September 13th, 2025

    I was sitting on the balcony watching the sun drop behind the courtyard building across the street. The September heat finally loosening its grip as the sun waved bye-bye. The bourbon in my hand was cooling against a single ice chip, doing its job as much as I was letting it.

One by one, the Shepkids wandered out to check on their Oldman. Each with their own little request, each reminding me that even on quiet nights, fatherhood doesn’t punch a clock.

George poked his head out first. “You okay, Big Man? Can you make some popcorn for me?” That is George, checking in, steady as he goes, with a snack request that is as much ritual as his favorite snack is on a Friday night.

Hazel followed, asking if I could make her dinonuggies. The girl knows what she wants and sees no reason not to ask for it.

Then Fritz came out, not with food in mind but a shower. Typical middle child move... practical, reserved, and somehow the one that is stuck to be the glue of the family.

Fritz sat down a moment to shoot the shit.

I had shuffle running on Spotify, playing through my list of favorite tunes. Fritz paused, listened, then asked, “What are you listening to?” I told him it was the song I played every time his mom was giving birth to him, his brother, and his sister... Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.”

It was my shorthand way of saying that this was the soundtrack to your arrival into my life. He blinked, then asked, “You actually listened to this song every time Mom had us?”

Truth is, the song played when I was asked to leave the delivery room while the epidural was happening.

Why ruin the poetry of it?

I let him believe the tune was pouring out as he squeezed his way into the world. Damn if that late-’80s song doesn’t still make me cry, still make me run the reel of what-ifs in my head, but screw the what-ifs.

Those three days, each birth, were the most magical days of my life. Kate Bush nailed the feeling better than I ever could.

Someday, I will tell them the whole story. That the one born on July 24th was conceived while their mom and I wore Halloween costumes, her favorite holiday. That the two knuckleheads arrived out of Thanksgiving spirit, which has always been my holiday of choice. Those details can wait. For now, I’ll let the myth live a little longer.

Fritz got his shower.

Hazel settled for a yogurt and a banana instead of her nuggets.

George munched on Orville Redenbacher.

And me?

I finished my bourbon, leaned back, and let the stars shine over Riverside and the Divorced Dad District. It wasn’t about popcorn or showers or Spotify or dinonuggies. It was about them showing up, one by one, orbiting the Oldman with their simple asks. Proof that in all the things I should’ve done, there is one thing I never failed at...

...I always showed up for them.

Saturday brings rugby and the halfway point to Saint Patrick's Day. If you don't have anything to do... Go out to Lemont and watch the Blaze ruck or go to The James Joyce and hear the bagpipes fill the air. 1983 is Flashback on XRT today.

September 12th, 2025

    Life has a way of serving me a lesson in humility. A sign, an event, sometimes even a déjà vu. Something always shows up to put me in my place. Whenever I start to complain or wallow, the world finds a way to knock me down a peg and remind me to pull my head out of my ass. That’s the heart of today’s quote: there is always perspective if you’re willing to see it.

Since it’s National Milkshake Day, I will add this... give me a malt over a shake any day. But truth is, either one is a win.

September 11, 2001: A Morning lost

   I was thirty-five years old on September 11th, 2001. By then, I had been working in the bond room at the Chicago Board of Trade long enough to know the rhythm of a trading day. The morning rituals, the camaraderie, the jokes, the way the floor woke up and came alive with the opening bell. The scream of down ticks and the roar of up ticks.

What I did not know, what none of us knew, was that this particular Tuesday morning would be unlike any other. A day when the world would shift. A day when a colleague’s voice on the other end of my headset would vanish forever.

It started out like every other workday.

The congress L carried me from Oak Park into the city, the train rattling over familiar tracks across the westside, the skyline growing larger at every stop. It was warm, unseasonably so, the kind of September morning that makes you wonder if summer has not quite let go yet. I walked into the Loop, coffee in hand, morning paper under my arm, White Sox cap pulled to my brow and into the Board of Trade building I went. The routine was comforting as I swiped through the turnstiles, nodding at the security guards, taking the escalator to the fourth floor.

Once I got up to the trading floor, it was like slipping into an old pair of shoes. I pulled on my trading jacket, shoved a water bottle into the pocket, and took that first deep breath of pit air… sweat, cologne, newspaper print, coffee, and adrenaline. I made the rounds, shaking hands and tossing hellos to my customers. Sharing a few quick jokes with the guys in the pit. That was our ritual, too, grease the wheels with camaraderie before the bell.

