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Two Brothers at Wrigley Field

2010-02-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

The save is a big part of being a brother.
I didn’t understand this on August 21, 1975. My brother Doug and I were in the left field bleachers at Wrigley Field. Doug was 13 years old. I had just turned 20.
The Cubs were playing the Dodgers and we were keeping score---just as we sometimes did into our adult lives. Andy Messersmith was the starting pitcher for Los Angeles and Rick “Big Daddy” Reuschel (one of my all time favorite Cubs) took the mound for Chicago. It was a meaningless game.
The Cubs were in 5th place with a 58-68 record. Only 8,377 fans were in attendance.

I’m looking at my scorecard now. Rick Monday went 2 for 4 and hit a home run for the Cubs. The evil Steve Garvey batted clean-up for Los Angeles and got two hits. A Schlitz beer was 65 cents. Cigars were advertised at 15 cents, 20 cents and 30 cents. Sweet cigar smoke is one of my best memories of hanging out in the bleachers as a teenager. As are the old dudes with the dogeared girlie magazines.

The Cubs beat the Dodgers 7-0.
Rick Reuschel pitched 6 1/3 innings and was relieved by his brother Paul. They were humble farm boys from Central Illinois. (With current Cubs pitcher Randy Wells choosing new glasses, I suggest a tribute to Paul Reuschel, who by the way is flip-flopped with his bro’ on this baseball card.)

Not a whole lot was mentioned about it at the time, but this game has gained historical importance as the only occasion in baseball history a brother has saved a game for his brother. After all manager Jim Marshall could have brought in Oscar Zamora. Legendary Chicago sportswriter George Vass chronicled it as one of the 50 games he will never forget for Baseball Digest.
Now that Doug and I have weathered the stiff winds of adulthood, I reallize this wasn’t a meaningless game.
It was a metaphor for what we would become and how our relationship would evolve. The save. We were at this game. We will always be at this game. This is what I think about as I think about his Feb. 28 birthday.

A Region of Place

2010-02-07T15:22:00.001-08:00

WHITING, Ind.---Surely there is no place like this place.
While the name of the Purple Steer restaurant suggests a 1968 acid trip from Haight-Ashbury, the 24-hour diner is in fact at the working class corner of Indianapolis Boulevard and Calumet Avenue in Whiting. On the west corner the Purple Steer faces the Robertsdale Inn, a ramshackle tropical drink roadhouse. The north side looks out over Oasis Discount Liquors.
This is Caribbean escapism for the Calumet Region, one of the grittiest sections of America.
On the clearest of days the skies can be gray.
The countryside is dotted with "Tank Farms," a series of mundane white septic tanks that stretch out for acres. Vapors spin out of the B.P. refinery smokestacks like candles on a foresaken birthday cake.
Last year photographer Gary Cialdella delivered a fine coffee table book “The Calumet Region: An American Place {$39,95, University of Illinois Press, Brauer Museum of Art, Valpariso University, www.press.uillinois.com] that features 118 pages of landscapes and scenes from the region. Cialdella, a 63-year-old native of Blue Island, focused on the heavy industry along the Lake Michigan shoreline from the old South Works in South Chicago to Gary.
You can feel the sweat drip off his muscular photos. Cialdella adroitly balances the use and misuse of land. He began making the black and white photographs in 1986. The Purple Steer --where nothing is purple--should hang Cialdella’s art on its walls.

Downtown Gary, Ind. Photos courtesy of Gary Cialdella

Cialdella is fascinated with sense of place.
“I’m interested in social landscape as a setting, a place,” Cialdella said last week over breakfast at the Steer. “I like to draw attention to where people live and work. The symbolism that is all around them: advertising, industrial setting, homes. As a photographer, a personal investment is what needs to be. There’s always something unique about an environment. I try to find that uniqueness.”
As I saw the Caribbean landscape around the dreary intersection I thought of the rural writer Wendell Berry, who in “Poetry and Place” wrote, “ To preserve our places and be at home with them, it is necessary to fill them with imagination.”

Cialdella has lived in the Calumet Region his entire life, only stretching as far away as Chicago and his current residence of Kalamazoo, Mich. He has made pictures in New Orleans and has spent the last four years photographing the immigrant Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago. No matter how hard life gets, some people never leave their place, whether it be New Orleans, Haiti or the Calumet Region.
Connection to place is entrenched either spiritually or economically.
“Its a puzzle,” he said. “But people still buy and sell homes in this area. They’re relocating to Whiting and Hammond. Right across from the (B.P. refinery) in Whiting I saw people putting up new homes.
“For example, after Katrina I photographed in New Orleans. I was back last spring documenting people coming back to the Lower 9th Ward. There was very little going on. A couple new houses were being built and Brad Pitt’s foundation was doing a couple modern shotgun places. Adjacent to the Inner Harbor Canal I saw a white house down the road. There were no houses between it and me. No houses beyond it.”
Cialdella sat in his car and stared in the distance. He noticed the singular profile of a man.

“He was edging his lawn,” Cialdella continued. “There was no house next to him. No house behind him. No house across the street from him. I made a photograph from the distance to see this landscape around him. I was so moved by that. It practically brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t believe the attention someone had put into this place that had been devastated. And they were back.”
Cialdella introduced himself to the man. “And he was thanking me for taking interest,” he said. “He was probably 70 years old. I wished a lot of good luck. There’s something rooted in human beings. People who live in these older neighborhoods and stay there have a stronger sense of that. Maybe its an older immigrant thing. But I know that in the Hammond area, Whiting and Chicago, Mexican-Americans are now the main population. And they’re taking root. And they’re reviving some of these neighborhoods.”

Cialdella is a passionate documentarian and knew the work of late Chicagoan Archie Lieberman who chronicled rural life near Galena in his 1974 opus “Farm Boy.” Lieberman always pointed out that he “made” pictures. “Its an important distinction,” Cialdella said. “Making suggests a process. ‘Taking’ suggests theft. There’s some of that in all photography of course, but when you’re making a picture you bring yourself to it.
Gary Cialdella sees that place with his heart.

Chicken Buses of Guatemala

2010-01-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

The Chicken Buses of Guatemala are tripped out-pimped up-lowdown moving pieces of folk art.
I love them.
The buses are retired coach and school buses. Most of the ones I rode out of Antigua were built by the Blue Bird Corporation in Fort Valley, Ga. The Blue Bird emblem was still entrenched like a sheriff's badge near the front door of the Chicken Buses I rode. The school bus company started in 1927 as the Blue Bird Body Company in Richmond, Ind. under Christian principles. An original sign from company founders reading “God is our Refuge & Strength” still hangs the corporate headquarters in Georgia.

Perhaps the Chicken Buses are blessed.
Each all-steel bus is custom designed and painted in bright red, yellow and evergreen. Gobs of shiny chrome are attached to the front. Most of the buses have names like interpid explorer’s ships. Our first bus was “The Cubanita” (the little Cuban girl or woman). “The Princescita” rolls back and forth between La Barrona and Guatemala City. I saw the beautiful “Orellana.”
Many of the buses play loud mixes of cumbia and ranchera music, a perfect soundtrack for hair pin turns down the mountains of Antigua. Flavored with a bold and somewhat touristy New Orleans landscape, Antigua is nestled between three volcanos.

