August 13th, 2026

 

         The Chicago White Sox gave out Pope hats at the game Tuesday night.

    Nearly 40,000 people packed Sox Park wearing papal hats, watching the White Sox play the team they should have beaten in the 1919 World Series, the Cincinnati Reds.

   Nancy Faust came back to play the organ. There were nuns and priests at the ballpark. There were enough Catholics wandering around 35th and Shields that you half expected somebody to start selling raffle tickets for a new parish roof.

     The best part of Pope Night came when Father Tom Hurley led 40,000 baseball fans in something that doesn’t normally happen between a pitching change and a beer commercial.

          The “Peace be with you.”

     Something us Catholics say to each other after the Our Father and before Communion.

    Most Sox fans come from neighborhoods filled with Catholic parishes and have heard those words thousands of times. Some people at the game grew up saying Shabbat Shalom.

    This happened at a place where there is usually a couple of drunks getting into a fistfight, but Tuesday night everybody was Catholic for about thirty seconds.

                   Peace be with you.

     There is another Chicago connection that makes the whole thing even better for me. Father Hurley’s brother is a good buddy of mine. That is Chicago Catholic geography for you.

    I know Father Hurley’s brother Dan. Father Hurley leads the Sign of Peace at Pope Night. Pope Leo XIV is Bobby Prevost from Dolton.

    By my calculations, that puts me about three handshakes from Saint Peter and Saint Peter is really where this story begins.

    I still get a giddy feeling whenever I think that the Pope is a guy from Chicago who grew up a White Sox fan.

    My usual reaction is a hearty laugh with tears welling in my eyes as I shout:

       “I can’t believe the Pope is from the F’ing South Side!”

  Then sixty years of Catholic guilt immediately takes over.

       “I’m sorry, Virgin Mary. I meant the South Side.”

     But seriously, think about it.

           This guy has the same job Saint Peter had.

    Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago and raised in Dolton, belonging to St. Mary of the Assumption. Bobby served Mass as an altar boy, and he went to White Sox games with his brothers.

      Long before anybody called him His Holiness Pope Leo XIV, he was Bobby Prevost.

    And every one of us who grew up Catholic in the Archdiocese of Chicago knew a guy just like Father Bob. We served Mass for a Father Bob. We went to confession with a Father Bob. A Father Bob gave us our First Communion. A Father Bob baptized our kids. A Father Bob buried our parents and Father Bob stood at the altar when we got married.

    There are Father Bobs all over Chicagoland. From Bridgeport and Beverly, Oak Lawn and Evergreen Park, Cicero and Berwyn, and from Pilsen and Old Town.

   They coached basketball. They ran parish carnivals. They drank coffee in the rectory kitchen, and they knew whose mother was sick and whose father had lost his job.

   They showed up at the hospital. They showed up at the wake. They showed up when we needed them.

     Some could deliver a homily that stayed with us for days. Others put us to sleep before they finished the Gospel.

     Father Bob Prevost was one of those Chicago priests. Then one afternoon white smoke poured out of a chimney in Rome and Father Bob from the South Side walked onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

   That is when this becomes almost impossible for a Chicago Catholic to comprehend. Because the story started two thousand years ago with another regular guy.

     Simon Peter wasn’t born a prince. He wasn’t a Roman aristocrat. He wasn’t a polished theologian.

     He was a fisherman, a struggling working man. He was stubborn, impulsive and he often let his mouth overload his rearend.

     And when shit hit the fan, he panicked and denied he even knew Jesus. In other words, Peter would have fit in just fine at a Southside parish.

  Christ picked him anyway.

           “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

    Catholics believe that moment began the chain. Peter to Linus to Cletus to Clement and on and on.

    Empires rose and fell, Rome collapsed, Columbus crossed the Atlantic and America was born.

    Chicago rose out of a swamp, burned down, rebuilt itself, reversed a river, invented the skyscraper, and gave us mustard on our hotdog.

   Eventually the keys handed to Peter ended up in the hands of an altar boy who grew up cheering for the White Sox.

     That is why this Pope feels a little different to us Chicagoans.

   To more than a billion Catholics around the world, he is the Holy Father. The Bishop of Rome. The successor to Saint Peter, but around Chicago, we get to claim him as ours.

     …And on a Tuesday night in August, 40,000 people gathered at Comiskey Park to celebrate him. Then a Chicago priest stood in the middle of a baseball stadium and said four words Catholics have been saying to one another for generations.

