ‘70s design and while there is interest , I think most teams don’t want the expense. But I will replicate it in time if only a monument to it’s uniqueness.”

     Mets cart out of gas, circa 1970s  

Trouble is that only one player has been interested in riding in the Wisconsin bullpen cart.

That is Timber Rattlers relief pitcher Taylor Magnum.

“It was fun and I enjoyed it,” Magnum said in a phone interview. “I knew a long time ago in the ‘50s and ‘60s  they used that to bring in pitchers. Nobody else had done it yet so I decided to be first.”

The cart without a pitcher still circles the warning track every time a relief pitcher from either team is announced at Fox Cities Stadium. When a player does use the cart they are dropped off by a dugout. The cart is sponsored by Breakthrough Fuel in Appleton.

“Once we started this, we’ve had a lot of interest,” Zerjav said before the Timber Rattlers (Brewers) beat Burlington (Los Angeles Angels) 4-2. I got a call from the Washington Nationals asking where we got our cart.”

Hoyt Wilhelm knuckleballer

  Magnum, 24, doesn’t think the cart does much to save his legs. “It’s only 75 yards from the bullpen to the mound so I don’t think it saves anything,” he said. “It’s just something more for the fans. Actually one of our other pitchers rode in it yesterday so I’m not the only guy anymore. I don’t know why more guys don’t ride it. I’ve asked them. They want to run in like they always have. Maybe it’s a mental thing.

“I’ll ride in it again, for sure. Where the bars are usually in front of a golf cart, they put bats there. It’s awesome.”

Magnum has a moving pedigree.

He is the third oldest player on the Timber Rattlers. After his freshman year at the College of Southern Idaho, he took off August, 2008-August, 2010 to serve on a The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day  Saints mission near Lubbock, Tx. “It was a thing I wanted to do most of my life,” he explained. “I learned a lot about the people in Texas, other religions and my own faith. You have to devote a lot of your time and energy. You don’t see your family.

A couple years ago Zerjav read an ESPN magazine article about the demise of the bullpen cart, although the publication called it a “car.” But most of the carts used golf carts as a template.

“That was intriguing to us,” he said. “We had relocated our bullpen to the outfield. We thought it was a good sponsorship opportunity and fun for the fans.”

Zerjav, 38, grew up in Green Bay and remembered the Harley-Davidson motorcycles with the sidecar the Brewers used in the mid-1990s at County Stadium.

“The Brewers still have a bullpen cart in storage,” Zerjav said. “Every time I go down there and go through their storage stuff, I go, ‘Hey, do you want to get rid of your bullpen cart?’ but they never want to part with it. So we saw there was this company that made them. It gives you that feel of ‘Major League’, the movie, when Tom Berenger takes the cart to go to Rene Russo’s house. That’s always been in my mind.  We thought it would be neat to bring it back.”

The Timber Rattlers cart tops out around 18 mph.

It does not have a seat belt.

“It can go pretty fast,” Zerjav said with a smile. “The guys that drive it are on our parking crew. They park cars before the game and come in and do the bullpen cart. To me, they go a little too fast, we need to tell them to tone it down.

 “We don’t keep the keys in it. I think they’d (pitchers) rather take it for a ride than ride in it. Once a pitcher comes in on it and has some success that’s going to become his ritual. We’ll do this again next year. Breakthrough Fuel signed a three-year partnership. It is here to stay.”

Or go.

[davehoekstra]

Bamboo in the Dusk of May

May 13, 2013--

The bamboo plant flourished in the dining room of her Rogers Park apartment. When she moved away three years ago I inherited the  plant. It brought us good fortune like bamboo often does. The plant  illuminated the present and sometimes pointed towards the future.

I gave the bamboo plant to my mother. At the time she was 88 years old.

I always kept an eye on the bamboo plant during my Sunday trips to see my parents. My Mom had placed the plant on a small table near a window in the northwest corner of her kitchen. As recent as two years ago my Mom would walk out onto the back porch adjacent to the kitchen and mind the bird bath she put up every spring.

The bamboo plant continued to grow. A lot. I almost wanted to take it back for my Tiki Bar. I had to fetch a bigger vase and more pebbles for the bottom of the vase. I believed it was bringing my parents the fortune all of us hope for. My Mom is now 91 and my Dad is 92. It is quite a story for another time. My Mom hasn’t been doing well recently and I don’t have many people to share these words with. The shadow of dementia is rapidly creeping in on her, although I can still stir her up now and then. On Mother's Day I mentioned the New York Times article about how dog ownership can curb heart trouble.

"We are not getting a dog," she declared.

Every Sunday when I walk into the living room my mother is sitting in her favorite chair. The brown chair is adjacent to a hassock where she has placed a calendar filled with doctor’s appointments. She wears a gray sweater with deep warm pockets.

My father is always sitting next to her in his wheel chair. The room is quiet and it is old people hot. Sometimes they just look at each other for periods of time without saying anything. They are bookends of memories. The television set is not on and old songs no longer play over the radio. My brother soon will be fetching the piano. Things move away. Things are lost.

But Mom and Dad sit close together, best of friends, hunkering against the cruel winds of time. One of the repercussions of dementia is how my Mom has neglected to take care of her house plants. She has loved plants her entire life. Now when I visit my parents I notice the plants are dead or dying. I wonder if it is too late to water them, but then I wonder why it snowed this weekend in Northern Michigan.

On Mother’s Day I removed the bamboo plant from the kitchen table. Its green stems had turned brown. Tiny leaves drooped. It was time to go. I replaced the bamboo with a bouquet of bright blue hydrangea. Mom liked that which I could see by the twinkle in her eyes. She did not comment about the missing bamboo.

Instead, she looked out the window and saw young birds fly away on Mother’s Day.

[davehoekstra]

Beat Goes On for a Heartland Baseball Stadium

April 17. 2013---

INDIANAPOLIS--A standing ovation is due for a group of young urban planners who rescued seats from historic Bush Stadium on the industrial west side of Indianapolis. Bush was one of the jewels of American baseball between 1931-1995 until it was torn down.

Bush was often compared to Wrigley Field. I visited Bush and it’s brick ivy covered outfield walls with manual scoreboard during it’s final season

.   I was told that Bill Veeck imported the Bush ivy to Wrigley Field. That’s not certain. (F.D. Clavey Ravinia Nurseries was regarded as the main source for the Wrigley ivy.) But this much is for sure: Bush was first. Veeck planted the Wrigley bittersweet in 1938.

Hank Aaron began his professional career for three months in 1952 at Bush as a shortstop for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American Leagues. Roger Maris, Razor Shines and the late Cubs outfielder Champ Summers played for the Class AAA Indianapolis Indians at Bush. Slugger Rocky Colavito used to amaze  pre-game fans by standing at home plate and throwing baseballs out of the park.