During passenger stops rural vendors come on board the Chicken Bus to sell fruit, juice in a plastic bag, plantain chips (my favorite) and water. I heard fried chicken is also sold on the bus, but I did not see it. One vendor carried a stack of newspapers on her head. There's an idea for the Chicago newspaper community.

A few men boarded the buses with machetes and leather whips. At one stop the bus driver requested that the cowboy deposit his machete at the front of the bus. I squirmed a lot. I am 6'2" and most of the Guatemalans are around five-feet tall. And most of the buses were built for kids. I did not bring an iPod and hardly had space to read a book or a magazine. I gazed out the window at the blue countryside, a pastiche of modest farms and roadside huts.

“We are in at least 60 countries,” said Ron Smith, Blue Bird Director of Marketing. “We sell them through dealers to school districts. The school districts use them between 10 and 15 years. The buses are really well made to meet federal safety standards in North America. They have a lot of life left in them. So a dealer or school district sells them to a broker who takes them to Third World countries. We see a lot of them in Latin America.” Smith said 225,000 miles is a good lifetime run for a Blue Bird bus in North America.

Smith studied the Chicken Bus photos I took. He even put one on his screen saver. He estimated the buses were built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “I can tell from the chasiss that it was prior to our models of the last 10 years or so,” he said. “They’ve been out there a while. But they’re built to transport students. Its a cage within a cage. It is beautiful to see how the owners and drivers take wonderful care of them.”

Locals say the vehicles are called Chicken Buses because people are crammed into them like chickens in a coop. Others claim they are Chicken Buses because riders transport live animals on the buses.

The website Antiguadailyphoto.com suggests that “Chicken bus is the derogatory term used in many guides to refer to the rural public transportation buses in Guatemala and in many parts of Latin America.” I do not use Chicken Bus in negative tones.
As the only “gringos” on the crowded buses, I found Guatemalan riders to be courteous, warm and engaging. Local women let their babies ride in the welcoming laps of my girl friend and her sister. I must have spent a dozen hours on Chicken Buses in Guatemala and not once did someone blow snot in my face. I can’t say that about my rides on the CTA.

A palm tree in Guatemala

2010-01-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

A bunch of palm trees are not as interesting as one palm tree.
A singular palm tree became my respite during a New Year’s Eve vacation to Guatemala. I was with Adriana and her sister. I have never traveled with two women--at least in the physical sense. They are younger than me. At times it seemed I was in a reality show.

I was in La Barrona, (pop. 900), where no one spoke conversational English. I recalled a few phrases from high school before I flunked out of Spanish II.
On our first day at La Baronna (sandbar), Adriana and I came upon a large sandbar with the slope of a crescent moon. Adriana was in La Barrona a few years ago when she volunteered for a sea turtle conservation effort. She said the sandbar was new. I headed for the palm tree perched above the sandbar. The palm tree was in an estuary steps from the Pacific Ocean. Herons as thin as bamboo shoots abounded along a riverway. I saw pelicans and Great Egrets. Maybe Kingfishers, I'm not sure.

The palm tree reminded me of those minimalist Corona beer commercials. No one was within miles. I figured the one coconut in the palm tree would fall down and knock me in the head. I had no iPod or cell phone. Just a book of Raymond Carver short stories, a notebook and some back issues of “Baseball America.”

I love the timeless possibility of an ocean horizon more than the momentary adventure of the crashing sea. A few times during our week in La Barrona I made my way to the palm tree I called my own. There were no other footprints in the sand besides mine from previous visits. Some visitors to my secret spot saw sea debris lodged in the sandbar. I only saw the ocean and virgin sunsets.

The world spins on dreams. I thought a lot about this under the palm tree. Adriana has a fast-talking upbeat friend name Douglas who took an eight hour Chicken Bus ride to reconnect with her. He is a fisherman who wants to spend three years working in Houston, Tx. to better his family.
Just about every night I was at the beach I spotted a man walking the beach looking for turtle eggs. He was always a different man, but similar in that he was always alone. Every man I saw carried a machete by his side. The foreword silhouettes of these wandering Guatemalan men under a full moon will be etched in my mind. Three-quarters of Guatemala--the most populous country in Central America---lives under the poverty level. But these men have the freedom of the ocean.

We took the Chicken Bus to La Baronna from Antigua. The buses are so named because people cram into them like chickens. They are reclaimed coach and school buses from the United States. During one connection on the way to La Barrona, I used the bathroom at a gutted out gas station.
When I came out of the loo I saw Adriana sitting on a curb between the two gas station pumps. Her backpack was at her right side. Her sunglasses sparkled in the piercing sun. She looked beautiful. She was waiting for her favorite bus, the Princess, whose spinning wheels takes you to La Barrona. She is always waiting for the next adventure, which is what I love about her. I thought about that, too, under my palm tree, alone and looking at the fortuity of the ocean.

Too Much Monkey Business

2009-12-23T16:22:00.000-08:00

During the holiday season it is better to swing from the vines than sit in a tree.

This is why I was amped up over a monkey serving tray I found last week in an antique store in Lincoln, Ill. during a detour on a road trip to St. Louis.
I thought of two things: how the green and brown motif would make a great accessory for my home tiki bar (see PHOTO gallery).
I also thought of my friend Bob and a New Year’s Day we spent at Sunset Junque on the Blue Star Highway near South Haven, Mich. That’s when I scored a four-foot long bamboo monkey with a baby monkey in tow. Bob and his companion Cleo loved it.
I may have loved the monkey serving tray even more.
Then my girl friend Adriana saw it.
You would have thought I brought home a live monkey with a tray of pineapple cheese dip. She told me the monkey looked like it was on crack.
That’s not in the holiday spirit.

So the monkey serving tray spent less than a week in my house, even though Adriana and I don’t live together. I knew Bob would appreciate it. His eye for weird collectibles is as crooked as mine.
When I was married in the mid-1980s I collected wooden frogs with instruments that I found in antique stores during fall foilage trips to Galena. I assembled a band of five erect frogs, playing the drums, fife stand-up bass, etc. My wife hated them. I was vindicated when a major newspaper conducted a survey of the world’s worst antiques. My marching frogs finished in the top three.
The monkey serving tray has that potential.

I’m just fascinated by thinking about whomever thinks up these things. Really, who would buy them except for me? Bob smiled a lot when he opened his present, but he seemed bewildered as to what to do with it. Since the monkey serving tray was only in my possesion for a short amount of time, I never noticed the holes in the back that suggested it was a piece of fine art meant to be hung on a wall.
But I told Bob I want to see my monkey serving tray in play at his next party: filled with bananas.

Happy and healthy holidays to all, no matter your point of view.

Men With Balls

2009-11-27T17:17:00.001-08:00

I picked up this picture on Thanksgiving Eve at the Carriagetown Antique Center near downtown Flint, Mich.
I don't have any family in Flint, although I have come to appreciate the gritty city as an Orphan of Americana.