         Peace be with you.

       … And for that one night, it certainly was.

                Peace be with you Chalkheads.

August 12th, 2026

 
    I have been getting stuck in this groove lately of picking quotes that make me examine myself.
     This one is a complete hand job.
           “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
   Might have been? What the hell is that?
      Is that like a has-been who never actually has been?
 About a year before my dad went up to heaven, we had a long phone conversation on a cold Sunday morning. Somewhere along the way, my Oldman asked me a simple question.
          “Do you have any regrets Moose?”
     It was a fair question at the time.
   I was about a year removed from my divorce. My career was running into a dead end on a trading floor that was itself becoming a relic. Money was tight. I didn’t see my kids as much as I wanted to.
    All the crap that can pile up on a guy in his early fifties had piled up.
     …And underneath all of it was that quiet realization that the life I had at fifty did not look much like the life the twenty-year-old version of me figured I would have.
      I sat there for a second.
   I was on my couch, looking out the window at the snow falling on a Sunday morning in the Divorced Dads District, talking to my dad on the telephone.
      “Nope,” I finally told him. “No regrets, Dad. I might have taken a couple wrong turns and missed a few exits along the way, but no regrets.”
               …And I meant it.
   I have never spent much time worrying about what I might have been. Sure, I could have done some things differently. Hell, I could have done a lot of things differently.
    There were jobs I could have taken. People I could have treated better. Money I could have saved. Chances I could have taken and chances I shouldn’t have taken.
    Change any one of those decisions and the whole course of my life changes, but that is the problem with might have been.
         You only get to see the curtain you picked.
   It is like being on Let’s Make a Deal and choosing Curtain Number Two. Maybe there was a trip to Hawaii behind Number One, and you end up with an inflatable swimming pool.
    For the next forty years, you can sit around bitching about Hawaii. Except nobody ever opens Curtain Number One. Maybe Hawaii was back there, maybe it was a goat.
   You never know. All I know is what was behind the curtain I picked. There were some lousy years behind it. There were mistakes, heartbreaks, bounced checks, divorces, dead ends and more than a few mornings when I wondered what the hell I was doing.
    I do know what was behind the curtain I picked… my three kids, one or two dear friends and a shit ton of good people along the way.
    There was a trading floor, road trips, rugby pitches, baseball games, Christmas mornings, concerts, Mardi Gras, laughter, and ordinary Sunday mornings that I would give anything to have one more time.
     So, I never became what I might have been.
           Good. I became what I am and at sixty years old, I am far more interested in what I can still become than some imaginary guy I was supposed to be.
    My Oldman has been gone almost six years now, but I still think about that snowy Sunday and the question he asked me.
       Do I have regrets?
                 Sure, Dad, a few, but I wouldn't trade curtains. Not even for Hawaii.
       There is a New Moon tonight. You won’t see it and that is the point.
  The old moon disappears into the darkness before beginning another trip around the sky. Another cycle ending and another one quietly beginning.
   That is a better way to think about our own lives. We spend too much time staring backward at what might have been when there is still something ahead waiting to become.
      The moon does not regret its last trip around the Earth. It just starts another one and so can we.
                Notice shit. Do stuff.

August 11th, 2026

          My loudest voice is the inner one.

   It has been chirping my whole life, but only recently has it climbed up on the stage with me and stepped into the spotlight.

   My inner voice takes on a shit ton of roles. Sometimes it is the disciplinarian telling me to get my big ass out of bed and get it done. Sometimes it is the wise man, although I am still not entirely convinced he knows what the hell he is talking about. More and more, it has become the voice of experience. A voice that has made enough mistakes to recognize them before making them again.

    Sometimes that voice comes from heaven. I hear my parents in it. Words and lessons I ignored when they were standing in front of me have somehow become louder after they left the building.

   More often than not, though, the inner voice is my conscience. It steers me toward integrity and honesty. It reminds me that doing the right thing and doing the easy thing don't always share the same road.

           But then there is the other voice.

   When my inner voice gets pissed off and starts flirting with mischievous ideas, the battle begins. I picture that scene in Animal House when Larry “Pinto” Kroger has the little angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, each giving him advice on what he should do next. My version has been playing for sixty years. The costumes have changed and the arguments have gotten a little more sophisticated, but those two bastards are still sitting on my shoulders.

