December 12th, 2025

 I won’t be around to find out whether I’m ever a legend or not.

Most of us won’t. That privilege is reserved for statues, headlines, and people who did something loud enough to get caught on camera, on stage or flashed up on a Jumbotron.

My legends once called me son, Moose, Pumpkinhead, John John. My legends prayed a shit ton. They knew how to build choo-choo trains. They directed large choirs for liturgies that the Cardinal presided over. One of them taught me how to wipe my own ass. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty solid foundation in life.

I like to think that someday I might be remembered from my Chicago Board of Trade days. One of the many players who populated the trading floor during the golden era. Not as a guy who made a million dollars a day, those stories fade fast, but as someone who did his job with decency, humor, and a promise that meant something.

The other day my son Fritz said something that stopped me cold. He told me a man dies twice. The first time is when he draws his last breath. The second time is when his name is spoken for the final time. That second death is worth wondering about. Who will be the last person that utters your name?

A man doesn’t get to decide his own legend. That gets handled by the people who loved him, who hated him, who trusted him, who scorned him. It is built quietly, out of integrity, consistency, and how you treated folks when nobody was keeping score.

I dropped my favorite Christmas movie into the Grabber section this morning, The Bishop’s Wife. It’s an old, good one. The kind that still believes kindness counts and grace shows up when you are not expecting it.

Arctic weather is rolling into the neighborhood this weekend. Keep your toes warm. But more importantly, keep working on the only thing that lasts, a legacy that doesn’t need a spotlight to survive.

December 11th, 2025

 No matter how hard we try, we are the villain in somebody’s story.

That’s just life.

Somewhere out there, a neighbor thinks you are the loud one, a classmate remembers you as the jerk, a colleague swears you are impossible, an ex has a running list on you, and the toughest one of all, a family member carries a bruise you never meant to leave.

That is the price of being human, we bump into each other. We speak too fast, assume too much, react too sharply. We make mistakes we don’t even notice until years later. Sometimes we never notice them at all and that is how they exist in another storyline.

Being the villain in someone else’s story doesn’t make you a bad person. It means you showed up and lived a life that touched other lives. You mattered enough to leave a mark, good or bad. The real measure isn’t how many stories cast you as the heavy; it’s whether you keep trying to be better in your own fable.

...And if today you were the villain? Fine.

Be the hero for somebody tomorrow.

In the Grabber section today, 68 days until Fat Tuesday. 164 days until the 110th running of the greatest spectacle in sports. 206 days and we celebrate the 250th birthday of this great country. I picked these three special days to remind you that the cold and dark of December will be gone in a flash.

December 10th, 2025

 Stevie Nicks doesn’t write lyrics: she lands them hard.

She has that rare gift of dropping a line that hits like a rake across the heart. No warning, no softness, just truth scratched into you before you even realize what happened. “And the days go by like a strand in the wind…” that is one of those lines.

December makes it feel even sharper. Short days, long nights, the whole world dimming early while the clock keeps moving whether you are keeping up or not.

In today’s grabber is the Latin, Magnus Frater, “big brother.” Titles that old don’t fade but thicken with time. You carry them whether you want to or not, and most of the time you are grateful you have someone out ahead of you swinging the machete through life’s brush.

So here is the birthday message carried on that wind down I-65:

Happy Birthday to my Big Brother, Bob McCutcheon, down in Indianapolis. Bob helped get me from Point A to Point B during my Exile in Indy. He guided me through the edge of seventeen.

Magnus Frater... today and always.

We are getting near the end of the two weeks of 4:20 sundown's in Chicagoland.

Soon the days will slowly get longer and bags of wrapping paper will be in the garbage can in the alley.

Stay warm and walk like a penguin, it might be slick out there today.

December 9th, 2025

 Dawn comes slow on December 9th, 2025.

The chalkboard says 38°, a smear of clouds, and a reminder that sometimes the wrong train takes you to the right station. I have lived that one. Most of us have.

You don’t learn it from textbooks. You learn it at places like an old Chicago diner where the coffee burns your tongue and the world makes a little more sense.