Then I grabbed my headset. That headset was my lifeline. Every day it plugged me into two worlds. One voice here in Chicago, Jeff, a cash trader with Rosenthal and one voice in New York, Jimmy O’Brien, OB, working as a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald.

Jimmy was thirty-three, a husband, a father, living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He was the kind of guy who could bust your balls and make you laugh in the same breath. He had that unmistakable New York accent that could cut through the chaos of the markets.

Jeff was not on yet that morning, so it was just me and Jimmy shooting the shit as we waited for the 7:20 open. The conversation was easy, the kind of small talk that builds friendships across miles of wire. He told me he walked his dogs to Prospect Park and went home. He took it easy with his family, watching the Giants play the Broncos on Monday Night Football.

I told him about my softball game, how I struck out and had to buy the team a round of overpriced shots. He laughed hard, really leaned into it, busting my balls with that Brooklyn swagger. We had a running thing about me being the big Chicago Midwest hayseed guy and him being the marble mouth New Yorker. That morning was no different. For a few minutes, it felt like every other day.

Then Jeff clicked in. The trio was complete, and we went to work.

The open was quiet. No big numbers, no market shockers, just another Tuesday. I was quoting bids and offers to Jeff, feeding him prices while Jimmy worked orders in the cash market. In the background I could hear Jeff and OB volleying back and forth, moving size, pushing orders. The headset was alive with their voices, and I was right in the middle, the bridge between Chicago and New York.

And then… silence.

Jeff suddenly shouted, “OB, you there? What the fuck—OB, am I filled?”

But OB did not answer.

I looked up at the Jumbotron on the trading floor. The image hit me like a punch to the chest. One of the World Trade Center towers had black smoke pouring from the side. My stomach dropped.

I told Jeff, “Flip on CNBC. Look at what is going on at the Trade Center right now.”

An uncomfortable pause and then the line went dead. Jeff had hung up, no doubt trying to reach OB directly, trying to figure out if he was okay. Trying to make sure that trade was not the last thing they ever worked together.

I took off my headset and stared at the screen. The pit went still. Hundreds of traders, usually loud and raucous, stood frozen, eyes glued to the smoke curling out of that tower. The air felt thick, like we had all stepped into a different world.

Phones started ringing across the floor. Customers liquidated positions, locals got flat, and one by one, traders and clerks slipped out of the building. None of us knew what was next. Was Chicago the next target? Was the Sears Tower, The Board of Trade, the Federal building in the crosshairs? We had no roadmap for what we were seeing.

The Board of Trade did not close right away. That is something I will never forget. While chaos unfolded on live TV, the exchange dragged its feet, waiting. Finally, after the second tower was hit, after news of the Pentagon attack broke and another plane was unaccounted for, the order came down the markets would shut immediately.

That was it. The spell broke.

We surged toward the exits, jackets still on, papers abandoned, all of us funneling down escalators, through the coatroom, out into the streets. Hundreds of people, all at once, pushing into the Loop, desperate to get out of downtown. I bolted for the Congress stop, hopped the subway, and sat in a train car full of pale, stunned faces.

The ride out to Oak Park was a blur. Underground for stretches, disconnected from news, we sat in silence. By the time the train broke into daylight near Halsted, word rippled through that one of the towers had collapsed. Nobody was sure which one. North, South, it did not matter. A building I had seen with my own eyes was gone. Thousands of people were inside. My friend might have been one of them.

Back in Oak Park, the sky was shockingly blue. Thin, wispy clouds floated like nothing had happened. The air smelled of late summer, almost sweet like corn. It was surreal. I did not go straight home. Instead, I cut into Ascension Catholic Church, my parish. The doors were wide open. Inside, it was empty. I lit a candle and knelt, the waxy scent filling the silence. I prayed, though my mind was a storm. Tears came, hot and heavy. I did not know if OB was alive. Deep down, I already knew.

The sound of school bells rang outside. Children poured into the playground, screaming, laughing, chasing each other like it was any other recess. Their joy was piercing. I remember thinking, we just lost our comfortable world. Childhood innocence colliding with the harshness of what had just happened. America was under attack. We weren’t naïve anymore.