         …And I'm not sure I want either one to disappear.

   The disciplinarian has value. So does the wise man. Experience certainly does. My conscience keeps me pointed toward the man I need to be. The voices from heaven remind me where I came from and even that mischievous son of a bitch serves a purpose. He keeps me from becoming too careful, too predictable and too old before my time.

   Maybe wisdom isn't finally discovering which voice is right. Maybe wisdom is realizing that I get to decide which voice gets the microphone.

    That is the challenge going forward. Listen to all of them. Learn from all of them and argue with a couple of them. Laugh with them, but understand that when the argument is over, I choose the louder voice.

       I wrote these numbers on the bottom of today's Chalkboard:

   143 days until 2027.

   508 days until 2028.

   874 days until 2029.
   1,239 days until 2030.

    I have spent my life thinking of those years as somewhere far in the distant future. Put them into days and suddenly they don't look very far away.

     There will come a day when forward isn't forward anymore, and when that day comes, all those voices that have followed me through life…

      …the disciplinarian, the wise man, experience, conscience, heaven, and that mischievous bastard sitting on my shoulder will finally go quiet.

     What will remain is the life I lived after listening to them and the final impression will be decided by which voice I chose to make the loudest.

   Choose your louder voice you Chalkheads. Don’t listen to the mealy mouth and make sure the voice of gusto and astonishment get a word in today. The clock is running and that is the reason to live louder, not quieter.

August 10th, 2026

 

    Why would I chalk “The sun is new each day” when I am predicting a cloudy Monday with a chance of thunderstorms?

    Because the sun might be behind the clouds, but it doesn’t give a shit what happened yesterday.

    It doesn’t give a shit what happened last week or last month, and it sure as shit doesn’t care what happened anytime in the past.

   The sun came up on August 10th, 1977, when the Cubs and Sox were both having surprisingly good summers. It came up later that fall when both teams finished well out of first place.

        Guess what…

               …the sun didn’t give a flying F.

    Hey, both sides now Chalkheads.

The sun shines on some days. On other days, clouds get in the way. Either way, it is still up there.

           And Mondays?!?!

   I do not let Mondays bother me. I haven’t since waking up one Monday morning on a balcony in the French Quarter, hungover from a rocking Sunday night. Mardi Gras beads for a pillow. A Mardi Gras flag for a blanket. Honky Tonk Woman blasting out of a bar on Toulouse Street at seven in the morning.

      Now that was one helluva Monday morning.

   Life is a dramatic comedy filled with experiences that should teach us something and lift us up at the same time. Some days we get sunshine. Some days thunderstorms. Sometimes we wake up on a balcony wondering exactly how the hell we got there.

      “Out, out, brief candle!”

           Not on my watch.

 I am a player strutting my big ass across the stage, and sometimes Mondays fall in my path. Actually, they fall in my path every damn week. As long as I take care of business, every Monday can be Lundi Gras.

    The Sox and Cubs are both playing above .500 baseball right now. That is not a bad way to look at life. You do not have to go undefeated. Only the Dolphins and the Hoosiers can pull that off.

   Just play above .500 and get a few more wins than losses. When you strike out, grab the bat again. When you make an error, get ready for the next ground ball. String together enough good innings and see where you are when the season winds down.

      The sun is new each day. So are we if we choose to be.

   Let’s get it on, Chalkheads. We are rolling into the middle of August.

Get some hits. Score some runs. And make your world astonished.

August 9th, 2026

 

   I turned eight in the summer of 1974.

    That summer, I climbed trees at the park and finally conquered my fear of catching a baseball. Before then, I mostly played catch with a rubber ball or a tennis ball. A hardball coming at my face scared the living shit out of me.

     I had a transistor radio with a strap on it. At night, I hung it from my bedpost. During the day, it was the perfect size to fit in the satchel on my bike.

    My bike was a red Schwinn. I considered it a little boy’s bike and desperately wanted something bigger and cooler. It had no speeds and no hand brakes. It was an old-fashioned coaster-brake bike my parents gave me for my sixth birthday.

   I dreamed of a Schwinn with five speeds and a banana seat. I finally got one for my tenth birthday.

     Six weeks later, somebody stole it while I was inside Kresge buying baseball cards. My dad made damn sure I understood that the thief may have stolen the bike, but it was my fault for not double locking it.

