Mark Ibach, a good guy.
A friend to his dog is a friend to all.
My friend Mark Ibach was all that and more. Since 1981, he rescued five basset hounds. There may even have been more that we don’t know about. Mark’s Christmas cards featured a photo of him with his hounds. He brought them to the annual Chicago White Sox Dog Day. He faithfully took them to the annual mid-September Basset Bash & Waddle parade in Dwight, IL. That’s the biggest gathering of basset hounds anywhere.
Mark was the most passionate music fan I knew. He attended nearly 1,000 concerts in his lifetime and often bought two [...]
Gumby Jesus blesses the van, 2016 Eureka Springs, Ark. (Jon Sall photo)
You cannot outrun the road.
It took a while for me to get there. Route 66, Highway 61, Mississippi River Road, Pacific Coast Highway, Lincoln Highway. Nice memories and lots of pictures. Hair blowing in the wind on the way to Key West. Now I don’t have much hair. The high beams are closer than you think.
This marks the 10th anniversary since my blue Ford Transit Van rolled out of the Kansas City Assembly plant into my merry fate. This was the same factory that produced the van for “American Pickers.” In 2014 Ford invested $1.1 billion into [...]
Duke Slater (1898-1966)
Once you learn that a good life comes from a series of small gains you will move on to bigger things. This is the ethos of football legend Duke Slater. Frederick “Duke” Slater was the first Black lineman in the National Football League. He played for the Chicago Cardinals between 1926 and 1931 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.
After his football career, Slater became an attorney on the South Side of Chicago and was the first Black judge to serve on the Cook County Superior Court. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1928 and practiced law while [...]
In these times it is important to know the strength of one voice: a clarion of dignity, grace, and conviction. When delivered on note it becomes a sound that can move others forward.
That was the sound of Chicago musician Gene Barge.
Barge died Sunday of natural causes at his home in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. He was 98 years old.
He achieved national fame in 1961 with the Gary U.S. Bonds hit “Quarter to Three,” on which he produced and played saxophone. Bonds sang how “I danced ‘til a quarter to three, with the help last night of Daddy G.” That was Barge’s nickname.
Barge was arranger, producer, and sax player [...]