In 1987 John Sayes filmed “Eight Men Out” at Bush. I was on the set along with John Cusack (Buck Weaver), Charlie Sheen (Happy Felsch) and the late great Studs Terkel who played Hugh Fullerton of the Chicago Herald and Examiner.

Over the winter the Indianapolis based People for Urban Progress (PUP) salvaged 9,000 of 11,000 ballpark seats left for ruin. The twenty/thirty something designers and makers re-purposed the seats for city bus stops. And just in time for baseball season, more Bush seats are now being made available to the public.

A single seat is $45. A double is $80 a “triple” is $120 and a series of four seats can be had for $160. PUP does not ship the seats unless a fan is willing to pay for shipping. The seats can be picked up at the PUP offices in the artsy Fountain Square neighborhood. PUP is on the second floor of the former G.C. Murphy’s Department Store (1929-1998), 1043 Virginia Ave. just a few blocks off of I-65 and I-70.

The aluminum and plastic seats were sandblasted, lead paint was removed and the seats were reassembled.

Michael Bricker, 30,  co-founded PUP in November, 2008. His twin sister Jessica is product manager-designer for PUP. “When people come in to buy a seat they share their memories of going to games at Bush,” Michael Bricker said. “They met a girl friend there, a couple got married there, one guy remembered staying at a game that went nine extra innings and no one was left in the crowd at two in the morning. A lot of people remember that place. It was the city’s first sports arena.”

The peeps at PUP were stunned at the interest in the seats once they began to sell them. “We had no idea what the demand would be because it is such a unique product,” Bricker said. “We estimated we’d sell around 50 chairs. We’re over 800. (That was in a period between Feb. 21 and March 13). It’s incredible because it’s allowing us to invest that money back into the community and do more bus stops. It’s covering the cost associated with the project.”

There are 42 bus stop stations in greater Indianapolis. PUP came out of the gate last fall installing stadium seats at 11 stations. “We have plans for 15 to 20 more by the end of the year,” Bricker said.

I bought my own chair so I don't have to drive to Indianapolis to sit in baseball history. (Photo by Jessica Bricker)

For NFL fans, the group also makes wallets ($40) from the roof of the RCA Dome (demolished in 2008). The dome wallets are one of PUP’s most popular items. The group also salvaged vinyl, mesh and polyblend from banners used at Super Bowl XLIV at the new Lucas Oil Stadium in downtown Indy.

Seats will even be installed near the old stadium site. Last year ground was broken for the site to become the Stadium Lofts apartment complex, with the shell and historic facade of the stadium retained. Even though I’m a Cubs fan, I so wish the White Sox had saved some of Old Comiskey, even just to frame a parking lot.

Bush was the first minor league stadium to have underground tunnels to the dugouts. A center field fence was installed in the 1960s and for part of one season, the Indians had a Native American mascot that operated from a teepee behind the fence. The teepee remained until Bush’s final day.

In 1995 then-Indians GM Cal Burelson told me, “We had an outfielder (in 1972) named Gene Locklear (who went on to play for the Reds, Padres and Mets). Today he’s an accomplished artist on the West Coast. One time he was given a fine for missing a bus. Instead of paying, he asked to paint the teepee.” The teepee now sits in the center field concourse of the present day Victory Field in the shadow of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Bush opened in 1931 as Perry Stadium and was renamed Victory Field in 1942 to honor the American war effort. In May, 1932 the first night game was played in at the stadium, with the Indians losing 6-4 to Paul Dean (Dizzy’s brother ) and the Columbus Red Birds. The 1954 Indianapolis Clowns were managed by Oscar Charleston, one of the first Negro Leage players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The ‘54 Clowns featured female second baseman Connie Morgan, who replaced Toni Stone who moved on to the Kansas City Monarchs. Stone was the first professional female baseball player.

The ballpark was renamed Bush Stadium in 1967 to commemorate Indianapolis native, ex-Tigers shortstop (1908-1921)  and former White Sox manager Owen J. “Donie”  Bush. Victory Field is the present day home of the Indianapolis Indians, a Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate.

The first Bush rock concert took place on Aug. 10, 1972. The festival included Chuck Berry, Foghat, the trippy San Francisco band It’s a Beautiful Day and others. [REO Speedwagon played Bush in 1975.]

It was promoted by Tom Battista, an Indianapolis native who now co-owns the popular Italian restaurant Bluebeard, 653 Virginia Ave., a block away from the PUP offices. Battista is also stage manager for baseball fan Jimmy Buffett. The restaurant is named after the 1987 Kurt Vonnegut novel about a famous painter. Vonnnegut is an Indianapolis native.

“I majored in Latin American history at Indiana University,” Battista says. “I was one hour short of getting my degree in ‘72. A friend of mine was hanging out with the promoter of the show in Clermont, Indiana. There was a court injunction against the show. They got an agreement to move it to Bush stadium at noon on Friday. And the show was noon on Saturday. And they had to be out of there at noon on Sunday.” Bill Hanley sound was from Indianapolis and Tom Fields did the lighting companies. Hanley designed, built and operated the Woodstock festival sound system. Hanley’s payment for  the Woodstock sound  system totaled less than five cents per audience member.

“We worked all through the night,” Battista said. “We set up towers with spotlights. Staging.  Bill devised these wagons that were 25 feet long and maybe 12 feet deep. You would pre-set one act on it, roll it up center stage, then at the other wing stage left behind the speaker stacks they set up the next band. Then the third wagon on the other side was empty. So when the first act was done you would move them off stage right and roll the wagon in from stage left. I had never done anything in the music business before that but I was told  if I came to Bush I could see how rock n’ roll worked.”

Battista immediately connected with the show’s promoter Bruce DeForest, a former sound man with the Rolling Stones. And DeForest asked Battista to build the iconic Bottom Line nightclub in Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The 400-seat Bottom Line opened in 1974 and closed in 2004, just short of it’s 30th anniversary. Bruce Springsteen played early showcase concerts at the club and Lou Reed recorded the live album “Take No Prisoners” at the Bottom Line. Van Morrison, Neil Young, Billy Joel and Linda Ronstadt were others who played the Bottom Line. “In it’s day it was THE place,” he said. “And that’s how I got in the business.”

Battista and his wife Sharon started having children--their  daughter Victoria is an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. and their  son Ed is a partner at Bluebeard. Battista nestled back in at his hometown of Indianapolis.

“The Amy Grant show came through town,” he says. “The production people that did Amy Grant did religious shows in the winter and Buffett in the summer.”