            That lesson of the stolen bike stuck with me for the rest of my youth, but that was the summer of 1976.

      The summer I want to chalk about today is 1974, the summer I turned eight. Of all the memories from that year, the one that sticks with me more than climbing trees, baseball games and bikes was a major change in my life…

         My bedtime moved from 7:30 to 8:00.

   Turning eight bought me another half hour of daylight. That was a big damn deal for an eight-year-old.

    From kindergarten through second grade, 7:30 was bedtime. It didn't matter that other kids were still outside. It didn't matter that there was daylight coming through the windows. When 7:30 arrived, I was done for the day. Finally that summer I got to stay up until eight.

     Last night, I took a shower and climbed into bed. It was eight o'clock, and it was the last night of the summer with an eight o'clock sunset.

     Fifty-two summers ago, eight o'clock meant I had finally been granted another half hour of childhood. Last night, eight o'clock meant this old bastard was ready for bed.

        Somehow, without noticing that it happened, life had come full circle.

   In the summer of '74, my dad hounded me to brush my teeth and wash my face. My mom would come into my room, tuck me under my NFL blanket, kiss me on the forehead and say, “Good night Pumpkinhead.” Then she would remind me to say my prayers.

   The moment the door closed, I would shorten the Hail Mary’s and reach for my transistor radio and turn on WLS.

   Under my nightlight, in the fading dusk of a Chicago summer, I would listen to Elton John, Roberta Flack and Paul McCartney until I fell asleep. Later, my mom would quietly sneak back into my room and turn off the radio so I wouldn't kill the batteries.

   Last night, an hour or so after I fell asleep, George quietly came into my room. He turned off my light. Then he turned off my radio and pulled the blanket over me.

       … And there it was. The whole damn thing. A lifetime contained in the click of a switch.

    One day my mommy was standing beside my bed, turning off my radio and making sure her Pumpkinhead was tucked in for the night...

   Then came school and jobs and girlfriends and marriage and babies and taxes and ballgames and heartbreaks and birthdays and funerals and all those ordinary Tuesdays that we foolishly assume will keep coming forever.

         …And now my oldest son is standing beside my bed, turning off the light and radio that his Oldman forgot to turn off.

         It happens that quickly.

  We spend most of our lives in the enormous space between being tucked in and someday needing someone to tuck us in again.

    When we were young, we couldn’t wait to stay up later. Another half hour felt like freedom.

     Then somewhere along the way, after all of those summers disappeared, eight o'clock is time for night-night all over again.

The streetlights still come on at dusk. The sun still goes down. The radio still plays, but the person reaching for the switch has changed.

   There are a lot of moments between childhood and the autumn years. Most of them pass without ceremony. Most of the time we don't realize the important ones when they are happening.

   Maybe that is what makes getting older both painful and beautiful. If you are lucky, there is someone there at both ends.

   Someone who loves you enough to come back into the room after you have fallen asleep. Someone who turns off the lights. Someone who turns off the radio.

Someone who makes sure you are tucked in for the night.

       In 1974, it was my mommy and last night, it was Georgie.

    Sunday Funday you Chalkheads….

     Go play catch, climb a tree and reach for the gusto that today brings and ignore the sunset time that I chalked today…

August 8th, 2026

       “Occupy thyself with few things, if thou wouldst be tranquil.” 

           I like this quote.

   Maybe because I am sixty now and I am finally beginning to understand something Marcus Aurelius figured out a couple thousand years ago.

    It is time to sweep the shed. I mean that literally and figuratively. It is time to declutter my life.

   I don't need the hand blender that I have used two times. I don't need pants that haven't fit me in fifteen years and, even if they somehow do fit, they probably won't be stylish in whatever remaining years I have left.

   I don't need drawers filled with power cords that don't connect to anything.

   I don't need the shot glass collection that has been sitting in a box since I got married. I can't remember the last time I did a shot at home, let alone at the tavern.

        Why am I keeping this stuff?

   Maybe we spend the first half of our lives collecting things and the second half figuring out what the hell to do with all of it.

   Though I don't think Marcus Aurelius was talking about hand blenders and shot glasses.

     There are other things cluttering the shed. Like old grudges and old regrets. Things I should have said. Things I shouldn't have said. People I should forgive. People I should probably ask to forgive me.

       Maybe it is time for a trip to the confessional box and talk to Poppa God about some stupid crap.