I walked the five blocks home slowly, still in a daze. It wasn’t even noon yet, but I craved a margarita from the Mexican place up the street. The bar wasn’t open. So, I sat alone in my apartment, flipping through channels, watching replays of the towers falling, trying to piece together scraps of information. I called colleagues, I called friends and I tried to reach OB over and over again. Nothing.

My girlfriend, the woman who would later become my wife, was taking graduate classes at DePaul that morning. She caught a train out to Oak Park as soon as she could. Her father, my future father-in-law, had been in his law office in the Loop, but he made it home safely, too. We checked in with family and friends, one by one, ticking names off a mental list, making sure they were accounted for.

But there was one name I couldn’t cross off.

Jimmy O’Brien didn’t make it out.

That realization sank in like concrete. He had been on the other end of my headset one minute, laughing about me striking out in softball, and the next, silence, smoke, collapse... Gone.

So much happened that morning, and by noon it felt like the world had aged a century. The millennium came in like a boxer rocked by an unseen uppercut. The trading floor, that sacred stage of my working life, was suddenly small and powerless. The rituals of yelling and screaming and hand signals seemed meaningless against the images of towers crumbling, lives ending and innocence lost.

I think back on that day often, not just the horror, but the details. The water bottle in my jacket pocket. The sound of OB’s last laugh. The pictures on the Jumbotron when the first smoke appeared. The rush of bodies at the turnstiles. The blue September sky in Oak Park. The empty church. The children’s laughter. The silence of my apartment.

September 11th, 2001 was the day America changed, but for me, it was the day I lost a colleague and a friend. The day a Brooklyn accent went silent forever on my headset. Years later they found six inches of Jimmy’s shinbone. September 11th quickly moves further away with time. I age through life continuing my career, getting married, having children, getting a divorce and OB will always be thirty-three.

Years throw their elbows, but the story keeps its shape. Sometimes I think about that last conversation with OB and how absolutely nothing in it would have made the highlight reel of our lives. Walking the dogs, watching football and me striking out like a bum. That is the point. The day before a world ends is never an opera, it is a soft shoe. It is a laugh you think you will hear again in ten minutes. It is a man in Park Slope walking back from Prospect Park with two leashes in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, thinking about ordinary things. It is a Chicago guy playing softball with his buddies from the neighborhood, thinking about ordinary things. Two men, two cities, one headset.

 

 

September 11th, 2025

                                                             May their memory be a blessing

Sunrise this morning is at 6:27

September 10th, 2025

 What if tonight is the last night you go to bed?

That is what September 10th is. It is the last night thousands of people went to sleep thinking they would wake up Tuesday morning, kiss their kids, walk the dog, grab a coffee, make the opening bell and have a normal day.

But they didn’t.

They had their last day.

For me, September 10th, 2001, was softball night. I pulled on a pair of softball pants, threw on my Wild Turkey jersey, and drove over to Ridgeland Common for the first game of the fall season. Oak Park autumn ball isn’t like summer ball, the games move fast. Every batter starts with a 1-and-1 count. By the end of the season, we are playing under stadium lights at 9:30 at night with wind chills, so shaving off pitches was survival.

First at-bat, I step in, brain on autopilot, and rope one down the first-base line foul. That’s strike two. Next pitch floats in, high and lazy, clear ball… ump rings me up. I forgot about the fall pitch count and struck out without taking a last swing.

The Wild Turkeys bench exploded... not angry, but delighted. Because in our dugout, you strike out, you buy shots, and back in 2001, Irish car bombs were the weapon of choice. Twelve players, plus girlfriends, spouses, hangers-on… two hundred bucks evaporated out of my wallet before I left the field. That was my Monday night, September 10th.

The next morning, headset on before the open, I checked in with Jeff at Rosenthal and Jimmy O’Brien from Cantor Fitz. Brooklyn guy, voice like gravel and traffic horns.

“So, what’d you do last night, Jombo? More of that Chicago beer-league hayseed softball?”

I told him about the strikeout, the shots, the damage to my wallet. He laughed so hard I can hear his coffee spill.

Half an hour later, an airplane went through Jimmy’s trading room.

That was it.

One minute, we are busting balls about Irish car bombs and softball. Next minute, he’s gone. He never called back. Never got to walk his dogs again. Never held his five-week-old son again. Jimmy’s name is carved in marble at Ground Zero now.

That is why this word is in the Grabber section today: Squander.