For me, that place was Gossage Grill, tucked on North Avenue just west of Harlem. A joint where the steam off a chipped white coffee mug curled up like the city taking its first breath in the morning. Neon buzzed in the window, painting the stainless counter in tired white and stubborn gray.

If you ever wanted to know who you were, or who you were becoming, you sat at the counter with your Oldman or stumbled in after a night of drinking with your buddies.

Jimmy was the overnight cook. More like a grill master. The spatula cracked against the griddle, sending up that holy trinity of bacon, butter, and burnt edges. Back then, we thought Jimmy was just “different.” We didn’t have the vocabulary or the wisdom. Years later, with life behind me and a son of my own, I can see it clear as day... Jimmy was autistic.

He took more grief from drunk kids than he ever deserved and he still fed us, every damn time, without complaint.

Cold air sneaked in with every swing of the door, mixing with the warmth of frying eggs and wet wool coats. The customer's sneakers screeched across cracked linoleum. The radiator clanked its usual complaint. The first sunbeam slid through the tired windows and turned a plate of hash browns into something like gold.

And Jimmy, steady as ever, kept the world humming low. Truckers, night-shifters, old-timers, lonely people, college kids... all trading pieces of themselves like loose change.

That diner taught me more about life than half the classrooms I ever sat in. It taught me that the wrong train doesn’t mean a ruined trip. Sometimes it just means you end up exactly where someone up there wanted you to be.

Hanukkah in five days.

Christmas in sixteen.

Sunrise at 7:07.

Sunset at 4:20.

Another day to get it right, or at least to sit down, warm your hands around a mug, and listen for the wisdom coming off a hot grill at dawn. Gossage has been closed for years, but there are still diners around town to pass experience and knowledge off at.

December 8th, 2025

 How about starting the week with a quote from Dickens.

Look back at how old you were on January 1st, 2000. I was exactly 33.5 years old when the calendar turned from the 1900’s into the 2000’s. Which means when I turn 67, I will have lived the exact amount of time in each century. That’s a fun little math game to play, but the equation that counts is the fact that we are all here at the same time. Give or take a couple years.

In that time, I have drunk a couple beers too many and played with myself more than the Catholic Church allows. I’m hoping I have some more gooder stuff than badder stuff. Most of the years I have suffered as a sports fan and most of those years I’ve voted for the same political party. Neither have the same vigor it once held.

And yet, through all that living... the wins, the losses, the bad habits, the loyalty, the decades-long sports misery...

...the only real through-line is this: Keep showing up.

Take the hits, laugh at yourself, and steady the people who lean on me. Even now, staring down what’s officially the snowiest start to winter since 1978, I keep putting one boot in front of the other.

Still, Dickens had it right. You are never useless if you lighten someone’s burden.

That is the kind of math that actually matters.

December 7th, 2025

   I was in eighth grade in February of 1980, deep in my Exile in Indy era.

I’d been suspended from Christ the King grade school, again. I was a little jagoff who couldn’t stay out of my own way. My mom couldn’t handle me, my Oldman was 177 miles north in Oak Park, and I was trying every stunt I could to get a one-way ticket back home to Cook County.

Most of that suspension week, I was locked in my bedroom with a small black-and-white Panasonic. I was in a world of trouble. My mom was beside herself, my Gramma was at church saying the rosary for my oversized soul, and my Oldman was licking his chops. I knew my next Amtrak ride back to Chicago was going to be about as gentle as a lumberyard.

But my timing ended up being perfect...

The 1980 Winter Olympics were happening, and instead of sitting in history and religion class, I watched every hockey game that led up to the Miracle on Ice. I watched the boys beat the Soviets and then finish the job against Finland for the gold. I watched Eric Heiden win five medals in speed skating, from the 500 meter to the 10,000. That was my math class... learning meters. The U.S. finished third in the medal count behind the Soviet Union and East Germany. There was my history class.

Fast-forward to last night and another miracle down in Indianapolis. The Indiana Hoosiers beat a team that has owned them for over a century. Nine out of ten times Ohio State handles them, but not last night. Not in that building. Last night's Big Ten Championship ranks right there with the 1980 victory over a favored bunch of commies.