I have looked at this picture every night. I paid $10 and it already is worth $100 of deep thought.
Who are these guys?
I can tell they are from the Flint Athletic Club 1939-40. The small print on the Flint-Stone explains they were in the Buick "78" League. They're clearly not 78 years old although I presume they all worked at the Buick factory in Flint.

I've had fun imagining their personalities. The guy in the middle was the funmeister/prankster. The bowler on his left was the serious member of the team. I bet he was always first to show up at bowling night. The guy sitting on the far right was the chick magnet, and the gentleman with glasses always kept score. The bowler on the top left was the scary iconoclast. I know that because he is wearing a tie that is different than his mates.

These guys are so striking because their jobs could be mundane. I don't think they were executives. Those guys are on the golf course. The bowling league was a conduit for self expression these men couldn't attain in the workplace.

The automobile industry in Flint was co-founded at the turn of the 20th Century by J. Dallas Dort of the Durant-Dort Carriage Company near the Carriagetown Antique Center (get it?). Dort believed a city's development was tied into the health and welfare of its workers. In 1915 Charles Mott, a GM Vice President, picked up the ball by creating an industrial committeee with Walter Chrysler as its chairman.
The commitee called itself the Industrial Fellowship League (IFL). Recreational and educational activities were offered to Flint workers through the IFL.
Bowling abounded.

I've told my journalistic colleagues that one way to bring back newspapers is to run bowling scores in the sports section. Bowling is all about foresight and neighborhood.

I'm serious. These guys were.

What's so funny about Chia, Love & Understanding?

2009-11-20T15:11:00.000-08:00

Making Ukranian Village brighter.

Now that the sun has emerged in Chicago my Obama Chia Pet is finally sprouting some hair.
I first saw the Obama Chia several months ago at a downtown CVS. I figured I'd get it at some later date but then there was a big hullabaloo about the meaningless planters being politically incorrect. They were pulled off the shelves along with a George Washington Chia Pet, an innocent bystander.

I was hellbent on getting an Obama Chia Pet.
I perused the Internet but it was more fun to try and find one in person. The clerks at north side drug stores were pretty testy. One woman even suggested it was "illegal" to sell the Obama Chia Pet. This is when I began thinking it would be easier to buy a handgun in Chicago than an Obama Chia Pet. I didn't get this static when I bought my Hillary Clinton Nutcracker.

South side people were more accomodating.
The Hyde Park Walgreens where the President used to buy NicoDerm went out of their way to help me. A store manager even told me that Obama's daughters loved the Chia Pet that depicts their father. The President reportedly didn't mind either. He was the first Chia based on a living person. Now that the Beatles are licensing everything, I propose Beatles Chias. Strawberry Chias forever!

After checking extra stock in the basement a Walgreen's clerk apologized for not having any more Obamas. Or George Washingtons. I wanted one of those, too. Then a nice woman in line--she was African-American--told me about a CVS down the street that had a few Obama Chia Pets.
This was the fifth CVS store I visited in Chicago.

A friendly clerk there sold me two Obama Chia Pets, I presume before they were cloistered in Chia Pet Jail. I kept one and gave the other to my girl friend. She is a Chicago Public School teacher. The Obama Chia Pet is now a garden project for her elementary school class. They love it.

Things are bleak in Chicago these days. We're losing conventions, we flamed out on our Olympic bid and now Chicago Olympic booster Oprah is leaving town.
We need to lighten up.

My Father's Parable

2009-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

There's a symposium on meat in Chicago this weekend.
I won't be able to attend--my rascal nephew Jude is in town for his 7th birthday,
But I will be there in spirit.
My father worked for Swift & Co. at the Union Stockyards on Chicago's South Side. He began as a messenger boy in 1937 and moved up to purchasing agent at the Swift offices in the Loop before retiring in 1981.

The symposium at Kendall College covers all kinds of stuff. There's panelists on cattle production from the cow-calf producer to the feedlot operator and beef processing and marketing as practiced in the past.
The sponsoring Greater Midwest Foodways [www.greatermidwestfoodways.com] should have a segment devoted to journalist Upton Sinclair's landmark novel "The Jungle."
Published in 1906, the book revealed the corruption and filth of the American meatpacking industry. Sinclair lived in a hotel near the Chicago Stockyards as he gathered material for his work. “We had very strict government inspections,” my Dad told me. “There was a government office at every plant. If they saw contamination, they pulled the switch. At the height of World War II they ran round the clock. About 50,000 people worked there.”

All that remains today of the Stockyards is the old stone gate at 42nd and Exchange. The gate is a national historic landmark. I have taken my father back to the now-desolate gate. The limestone head at the highest point of the 30-foot-high arch is of “Sherman,” the first national Grand Champion steer at the Stockyards.

Legend has it that Gutavus Swift, founder of Swift & Co. rode around the stockyards on a low-slung pony. His feet dangled to the ground. This way he could kick open the pen gates, which meant he didn't have to hire an extra worker to open the gates. In 1965 the Chicago Historical Society Guild commemorated the 100th birthday of the stockyards. At a spring luncheon Bill Ogilvie told the Chicago Sun-Times, "My father told the story that when J. Ogden Armour, son of the founder of Armour & Co. was asked what is hobby was, Mr. Armour replied, 'Making money.' When pressed for his second choice of a hobby, the answer was the same, as it was to the third."

My favorite story/life lesson from my father is his recollection of the foreboding goat on the livestock ramps that led sheep to slaughter. This strategy avoided deploying men with whips and other potentially gruesome tactics. Union leaders nicknamed the goat “Judas.”
My dad’s advice: “Don’t be like the sheep."

Here's a rare photo of the Hammond (Ind.) Stockyards Baseball Team (circa 1890-1900). The Hammond Stockyards burned down in 1901. [Courtesy of the Hammond Public Library.]

Lucinda Williams Just Left Chicago

2009-10-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

We both like cars (Photo by Danny Clinch)

Lucinda Williams just left Chicago.
Hey, that sounds like a Z.Z. Top song.
Earlier this week I took in the first two nights of Willliams’ scorching three-night residency at the Park West nightclub---a former strip joint--in Chicago. The shows stacked up as a 30th anniversary chronological review of the singer-songwriter’s recording career. Williams’ first record consisted of raw blues covers and Hank Williams (no relation) “Jambalya (On the Bayou)” made in 1978 for Smithsonian Folkways, the seminal home of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and others. On Tuesday’s opening night at the Park West she told the sparse crowd she was paid $250 to record her “Ramblin’” debut.

Williams, 56, is my favorite female singer-songwriter.
She sings about road trips, Memphis, bad relationships, folk art (I loved her rousing gospel-tinged “Get Right With God” on Wednesday), juke joints, depressing Sundays, more bad relationships, Fats Domino and Z.Z. Top.
What’s not to like about that?

I leaned over to my friend Janet Ray Stoddard at Tuesday’s gig and said, “If I were a woman I’d be Lucinda Williams.”
Janet Ray put down her drink, looked me in the eye and said, “I never thought of that.”
I even sound like Williams: a dry drawl covered with maple syrup. It is why you don't hear me much on radio.