I never stepped into another batter’s box after that and I have never squandered a day since. That is why I write these chalkboards. That is why I point out the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars. That is why I use the word astonishing so much. Because every damn day is.

September 10th is a day to live for the people who didn’t get September 12th. Take the dogs for a walk. Call your parents if you still can. Meet a friend for oysters. Order the cannoli and the glass of port. Tell your kids you love them twice, not once.

Jimmy O’Brien’s children are adults now. He never had the chance to watch them grow up and that is why we never forget.

Because one day, without warning, we will all have our Monday night.

Don’t squander today.

September 9th, 2025

 The Cave, the Treasure, and the 14,471 Day Drought....

Fourteen thousand, four hundred seventy-one days.

That is how long it has been since the Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX. Back when Walter Payton still carried the rock, Ditka still chewed gum like it owed him money, and McMahon’s headband was cooler than all the quarterbacks we have had since.

Today’s chalkboard says, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Well, around here, that cave is called Soldier Field. Every September, Chicago walks right up to that dark entrance like a pack of suckers with season tickets and old memories. We squint past the shadows, hoping this year, maybe this year, we find the damn treasure.

Only ghosts live in that toilet seat stadium. Duerson, Payton, McMichael and The Super Bowl Shuffle. The monsters have left, and the cave swallowed the roar. What is left is a city leaning on hope the way a drunk leans on the bar at closing time. Praying that the next round is the one that finally changes everything.

Fourteen thousand, four hundred seventy-one days since the last title. One more September, one more chance to chase the treasure.

If you’re scared to walk into the cave again, you’re not alone....

...but here in Chicagoland, we keep walking in because that is what this city does, we show up.

Because we are the Bears shuffling crew and we don’t stop fighting for our Monsters of the Midway, even if it kills us.

September 8th, 2025

 It is going to be a long day. I woke up at two o’clock in the morning and if I stay up to watch the Bears… Monday will be longer the Canterbury Tales.

Tuesday will be tired, but who can sleep when we are in the middle of such a gorgeous end of summer, beginning of autumn.

From the full moon to the Monsters of the Midway, it’s going to be a miraculous Monday.

Bear Down.

September 7th, 2025

      Being a baseball fan in Chicago is like being in a bad marriage. You keep showing up, keep believing, and somehow keep getting your heart stomped on. We finally got a couple of miracles in this lifetime, Sox in 2005, Cubs in 2016. That is more than most of our parents and grandparents ever got. They lived and died waiting for parades that never came.

On the South Side, the Sox are just about to put us out of our misery. Up north, the Cubs still have “a chance,” but don’t kid yourself, being a Cub fan just means your disappointment shows up in September instead of June.

Then there are the Bears... God help us.

Monday night kicks off another season of Monsters of the Midway mythology, and it’s been forty years since they were kings. As of today, they’re technically “in the hunt” for a Super Bowl. By Tuesday morning, that hunt will look more like a crime scene.

September 6th, 2025

 I’ve got the Shepley scowl. I thought it was my Oldman’s trademark, but it turns out that it came bundled with the Shepley big ass. I inherited both, no refunds, no exchanges. That is why I do my “smile ups” every morning, one hundred of them if I can. I do them while brushing my teeth, shaving, shampooing. I gotta keep the face loose before the world hardens it up.

I try to flash a grin wherever I can. Elevator rides, grocery store aisles, gas stations and especially at the doctor’s waiting room. I will even smile at the poor bastard standing next to me at the urinal. If he looks uncomfortable, I hit him with one of Don Shepley’s greatest hits: “This must be where all the pricks are hanging out!”

Best time to test your smile is during traffic altercations. Picture it... Mr. Subaru rolls up, ready to bark at me at the stoplight. My grin either cools him down or lights him up. That’s when I drop the Oldman’s hammer: “Listen, Scout — you don’t matter in your own life. Why should you matter in mine?” Smiling throughout...

I like smiling at strangers because it throws the world off balance. It keeps them guessing... and hell, sometimes it even connects us for a second or two. So, I’m making it official. September 6th is Smile Saturday. Go make the world astonished with your smile!

Flash it at the next person you see. If it doesn’t change their day, maybe it’ll change yours.

September 5th, 2025

       If I could pull 1978 John Shepley aside… if I could sit with 1984 John Shepley, talk some sense into 1992 John Shepley, buy a beer for 2004 John Shepley or take a long walk with 2016 John Shepley, I’d only say one thing...

