Thanksgiving for 2022 is in the books. The damage has been done. Some of it constructive and unfortunately some destructive.
I hope the positive damage was done at the dinner table. God willing there are no leftover cranberries this morning. Maybe a little turkey for lunch today.
Oh lord why did you talk with Uncle Stan about politics? That left a memory of an epic thanksgiving battle that will go down in family folklore.
And the battle on the gridiron or on the pitch? Please tell me everyone left the game in one piece? When fifty year old men put on their Walter Payton jersey they usually are putting the icy/hot on later in the day.
The Friday after Thanksgiving is a day of shopping, food comas, meat sweats and hangovers. Throughout the nineties and early part of the new millennium I had a Thanksgiving Friday tradition that stirs great memories.
The market closes early on this day, so I would jump on the Howard and go up to Division street by 12:30pm. I would grab prime real estate at Butch McGuires right at the front end of the bar near the big window. Butch’s does an excellent job of decorating for Christmas. Google Butch McGuires Christmas decorations and you’ll see. They even have a Santa taking a poop in his outhouse from the North Pole.
College football, College basketball, good friends, Bloody Marys and big ass juicy hamburgers. A great combination to fight what ails you from the day before.
I had a group of friends that merged from the trading floor, the neighborhood and from school. The one thing they had in common was Jumbo and that made me feel fanfuckingtastic. To this day when I talk to one of the members of this memory we laugh and smile at the antics we pulled.
Towards the end of this grand tradition I invited my new girlfriend from the trading floor. She decided to have her mom and aunt from Hensdale meet us.
Exactly!
This wasn’t going to end well and it did end a ten year tradition that many of us long to reignite.
We had the space by the front window. It was a gloomy day, but the temperature was in the sixties so Butch opened the window. As my future mother in law and her sister in law sip their Prosecco, Scary Mary walked up to the opened window. If you’re not from Chicago, Google Scary Mary Chicago homeless woman.
Scary Mary often panhandled by the Board of Trade, by both ballparks and on this day in the early 2000’s….. Division Street. Ol’ Scary Mary decided to pull her boobs out for the nicely dressed Dupage County ladies. It didn’t go well and the rest is history.
I’m sure we will all meet again at Butch’s on Thanksgiving Friday. Scary Mary is gone, the mother in law is an ex and people have moved away or don’t work in the city anymore. So the fates must decide.
Onward we go into a month of Christmas Carols and Christmas movies. I’ve already watched “Love Actually” and I came across a new movie that I recommend to my Italian friends. “Feast of Seven Fishes” from 2018. It takes place on Christmas Eve of 1983. This movie is in my Christmas movie rotation now. Next up “Family Stone” and “The Bishop’s Wife.”
Hey…… Sox play some team called SF in 129 days. I think they might be in the other league.
Until we meet again at Butch McGuires…..