Back when Williams lived in Nashville I’d stroll into Robert’s Western Wear on Lower Broadway once every year. It’s a great honky tonk with a funky grill and rows of cowboy boots for sale along the wall. Two years in a row I saw Williams at the far end of the bar arguing with some guy. And it wasn’t Steve Earle. Somehow I could relate.
Williams has now been married twice. Someday I might get married a second time.

This is my 20th annivesary of my first conversation with Williams.
I became a hard core fan with the 1989 release of her third album, “Lucinda Williams,” which she made for the defunct Rough Trade label. Her style was already blossoming to include the pure pop chords of “I Just Wanted to See You So Bad” to a mystical groove in which she doused Howlin’ Wolf’s “I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline).” In 1989 Williams told me it was hard to distance herself from her dogmatic roots in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Her father Miller Williams is a poet-writer who headed the University of Arkansas Press from 1980 through 1997. He read his poem “Of History and Hope” at Bill Clinton’s second inauguration. Her mother was a music major at Louisiana State University. Williams’ parents divorced in the mid-1960s. Both grandfathers were Methodist ministers.
“There’s a real deep-rooted sense of that spirit in my music, but at the same time my father’s agnostic,” she said. “So I grew up in an agnostic household. My father’s father was a conscientous objector in World War I. He was a Christian in the true sense of the word---liberal, socalist, Democrat. (My grandparents) wore black armbands during the 1969 moratorium. That’s the line I come from. And that’s all in the music.”

Like my favorite male singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Neil Young, Williams is free of musical rules. Like Dylan, she learned to write songs without bridges. Williams has only recorded nine studio albums in 30 years, but all corners of my record collection reflect her diverse musical taste by guesting on these tracks: “Cowboys to Girls,” a cover of the Intruders soul hit with the late Chris Gaffney; a cover of Don Gibson’s “Oh Lonesome Me” with M. Ward,” a tasty version of “Honey Chile” for “Goin’ Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino” and “Love Hurts” on the “Welcome to Little Milton” hard blues tribute. There’s many others.
Other songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Ani DiFranco do more with wordplay than Williams, but no one captures atmosphere and landscape as well as Williams does. In Bill Buford’s extensive June, 2000 New Yorker piece he called Williams “Raymond Carver with guitar (because of her stark narratives).” That article featured a photo of Williams in her Nashville kitchen. I was astonished out to see she had much of the same kitchen kitsch I have including a Mexican beer tray I bought from my friend Angelo Varias when he ran his Casa Loca store in Chicago.
Now I’m ramblin’ too.

Sputnik Monroe's Memphis

2009-08-31T10:44:00.001-07:00

The recent death of Jim Dickinson got me to thinking about the late Sputnik Monroe. This is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago that kicked around Sports Illustrated for a bit before getting kicked back to me.
Jim and Sputnik are kindred spirits spinning around the earth.

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA

Sputnik Monroe was a satellite of a man who saw a planet big enough for all walks of life. The rock n' roll wrestler was born in 1928 as Roscoe Brumbaugh on the plains of Dodge City, Ks. He came of age in the restless humidity of Memphis, Tn. He died in November, 2006 in the cradle of promise called Florida. He never backed off from the heat.
Monroe was one of the underchampioned figures of the civil rights movement. During the late 1950s he played to the segragated black balcony of Ellis Auditorium, about 10 blocks from the then all-black Beale Street entertainment district in downtown Memphis.

Monroe was nicknamed after Sputnik, the first artifical satellite that was launched on Oct. 4, 1957. He was an ambassador of soul, a liberating, pompadured potion in motion. He wrestled with a flamboyant white streak shooting like a lightning bolt down the middle of his jet black hair. The Valley of Elvis Presley could relate. Monroe was takin’ care of business.
Long-time Memphian Jim Dickinson played piano on Bob Dylan's Grammy-winning "Time Out of Mind" album and in 1971 brought the Rolling Stones to Muscle Shoals, Ala. to record "Sticky Fingers." Dickinson is a wrestling fan. A black and white picture of Monroe's successor Jerry "The King" Lawler hangs in Dickinson's trailer on his North Mississippi compound.
"Sputnik Monroe integrated the Memphis audience," Dickinson said while sitting among his collection of Larry Brown books in his trailer. "Absoultely. He'd go on stage, radio shows, television shows, anywhere he could find an audience he would work it. And what is Memphis about? Music, race and Elvis. And Sputnik went for it all."

Memphis has always been about big ideas. Holiday Inn started in Memphis. So did Federal Express and the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain. But Monroe referred to other Memphians as "liver-lipped little pukes." He played the role of the heel with all his foot stompin' heart. He snarled like a Delta catfish and swayed like a Baptist choir. Monroe was generally booed by ringside whites and cheered by blacks. His friends included the late Sam Phillips, who discovered Presley and started the legendary Sun Records. Monroe became an icon for many teenage white boys growing up in Memphis as rebellion was being fused into rock n’ roll.

Monroe's gold jacket, lime green tights and wrestling boots are on display along with items from Presley, Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes at the Rock n' Soul Museum a half block south of Beale Street. There's also a menu from a late 1950s Beale Street diner that offered "Sputnik's Breakfast Special" (choice of chilled juices, two fresh ranch eggs to order, U.S. Choice minute steak, choice of hash brown or French Fried potatoes, hot biscuits and butter and choice of beverage: $1.35.) A plaque honoring Monroe adds, "He often strutted down Beale Street, he trangressed the color line and encouraged his African-American friends to violate segregation ordinances. He became so popular at Ellis Auditorium that the balcony seating could not accomodate all his African-American fans.....Sputnik Monroe played a major part in destroying the color lines in Memphis entertainment venues." After Monroe's death The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier wrote, "He just may have been the most improbable civil rights hero the South has ever seen."

Monroe died on Nov. 3, 2006 in an Edgewater, Fla. nursing home after a long battle with lung cancer, prostate cancer and respiratory ailments. The old wrestler had run out of moves. In 2005 Monroe and his wife Joanne had moved to Flordia from Katy, Tx. She was the last of Monroe’s six wives. In the spring of 2004 Monroe gave one of the last accounts of his colorful life.

He was living in a modest ranch house in suburban Houston. His kitchen table was filled with medicine bottles, pills and MRI charts. Monroe wore a red tee shirt from a local hospital. Both his arms had tattoos he got in 1945, his first year in the U.S. Navy. He wore white shorts and black socks. He threw soft punches into ghosts that drifted in the humid air.