... Work harder.

Easy roads are a mirage. They are a crock of shit. Every shortcut has a toll booth at the end.

Make yourself stronger, John. Push yourself harder, Shep. Put more passion into it, Jumbo. Don’t settle for second best, because second best turns into second place.

I spent too much time praying for breaks instead of creating them. Waiting for doors to open instead of kicking them in. I took the easier route more than I should have... and now I am paying for it. That is why I’m working harder now.

I have one of those fancy trading desks that goes up and down with a switch. I left mine standing and unplugged it. I am standing today because I don’t want to be lying in a bed tomorrow with a stranger wiping my ass.

I’m taking my father-in-law’s advice too, ordering a medium-rare strip today, so I’m not eating gruel in a nursing home later. I never scored a try in my twenties, but I will in my sixties. I finally finished James Joyce's Ulysses this year and maybe I will complete my Twilight Zone marathon.

I am closer to my funeral than my baptism, and I promise you, Chalkheads… I’m going to hit every pothole and keep driving along.

It is the first Friday of September. Go find a football game. Go find a bonfire. Go find a friend.

And like Don Shepley hammered home: “You can judge a man by the way he finishes a job.”

Let's finish strong!

Today is leg day. Push yourself and don’t forget the gusto.

September 4th, 2025

 I might come off like a jag off this morning, but I am taking a tough love stance towards someone that I love dearly. If today's Chalkboard can heal one regret, fanfuckingtastic!

I have known my cousin since we were toddlers. Our dads, my Oldman and Uncle Charlie... were thick as thieves, running side by side through life.

My cousin got me my first job on the trading floor. That wasn’t just a paycheck, that was a door opening to a career that has lasted nearly forty years. I owe him for that. I’ll never forget it.

BUTT gratitude doesn’t erase truth.

My cousin, the birthday boy has walked away from his only sibling. Ghosted her. Ghosted her family. Ghosted memories that should be shared. Once, they were tight... laughter loud, history deep, stitched together by the love of family. But years have slipped away, and silence has settled in.

I have seen this movie before. Back in the late ’80s, my Oldman and Uncle Charlie had a blow-up. Six, maybe nine months, they didn’t speak. Later, my dad told me it was one of the saddest stretches of his life. When Uncle Charlie died in 1992, the regret crushed him even more. You don’t get back the time you throw away. You don’t get a do-over.

That’s why today’s chalkboard carries this quote:

"I am never afraid to start again. Restart is always better than regret.”

Cousin, give yourself the best birthday present you can, heal this wound. Pull your head out of your stubborn ass, make the call, and fix this while you still can. Do it for your sister. Do it for the family. Do it for yourself.

And to the rest of you Chalkheads, if this hits close to home:

Every year you don’t make the call, the clock gets louder. Someday it will stop. Don’t wait for the funeral to wish you’d picked up the phone. Life’s too damn short to let pride run the show. Swallow it, make the call, fix the wound. Be the one who ties the knot, not the one who leaves it frayed.

Because regret?

Regret is the heaviest thing you’ll ever carry.

September 3rd, 2025

 When I first told my ex-wife that I loved her, I promised her something simple.

That I would work hard to love her more today than I did yesterday. I stole the idea from the Spiral Starecase song, but I meant every word, and for most of that marriage, I lived up to it.

Then life shifted.

My energy turned more towards fatherhood. I put everything I had into being a good dad, trying to be better today than I was yesterday. That is still true today and it always will be.

Now, as the working years have started to wind down, I have found myself doubling down again. I am working harder today than I did yesterday. I am writing more consciously, more intentionally, leaving pieces of myself behind in chalk. I am loving God more today than I did yesterday, this country I call home, and the gift of my life, even when it has not been easy.

More than yesterday…

This is how I am going to finish this somabitch: by working harder, loving harder, praying harder, and trying, in my own small way, to bring us all together.

I want to promote my faith, my family, and my friends... louder today than I did yesterday. I want tomorrow to be more astonishing than today. If I can get the world around me to see that, to feel that, then maybe my legacy will lean more toward the positive than the negative.

It is supposed to rain today. Maybe, if we are lucky, a little August rain has lingered. Just enough for one more smell, one more reminder that even the smallest things carry meaning.

Because at the end of the day, the goal hasn’t changed.