Battista knew one of the crew members and mentioned that if they ever needed a fill in during a summer run, he was available. “He called me the next day because his assistant had to go out and do Bruce Springsteen,” Battista recalls. “When I asked my wife if I could go out, the only thing she said was ‘How much?’ When I said ‘how much,’ she said, ‘See ya.’ Battista has now been with Buffett since 1992.

“He’s the greatest guy and it is a great camp,” Battista says. “They take care of their people. He’s lucky and he knows it. He’s not pretentious. He’s a big Cubs fan.  I’m not into sports at all, it’s all entertainment to me. But they all love the Cubs and that’s a good thing.”

[davehoekstra]

March 23, 2013--

A sweet shout out from my friends at the Chicago Newspaper Guild.

Thank you.

[davehoekstra]

Looking at Tiki culture

Jan. 27, 2013-- Elaine Layabout transforms global music through images from vintage dramas, kitsch and travel videos. The Chicago-based indie filmmaker is creating the video wallpaper for a monthly tribute to Tiki exotica that sets sail at 9 p.m. Jan. 29 at Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar, 960 W. 31st St. in Bridgeport-By-The-Sea.

Well, Bridgeport-By-Bubbly Creek.

“It’s exciting because this is the reverse of what happens in movies,” Layabout said last week. “I’ve done music direction in movies where you’re picking music to transform the images. Here I am doing the reverse.”

A couple of hours of her work will be shown to the mixes of global DJ Richard Pierson. Expect colorful snippets from 1932’s Dolores del Rio romantic drama adventure “Bird of Paradise,” the 1952 Bing-Crosby-Bob Hope classic “Road to Bali,” 1922’s “Toll of the Sea” and much more.  I’ll be spinning Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Don Ho and  “The Magic Organ Goes To Hawaii,” but that’s not the point of this coconut telegraph.

“My work is completely cued into the music,” Layabout said. “I’m a musician, so it’s a given. Richard gives me the mixes and I listen to them. Then I browse through my archives and pull videos. I cut them up to pull scenes I think are interesting or to fit whatever narrative I am trying to shoehorn them into." Layabout said she pulls her material from large stacks of still and moving  images. “I was watching (the 1944 travelouge) ‘Belles of the South Seas’ and trying to see if I could use some clips," she explained. "It is old black and white video and every scene the women are topless and I’m totally fine with that. My videos are all about breasts in the moonlight. But the way the images are framed, in order to get everyone’s breasts on camera, they cut off the tops of the women’s heads. Is this too much objectification for me to handle? This is all about objectifying people and their culture. I may use these at Maria’s, I don’t know.”

Layabout assembles the videos aesthetically. Sometimes she mixes color and black and white footage and colorizes black and white footage. “It’s irreverent,” she said. “I’ve taken footage from Cuba, South America, Africa and Japan and put it all together. Thinking with the music, that’s the exciting thing to me. There’s a lot of dance footage, which is appropriate. I’m manipulating time. I’m slowing footage up, or speeding it up in order to fit with the music. I’m very anal retentative about matching video with the music.”

Iconic Chicago groove merchant Joe Bryl is the show's promoter. "Tiki music per se was developed by mainland haole Martin Denny and Kaui born Arthur Lyman, both of whom spent the bulk of their careers sound-tracking Tiki themed tourist lounges in Waikiki," Bryl said. "Those who insist Tiki music has nothing to do with Hawaii forget that it's a music of ports of call rather than territories, sound born along a web of trade routes linking Havana and Hong Kong, Mexico South and Manila, with Honolulu as a hub." Snippets of “I Am Cuba” will be part of her mix at Maria’s.

The 1964 anti-American propaganda film was made as a Cuban-Soviet collaboration. It was restored and released in the United States in 1995 by Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola. The film is shot in black and white with hand held cameras that create a musical rhythm (and accounts for the film’s majestic pans). The Sun-Times Roger Ebert called it “dated--but fascinating.” I bought the cigar-box sized “Ultimate Edition” of “I Am Cuba” which does a fine job of creating ambiance at my home tiki bar. Layabout said, “Just for me as a photographer where every single frame looks like a photograph, ‘I Am Cuba’ blew my mind.”

Layabout is a native of Cleveland, Ohio who grew up in the hills of Virginia.

Bird of Paradise, 1932

She also lived in Treasure Island, Fla. and the Everglades in Florida where her late father Walter was a manager for the Farm Store convience store chain. “Whenever there was a hurricane he would load us into the car during the eye of the storm,” she recalled. “And we would drive us around checking on all these stores.” Now, there’s some video footage. Layabout earned an English degree at the University of Chicago and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She went to law school and studied film at U.C.L.A. She stayed in Los Angeles for “many years” and returned to Chicago in 2011. Layabout is currently doing post-production work on jobs sent to her from Los Angeles.

When Layabout lived in Los Angeles she played--mandolin--in the popular Southern Gothic punk band Manhattan Murder Mystery. “Most of my video experience is in Los Angeles,” she explained. “I was the videographer for this amazing college radio station called KXOU. We did a live show on Friday nights. Somebody would do playlists from  YouTube and we had cameras on the DJs. We were live mixing the DJs to bands from YouTube. Sometimes we even color keyed and did special effects. Video is also very popular in L.A. clubs with outdoor bars. I don’t know why, but it seems like in outdoor bars they project video.” I’d guess it’s because of drive-in movies.

Layabout continued, “I’m surprised there’s not more of this being done. I’m kind of new to all this in Chicago.”

[davehoekstra]

Dreams Come True in Springfield, Missouri

Happy Birthday Lou Whitney

January 10, 2013--

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.---Lou Whitney props his feet up on the soundboard of his recording studio in downtown Springfield. The bass player-vocalist-producer has just finished his first show of 2013 with yet another version of the Skeletons, the most giving rock n’ roll band in America.

The Skeletons play regular two-hour Thursday sets which start at 7 p.m. at the Outland, a small rock club adjacent to Whitney’s studio. They start early because they have things to do. 

Long time Skeletons keyboardist Joe Terry has to get up at 4:30 a.m. to open a coffee shop he manages in the soon-to-be-gentrified North Springfield. On this first Friday  of 2013 Whitney is substitute teaching first grade at Portland Elementary in Springfield.

Skeleton  music is a glorious blend of fire bells, gumdrops and life’s eternal recess.

They play Morells and Skeletons “hits,” along with an infectious new Terry original “Wishing Well” that is part Garth Hudson and part Elvis Costello. Covers range from drummer Bobby Lloyd Hicks’ “Tennessee Waltz,” a tribute to the recently departed Patti Page, a Band-like version of Bobby Charles’ “Small Town Talk,” a reggaeized cover of the 1969 hit “Ma Bella Mie” by the Dutch group Tee Set and a wild version of George Harrison’s “Wah-Wah” led by new guitarist Mark Bilyeu, the former lead songwriter of Big Smith.