I probably have your attention because of what is in the Grabber section of today’s Morning Chalkboard. That is why they call it the Grabber. Japps might have changed the name of their potato chips to Jays after that day of infamy, but I’m not changing my blackboard. I’m not sugarcoating history. Even my Gramma, who prayed the rosary every day of her life, used that word. When Hazel wakes up, she will probably call me a racist baby boomer, and I’ll correct her that I’m Gen X. She lives to push that button.

Look...slur words have been thrown at every group in history. At one point, all of us were on the other end of a slur word. We don’t use them today because we know better, but pretending they never existed? That isn't history.

That is fiction.

As I am writing this, the snow is coming down over the Divorced Dad District. That “dusting” they predicted looks more like four or five inches. Perfect weather for Bears–Packers football, and thank God I’m not watching it on a 12-inch black-and-white with rabbit ears.

Go make the world a better place today.

If you insist on using a slur word, pay the bartender and Uber home. Do your best to make the Yuletide gay. Because in 2026, all our troubles will be miles away...

December 6th, 2025

Today's quote was written by Billy Shakes, one my Oldman often used.

He used it when dealing with mealy mouths and fakers who don’t add up to the big equation of life. It also became readily available for every loudmouth who has never taken a real hit. Easy to laugh at pain when you have never bled.

My Oldman was usually plain and simple. Chicagonese rolled off his tongue whenever life’s assclowns pushed him to the brink, but when his anger started to boil and he needed to check himself, that was when Shakespeare came out.

“Look at this hurried jagoff changing lanes without using his GD directional! Someone tell him his horseshit life isn’t going anywhere. It will f’ing be there waiting no matter when he shows up!”

Or, when he wanted to cut straight to the bone:

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound!”

I don’t know how or when this line became part of Don Shepley’s arsenal, but when he pulled it out, it was napalm. He had another line too... one he took to the grave before I ever figured it out:

“This guy talks like a man with a paper asshole.”

To this day, I still don’t know what the hell that means.

Anyway… it is Saint Nicholas Day. Put your shoes by the door and wake up tomorrow to find treats in them. Saint Nick and William Shakespeare, strange pair, sure, but both teach the same thing: mercy usually comes from the wounded, not the untouched.

Find astonishment and gusto today. You will need to put a smile on the sun yourself.

December 5th, 2025

 Today's quote hits like a steel door in an empty hallway.

Some people and situations simply aren’t going to answer. No matter how loud, how patient, or how hopeful you are. Life teaches that the hard way. You can waste years pounding on doors that are never going to open, or you can turn around and walk toward the ones that will.

Today is WagStrong Day.

John Wagner was in the class ahead of me at Dear Old Cathedral. He died a few years back. He actually died a couple times. On one of those miraculous returns from eternity, he told us how he met the Holy Spirit. The Ghost that completes the Trinity sent him back with a message: Forgive, ask for forgiveness, and tell Wag Nation to do the same.

True Story!

Wags passed the lecture down from heaven and touched his family and friends with one last bit of wisdom. Occasionally when I mouth off about a group of people that I hate, I hear, "Shep, get over it! Don't you want to hang for eternity and drink beer?'

That is Wags way of telling me to clean my heart if I want to go to heaven someday.

So, today is the perfect day to forgive and forget.

Yesterday's cold blast wasn't a big deal. It just prepares us early for short pants weather this February in Chicagoland.

Have a beer for Wags today and if you see a kid walk in the bar wearing a Red Sox hat, buy him a cold one!

December 4th, 2025

The good news, I put a big ass smile on the sun.

The not so good news... winter controls the thermometer this morning. The temperature in the Divorce Dad District is currently two.

Today is National Cookie Day.

The length of my belt will tell you that I have grown up having a love affair with cookies. Put on your wool socks and grab a handful of chocolate chips. It is Thursday and cookies add gusto to our lives. Keep that long shadow warm today and know that it begins to get short again in a couple of weeks.

December 2nd, 2025

 A man doesn’t usually know the shape of his life while he is living it.