"Its hard to be humble when you're 235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with the body women love and men fear," Monroe said as he echoed a long ago tag line. His words rang through the quiet house. Monroe moved to Houston in 1980 to cash in on the oil boom. It didn't work out. He was a shuttle bus driver for a rental car compay at the airport. He became a security guard at a Holiday Inn. [Sam Phillips was one of the original Holiday Inn stockholders.] On his way to the Holiday Inn Monroe met Joanne while she was wrapping hot dog buns at a Stop n' Go in Houston. They married in 1994. Monroe's 46-year-old son once wrestled around Houston as Bubba the Brawler. Monroe's 48-year-old daughter Natalie is a nurse who lives in Arizona. Another son, Allen, was unknown until he appeared at Monroe’s funeral where he performed a Native American chant. In Texas, Joanne had been a sales associate at a local Wal-Mart. She had broken her ankle and was out of work. "We were both sitting here with no income," Monroe said as he took a long drag from a Marlboro Light 100. "Knox and Jerry (Sam Phillips' sons in Memphis) came to the rescue."

Monroe was breaking down barriers in sports just as Sun Records was breaking down barriers in music. For a spell he wrestled as Elvis ‘Rock’ Monroe. He carried a guitar into the ring and proceeded to get whacked around with his own guitar. Monroe cut a novelty single "Man, That's the South" for Satellite Records in Memphis. Satellite was the precursor to Stax Records. In 2003 a Los Angeles alternative rock band named itself Sputnik Monroe. The drummer wore a black Mohawk.
Jerry Phillips said, "He was as rock n' roll as any artist at Sun. His persona was one of rebelliousness and rock n’ roll is a good term for rebellion. He was every bit the showman Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis were. Sometimes he would knock the hell out of somebody when he wasn’t supposed to, just to get the crowd going.” Phillips said that Monroe hung out in the Sun Records studio with his father and the seminal Sun artists of the late 1950s that included Lewis and blues great Junior Parker.
Knox Phillips added, "Sputnik embodied the spirit of independence which is what made him such a star in Memphis.
Musically, Memphis is the home of the independent spirit. Sam (Phillips) laid that groundwork. Sputnik was the same way. He struck out on his own racially by appealing to blacks as his brothers. Sputnik would walk down the middle of Beale Street and raise up his arms. People would chant, 'Sputnik! Sputnik!' He was the craziest of the crazies in wrestling, which is saying a lot. He desegragated Ellis Auditorium. He was as unreal as the satellite was in those days."

Ellis Auditorium was the site of Elvis Presley's first sold out concert. Built in 1924, the auditorium was a primitive setting for a sports event, which only enhanced Monroe’s dramatics. The ring was in the center of the dark, cavernous building. A singular spotlight hit the stage and Monroe would explode out of the glow with the attitude and anger that was supressed in his black following. Nearly 100 seats were reserved for blacks in the distant balcony, an area lined with velvet drapes which locals called "The Crow's Nest."
Monroe recalled, " I told the auditorium manager that if he didn't make room for my black friends, I'm outta here. I didn't bullshit around. I meant what I said. The south side of the stage on the floor held 1,000 people. That became black, too." Monroe instructed ticket takers to sell tickets after the balcony sold out and white only seats were available. "I'd give the ticket man $20 and tell him to let it roll for a while," he said. "Everybody's got a price." Once the auditorium was integrated, promoters saw an increase in profits. Memphis nightclubs soon followed the lead of the Ellis Auditorium. Another time black leaders in Memphis were protesting against the segregation of an automobile exhibition. Monroe got on the phone and told the sponsors he was going to open his own auto show in all-black northern Mississippi. That night, the Memphis dealers announced a change of admission policy on the local news. One time Jerry Phillips was walking down Beale Street with Monroe. Phillips said, “A kid came up to him and said he was raised with pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Sputnik on the wall.”

In the early 1970s Monroe wrestled with Norvell Austin, a black tag team partner. After they defeated an opponent---usually white---Monroe dumped a can of black paint on the loser and screamed, “Black is beautiful!" Austin would scream back, "White is beautiful!" Then in tandem, Monroe and Austin would shout, "Black and White together is beautiful." This was long before Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney. Monroe palled around with black cooks at the historic Rendezvous restaurant in downtown Memphis. He liked to find the most gangly help and encourage them to put him in a headlock. Monroe wore fancy threads and gaudy belts from Lansky Brothers on Beale Street (where Presley also shopped). Monroe's ability to build bridges earned him a chapter in the 2004 Juan Williams book "My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience." Music writer Robert Gordon also devotes several pages to Monroe in his book "It Came From Memphis."

Monroe's grandfather was a horse trader and a bare knuckled fighter. Monroe's father Roscoe Monroe was killed in a 1928 plane crash two months before he was born. When Monroe was four his mother Ruie Avelina married his stepfather Virgil, a superintendent of the Miller & Smith bakery in Dodge City, Ks. "One time I walked to the bakery to take his dinner to him in a sack," Monroe recalled. "I got lost in a duststorm. The dust was so bad, you couldn't recognize the streets." The family moved to Wichita, Ks. where Monroe began wrestling at East High School and the family continued to operate a bakery. He said, "I helped in the bakeries and there was always at least two blacks in my stepfather's crew. Sometimes they'd help me with the big mixers. I'd have to get inside of them to scrape them down and clean them up. I didn't see any difference between them and the other help." After serving in the U.S. Navy between 1945 and 1947, Monroe saved $3,000
and bought his own bakery in Anthony, Ks. It didn't work out either.
But Monroe paid attention to the carnival circuit that rolled through town during long summers in the plains. One carnival headliner was a wrestler who took on anyone in the audience. Monroe accepted the challenge, won and joined the carnival. He started wrestling as a junior heavyweight (218 pounds). "You had five minutes to beat a guy," he recalled. "If you didn't beat him, you threw your stuff in a suitcase and went down the road." Monroe spent the early 1950s wrestling in carnivals in small towns throughout the heartland. He once purchased a cape from Mel Peters, who was a knockoff of Gorgeuous George. "It was an outstanding gold cape," Monroe said. "I wore it on the bally platform in front of an athletic show in Nebraska. They started a chant, 'Pretty Boy' 'Pretty Boy' like I was gay or something. But what became 'Pretty Boy Rocque' (a spinoff of his given name Roscoe or ‘Rock’) stuck. Its strange about my names." Its more strange that Pretty Boy's get up also included pink shoes and sequined robes.

In the fall of 1957 Monroe was driving long shifts on a road trip from Washington to a televised match in Mobile. Ala. All the highways were two lane, north and south. "When I got to Greenwood, Mississippi I spotted a little black guy hitchiking," Monore said. "I asked him if he could drive to Mobile. When we got to the arena I went through the crowd with my arm around him. He was carrying my bag. An old lady was cursing and raising hell. Security said if she didn't stop swearing they were going to have to put her out. Then she shouted that I wasn't "nothing but a Goddamn Sputnik!' I didn't know what a Sputink was. I had no idea. Two or three days prior to that is when the Russians sent Sputnik (I, the manmade satellite) up. But everybody picked up on it. The commentators started calling me 'Sputink'. And it stuck."
After stops in St. Louis and Louisville, Monroe landed in Memphis in 1957. He quickly made a name for himself. Just to get attention, he laid down on a blanket at the intersection of Union and Main in downtown Memphis. He stopped traffic and six policemen were dispatched to the scene. "I said I was capable of kicking six policemen's ass," Monroe boasted in a hoarse whisper. "They came back with 12 and took me to jail." Monroe was arrested on Beale Street for "Mopery and Attempted Gawk." Monroe whistled and said, "So I got a black lawyer. That really went over. I told them I was a Navy veteran so I thought I could go anywhere in the United States, whether the neighborhood was black or not. They threw out my case. I didn't have any more trouble after that. They accepted my excursions on Beale Street."