The audience numbers 16 people.

We have paid $5 each to witness this unfiltered joy. If you like the early Beatles/Dave Clark Five, She and Him and  NRBQ (another relentless band which most often gets compared to the Skeletons) you are here.

If you like to be happy, you are here.

One older fan has done work on the awnings of Whitney’s studio that were damaged in a recent storm. Another gentleman brings the band $50 certificates to a local art cinema house as a late Christmas present. These fans light up a night club that has seen better days.

The Outland’s walls consist of exposed brick and jagged crate. A deflated life size Jim Beam bottle sits on a shelf high above stage left. Somebody should really do something about that. A dead mirror ball hangs from the center of the room, all reflections covered in the dust of time.

Whitney turns 70 years old tomorrow.                                                                                                      *                                            *                                    *

Lou Whitney has led a unique American journey.

Sweet Lou cut his chops on the Carolina Beach Music scene where he backed Arthur “Sweet Soul Music” Conley and Chicago’s late Major Lance. In 1977 his band the Symptoms hit New York radio with their cover of the Swinging Medallions Beach music hit “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love).” The band heard it on WNEW-AM on the way to a gig at the Peppermint Lounge.

Major Lance

Whitney has produced and the Skeletons played on projects by the Del Lords, Robbie Fulks, Dave Alvin, Jonathan Richman, Steve Forbert, Syd Straw, late Branson hobo Boxcar Willie and most recently Exene Cervenka of X. Wilco’s “Why Would You Want To Live” from their 1996 “Being There” double album was recorded at The Studio.

One of the Skeletons biggest hits was the 1991 Bo Diddley influenced “Outta My Way,” which received airplay on Chicago’s WXRT-FM. Chicago’s most famous stripper Seka used “Outta My Way” in her routine. In 2003 Whitney and the Skeletons were Diddley’s band for his 2 and a half-hour set on his 75th birthday at FitzGerald's in Berwyn, Ill.

“Maybe someday 50 years from now these Belgian guys and Japanese music fans will come by, ‘We’re looking for where ‘The Studio’ was, where all this happened,” Whitney says of the 1,700-square foot studio he opened in 1994 in a former cosmetic store. “And they’ll be told he died a long time ago.”

Springfield (pop. 160,000) is one of the most down-to-earth places in America.

* Springfield is the birthplace of Route 66.

In April, 1926 Tulsa oilman Cyrus Avery met with members of the Missouri State Highway Commission and others at the Colonial Hotel in Springfield about a newfangled 2,448-mile highway that would connect Chicago with the dreams of Los Angeles. The idea was to link the main streets of many small towns to create an interstate highway--thus the Route 66 tagline: “Main Street of America.” This small town ethic has defined Whitney’s music.

* During the mid-1950s’s the Springfield-based Ozark Jubilee was bigger than the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn.

In line for the Ozark Jubilee, mid-1950s,

Courtesy of the Springfield Convention & Visitors Bureau

Country Music Hall of Famers Porter Wagoner and Brenda Lee got their starts on the Ozark Jubilee radio and television show broadcast live across America in the 1940s and 50s from downtown Springfield., a block east of Whitney’s studio. Chet Atkins was a studio guitarist for the Ozark Jubilee.

Springfield is no longer for squares

* Springfield is “The Cashew Chicken Capital of America,” with more than 100 restaurants that serve cashew chicken. Whitney moved to Springfield in 1970. He once explained how Pensacola, Fla. chef David Leong migrated to “The Queen City of the Ozarks” after World War II.

In the late 1960s a semi-truck plowed off of Route 66 into the kitchen of the now-defunct Grove Supper Club where Leong was working. Whitney told me this story in the summer of 2001. To demonstrate what happened, the 6’4” raconteur stood up from behind a desk in his studio and threw himself against a wall. Like Dick Butkus laying into Fran Tarkenton.

Still standing Whitney said, “David was pinned against the wall and suffered minor injuries. He ultimately got a settlement.” Leong opened his own restaurant with the settlement and became the Ray Kroc of Cashew Chicken. His unique style consisted of Chinese oyster sauce, chives and/or chopped scallions.

* Springfield is the “Buckle of the Bible Belt.”

For more than 15 years small groups of fundamentalist Christians march up and down on South Street, the major nightlife corridor in front of Whitney’s studio. They carry placards like “MUSIC STARS ARE IDOLS. GOD IS A JEALOUS GOD.” And “THIS PARTY ENDS IN HELL.” I’ve seen the Skeletons sing the haunting Ronnie Self (a Springfield native) blues anthem “Waitin’ For My Gin To Hit Me” with this religious backdrop. And Brad Pitt was raised in a Southern Baptist household in Springfield--before heading to the University of Missouri to study journalism!

This all stirs up a mighty stew of Americana.

“Springfield seemed like a lot of places to me,” Grammy winner Dave Alvin told me in a 2002 piece on Springfield I wrote for the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Journal of Country Music. “Part of it seemed like my hometown of Downey (California). I felt at home. Then there was a vibe that felt a little like Austin and Nashville. Everybody can play a lot of different styles. They’re pretty open-minded. In many ways it’s a western city, a southern city and a midwestern city.

“It’s kind of centrally located to be nowhere.” 

    *                                    *                                    *                               

Lou Whitney, III  was bassist-vocalist for the Symptoms (think Ramones meets Billy Lee Riley) between 1975-80. They began playing six nights a week in the “Pub Mobile” bar in Rolla, nowhere along Route 66 half way between St. Louis and Springfield. The subterranean bar was part of an automobile museum on a plot of land owned by guy who dated Donna Douglas.

She was “Elly Mae Clampett” on the Beverly Hillbillies.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The Symptoms morphed into the Morells in 1980 which later became the Skeletons, where pop and rock met Beach music. Drummer Hicks has been around for most of this. He counts the three bands among the 42 he has played in.

Whitney figures the Skeletons know “thousands” of songs.

“I graduated from high school in 1962,” Whitney says with a big smile. “My first two years I was a juvenile delinquent. That’s why I’m a good with kids. I can recognize one.”

Whitney is the grandson of Louis B. Whitney, the former mayor of Phoenix, Ariz. and an unsuccessful candidate for Congress on the Democratic ticket. Lou Whitney, Jr. was a successful Phoenix attorney who had trouble with the law and ordering of Lou Whitney III.

“I went to live with relatives up in the mountains near Bristol, Tennessee after I got in trouble,” Whitney says. “I straightened out and went to college.” Whitney obtained a degree in real estate at Eastern Tennessee University. “It’s a language, actually,” he says.

While in college Whitney joined bands that played soul music at frat parties from Tennesse through the University of Mississippi. He reflects, “Sure, I liked the Beatles, but soul music had horn sections, better melodies, there were poppy chord changes but with a big gospel voice.