He just follows the tracks laid in front of him. In my youth, I learned this earlier than most. The Amtrak carried me back and forth between my mother and father, two worlds stitched together by a timetable I didn’t create. Watching Indiana pass in long stretches of fields and towns taught me the strange lesson that you can belong in two places and still feel like you’re standing on a platform waiting for a train that never fully arrives.

That back-and-forth built something in me I didn’t understand at the time. The ability to live in motion, to accept that life isn’t one story but a collection of transfers.

As a young man, the tracks led me downtown. Not to forests or mountains, but to a different frontier, the trading floor. My wilderness was a pit surrounded by men who fought with hand signals and shouts. Every day felt like stepping into volatile weather... loud, unpredictable, furious, alive.

I was carving out my place in a world that rewarded grit and punished hesitation. There was a rawness to it, a kind of honest violence where you took your hits, gave a few back, and went home carrying the residue of the day on your skin. The world thought that trading floor looked chaotic. To me, it was the closest thing I ever had to a settlement of my own.

Then just like landscapes disappear when the tracks bend, that world vanished. One day the roar of a thousand voices became the hum of servers and screens. The life I’d built, the identity hammered out in noise and sweat, evaporated, leaving me standing in a quiet that felt almost unreal. That is how life moves ... it doesn’t ask permission when it changes, it just does.

Between all that movement, love showed up and slipped away again. Some people rode a few stops with me and some stayed longer. Some I thought would be there at the end of the line.

A few broke my heart.

A few I broke back.

Most of life is people stepping on and off the train. You don’t realize how rare the stayers are until the seats around you start emptying out. More leave than come. That is the truth most men never say out loud.

The train took me home countless nights, rattling over the city grid. Each streetlight and storefront a reminder that the world doesn’t stop turning just because you don’t know where you are headed. On those rides, I felt the years beginning to stack. Childhood in the rear window, the pit fading into memory, love drifting into distance, the quiet settling in deeper. That is when a man starts hearing the echoes and the things he lost.

The things he should’ve said.

The chances he should’ve taken.

Life haunts you, not out of cruelty, but out of accuracy.

As time thins out and the track ahead grows short, you finally begin to understand your own story. You see that the boy shuttled between parents, the young man trying to earn his place in a pit full of sharks, the father, the husband, the man who kept going even when the world changed under his feet. He was building something the whole time. A life that seemed ordinary from the outside but was miraculous in its endurance.

Most of us don’t find our place until the world has stopped looking at us but finding it late is still finding it.

.... and a life lived fully, with scars, losses, small victories, and all station stops; that is its own kind of miracle.

November 30th, 2025

 Yesterday wasn’t just a winter wonderland in Chicagoland, it was the annual Shepley CTA Christmas Train ride.

This year it was just the Oldman and his two boys. Hazel skipped out, tucked deep in that preteen “Dad-is-embarrassing” phase. PopPop and Grampa Don rode along in spirit, and I’ll admit there was a moment when that hit me square in the chest.

The snow gave the day a magical touch, and per Don Shepley tradition, the lessons started early. The drive to Harlem/Lake was part defensive-driving class, part master class on dealing with idiots who still drive like the roads are bone-dry. Some people will never learn that snow doesn’t lie.

Up on the platform, young families bundled up with strollers, all waiting to get their picture with Santa. We never waited in that line when my kids were little. We always went to the real star of the day, the motorman. Santa may have a sleigh, but it’s the guy driving the L who is the true hero on CTA Christmas Train Day.

After the engineer come the elves. CTA employees dressed up, handing out buttons and candy canes, smiling like they mean it. These are the real celebrities. We found Mr. Carr, the motorman who has been in most of our photos over the years. He said the boys were giants now, asked where Hazel was, and noticed again that there wasn’t a grandfather with us this year. That is what you get when you build a relationship with a class act.

George chatted up a CTA elf while we waited. At the end of their conversation, the elf told me the CTA was hiring, and that my son ought to apply. “His knowledge of the lines and equipment is impressive,” he said. I told him George was neurodivergent. The elf didn’t blink: “We work with several George’s already.” That meant more than he knew.