Be better than yesterday.

And tomorrow?

Better still.

September 2nd, 2025

 There is a Talking Heads song that is carved into the soundtrack of the ’80s. This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).

A song so tied to the movie Wall Street that I still see Charlie Sheen whenever David Byrne belts out those gorgeous lyrics.

For me, it is more than nostalgia. Every time I hear it, I also hear the voice of the late Lin Brehmer from WXRT. His iconic sign-off echoes in my head: “Take nothing for granted. It’s great to be alive.” Lin understood what that song stood for. That home isn’t just a place, it’s a feeling. It’s the people, the small gestures, the fleeting comforts that make us feel like we belong.

The last night I ever slept under my Oldman’s roof, he left a towel and washcloth folded on the guest bed. On top sat his old Grundig Yacht Boy radio. On the nightstand, a perfect cup of tea... splash of milk, rounded teaspoon of sugar. Just the way I drank it.

I turned on the Grundig, and there it was:

“Home is where I want to be…

Pick me up and turn me round…

I feel numb, born with a weak heart.”

I showered in that creaky 1920s tub and fell asleep for the last time with my Oldman just down the hall. I haven’t really had a home since. Just landing pads along the way, but that night still holds me.

Today, I bet half of Chalkhead Nation will listen to that song. Because it is more than music... it’s comfort.

Like a bowl of soup, an old Champion sweatshirt, or the smell of Arm & Hammer detergent on a towel at your dad's house.

While we’re all here sharing this life for just a minute or two, love each other until your hearts stop. Feet on the ground. Head in the sky.

In the Grabber Section today, Noli rumoribus credere/Do not believe rumors.

Believe in each other.

September 1st, 2025

“All the months are crude experiments,” Virginia Woolf said and maybe she was onto something.

Think about it… the calendar starts us in the dead of winter, cold and dark, like life before the spark. Then comes spring, full of bloom and rebirth, teasing us with hope and second chances. Summer follows, wide open and loud, stretching out long days where freedom and warmth make us believe the season might last forever. Maybe all of those months, all of those seasons, are just the opening act.

Maybe their only purpose is to prepare us for this moment, the first of the “Ber” months, September.

September brings clarity. It doesn’t rush in, it just arrives with its cooler mornings, sharper skies, and a reminder that change is the one thing we can always count on. It gives us a proper farewell handshake with the longness of summer days, then slowly walks us toward autumn’s front porch. There is comfort in that transition… in knowing that it is okay to pause, breathe, and watch the leaves ignite in color before drifting to the ground.

I think back to the few falls I spent in Indiana, the smell of burning leaves floating down the block, the soft crackle of smoke hanging in the air. The sound of rakes dragging across lawns. Sweatshirts pulled out of the bottom drawer or better yet, that new sweatshirt with the name of your favorite college. The smell of burning leaves only lives in my autumnal memory. Nobody lives at 6130 Indianola that I know or love.

Maybe life, just like Virginia’s September, is a crude experiment, as well. There are no blueprints, no instructions, no guarantees. We stumble, we adjust and we learn as we go.

So, you magnificent Chalkheads, grab your favorite sweater, sip your first pumpkin latte and let the sun put a smile on YOUR face today. Go find the first astonishing treasure this new month has waiting for you.

A Farwell to Summer (Chalkboard Bonus)

 

The Last Evening of August

There wasn’t a breeze on the last evening of August.
The air hung still, heavy with the usual late summer fatigue. The kind that makes you feel like the whole world has been holding its breath for weeks and is finally about to exhale into September. Bats glitched across the fading sky, their quick, erratic movements cutting black strokes against the pale orange wash as the sun settled into another month.

The cicadas screeched softly from the tree line. Not the manic roar of July, but something quieter, wearier, as if even they understood summer was reaching its close. Above them, the moon hung half-lit in the southern sky, its borrowed light pulling at shadows like a slow tide.

 The sun has slowly melted into Monday, while the constellation Scorpius crawled ahead in the first-quarter glow. Its curve bending toward Antares. That red heart burning stubborn and low on the horizon. A reminder, maybe, that some things burn brightest right before they fade.

Lincoln Avenue and the Quiet Glow

The last of the dog walkers drifted home down Lincoln Avenue. Their shadows stretched long under the soft hum of the gas lamps, that old Riverside glow pooling in front yards where annuals leaned like tired sentries. There wasn’t the flash of lightning bugs anywhere, no tiny bursts of electricity to illuminate summer’s final bow. The stage was closing without fanfare, and nobody seemed to notice.