“So I  drag the Beach music stuff into this.”

Terry’s cresting keyboards amplify Whitney’s joyous Beach music rhythm. Hicks has a profound beat that is shaped in the ethic of bandleader Johnny Otis. Long time guitarist Symptoms-Morells-Skeletons guitarist  D. Clinton Thompson currently is not performing live with the band, but he still plays sessions at Whitney’s studio when work is available.

Whitney admits that is rare these days.

“I’ll be 70!,” he says. “Even roots rock weirdos won’t come near me. It’s a young person’s business. But if you know anything about music, you know Donnie Thompson is one of the six best guitarists in America. It’s the quality here. You got guys like Bobby Lloyd Hicks, Joe Terry and Mark Biyleu. Those are my go to guys. They are down to earth, hard working  and people you can count on. I stayed in Springfield because it would be hard to find any place where you could do better with more money. Guys in L.A. play good, of course, but the quality doesn’t get much better than this.”

The Skeletons faxing their signed contract to Alias Records

*                                           *                                    *                                

The ‘Springfield Sound’ blends Beach music with rockabilly, surf and pop.

Is it a sound where musicians play with curiosity and generosity that could only come from the birthplace of Route 66?

“I’d say there is a Springfield attitude,” Whitney says with a whisper. “We are defenders of the song. It’s hard to put yourself outside of this, but if I put myself outside, I realize it is organic. It is musical. When we cut tracks everybody is playing. We do our share of overdubs, but it is live. Some people call it ‘unpolished,’ I would say it is a little more quaint. The people I associate with don’t go to a recording session to enhance their reputation. My guys get paid $250 a day. $250 a day! They come in and work their asses off and go beyond that, 12, 14 hours. If I have anything going on in the studio I want people to know all you have to do is work hard and you can make good music.”

Not long ago a trio of 14-year-old Springfield girls walked into The Studio asking for Whitney to record their tweener pop.

The girls call their group The Poverty All-Stars.

“My goal is to send them down the road knowing, ‘This can be done’,” Whitney explains. “I want their first recording to be the one they hold up as a benchmark for everything else they do. The punk rock bands come in and start talking about the Sex Pistols and I tell them I’m in the documentary DOA (A Rite of Passage, released in 1980). The Sex Pistols played Oral Roberts University in Tulsa and we were out there arguing (with the authorities). I can tell you about punk rock. I can tell you about the Ramones, we played with those guys.”

Whitney has been married for 22 years. He and his wife Kay Tolliver have seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Take that, Keith Richards.

It is not beneath Whitney to teach his grandkids some glossy Bruno Mars guitar chords. “And I keep playing live because it keeps your skill set up,” he says.

Whitney leans back in a chair and look around the dimly lit studio. It is nearing 11 o’ clock at night. He continues, “I am noticing some age things. I can’t jump around as much. But I still run three miles a day. I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel any different from a personality standpoint. You get down on your hands and knees to work on some painting, you get up and it’s ‘Oh fuck’. I’m not that excited about turning 70. I’m not doing anything for my birthday. Kay and I will do something. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to be here.”

Mainstream listeners may not know it, but American roots music is a happier place because of Lou Whitney. After the first time you hear the sound of his generous spirit, it becomes a benchmark of everything else that follows. Especially the warm moments that bring you joy, like bright candles on a birthday cake.

 M

 Me and Lou, January 2013

[davehoekstra]

Looking for Silver Linings

The Chicago River on a December day

December 26, 2012--

And so there were clouds.

In recent years my Christmas Eve ritual has been to see a movie by Navy Pier, followed by a long walk through the still of Chicago.

This year's fare was "Silver Linings Playbook," a film with the bright look and colorful optimism of the late-1950s. I'm seasoned enough to know life doesn't always end this way, which may be why I dropped tears.

But "Silver Linings Playbook:" sure beat the Christmas Eve where I screened the documentary "Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy." That night the Chicago north side theater consisted of me and three silver-hared female film buffs.

"Silver Linings Playbook" attracted more people than the Ron Jeremy dick-flick. There was the usual holiday gathering of strays and tourists. In the lobby I saw a couple people wrapped in old coats, framed by ragged shopping bags of random items. I don't know if they were homeless, but they were displaced like silver bows that had slid off Christmas gifts.

After the film I walked down North Michigan Avenue, which was quiet as a museum hallway. I turned past the site of my former office, now a Trump Tower glistening in an opulent glow. Every golden Christmas light counted for a moment of fun in the now-razed building.

I rambled across an empty bridge over the Chicago River. I considered boat trips that began in Lake Michigan, went through the Chicago River, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the Illinois River and the Mississippi River to New Orleans,

Connections made on sunny days.

Connections lost in dense clouds.

It takes a certain amount of grit and generosity to make those connections. I adjourned for a beer and a shot of warm tequila at the Matchbox (here's Mark Konkol's sweet postcard to Jackie and Dave). Bartender Graham's soccer pals came in. Like me, they had bad teeth. They were full of piss and vinegar, cranked up about Boxing Day (Dec. 26) matches in England. Boxing Day is where the upper class helps out the needy and bosses give gifts to their employees.......

........I'll leave that punch line to Albert Brooks, who is the funniest guy in America outside of BIll Linden.

Before I retired for my long's winter nap on Christmas Eve, I read the current Vanity Fair Q & A between Judd Apatow and Brooks (Brooks plays a neurotic older dad in Apatow's new comedy "This is 40.")

At the end of the interview Brooks talks about how he was influenced by the minimalism of comic Jack Benny.

I want to share this with you:

A.B. "I knew him a little. He was very sweet to me once. I did a bit on The Tonight Show, early on, this bit Alberto and His Elephant Bimbo. I was a European elephant trainer. I came out and was dressed up with a whip, and I was distraught because the elephant never arrived, and I said, "Look, the show must go on. The Tonight Show, all they could get me was this frog, so I will do my best." So I took a live frog and put it through all these elephant tricks. Every time he did a trick I threw peanuts at him. And the last trick, I said, 'I call this trick 'Find the nut, boy!' I gave the peanut to somebody on the stage. I walked over and gave it to Doc Severinsen. 'The elephant will find the peanut!' I took this frog. I threw this black, huge cloth over him, the one I said I used to blindfold the elephant, and this black rag started hopping all over the place till it eventually hopped over to Doc Severinsen. It actually found him. I didn't know what the hell the frog was going to do. So after the bit I sit down at the panel and Jack Benny was on. There was always that last two minutes where Johnny was asking people, "Thank you for coming--what do you have coming up?" And during the last commercial Jack Benny leaned over to Johnny Carson and said, "When we get back, ask me where I'm going to be, will you?" So they came back. Johnny said, "I want to thank Albert, Jack, where are you going to be performing?" And Jack Benny said, "Never mind about me--this is the funniest kid I've ever seen."

