Last day of the month… January of 2023 flew past quickly for everyone accept those who practiced a dry month. Congratulations to you.
Not much to say on this cold Tuesday morning. It is zero degrees in lovely Riverside, Illinois. I sure don’t miss waiting on an el platform for the next train and then getting onboard and the heat isn’t working.
I lived at home the winter of 1989-1990 and I would walk to the Ridgeland el stop with my dad. On the southeast corner of Ridgeland and South Boulevard was a greasy little diner.
An older black man ran it and he knew my dad well. As I started going in more often he got to know me. I was an arb clerk in the ten year pit. Every morning when I’d walk in he’d ask me for a stock tip.
I would simply repeat what I once heard my dad’s friend Ira say, “if it’s cheap, buy it. If it’s expensive, sell it!” …..then I’d order the best breakfast on the Southside of Oak Park.
They tore that building down sometime around the turn of this century. It was replaced with a big condominium building that looks cold and damp. Gone to soon was that gorgeous brick apartment building built in the early part of the twentieth century. Gone were the abandoned store fronts. Gone was the little diner that my dad and I frequented that cold winter. The winter that ended the eighties and began the nineties.
I know that diner is in heaven. I know in about thirty years I’ll be having breakfast with my dad, maybe your dad too.
I don’t care if the Metra is running late this morning. I just hope Betty the Green Blazer cranks up on this cold Tuesday morning.
….Stay warm Chicagoland and make yourself a hot chocolate.