    There are cobwebs that I have known about for a long time. I have walked past them, promising myself that I would clean them up later. Well, later has arrived and it is time to sweep the shed and come clean and simplify…

              …And while I am at it, maybe I can declutter my head.

    I don't need every piece of information the world wants to shove in there. I  don't need every email. I don't need every headline. I don't need to spend valuable hours being angry or anxious about things happening hundreds or thousands of miles away that I cannot control.

   Marcus Aurelius would probably tell me that is just another kind of clutter.

I have enough things within my control that could use my attention.

My family.

My work.

My Faith.

My friends.

My home.

And myself.

           Those are enough things to occupy a man.

    There is some practical housekeeping to do as well. I should probably open that old footlocker and go through the photographs from the last century. There are undoubtedly a few pictures in there that the Shepkids don't need to discover while cleaning out my belongings someday.

     Though I am keeping the picture of me with the Houston Oilers Cheerleaders at Caesar's Palace. Marcus Aurelius can kiss my ass on that one. Some things are historical documents, but everything else is fair game.

     I need to cut the inventory, clear the drawers, empty the boxes, delete the useless data and reply to that email.

       Maybe tranquility isn't something I need to find. Maybe it has been sitting there all along, buried underneath all the crap I have accumulated since 1966.

          …And today seems like a good day to start digging it out.

             Today is 8/8. The eighth day of the eighth month.

   Here in Chicagoland, we are reaching that annual milestone when our long summer evenings begin surrendering to autumn and the sun slips below that magical 8:00pm line.

       We also remember 38 years ago tonight, 8/8/88 when the lights came on at Wrigley Field for night baseball for the first time.

    The Cubs played the Phillies under the lights at the Friendly Confines. Mother Nature apparently wasn't ready for night baseball on the Northside and dumped enough rain on Wrigley to wipe the game from the books after 3½ innings. The first official night game came the following evening.  

    Still, nobody remembers 8/9/88 quite like they remember 8/8/88.

    There is something about today. Eight-Eight. Every year it marks earlier sunsets and also when the lights came on at Wrigley.

         Another Saturday has been handed to us, use it wisely.

      Run your errand. Clean the drawer. Open the pantry. Make your phone call and take a trip to Goodwill.

          Sweep the sheds Chalkheads...

            … be astonished on this 8th day of the 8th month and find that gusto.

 

August 7th, 2026

     One More Ride with Clementine

I drove past The Saint Cletus practice field yesterday.
The grass was tall, the field was quiet, and Clementine was still sitting beside the shed. She hasn’t been hit by a young Cardinal in years. Her blue paint has surrendered more ground to rust, and those brand new blocking pads were never removed. Years of rain, snow, heat and cold have faded the bright red pads into a tired shade of pink.
She looks old now. Then again, so does the coach who once stood on top of her.
Clementine was our blocking sled. I would climb aboard while a line of Saint Cletus Cardinals lowered their shoulders and pushed that heavy old rust bucket across the field. With my weight added, she was difficult to move. The boys hated seeing me step onto her. They would groan, adjust their chin straps and dig their cleats into the grass.
“Get lower. Keep your feet moving. Don’t stop until you hear the whistle.”
At the time, pushing Clementine and Coach Shepley across that field probably felt like punishment. Today, I would bet every one of those former Cardinals would give almost anything to do it one more time.
The boys who pushed that sled are now in their late twenties and mid-thirties. They have jobs, mortgages, wives, a husband and children of their own. Some wake up with sore backs and aching knees, wondering how the years managed to move faster than they ever pushed Clementine.
When I coached them, I told their parents that my two biggest coaching idols were Bobby Knight and Woody Hayes. Neither man was perfect, but both believed coaching was about more than winning games. They believed in discipline, preparation, accountability and producing strong, successful men. That was always my goal at Saint Cletus. Football was simply the classroom we used.
Through the years, I have occasionally run into former Saint Cletus men and the two women who played for the black and the red. I am proud of the adults they have become. They may not remember every score, every play or every speech I gave them, but the important lessons remained.
Faith. Family. Friends. Football.
Straight F’s in life.
Those four things helped turn young Cardinals into good people. They learned to show up, do their job, protect the person beside them and keep moving when something heavy stood in their way. Clementine was teaching them about much more than blocking. They just didn’t realize it at the time.
The league is gone now. The helmets have been packed away, the shoulder pads no longer smell like August, and the whistle doesn’t blow in the shadow of the church anymore. The sidelines are empty. The coaches have gotten older, and the players have moved into lives of their own…
…But Clementine remains beside the shed, slowly rusting and holding our memories.
Look closely at that old photograph. Behind the orange traffic cone stands one of my assistant coaches, George Shepley. He was just a little boy watching his father coach football.
Next week, George turns twenty.
Life goes on. The years pile up. The grass grows tall, the paint fades, and little boys somehow become men.
I sure would like to blow that whistle one more time and watch those Cardinals push Clementine across the field.