J.A. "Wow."

A.B. "And it was this profound thing. Like, Oh, that's how you lead your life. Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived."

[davehoekstra]

Bill Linden's Life of Good Cheer

Spoon me! Courtesy of Bill Linden

December 20, 2012---

Global warming has put a chill in the air of community. It is five days before Christmas  and we haven’t had a drop of seasonal snow in Chicago. Few strangers offer a welcoming nod. They cannot be in a dour mood from dibbing parking spots on a one-way street. But then where I work some guys don’t even look up to say hello in the halllway.

Most people have stopped sending Christmas cards---I did get one from my parents where the shaky cursive broke my heart. It takes time to get it right. The rapid growth of technology (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.) has made our space more personal, defined and solitary. But this isolation is not about me. It is about all of us.

Next month will be four years since I drove from Chicago to Washington, D.C. to follow the promise of the inauguration of President Obama. My friend Ted Frankel put me up in his whimsical Baltimore home. I still remember what he told me over dinner and I’ve used his comment a couple times since: "I'm going to do what makes me happy," said Ted, who founded the quirky gift shop Uncle Fun in Chicago. "If I'm happy, all the people around me should be happy. And if they're not, they can find other racetracks, other places to go." Bill Linden makes me happy.

He makes a difference. I became friends with Bill when I started work at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1985. Bill was an art director and graphic designer for the Sun-Times. We drank at Riccardo’s on Friday night, we  threw a few parties together and had a couple late night breakfasts where I watched him affix a half dozen spoons to his noggin’.  His record for hanging spoons off his face is 11, set at Riccardo’s. He was in a zone.

Bill is retired now. He quit smoking. And drinking. He writes gags for the popular “Shoe” comic strip as well as "B.C." and "Wizard of Id." . He spends a lot of time on Facebook. Bill’s posts make me smile every time I read them. I am not alone. Just a couple hours before we met for lunch at the historic Exchequer Restaurant & Pub in Chicago’s Loop, Bill posted this joke: “My cousin Alan is homophobic...he’s deathly afraid of his home.”

Bill at work at the Sun-Times

William John Linden III was brought up in a happy home in Humboldt Park on the west side of Chicago. His father William John Linden  II was a body and fender man, his mother Josephine was a housewife. Bill is the eldest of three boys.

“I was a happy kid,” Bill said over an Exchequer hamburger. “I told jokes. I think I get my sense of humor from my Mom. My father was German, set by the rules. My Mom was Italian---DeMarco--which turns out is the same name of Momo Giancanna’s mistress. I remember the first joke I ever told. I was eight years old. I had just come from the bathroom and told my mother I sprung a leak. She told me not to talk like that. So it was in there. “To hear people laugh is where I got my love of entertaining people," and Bill's eyes were still wide after six decades of wonder.

Bill was a 1965 graduate of Lane Tech High School ---quite appropriately adjacent to the Riverview Amusement Park on the north side of Chicago. After graduation Bill found work at an art studio in downtown Chicago next to the old Playboy building, 232 E. Ohio in Chicago. It was a great neighborhood for an artist who later would become known as “Captain Fun.”

“I stayed there for two years and got drafted,” Bill said. “I went to Dugway, Utah. I had nine months left and was sent to Vietnam. I thought I was going to die.” Bill ran a social club in Quinn Yan Vietnam. The U.S. Army knows how to pick ‘em.

Bill on the last night of Riccardo's in Chicago, Aug. 25, 1995

“I almost died there from a self inflicted bow and arrow wound,” Bill explained. “I had the bottom barracks all to myself for the service club. One night I heard a rumbling. I looked behind some boxes and there was a big white rat.” Captain Fun grabbed a bow and arrow. He leaned over and shot the arrow at the rat. The arrow ricocheted off the cement floor  and zoomed back to Bill’s face. It stuck in the wooden ceiling of the barracks. “I ducked and it hit the ceiling,” he said. “I can still see that arrow coming at me. My old man would have been so pissed with his son coming home in a body bag from a self-inflicted bow and arrow wound.” Bill was 20 years old during his nine month stint in Vietnam. He had a tough audience of a couple hundred soldiers.

“I was friendly to people,” he said. “I made sure people got what they wanted. If they needed a chess set, somehow I would find a chess set. I would show movies in an outdoor theater. We rigged up a parachute so if it was raining the guys could watch the movie without getting soaked. I showed the movie out of an ammunition locker that was baking in the sun all day long. We’d have to wait until night time because it was so hot.” He made something out of nothing.

Bill returned to the states in 1969. “I didn’t have a job,” he said. “Even though I was a VETERAN. It was a tough situation to come home to. I didn’t want to go in the first place. “People weren’t very friendly to us coming home.” *                                                 *                                                    *

One day out of the always blue skies, Bill saw a want-ad in the Chicago Sun-Times looking for an artist. “I loved the Sun-Times my whole life,” Bill said. “I applied and got it. I was there for 26 and a half years. Jim Hoge hired me. Handsome man, as you know.” Bill started Dec. 4, 1969 at the Sun-Times. He didn’t have to look it up. He keeps it close to his heart. There were between 12 and 14 people in the Sun-Times art department when Bill  started. “Graphics didn’t exist then,” he recalled. “We set linotype. The paper cost seven cents. I was actually one of the first graphic designers to make the fashion and food page look like something. Then computers came in and ruined my life. Anyone could be an artist.” Many of the vintage Sun-Times “T.V. Prevue” covers were designed by Bill. “We didn’t have any money back then,” he said. “Shades of today. I would use my friends or co-workers as models.  I loved working with people. I would come up with an idea and Downsy (his best friend, former Sun-Times artist John Downs) would draw it. I loved it. For a kid to not have a college education and walk into a newspaper job as an artist? I put all of me into it. I loved the newspaper business. When there’s a big story now and I’m not involved in it, it still hurts.” Bill loved the Sun-Times so much he stole a Sun-Times truck. But he returned it.

Bill Linden (left) and John Downs

In a phone interview Downsy said, “From a working point of view, he is very creative and probably one of the best designers around. No question about that. But his creativity goes way beyond design. It goes into writing, his humor and his sensitivity. It makes for a big, brilliant package. “And the social side of him is just as great because he has the ability to take any kind of a situation and create something unique out of it. That’s what he’s doing today as a gag man for ‘Shoe’ and a number of other cartoons. I’ve always enjoyed being someplace where people don’t know him and watch how people gravitate to him. By looking at the smiles on their faces you can tell they enjoy his presence.”