I thanked him for planting that seed with my son. I would be honored if one day George worked with Mr. Carr and colleagues who took time on their day off to spread joy to the world.

When the train pulled out toward the Loop, the city was covered in a blanket of white. We stopped at the station near my Oldman’s old house. It felt like he stepped on board right then and there. Fritz asked why I was smiling with wet eyes. I told him, “Your Grampa Don just got on at Ridgeland.” Fritz shrugged: “You always say heaven’s closer than Oak Park.”

The train packed in, riders soaking in the lights and music, faces glowing like they were seeing magic for the first time. It reminded me of the first time the Oldman and I rode it back in the nineties on the old Congress line. Just me and my dad, much like this year. A father with his son creating lasting memories.

As we entered the Loop, the crowd thinned. By the time we left the last downtown stop, it was just a handful of CTA elves, a few Black people heading home to the Southside, a couple Orientals going to Chinatown, and the Shepley men. It was peaceful and warm creating a small pocket of quiet in a loud world.

The Christmas journey arrived at our turnaround station. George sprinted down the platform at 35th to thank Mr. Carr one last time. From his window at the front of the train he yelled “See you next year! Bring Hazel!” through the snow and wind. That moment slowed us just enough that we missed the northbound ride home. The doors shut and that warm train was gone. Now we were stranded on an exposed platform near Comiskey Park, De La Salle, and IIT with the wind slicing right through us. The next train was in twenty minutes.

I wasn’t thrilled, but George needed that last goodbye. So, we waited under the heat lamp. That was when an older man, beaten and tired by life asked if I could help him get food and water. I turned away so he couldn’t see my wallet, then slipped him a couple bucks. We exchanged a “God Bless” and he wandered off into the swirling snow.

I didn’t give him money to feel noble. I didn’t do it for an audience. I did it because my boys were watching. They saw the street smarts and the humanity, two things Chicago demands in equal measure.

I asked if they were cold. “Kind of, Dad.” I told them when the train comes, we will go home to Riverside, to heat and dinner. That man was staring down a storm that could kill him. One storm is an inconvenience for us and a possible death sentence for someone else. That was a lesson no classroom teaches.

Our train finally arrived and just like that, we went from holiday joy to brutal reality. Litter on the floor. Smell of urine. A crack pipe lit in the corner. Four young Black kids laughing at the junkies, because that’s their normal. Fritz pulled out his phone, suburban innocence on display. George looked at him and said, “Put it away. Head on a swivel.” That’s the autism I love—straightforward, observant, unfiltered and correct.

At Roosevelt, a street woman shoved her shopping cart onto the car.

This is Chicago.

Not a brochure.

Not a Hallmark card.

Not tourists sipping hot wine at Christkindlmarket.

This is the real city and I was glad... yes, glad that the boys saw both sides. You don't plan these lessons. Life hands them to you when you pay attention.

Back in the neighborhood, George asked if we could go to PopPop’s McDonald’s. It was where we used to go whenever he was with us. Last time he was there, his nose was running like a busted hydrant; I grabbed him a stack of napkins as we sat and ate Big Macs together. Yesterday, sitting there without him, my eyes filled again. I missed him. I missed the joy he received spending time with his grandchildren on the train.

We got home and the boys disappeared to their rooms, silent and spent. A day of magic, snow, family, and hard truth will wipe out even the toughest kid. The CTA Christmas Train delivered again.

I’ll keep taking this ride every year. Riders will come and go. I know George will probably always be my constant. Someday I may ride alone and someday the train will leave without me. I will be with Grampa Don and Pop, watching to see if the lessons we passed down are still being lived.

Okay Chalkheads... shovel smart, fill the crockpot with something that smells like love, and hold tight to the person who fits your jigsaw.

End December with gusto and astonishment.

PopPop with the Shepkids on one of his last CTA trips.

November 29th, 2025

 The snow is gently falling on Chicagoland this morning, and it won't stop anytime soon.

It is our first test of the season. The kind that checks your patience more than your muscles. Because around here, winter doesn’t win, it just takes its turn.

