LOUISVILLE, KY.—The rewards of travel are found in a warm light.
Last summer while driving back from Nashville, Tn., I stopped in Kentucky to see a minor league Louisville Bats baseball game. Around the third inning, an African woman in a bright yellow cotton kitenge (sarong) walked down my aisle. She was selling homemade cookies from a Kibo basket that she balanced on the top of her head. This was pretty great. She was effusive, smiling, and stopped for a photo with every fan.
I learned that Elizabeth Kizito was “The Cookie Lady.”
When this season’s Bats schedule was announced, my Louisville based friend John Hughes sent me a notice [...]
Photo courtesy of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum
MILWAUKEE–Phil Sklar once had a successful career in corporate finance.
He was assistant finance director for the $500 million Engineered Solutions Segment at Actuant Corporation in Menomonee Falls, Wis. One day he quit his job to become co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, which opened February 1 in Milwaukee.
I bet heads spun at that exit interview.
Sklar, 35, and museum co-founder Brad Novak, also 35, have known each other since middle school in Rockford, Ill. Another huge bobblehead collector, [...]
The late, great William Gaines.
I did a deep salty dive into the offices of Mad magazine in November 1987 for the Chicago Sun-Times. I found publisher William Maxwell Gaines to be a blunt and fun character. I also learned he paid his freelancers the minute they dropped off their copy. I’m grateful he gave me some time. Gaines died on June 3, 1992 at the age of 70. He was Mad’s publisher until the day he passed away. With last week’s news that Mad will disappear from newsstands in August, here’s my look at Gaines’ muse:NEW YORK- A set of snare drums are poised behind the editor’s [...]
Wanda at her bar working on her lotto numbers (Joe Bryl photo.)
As you get older the world moves faster.
And you look for things to hold on to.
That was the case with Wanda Kurek. She was the beloved owner-operator of Stanley’s, 43rd and Ashland on the south side of Chicago.
Stanley’s was the last tavern of the infamous Whiskey Row near the Union Stock Yards. Wanda died on Tuesday at the age of 95. She had been in declining health after suffering a fall last autumn.
During the 1920s more than 45,000 people worked on the 350-acre stockyards site. My Dad was one of them. So was blues-folk musician [...]