Downs began his newspaper career in 1962 at the Chicago Daily News. He was brought to the Sun-Times in 1978 after the Daily News folded.  Downs took a Sun-Times buy out in 1994. With a forgiving smile Bill recalled, “In the late ‘70s I got mad at the Sun-Times. The National Enquirer wanted a graphic designer. They flew me to Lantana, Florida (their home office). I was there for a Thursday and Friday. The job was for art director and headline writer. They’d give you a test story and you had to come up with a headline. It was a story about this woman who was blind and could see again. I wrote ‘MIRACLE, blah blah blah.’ They looked at it and said, ‘That’s very good. We’re very good at mircales here.’ They paid well, better than the Sun-Times. At five they would bring around this catering cart with free booze and hors d’ ouvers. (The late Generoso) Pope owned the Enquirer then. He would take a chicken wing and bless the table. And everybody would have this great big party. “Then Carol Burnett won the lawsuit from them (in 1983) and the parties stopped.

Bill on Rush Street, north of Riccardo's circa 1978-79

Bill was always friendly to people in the newspaper business. Again, he had a tough audience. “Journalists have always been cynical,” Bill said. ‘Even in the ‘Front Page’-Ben Hecht days. That’s part of the territory. But I really started to see it change in the late 1980s. One by one they stopped drinking. We lost sense of community.”                                                                                     *                                                        *                                         * Bill left the Sun-Times in 1996 when his wife Karen took a job as marketing research director for Paramount studios in Los Angeles. I went to their wedding on Dec. 31, 1996. We sat at the Jerry  Lewis table. That's where  Bill and Karen placed the "most insane people." There was a Judy Garland table and Bill's future mother-in-law didn't want to sit a the Guy Lombardo  table so she was moved to the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers table.

The Jerry Lewis Table, me upper left, Downsy upper right.

Bill and Karen get remarried every New Year’s Eve. They have been remarried by a rabbi, priest, minister, Elvis Presley impersonator and Dudeist Priest Boyd McDowell as a nod to the cult 1998 film “The Big Lebowski.”

Bill has two children from a previous marriage: William John Linden, IV, 39, who is a switchman for the Montana Railway in Billings and a Cubs fan at heart. Brandi Linden McKoy, 38, is stationed in Norfolk, Va. and has served more than 20 years in the United States Navy. She recently returned from a 10 month tour of Dijabouti, Africa.

One time I went to visit Bill and Karen in their ranch house in Hancock Park in old Hollywood. Bill reminded me, “You and I went to the Janis Joplin hotel (she suffered a fatal heroin overdose at the Landmark, now Highland Gardens Hotel). Forest Lawn cemetery. I met John Fogerty with you. We went to the original Bob’s Big Boy. We got a lot done in one day.” Bill never forgets a good time. When Bill and Karen returned from Hollywood in 1998, Bill snagged a part time job at the Wisconsin Department of Tourism. He once assisted former Sun-Times publisher Marshall Field with his hunting license. 

Karen had been friends with the third wife of three-time Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist Jeff MacNelly. MacNelly died in 2000 at the age of 52. He had been suffering from lymphoma.

“The four of us would go out on dates and I’d write a couple of jokes for ‘Shoe’,” Bill recalled. “I got paid $25 per joke back then. I have the first collaboration (July 29, 1985) , pen and ink. They don’t draw anymore. They use computers. Then they got divorced and that made all of her friends verboten. I’d still go upstairs of Riccardos’s with Jeff for reubens. He loved my sense of humor. He was a great artist. He looked like Phil Donahue, which we teased him about all the time.”

The first Linden-MacNelly collaboration

One time MacNelly made a cartoon inspired by a moment when he and Bill tried to steal a trophy fish off the wall of Shaw’s Crab House on the near north side of Chicago. Bill recalled, “It was nailed down and we we were soooooo offended that ‘nobody trusts nobody anymore’, we stole a bar stool instead.”

Here is how MacNelly remembered that night (Bill lower left):

After MacNelly died, Bill was brought back on board in the “Shoe” camp as a writer. Bill sends the “Shoe” group 85 gags a week. He calls it a “shut out” if he scores seven strips in a week.

“I write like a mini-screen play,” he said. “Scene: the office. Panel one, Shoe is happy. I only write one or two panels. If it is a Sunday, they pad it out. I have a million joke books. I’ll look at a joke and go, ‘Why is this funny? What is the point of the joke?’ Then I’ll rewrite it. I have million of jokes. Like the ‘homophobic’ joke. When you see a word, then you say where can I go with this? You take the scary word which makes it seems like you’re treading. And then you make it something innocent. Humor is always a twist at the end, or the ‘bump’ as we call it in the gag writing business. You do your 90 degree angle on the set up. The ‘homophobic’ joke has nothing to do with homosexuals whatever.  A big part of comedy writing is how you have to surprise them.

“Timing is the most important thing in telling a good joke. Always the shorter the better. Sometimes I see people telling a  joke and people’s eyes are glazed over. Get in and get out. I listened to George Carlin albums. Woody Allen. I was lucky enought to see Woody Allen do his stand up at Mister Kelly’s (now the site of Gibson’s steak house in Chicago) in 1967. I asked a question from the audience and he answered it. He wasn’t stand up too long and he went right into the movies.”

Bill stands up for his 881 friends on Facebook. He puts the yuck in Zuckerberg. Bill makes a minimal six Facebook posts a day, generally starting with a “Shoe” cartoon that he wrote, a couple of good jokes and a wacky news story. “I’m on Facebook to amuse, entertain, inform, appall and delight,” he said. “I only try to make fun of a bad situation and turn it around to a lighter thing. Facebook is my water cooler.”

Bill designed the invite for my birthday party at Jimmy Wong's in the Loop. Like Riccardo's, Jimmy Wong's  now belongs to the ages.

Earlier this month, 166 friends attended Bill’s virtual “Four Years on Facebook Anniversary Party.” There were long punch lines. His annual “Bean-A-Palooza” in Millennium Park was born from the virtual party. “I wanted to physically meet my friends,” he explained. “We’re going to have the fourth one this summer (June 8, 2013). I get more people every year. People meet each other. It’s become a great thing.”

Bean-A-Palooza is always on the Saturday afternoon of the Chicago Blues Festival. The bluesy timing is the sweetest of contradictions  for a man who makes everyone smile.

[davehoekstra]

San Francisco's Two Heartbeats

The Brown twins (San Francisco Chronicle photo)

Oct. 21, 2012--

Every big city has people like the Brown twins.

Marian and Vivian Brown, 85 and 85, are San Francisco icons. The twins wear matching outfits and share the same hair style. They often would greet pedestrians with hand shakes, which locals believed led to good luck. For the past 15 years the sisters have sat at the same window seat at Uncle Vito's pizzeria in Nob Hill.