Monroe’s black lawyer was Russell B. Sugarmon, Jr. a civil rights attorney who went on to become a Memphis judge. In 1959 he became the first African-American since the Civil War to make a bid for a major city office in Memphis when he ran for public works commissioner. He lost. “Wrestling matches desgragated Memphis,” said Judge Sugarmon, who retired earlier this year. “There was a legitimate theater called the Front Street Theater. My wife and another lawyer’s wife bought season tickets. One night we all went to see ‘Gypsy.’ They wouldn’t let us in because we were black. We wrote the theater president and copied it to actor’s equity. We were told to ‘go slow’ and how we ‘can’t get in front of the masses.’ We told them the masses had no problem getting in the wrestling matches.
“And Sputnik got the masses involved.”

Memphis wrestling promoter Buddy Fuller put a rock n' roll spin on Monroe. Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" were all over the charts in 1957 and Monroe's pompadour created a Presley mystique. Fuller featured Monroe and his arch rival Billy Wicks on his 1959 WMC-TV television show. In 1959 Monroe and Wicks wrestled before 18,000 people at the outdoor Russwood Park in Memphis, where Lefty Gomez and Ernie Lombardi had toiled for the minor league Memphis Chicks. Retired heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano was guest referee. Monroe told friends that he and Wicks earned $500 each for the match while Marciano was paid $5,000 for his appearance.

Monroe had the wild white streak in his hair and he thought he was a sharp looking cat. Early in his career, Monroe got smacked in the head with a wooden chair during a match. An undetected splinter became infected. When the small piece of laminated wood was removed, the hair over the scar grew back in white. Over the years Monroe had his throat cut, shoulder stabbed, he was shot once in the ass and once on the leg with a pellet pistol. No one messed with his heart. At his peak, Monroe talked in a staccato rhythm that was a precursor to hip-hop. When former West Texas State football star Terry Funk made his wrestling debut, Monroe greeted him in the ring with the rap, “You little punk kid/I am going to whup your ass like Borden House pie/Cuz’ I’m a Diamond Ring and Cadillac Man/And am going to stay that way you little punk.....”
In 1958 John Dougherty was an East Memphis teenager who hung out with Jerry and Knox Phillips. Dougherty was founder and president of the Sputink Monroe Fan Club. Jerry Phillips was secretary. In 1961 Jerry Phillips, only 14, wrestled in small towns around Memphis as "De Layne Phillips: The World's Most Perfectly Formed Midget Wrestler" and Dougherty played the role of his manager. Phillips and Dougherty had white blond streaks in their hair to honor their hero. Phillips was a heel like Monroe and his rival was a real midget named Fabulous Frankie Thumb. Dougherty had met Monroe through Sam Phillips. Known around Memphis as rock n' roll disc jockey Johnny Dark, in 1980 Dougherty became program director of Phillips radio station WLVS-FM (named after Elvis).

"When Sputnik came to Memphis in 1957 they averaged about 300 people a night at the Ellis Auditorium," Doughery said. "Within two months if you didn't have a ticket in advance, you didn't get in. Of course, he was the bad guy and everyone hated him because he stuck up for black people. Me and Jerry were the only whites cheering for Sputink. He would come out and not even look at the whites. Sputink would walk around the ring, look up to the balcony and raise both arms in the air. Every single black person in the balcony would jump up and put their arms in the air. I have emceed concerts by the Beatles, the Supremes, everybody who was big in the 1960s. He was the most charismatic person I ever met."
“One time he went to the state fair and got into it with this cowboy at the rodeo. His intent was to meet Gene Barry (Bat Masterston of the cowboy televsion series). Sputink wanted to get in the barn with the Brahma Bull and the cowboy tried to stop him. They got into a fight and while Sputnink had his back turned, the cowboy hit him with a two-by-four. The next day on the front page of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal there was a picture of Sputink with some headline like 'Cowboy Levels Wrestler.' Down at the bottom there was a story about President Eisenhower's heart trouble. Sputink was the lead story." An active member of the NAACP and ACLU, Judge Sugarmon said Monroe was deeply respected in the black community. “They thought he was a guy who treated them like he treated everyone,” Sugarmon said. “He was a decent man.”

The outrageous marriage of rock n' roll and wrestling made sense to Monroe, who left Memphis in 1960 for Lake Charles, La. "Both outlaws," he grumbled. "That's what the deal was. Elvis gave us music we never had before. And Sputnik did, too. Jerry Phillips and John (Dougherty) were always at the door to meet me when I left wrestling matches." A plaque on the wall near the front door of in Monroe's home read: "Sputnik Monroe, World's Greatest Wrestler: Appreciation for your contribution to the City of Memphis, the world of wrestling and Memphis music. It's all rock n' roll to us. Memphis music friends and Wrestling Hall of Fame Celebration, Sam Phillips Recording Studios, Memphis, Tennessee--March 6, 1994." A nearby framed certificate honored Monroe's membership in "The Friendly Sons of Bitches." It read, "Never forget, there's the love of a girl for a boy and a love of a child for its mother. But the greatest love is the undying love is that of one son of a bitch for another."

During the 1960s Monroe took on sons of bitches like Tokyo Tom in a wrestling circuit known as "The Amarillo Territory." This is where Monroe he perfected his technique. "There's probably 1,000 wrestling holds and 10,000 variations," said Monroe, who is in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in Schenectady, N.Y. "That's hard for most people to understand." He leaned over and clenched his fist. It was as tight as a promoter's wallet. "They grab it and they're in a lot of trouble," he said as he looked at the fist. "Then they get a knee in the squash. You pick up moves by being put in a position you haven't been put in before. You learn a hold and you catalog that. I wasn't beat very often. I didn't pay much attention as long as I was on top. Sometimes I got robbed by shady promoters like Buddy Fuller. He died wearing diapers and he didn't know what planet he was on. That happens to all the bad guys. Eddie Graham committed suicide (in
1985 of a self-inflicted gunshot). Its unbelievable how those things happen to people who were short on the payoff."

Monroe returned to Memphis now and then. He was there for the 2000 ribbon cutting of the Rock n' Soul Museum. His final public appearance was in July, 2005 when he appeared at a legends bout at the DeSoto Civic Center in Mississippi, 10 miles south of Memphis. Monroe reprised his shtick with Billy Wicks. Dougherty escorted Monroe into the ring. He recalled, "Sputnik walked kind of slow, but he used to have this strut he would do when he got in the ring. The white people just hated it. And last July when the spotlight hit him and we walked out, I couldn't believe that 76-year-old man was strutting. The crowd went crazy." Monroe always loved the heat of the spotlight. He remembered, "I get kissed by people on Beale Street who didn't see me wrestle. They heard from their parents or grandparents what I had done and thanked me for doing it. That's pretty emotional, to have people walk up on the street and hug you and tell you 'thank you'
for something you did 40 years ago.
"Its hell to see the toughest son of a bitch in the world cry when that happens."

