Yesterday I listened to the CBS jingle on Chicago’s WBBM radio for the final time.
One hundred years of affiliation and history gone with the flip of a corporate switch. Maybe that is just how business works now, but it still feels like somebody tore down an old neighborhood tavern to build a parking garage.
Morning radio today doesn’t sound like it used to. It used to keep you company. Voices had personality. DJs sounded like regular people drinking burnt studio coffee at 4:30 in the morning while telling you about traffic on the Ike and whether the Sox bullpen blew another one. Now half of it feels like noise designed by a committee.
The quote on the board this morning says pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Maybe that is why losing little traditions hits harder as you get older. They remind you time keeps moving whether you’re ready or not.
As for the grabber section… today belongs to the cooler.
National Cooler Day deserves more respect than it gets. I still have a cooler from the 1989 Bluesfest, back before I was handed the persona of Jumbo. Back then I was still just “Shep,” and somewhere along the way I scrawled that name across the lid with a Sharpie that never fully faded.
That cooler has survived lakefront parties, tailgates, road trips, picnics, heartbreaks, and enough cold Old Style cans to fill Comiskey Park.
The handle squeaks now, the plastic is worn, but like an old Chicago bartender, it still shows up and does its job without asking for applause.
Funny how objects become witnesses to our lives.
Today is another reminder that the old stuff mattered.
Old radios.
Old songs.
Old Sox fans.
Old coolers.
Old Arb Clerks.
Old voices.
May your cooler be filled with ice, gusto and astonishment.
