Today's quote comes from Tennyson and it fits perfectly for today's Chalkboard.
Yesterday was the 2025 Wild Turkey Open. Two dozen brothers, friends, sons, and sons-in-law teed it up on a wet, sticky July morning. This wasn’t just a golf outing, it was a living testament to something bigger.
At the center of it all are the five Hamilton brothers. Around them... the guys from down the block, a few lucky stragglers like me, and a second generation that’s now taking up the torch. Whether they know it or not.
The softball bats haven’t seen daylight in years, but the spirit of the Wild Turkeys lives on. What started in the mid-’80s on dusty Oak Park diamonds and was born when the team name was selected at The Time Out Lounge, burns on. Not just in stories or old jerseys tucked in closets, but in these young men.
They showed up yesterday. They played hard, they laughed loud and they listened, too. I had conversations with kids thirty years younger than me that sounded just like the ones I had with their dads three decades ago.
Same grit. Same goof. Same heart.
That is legacy.
It didn’t start with us GenX guys. It started with the Hamiltons’ parents. With the grandparents who raised men of faith, humility, loyalty, and laughter. Then those men passed it down without sermons, but just by showing up. By always doing the right thing. By calling you out when you needed it and hugging you immediately after.
What I saw yesterday was not just a passing of the torch, it was a promise. That the Wild Turkey culture... this blend of fierce loyalty, deep roots, and inside jokes that still hit...
...will outlast us all.
We may not have a batting order anymore, but we’ve got a lineup that can carry this into the next chapter.
And I’ll tell you what, Chalkheads... the future’s looking damn good for the Wild Turkeys.
Speaking of Turkey, Thanksgiving is just 123 days away.
I chalked a smile on the sun today. Lets finish July of 2025 this week with astonishment and gusto.