August 6th, 2026

 
         This past week, Janie Hodge passed away. 

    Unless you grew up around Indianapolis, that probably doesn't ring a bell. For Hoosier kids who grew up in the 1970’s, it feels like one of the neighborhood grownups has left us.
    Janie felt like a family member. She felt like our favorite teacher. She wasn't a big celebrity outside of Central Indiana. 
    She sat in our living rooms almost every day. She introduced Popeye cartoons, sang songs, talked to puppets, reminded us to be kind and curious, and somehow managed to make every kid watching television feel like they mattered.
    Her passing made me realize something. She was the last connection to an era that can never exist again.
             I was lucky enough to have two childhoods.
   Growing up in Chicago, my television friends were Bozo, Ray Rayner and Garfield Goose.
   When I visited and then moved to Indianapolis, Janie and Cowboy Bob stepped in and somehow made me feel at home.
    Looking back now, it is amazing how local television could accomplish that. Chicago kids knew Bozo's Grand Prize Game like it was the Super Bowl. We all imagined ourselves throwing those ping-pong balls into the buckets. Ray Rayner made cartoons feel like hanging out with your favorite uncle while Cuddly Duddly faithfully sat beside him every morning. Garfield Goose, with his oversized crown and unmistakable desk tapping, somehow convinced us that a giant goose could run a television station.
       Then there was Indianapolis.
  Janie made learning seem effortless. One minute she'd be introducing Popeye, the next she'd be teaching music, talking about the zoo, welcoming Scout troops into her show or taking us somewhere around Indiana.
         And Cowboy Bob?
   Every kid wanted to ride along with Cowboy Bob. He sang campfire songs, cracked corny jokes, introduced cartoons and always made the afternoon feel like an adventure. His dog Tumbleweed was nearly as famous as he was.
    Those television shows weren't just background noise. They became part of the rhythm of childhood.
    Breakfast tasted better with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, HoneyCombs or Lucky Charms while cartoons played before school.
   Summer lunches meant a ham sandwich on white bread, a glass of Kool-Aid and whatever cartoon happened to be on.
   After school meant dropping your books by the door, grabbing a handful of Oreos or another bowl of cereal. Because somehow cereal counted as a snack as we raced to the television before the show started.
     There were only a handful of channels back in the day. No streaming, no pause button and no recording it on a VHS tape or Betamax.
        If you missed it, you missed it. Funny how scarcity made things feel more special.
     Our television personalities weren't trying to become national celebrities. You would see them in Christmas parades, county fairs, shopping malls and charity events. Meeting Bozo or Cowboy Bob felt as exciting as spotting your favorite baseball player walking through the grocery store.
   Looking back, I realize they were doing something much bigger than filling television time. They taught manners without preaching. They encouraged imagination without expensive toys. They reminded us to read. They reminded us to share, but most importantly, they made us feel safe.
   For thirty or sixty minutes every day, the world was simple. Mom was in the kitchen, and dad would be home after work. Our biggest decision was whether to ride bikes, play Wiffle Ball or stay inside for one more cartoon.
     Janie's passing reminded me that we weren't just saying goodbye to a television host. We are saying goodbye to an entire generation of local heroes who quietly helped raise us.
   Today kids can choose from thousands of channels, millions of videos and endless entertainment. I still think we had the better deal. Chicago had Bozo, Ray Rayner and Garfield Goose. Indianapolis had Janie and Cowboy Bob.
    Most of all, we had people who climbed into our living rooms every day, asked for nothing in return and somehow left us believing the world was a friendly place.
        I hope today's chalkboard gives my Chicago and Hoosier Chalkheads one more Kodachrome look at the sunny days of our youth...
                            …because those colors haven't faded one bit.