The moon crept toward Antares, slow and deliberate, like it had nowhere else to be. I sat back and let Charlie Parker’s horn spill from the speakers, sharp one second, soft the next. Cutting across the stale air like a memory you’re not ready to unpack. My Avo burned lazy between my fingers, its smoke curling up into a ceiling of stillness, while the espresso and Licor 43 blended vanilla and citrus into the edges of my thoughts.

An Unused Season

August and summer were the subjects scaling through my mind, each one taking turns on the balance beam of regret. It wasn’t a bad summer, not exactly, but it was an unused one. A season that somehow slipped away while I was busy catching up on work, running numbers, chasing markets, grinding through another set of days at my trading desk.

I spent more time watching the green of the corn belt than the blue of the lake. More hours staring at soybean spreads than sunsets…. and when I wasn’t buried in the churn of my career, I was helpless with the nurturing of family, stuck between wanting to do more and not knowing how to fix what was fraying.

Then, in the distance, fireworks cracked against the dark. Not mine. Some other town’s celebration carried on through the breeze, too far to see, but close enough to hear. That is summer in a nutshell, isn’t it? Somebody else’s joy, miles away, drifting just out of reach.

Rebirth, Regret, and GoldBond Powder

Daylight gave way to darkness, and with it, the season gave way to its clamor. I thought about autumn the way I always do, not as death, but as rebirth. A chance to reset, to take inventory, to sharpen the edges before the cold sets in.

One less summer to live.
One less summer to forgive.

That is the math that keeps hitting harder every year. As the smoke from my stogie curled across my face, I wondered if I’d spent this season wisely or wasted it altogether. No margaritas on the beach. No music on the stage. The rituals I used to chase slipped right past me, swallowed by workdays and quiet nights that stacked into months.

And yet, there were moments. Little ones. Enough to hold onto.

The Ice Cream Stand with George

Picking George up after his therapy sessions became my favorite part of the summer. No plans. No agenda. Just a dad and his son at the ice cream stand. He always ordered soft-serve, and somehow, without fail, he’d finish his cone before I was halfway through mine.

Then came the grin. That scheming little grin.
Always trying to finagle my last bite, but I never gave in. Not once. That was our dance. That was ours, only ours.

Hotdogs, French fries and Fritz

With Fritz, it was the occasional trip to our hotdog stand. A ritual, small but steady. Parky’s, where the smell of grilled onions hangs in the air and the umbrellas over the tables have their own kind of nostalgia baked into the fabric. Something I once shared with my father. Something I now share with my son.

We’d sit there and talk, and I’d listen, really listen. As he tried on his voice, trying to balance who he has been and who he wants to be. You can hear it in your kids when they are starting to figure things out. It isn’t loud, it isn’t dramatic. It’s a shift, a subtle settling, and if you are paying attention, it sounds like growing.

Hazel and the Roar

My daughter, though… Hazel didn’t spend much time with her dad this summer. That part stings. Her little squeaky voice, the one that used to light up rooms, has shifted into something new… a sparky, sarcastic roar. Maybe part of me loves it, because it has strength. It has fire. It is her owning her edges, but I want her to have that roar when she’s twenty-two, not twelve. I want to buy her time before the world forces her to sharpen her teeth.

Farewell to a Boring Summer

The stogie burned down to its butt.
The espresso cooled.
The liquor slipped into the last quiet traces of spicey content.

And above me, the moon settled into the silent branches, indifferent as always.

Farewell, boring summer of 2025. One less summer to powder the nooks with GoldBond. One less summer to worry about sunscreen. One less summer of mediocre baseball in Bridgeport. The White Sox mailed it in again, and maybe so did I.

The Polar Bear ice cream shop will board up soon.
The umbrellas at Parky’s will fold away until spring.
Hazel will have one less summer to be embarrassed by her gregarious father.

What Comes Next

I look forward to fall. To the soft rain of autumn teardrops and the quiet dark that comes to claim the streets earlier each night. Another full moon is coming. Another scoreless period will run out of time. Another season will turn, whether I am ready or not.

Maybe that is the thing about summer?
It doesn’t end when the calendar flips.
It ends when you realize how much of it you let slip away.