Monroe had a military funeral in front of 300 friends and family at Veterans National Cemetery in Pineville, La. Jerry Phillips was there. “The last few years had to be tough for him,” Phillips said. “The whole ‘falling from grace’ deal. When he was security guard, he’d get mad at some of the people he was trying to guard. He wanted to ‘strum ‘em in the head’ as he called it---like a guitar. The end of his life didn’t work out like he thought it might, but that, too is a rock n’ roll story.”

Monroe’s last professional match was in 1998 at a small community center in Texas City, southeast of Houston. Around 500 people were in attendance. Few sights are as poignant as a 70-year-old wrestler with cauliflower ears and a wilted spirit. Monroe went into the ring with four herniated discs in his lower back and two in his neck. "The money man said I was a little slow," Monroe reported in a whisper. "I said at that age, you got one year straight ahead---slow." Despite having lost half of his right lung to cancer and gangrene in his gallbladder, Monroe took another hit from a cigarette. "I'm not a quitter," said the old wrestler, who poked at shadows cast from the Texas sun.

Chicago Cubs 1978 Field Trip

2009-08-26T10:40:00.000-07:00

I've known Chicago radio and television personality Bob Sirott longer than he knows.
I'll be on the Sunday Night Radio Special, hosted by Sirott and Marianne Murciano, at 10 p.m. Aug. 30 on WGN Radio (720 AM). I'll be talking about my book "Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!)," a field guide to Midwest League baseball.
But that's not why I'm here.
Deep in the bowels of my home office I found this picture of what must have been a listener give away when Sirott was an on-air personality at the rock n' roll giant WLS-AM in Chicago.
I'm guessing this was taken in 1978 before a Cubs game at Wrigley Field.
Sirott is in the middle. I'm in the back row, third from the right in front of the Andy Frain usher. Nice haircut.
The kid far left in the front row is not Steve Bartman.

This must be 1978 because Sirott is standing between Rick "Big Daddy" Reuschel and shortstop Rudy Meoli on his left. Meoli played one year for the Cubs and that was '78.
He batted .103.
In his six year major league career that incorporated 310 games Rudolph Bartholomew Meoli had more errors (48) than extra base hits (26). Maybe that's why he was assigned to this detail to hang out with a bunch of strange Cubs fans/rock n' roll listeners. The other Cubs in this picture are relief pitcher Willie Hernandez (on Reuschel's right) and the late Larry Cox showing off an early Tom Selleck look. If I had more time I'd like to do a "Great Day in Harlem" reunion of all the characters in this photograph, similar to how jazz legends Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins and others got back together in 1958 on 126th Street in Harlem.

Just like radio, the game has changed. Most major league ballplayers no longer have time or desire for this type of connection. Minor league ballplayers do. Even at an early age they understand the songs are fleeting in late August.

Largest Rabbit at Iowa State Fair

2009-08-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Everyone says that over time dog owners begin to resemble their pets.

Maybe the same is true with rabbits---this 20 pounder won top prize at last week's Iowa State Fair.

Thanks to Nicole Bruskewitz for the photo from the trenches.

Iowa State Fair

2009-08-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

The lack of hipster quotient is one of the many things I like about state fairs.
I just got back from spending a seven hour day at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. I was wide-eyed at every turn. I saw a 1,900 pumpkin, a 20-pound rabbit and zero Lollapalooza tee shirts.
My traveling companion Adriana said I was like an 11-year old. This is a vast improvement from my typical 18-year-old persona.
I have been to the Illinois State Fair and the Ohio State Fair but there is nothing like the Iowa State Fair. The 400-acre grounds are more woody and hilly than Springfield, Ill. and Columbus, Ohio. In 1987 the Iowa State Fairgrounds were named to the National Register of Historic Places.
The Iowa State Fair takes the cake when it comes to stuff on a stick.
I was on the fairgrounds for less than 10 minutes before I purchased a pork chop on a stick. Swine flu? Bah, humbug. Trying to walk the midway while balancing the juicy slab on a thin stick was like moving a sandbag with a toothpick. I also tried horrific cajun cheese on a stick and we saw Iowans devouring hard boiled eggs on a stick.
The Iowa State Fair has nearly 50 items served on a stick, including Hot Bologona on a Stick and Deep Fried Snickers on a Stick (which we missed, but we did enjoy the Deep Fried Oreo cookies not on a stick). Next year I will save room for the Pineapple on a stick (dipped in funnel cake batter and deep fried). Despite the varitey of things on a stick, just about everything looked like a corn dog.
This got me to thinking.
What is the state fair missing?
Old Style Beer on a Stick. Jello on a Stick. I thought Chili on a Stick was funny until I did some research and discovered there is a Chili Dog on a Stick.
Bloated and tired we concluded our visit with a ride throught the Ye Old Mill. This is simply a tunnel of love ride that makes a few dramatic turns through 1,500 feet of dark canals. The only light shines on several vintage Iowa State Fair posters. It set us back $2.50 each but that is not important. What is important is that Ye Old Mill was originally built in 1911. I tried to comprehened the scores of people who have taken this trip in 98 years. State fairs stand for that type of consistency.
They are who we are, not who we seek to be.

A spot for summer

2009-08-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Everybody has a spot.

This summer my spot became Lake Park Beach in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. It is a neighborhood beach where African-Americans, Jamaicans, Hispanics, whites, gays and straights all mingle in a coarse sand along Lake Michigan.

A mound of jagged rocks define the north end of the small beach while the city skyline curves like a boomerang on the south end. I've been told the young lifeguards don't like folks climbing those rocks. I like taking risks.

I was tired and needed to retreat. My day began at 5:30 a.m. as I scurried to WGN-AM radio studios in the Tribune Tower to talk about my minor league baseball book with the wonderfully empathetic journalist Rick Kogan. Next up was the Iowa Cubs-Las Vegas '51s minor league baseball game at Wrigley Field where a bunch of young men were playing for their spots in 95 degree heat.

I wanted to cool off. I took the short drive up from Wrigley to Edgewater. I have lived in the city for nearly 30 years and have spent little time at the Lake Michigan beaches. I either get out of town, swim at a WPA-era quarry in Naperville or bike to the Humboldt Park lagoon.

But in just a few visits this summer, the Edgewater spot took on meaning. There were one or two picnics. There was a wish made.

I realized that in 1950 my parents spent their first night as husband and wife just west of this spot in the since-razed Edgewater Beach Hotel. The hotel was billed as the "Site of America's Most Successful Meetings." When my mother opened the door to her hotel room she found a surprise from my father--a bouquet of a dozen red roses. A couple Sundays ago there was as much wonder as watching children misbehave on the beach as there was today when I saw the pretty blond lifeguard wreck her deal by wearing light blue Crocs.

I went to my spot for clarity and purpose. Kogan and I were talking about the kind of underbelly writing we do. He called them "The Quiet Stories." I liked that. Sometimes I think I go to minor league baseball games alone and visit beaches by myself because I am my own Quiet Story. Sometimes that's sad.