  

August 5th, 2026

 

       For some reason, I have lights on my mind this morning.

  Lighting has changed quite a bit since the Winnie the Pooh night-light that sat on my childhood dresser, keeping the fog monster away at night. Back then, every living room seemed to have one of those tall floor lamps with an ashtray built into it. The fancier models had cigarette lighters added on. Nobody had to leave the recliner or interrupt Walter Cronkite to fire up another Winston.

    Years later, we all wanted the Italian leg lamp that arrived in the enormous wooden crate marked FRAGILE. It was ridiculous, gaudy and magnificent.

       But these are not the lights I am thinking about this morning.

  I am thinking about streetlights and headlights. The lights that guide us through the darkness. The lights that once illuminated the road without trying to put on a goddamn Las Vegas show.

    Chicago used to announce itself before you ever saw the skyline at night.

  On a cloudy winter night, the sky would turn orange miles before the buildings appeared. You could be driving north on I-57 from Kankakee or crawling along the Dan Ryan or looking east from some western suburb, and that soft orange glow told you the city was waiting.

   You didn’t need a GPS to tell you that you were getting close and Chicago was just ahead.

    The orange sky was not beautiful in the traditional sense. It wasn’t a sunrise over Lake Michigan or Christmas lights along Michigan Avenue. It came from sodium streetlamps, busy factories, parking lots, alleys, warehouses, and expressways.

      It was probably wasteful and it certainly hid the stars, but it was ours.

  The old lights cast a dull amber glow over everything beneath them. Snow falling through an alley light looked like something from an old movie. Wet pavement shimmering beneath the “L.” Parking lots glowed like campfires. Even the worst streets had a warmth to them. The city looked tired, dirty and alive just like the intro on Hill Street Blues.

    Today, much of that orange has been replaced by the clean white glare of LED lighting. The new lights use less electricity and they last longer. They need less maintenance and save the city a shit ton of money.

     All of that is good. Progress is progress, and there is no point pretending the old way was always better simply because it was old, but efficiency and beauty are not the same thing.

   The new lights may illuminate more pavement, but they do not provide the same comfort. Chicago changed colors while we were busy growing older. The orange haze disappeared so gradually that most of us never noticed until somebody showed us the before-and-after pictures from Elon’s satellite.

       Then it hit us. The city of our youth no longer looked the same from the heavens.

   I notice another change while driving at night. Modern headlights seem brighter and more piercing to my older eyes. Maybe my eyes are part of the problem. They have been staring into the dark for sixty years, but it is not just age.

   When I was a kid, my Oldman once received a ticket because one of his headlights was off-kilter and pointing slightly upward. The police considered it dangerous because the beam might shine into the eyes of an oncoming driver.

   Today, nearly every new car seems to throw its lights directly through your windshield and into the back of your skull. We have traded two simple round headlights for a full disco of LEDs wrapped around bug-shaped automobiles.

    The lights today squint, they wink or they shimmer. They stretch across the front grille and crawl around the rear fenders. Some of them flash when the driver turns the wheel, unlocks the doors or thinks about changing lanes.

     Headlights no longer merely light the road. They make a flamboyant statement about the personality of the automobile. Every new car looks pissed off.

     Bring back the tailfins, steel bumpers and round headlights that illuminated the pavement without trying to invoke road rage. Cars once looked like cars. Their headlights helped you see where you were going, and their taillights let the fellow behind you know when you were stopping. They had style and told you if it was an Oldsmobile or a Plymouth coming down the street. They didn’t try to perform a halftime show in your rearview mirror.

    I understand that we cannot go backward. The sodium streetlights are not coming back. Neither are the steel bumpers, cigarette-lighter floor lamps or the Winnie the Pooh night-light that guarded my childhood bedroom.

            That is how life works.

   The practical things are replaced by more practical things. The familiar is discarded for efficiency. One day, you look around and realize the world has been modernized without asking whether you were finished with the old one.

   Maybe that is what I miss when I think about the orange Chicago sky of my youth. I don’t just miss the color. I miss the people who lived beneath it.

    I miss my Oldman behind the wheel, even if one headlight was pointing toward the moon. I miss the cars that had weight, chrome and scars. I miss snow falling beneath the streetlamp on the corner and the orange halo telling me I was almost home.

   Okay Chalkheads, the streetlights are popping on earlier and earlier this month. Have a glorious Humpday…