Their smiles brighten the foggiest day on "Baghdad by the Bay," as late San Francisco columnist Herb Caen called his city.

Familiar characters like the twins give every city a small town touch.

So when humble, celebrated folks encounter hard times, people respond with small town style.

I learned of the Brown twins plight during a mid-August visit to San Francisco. I read a column in the San Francisco Chronicle by former mayor Willie Brown (no relation) explaining that the women were slowing down and facing a move into an assisted living facility. Brown reported the women did not have funds to relocate in the city.

He was afraid San Francisco would lose their unique touch.

The Brown twins are the sparkling gate to golden years.

Soon after my visit Vivian Brown fell in the apartment she shared with Marian. She was sent to a hospital and is now in assisted living in San Francisco.

She has Alzheimer's disease.

The city has rallied in support of the sisters. People have showed up on a daily basis at Uncle Vito's to donate money for meals and cab fare so Marian could visit her sister. Uncle Vito's owner David Dubiner has given Marian all the money along with matching funds.

"They had been in every night for almost a year and half," Dubiner said in a phone conversation last week. "They order the same thing, the small 'Mountain' pizza (salami, pepperoni, sausage, bell peppers, onions and mushrooms.) They both do not love all those toppings (laughs), but they agree to get that. A pot of hot water with lemon and two glasses of house red wine. Before that they came every Monday night. They had a circuit, one night to Fog City Diner (which has a Marian & Vivian booth), one night to Scala's Bistro (at Union Square), two nights at the Cheesecake Factory, two nights at the Hyde Street Bistro."

"I'm protective of them because they're our little ladies. They're frail. I had to do something. Marian will never have to pay for another meal anyway. She comes to my place because she lives around the corner and love it but I don't want her to feel like the only place anybody will buy her lunch is at my place. She doesn't want to leave her apartment. It's rent controlled and it's amazing.

"But I don't know how long she can afford to stay there."

The Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco hosted an Aug. 30 benefit for the sisters.

Jazz vocalist Kim Nalley headlined and lounge acts like Pearl E. Gates and the Rebobs  performed along with Pink Flamingo and the Mai Tais. Proceeds went to Jewish Family and Children Services (JFCS), which is monitoring donations.

"The twins are doing well,": said Barbara Farber, JFCS Director of Development in a Friday evening interview. "We provide transportation for Marian to visit her sister. JFCS is taking care of Vivian's needs and helping Marian when she needs it. The community has been incredible in helping them out. People write and tell us how they've seen the twins over the years in the financial district. The twins are like looking at any site in the city.

"It was a feel good for people."

JFCS is one of the oldest and largest family service institutions in America, founded in 1850 by immigrant pioneers who arrived in California during the Gold Rush. They created an extended family, not unlike the family that embraces the sisters,

D. Hoekstra photo, Aug. 2012

Dubiner said, "Marian did not want to go to the benefit. Because she felt like who would want to see her without her sister. I told her I would take her as a date. I said, 'You'd be surprised. People really love you.' And they do. Now, San Francisco has a huge drag community. And just so we're clear, they don't like being twins...

..They like being THE twins....

"They don't like people dressing up like them and there's a couple guys in the Castro who dressed like them a couple of times. So when we get to the benefit there's these two ladies dressed exactly like the twins. I was expecting it would go south real quick."

One of the women was Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos.

"She was smoking hot," Dubiner reported. "Her and her friend Susan Tenby. So Marian was between these two ladies who were dressed like her. At one point Marian had to go to the bathroom and Jane said, 'Let's go,' grabbed her and walked through the crowd. It was fantastic. That's the difference between people looking for publicity and people who were there to help. Jane just wanted her to be comfortable. Marian settled into her groove like she would do with her sister. She was one of three twins.

"And Marian said she never had that much fun ever."

(L to R), Jane, Marian Susan and David in background (Courtesy of D. Dubiner)

The story of the Brown twins only touched me more deeply because I am going through the same things with my own parents, 91 and 92.

They often act like twins themselves.

I've gotten used to assisted living facilities, hospitals and sudden falls. I'm still getting used to a tear in my eye as I drive back to Chicago after a Sunday afternoon visit.

On Oct. 15 my brother sent me a news story about how dementia sufferers will top 2 billion by 2050, according to the World Health Organization (WH0).

This would be the worst medical disaster in human history.

At Friday night's 60th birthday party for Chicago area clubowner Bill FitzGerald, I shared stories of aging parents with my friend and Milwaukee musician Paul Cebar. Cebar gently smiled and said, "Chuck Berry didn't tell us about this."

Farber said, "The best thing the twins are doing for the community right now is making people more aware of the difficulties that seniors have. Some of these seniors are only living on $840 a month and that's all they have. Medical costs are high. If someone needs in-home care, assisted living or skilled nursing, it is very expensive. For all of us who are in our '50s and '60s and we have parents in that position you really have to give a hard look at what you can do to help your parents and see what services your community has to offer. We just don't have enough good services for seniors.  And the senior population is going to get much larger as Baby Boomers get older."

Dubiner, 47, added, "This is a timely topic. I started working at this restaurant in 1985 and bought it in 2001.  I've known the twins that whole time. I've seen them go from little old ladies to kind of old ladies. It is sad at times. They've shared the same space that I've shared but obviously they have seen life through much different eyes."

David Dubiner and Marian Brown (Courtesy of D. Dubiner)

Dubiner always kept an eye on the sisters and still watches over Marian's visits. He was a journalism major at San Francisco State University. "They are very identical but that started to change a bit as Vivian's health declined," Dubiner explained. "Marian being sharper than Vivian in recent years, I think that has been a constant source of aggravation between those two. But before that you had to pay real close attention to how they spoke. It was that tough to tell them apart."

The sisters reportedly moved to San Francisco 40 years ago from Kalamazoo, Mi. According to an Aug. 31 post on Michigan Live, the sisters together delivered the valedictory address to their classmates at Mattawan (Mi.) High School, Class of '45. The twins also played clarinet in the high school band,

"They like to be engaged but they also like to be distracted," Dubiner said. "Spending their lives together they didn't always have fresh things to talk about, They liked to sit by the window, look at new cars and talk about them. I think their Dad used to be a car dealer or something. They know cars. They used to wait for whichever window table became open first, then when I bought the place I started saving one table for them."

Now Dubiner, his friends and neighbors are saving so much more. So much more.

It's worth repeating twice.

Readers can assist the Brown twins by visiting Jewish Family and Children Services.

Press the donate button at the bottom of the home page. To help the Brown twins, select  "Emergency Assistance in San Francisco" under the Services option.

[davehoekstra]

San Francisco's Two Heartbeats

john prine...hello in there.. (by im4out)