Just as I arrived at my spot the skies darkened. People began leaving and the beach became very serene. The lake waves whispered secrets to my soul. I sat on a white rock--not part of the forbidden mound--and thought about my spot in the world. I try to inch it forward with dignity, love and understanding. All you can do is try.

There was a flash of lightning and bit more thunder. I was one of the last people on the beach. The lifeguard with the Crocs asked me to leave my spot. She was clearing the beach because of the lightning. I understood.

The storms will pass.
My spot for this summer will always remain.

Baseball & Bowling in Clinton, Iowa

2009-06-30T13:13:00.000-07:00

Jerry Ramig as seen on his press pass.

Grass roots marketing is one of the joys of making independent art, whether it is books, music or paintings. That’s how I found myself across the street from Alliant Energy Field in Clinton, Ia., which hosted last week’s 45th annual Midwest League All-Star Game. I was signing copies of my new book “Cougars and Snappers and Loons (Oh My!)--A Midwest League Field Guide.”
It was 97 degrees when the session began at 4 p.m.
I sat at a table with my publisher George Rawlinson. He wore a leather biker’s cap and assumed the role of carnival barker in trying to get sluggish fans to come to our booth. There was no cover from the sun. We were positioned between the loud Union Pacific railroad tracks and the quiet Mississippi River. Behind us, lumberjack impersonators were at work recalling the days when Clinton was the “sawmill capital of America.” The Clinton entry in the Midwest League is the LumberKings.
I met all sorts of people in Clinton (pop. 30,000).
One woman gave me a sheet of baseball limericks she had composed. Another woman was from Cuba, via Miami, Chicago and Clinton. She bought a book and left, electing not to stay for the game. Perhaps the most wonderful character I met was long time Clinton Herald sportswriter Jerry Ramig. He looked like an elder Bob Hope on the road to somewhere. He was extremely dressed up considering the heat. Ramig wore a white sport jacket and used a cane to navigate his way through the adjacent field that was the site of the pre-game “fun fest.”
Ramig was going to take in the game, and even though he has been writing for the Herald since 1953 he complained about the placement of one of his baseball stories on page four of the sports section. Sportswriters never change.
Ramig spared no words in talking about his bowling column which was ironic because I had just mentioned to my Chicago Sun-Times colleague Mark Konkol that one way to increase readership is to bring back a regular bowling column in our working class newspaper. Konkol would cover South Side bowling alleys and I would take care of the North Side. We need help with the West Side.
I later learned Ramig was inducted into the Iowa State Bowling Hall of Fame. And for 17 years he hosted a local bowling radio show called “Sparetime.” I love that title.
Ramig was playful with this young pup. He hovered around our booth feigning apathy about my 240-page tome to the backroads of baseball. He first left without buying a copy but later returned with a $20 bill and a grandfatherly smile. Ramig enjoyed being in the spotlight as did the rest of Clinton. The all-star game brought in a roughly $1.5 milllion economic impact to the crippled Clinton economy.
The game itself was rich with memories. I cut out of the book signing session to catch future major leaguers like Peoria Chiefs (Chicago Cubs affiliate) third baseman Josh Vitters (who went 0 for 3) and Chiefs first baseman Rebel Ridling (I love that name) who won the previous night’s Home Run Derby by knocking out 12 dingers. He beat out Milwaukee Brewers 2008 first-round pick Brett Lawrie, who had 5 taters. Lawrie, who plays for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers near Appleton, is the highest ever draft pick out of Canada.
But my favorite click to pick was Dee Gordon, the starting shorstop for the East All-Stars. Gordon plays for the Great Lakes Loons, the Los Angeles Dodgers affiliate in the Midwest League. Gordon went 1 for 2 in the game and stole a base. At the all-star break he led the league with 40 stolen bases in 49 attempts. He also led the league in triples with 8.
Gordon is really fast and hustles all over the place. Even in the all-star game---generally a laid-back affair-- Gordon sped out to center field on a long pop fly and darted to his left and right while playing deep in the hole. He has superb reaction considering this is his first full professional season. Last spring Gordon, 21, attended Seminole Community College in Florida where he did not play baseball. He finished the summer at short season Ogden after the Dodgers drafted him fourth in 2008.
A 5’11, 150-pound left-handed hitter, Gordon is the son of former Cubs reliever Tom “Flash” Gordon. Ironically, his father played in the 1988 Midwest League All-Star Game in Clinton. Flash played for Appleton, then a Kansas City Royals affiliate.
A flash, a strike and then you’re home. The road trip to Clinton was supposed to be about selling some books and catching a glimpse of the future. But the gentle people of Clinton turned out to provide the moments I will most remember.

Joe Cocker for Dummies

2009-06-22T11:25:00.000-07:00

How did this guy make it to 2009?
In a 1988 interview the master of the soul music cover told me he listens to nearly 500 songs before making his selections. Besides this ditty here Cocker has re-popularized Randy Newman's "You Can Leave Your Hat On," "You Are So Beautiful," (co-written by the late Billy Preston) and the Box Top's "The Letter," among others.
Cocker, now, 65, said there is no guaranteed method for knowing a song is right for him.
"Otherwise we'd all have hits," he growled back in '88. "I go by lyrics that I like and songs that have a hook that are just a bit different. I have to do things I like to sing."

Magic Fingers Guy Dies

2009-06-19T14:35:00.000-07:00

This news was just handed off to me:
John Joseph Houghtaling died June 17 at his home in Fort Pierce, Fla. He was 92. Houghtaling was the dude who invented the "Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed" mostly used in roadside motels and places like Las Vegas and Reno, Nev. Burned out travelers would deposit a quarter into a machine mounted on the bed and get 15 minutes of "tingling relaxation and ease" in return.
I bet Houghtaling is going to have some great pallbearers.
I used the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed once, in a motel room outside of Gallup, N.M. The device was effective for a sore back after a long day's drive, but it was noisy. There should be rock band named Magic Fingers.
Magic Fingers had a pop culture rebirth in 1975 when Steve Goodman name dropped the device in his ballad "This Hotel Room." Goodman sang, "They got a room service menu for food and drink/A porcelain throne and an aluminum sink/Two big pillows to rest my head/A Magic Fingers and a king-size bed/Put in a quarter/Turn out the light/Magic Fingers makes ya feel alright."
Jimmy Buffett popularized "This Hotel Room" and later Fox News' Brit Hume sang the Magic Fingers lyric to former President George W. Bush and his father in a January interview when they talked about a vibrating chair in the Oval Office.
On Friday Associated Press reported that at its peak, there were about 175 Magic Fingers franchise dealers across America and the gadgets collected betweem $6,000 and $7,000 a month in quarters.

My new book: Midwest League Field Guide

2009-06-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my latest book that mixes travel with the innocent beauty of Midwest League baseball. "Cougars and Snappers and Loons, Oh My! (A Midwest League Field Guide) is available through www.cantmisspress.com.
Enjoy.

TURN HERE - Chicago Notebook

2009-05-25T13:07:00.000-07:00