Joni had it right... you can look at snow from both sides. Today’s storm can be a gift. It will moisture the fields need, a blanket for the earth, a fresh coat that makes even the ugly parts of Chicago look magical. It can be an excuse to feel a little joy, to go sledding, cross-country skiing, or even skitching like we did when we were young and stupid.

Or

You can take the other angle. You can gripe about the roads, the procrastinated snowblower, the salt chewing up your car, or the fact that every shovel in Cook County feels like it wants to send you into cardiac arrest. It’s all there if you want to see it in a negative way.

But today, I’m choosing the better side of the coin. I am taking the beauty. This snowfall sets the stage for December. A perfect opening act for Christmas lights, warm houses, and deeper breaths.

If I’m feeling ambitious and it isn't canceled, I might hop on the CTA Christmas Train. If I feel lazy, I will stay inside and decorate. Either way, I should probably grab some eggnog and brandy before the shelves look like Sox Park during a bad season.

Vivaldi’s Winter is already playing in the background, the first pot of coffee is percolating, and Big Al, the French Algerian, is whispering the truth we all forget:

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

So feel the warmth, Chalkheads.

Step outside and taste the November snowflakes.

November 28th, 2025

 Hazel had her project boxes out, building whatever twelve-year-old girls build.

You know the drill... glitter, glue, scraps, cardboard kingdoms and always a mess for dad to clean up once the extravaganza is complete. While she worked, I told her a story from when I was in the fourth grade in Cub Scouts. We made our moms pendants out of old prescription bottles. We poured colorful aquarium gravel into the bottle cap, baked it on parchment paper, punched a hole through it as it cooled, and pulled yarn through the hole. Gramma CeCe loved the thing. I might still have it tucked away somewhere.

Hazel told me to go find it. So, we headed over to my old footlocker.

Now, this isn’t just a box, it is a time capsule. The kind you would expect to find hidden in the cornerstone of a municipal building. Mine just happened to be in a red footlocker I painted blue in 1976. It holds the story of John Shepley from the beginning: trophies, letters, pictures, ticket stubs, medals, certificates, treasures, and ghosts.

Hazel lasted about ninety seconds before she forgot all about the 1970s pendant for her grandmother. What grabbed her wasn’t the craft, it was the mountain of Polaroids and Kodachromes stacked inside. Pictures of her daddy growing up. Pictures of a life she never saw and probably never suspected.

The ones that caught her the most? The party years.

Me drinking a Little Kings at a high-school party.

Me doing a beer bong at a fraternity house.

Me leading a Second Line down Royal Street in the French Quarter.

Dad pounding pints in a London pub.

Dad with several empty Irish-coffee mugs at the Buena Vista Café in San Francisco.

Mardi Gras with Jumbo at Shanahan’s.

Dad hugging people of all shapes and colors, all smiling.

Bachelor-party golf outings with cart girls in bikinis.

A hot tub in Vegas with the Houston Oiler cheerleaders

Tailgates in Bloomington, Champaign, Iowa City, Baton Rouge, and South Bend.

And then came the pictures of me with a couple girls I knew BEFORE her mother. Hazel didn’t say much, just raised an eyebrow like only a twelve-year-old daughter can.

Eventually we reached the photos of her mom and me. The digital-camera era. The box-camera era. Those early years when everything was still ahead of us.

Mom and Dad at a Bears game.

Mom and Dad at a Cubs game, a Sox game, another Bears game, a Jayhawks game, then another Bears game.

Mom and Dad cleaned up for a wedding.

Mom and Dad in PopPop and JoJo’s house before the renovation she’s grown up with.

And then New York, a year after 9/11.

Oysters at Grand Central Station.

Standing in front of the Chrysler Building.

Near the Brooklyn Bridge.

Her mom laughing, smiling, hair different in every picture. Beautiful in all of them.

Hazel stared at those the longest. Her first real glimpse of her parents when they were in love, before the long chapters life eventually wrote. She asked to take a dozen photos home. Of course I let her.

The rest of the day was just as it should be. Baking, projects, homemade pizza rather than turkey, a Stranger Things marathon, and the sort of quiet Thanksgiving rhythm instead of the hustle and bustle.

I think the Shepkids will remember Thanksgiving 2025 for a long time, Hazel especially. It was the day she saw her parents in another lifetime, and her dad as a young party monster before he turned into the guy who sweeps glitter off the kitchen floor.

She’s used to seeing a thousand pictures on her phone. She wasn’t prepared for a thousand pictures in a cardboard box buried in a footlocker. Different world, same dad.

Thanksgiving is over now, and it is time for the first official Christmas song of the season. Everyone else can start with Mariah Carey or Bing Crosby. I’m going with The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York."

The Bears play this afternoon. The Hoosiers and Boilermakers battle for the Bucket around suppertime. I pray Chalkhead Nation had a spectacular Thanksgiving and is rolling into Christmas and Hanukkah with some fire in their step.

Gusto and Astonishment

November 27th, 2025

 I think about what I am thankful for today, and it always comes back to the Straight F’s in life.

If you have been hanging around the Chalkboard long enough, you have seen them appear from time to time. They are the Foundation, the cornerstone, the simple things that never fail me when everything else gets loud and chaotic.

It starts with the big three: Faith, Family, Friends. On Thanksgiving, I tack on Food and Football. Because if there is ever a day when those two belong on the list, it is today.

During the year, the list gets a few additions. Fundamentals is often applied. Fearless, Farmer, Fitness, Funk, Forgiveness and even flamboyant will make an appearance. Living on this lighted grid next to a big lake, Familiarity sneaks its way in on a daily basis. The feel of home, the comfort of knowing where the hell you are in this Fragile world.

... And yeah, sometimes I can toss in the most common F-word known to mankind. I am still a Chicago guy who worked on a trading floor.

But today I keep it clean and stick with the ones that built me.

Faith.

I will tell you straight: without the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary, I would be a busted-up mess. I am thankful every single day for the faith my parents planted in me, started in the baptismal font at St. Ita’s up in Edgewater. That wasn’t just water, it was the first brick in a foundation that has carried me through all the rough patches and all the stupid decisions.

I pray every morning driving into work and plenty of you Chalkheads get name-dropped in those quiet chats with heaven. You might not know it, but you have been prayed for more than a few times. I pray and I swear, that is what I do. I can be in the middle of a Hail Mary and if a guy doesn't use his directional signal, heaven will hear, ".... blessed art though amongst women (this jagoff can't use a directional?) and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Family.

The Shepkids are the biggest blessing I have ever been handed during my crooked, awkward journey of life. They clog toilets. They spill shit. They push every button God installed in me, but then, out of nowhere, they flash these moments of brilliance that stop me dead in my tracks. That is the good stuff. That is the stuff that keeps this man going.

As years roll on, family disappears from our tables and our phone lists. They leave a hole, but I don’t wallow in grief or emptiness. I am thankful they shaped me when they could, and I am thankful I will see every one of them again in whatever great reunion comes after this storyline, even the Shepkids’ mom will be at the eternal table.

Friends.

My Oldman preached this one hard. He told me early on to learn the difference between an acquaintance and a friend. Then he would quote Yeats,

“Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.”

As I have gotten older, friends have sifted out. Some fade into memories. The true ones, the ones meant to stay have become the bedrock of my Foundation. You don’t get many of those in one lifetime. Guard them fiercely and cherish them.

Football and Food.

Thanksgiving doesn’t feel right without the Turkey Bowl, the Detroit Lions, and some good-natured tackles. Football is stitched into the fabric of today even if the Bears aren't playing.

Food glorious food! It is the bountiful symbol of all the hard work and sacrifice we go through. Every damn day, we grind for today's bounty. Give me stuffing, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, and a slice of pecan pie to top it off.

When I get done chalking about Straight F’s, I will put on December by George Winston. Something I have done every Thanksgiving morning since Reagan was in the White House. Traditions matter and that album kicks off the day.

So today, give thanks for the Straight F’s in life. Stretch before you hit the annual gridiron. Hug the cook who made the turkey gobble just right, and don’t forget to tell the people around you that you love them.

Because next year’s feast isn’t promised to any of us.

One last thing...... I Love You