Dave Hoekstra has been a Chicago Sun-Times staff writer since 1985. He has contributed pieces to Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader and Playboy magazine. He has written books about the Farm Aid movement, travel and kick ass country music. His latest book is about minor league baseball in the Midwest.
He likes sunsets over cool waters.
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Jan. 4. 2012
The first steps I took in 2012 were up a steep hill off of Bay Shore Drive in Door County.
That’s better than starting the year by going downhill.
The Northern Wisconsin wind slapped my face around like a pimp as I took a gentle curve to the Church Hill Inn in Sister Bay. I was heading to Ephraim. I felt old. I had booked myself into the frilly bed and breakfast because it was walking distance from the Sister Bay Bowl and supper club.
I love the concept of a supper club and bowling alley in one space. I love going to a summer destination in the dead of winter.
And the fact that Whiskey Ditch was playing for free sealed the deal.
What a great name for a band.
The Green Bay band played almost all their songs in John Mellencamp rock style, with the drummer constantly riffing the backbeat of “The Authority Song.” It didn’t matter if it was John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son” or Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” all the tunes had gnarly four wheel drive. I never thought I’d hear John Denver’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane” sound like “The Authority Song,” but Whiskey Ditch pulled it off.
I did not want to motor around Door County on New Year’s Eve with Illinois plates, so the Church Hill Inn was the closest bet to stay away from local authorities.
The Stella Maris Parish church is across the street from the Church Hill Inn, so I definitely was on higher ground.
The pleasantly rotund innkeeper is English. The warm English pub area and parlor is decorated with Winston Churchill portraits, and bric-a-brac such as Churchill tea cup. It was all kind of stuffy, and to make things worse I was booked into a room called “Victorian Times.”
I noticed a framed autographed picture of John Cleese from the hit British hotel sitcom “Fawlty Towers” in the hallway. The innkeeper told me that he had been accused of being “grumpy” so someone gave him the portrait as a gift.
I’m sure I was the only single person at the Church Hill Inn on New Year’s Eve.
Too bad. Wikipedia told me that for every 100 Sister Bay females ae 18 and over there were 69 males.
The grumpy innkeeper rolled out a very nice spread with complimentary snacks and drinks between 4 and 6 p.m. I was writing in my room but snuck out for a ham sandwich and celery sticks.
About a dozen people had gathered in the sitting area outside of “Victorian Times.” The men had white beards and the women wore nice dresses and fancy pearls. They were drinking red wine and eating cheese and crackers near a fireplace. The men would have been smoking pipes had it been permitted. I returned to my room and turned up the latest CD by Bahamas.
And that is how my year went down……….
………..Winston Churchill. Victorian Times. Whiskey Ditch.
It sounds like a trifecta at Arlington Park—or Churchill Downs.
It wasn’t the worst of years, and it never is as long as you have your health. But December was a particularly ornery month with disconnects, layoffs of friends and the noise at my Mom’s 90th birthday party at Hugo’s Frog Bar in Naperville (just kidding sort of Mom.). So it was okay that I would find myself alone around 1 a.m. Jan. 1 trudging up a hill to a church in a town of 880 people. I had wanted to get away, be alone and give myself time to think.
I looked up Churchill stuff at the bed and breakfast. There are many good quotes about booze and war, but my favorite is:
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
That only happens by moving forward.
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December 19, 2011—
The writing was on the wall.
I would no longer be sending Christmas cards after 2011.
For the past several years I’ve purchased a couple of boxes of “holiday” cards from Chicago Lights at Fourth Presbyterian Church in downtown Chicago. It is a non-profit organization that opens doors to individuals and families who face challenges of aging, poverty and access to education and health care.
The cards were cute, witty and always warm.
They were designed and illustrated by children from Chicago.
Chicago Lights provides one on one tutoring sessions with adult volunteers and scholarship opportunities for more than 400 children living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in Chicago.
Last week I went to the church offices to pick up my cards. I was told this would be the final year of the program. Although the Ford Motor Company had underwritten a portion of production costs, the project lost thousands of dollars in the last couple of years. I promised I would not say how much money that was.
I was also told some people complained about the political incorrectness of the kid’s innocent sentiments; wide eyes without eyeliner.
A few years ago there was a great card with black and white angels together in front of a Christmas tree. The card was illustrated by 5th grader Yaihaida Westbooks and said “Merry Christmas.” This year Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel changed the name of the downtown “Christmas Tree” to “Holiday Tree.”
Who can forget that great Brenda Lee song, “Rockin’ Around The Holiday Tree”?
Also, people just don’t send cards anymore.
E-mail, Facebook and tumblr do the trick.
The kids were heartbroken that the program has ended, according to my salesperson.
I loved these cards and I have saved some of my favorites. I will still send out the current box and some remainders from years past. My friend Angelo joked how I could act like an old guy and enclose a dollar bill in each card.
Just the day before I trekked over to the church I gave my ex-girl friend a Chicago Lights card about giving. We were heading out for breakfast and coffee at the Sunrise Cafe, my neighborhood diner that has the name of an assisted living cafeteria.
She smiled and fumbled around her purse and I thought maybe she had a card too, or maybe a Red Hershey kiss for me!
She showed me her make up she just purchased.
The writing was on the wall.
If there is one thing that overshadows the expectations of the holidays, it is the wonderful giving of the season. And maybe you don’t need a card to do that.
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Dec. 11, 2011—-
The most memorable place I’ve had sex is atop Mount Tamalpais, overlooking the East Bay in Marin County, Calif.
Like all magical moments, it wasn’t supposed to happen.
The weathered coastal mountain peaks at 2,500 feet. We drove about three-quarters of the way up Mount Tam and parked at a scenic turnaround. We hiked the rest of the way.
We sat down to rest on a grassy slope. She rolled out a blue and white blanket for a picnic. The blanket matched the azure skies, a contrast to the fog we saw over San Francisco. We talked about poetry, free birds and the songs of Greg Brown. We tried to scare each other with rumors about the late 1970s “Trailside Killer” who murdered hikers at the mountain. We were alone.
It is difficult to climb a mountain alone.
The next thing we knew I was on top of her with beads of sweat rolling down the back of my neck. Strands of her brown hair swept across her face like waves on a shore. Her blue eyes were everywhere.
Sometimes they still are.
We were in a state park and someone could have been watching. Maybe we could have been arrested and learned more about the “Trailside Killer.” Who cared? Outside views are perceptions. This was our great reality.
During my life, I’ve motioned for hanky panking in an airplane, against the refrigerator door and on kitchen tables. I like my friend Mark’s stories about having sex during a rain delay in the upper deck of Old Comiskey Park, no doubt during the era when the White Sox wore red uniforms and Wilbur Wood was tossing knuckleballs.
But our San Francisco moments were sparked by metaphors: Alcatraz, where confinement seemed so small from the top of a mountain; the freedom of coast oaks, with treetops swaying back and forth like a pendulum in the gentle summer breeze.
I remember how warm it was on the mountain top and how cool it was down below. (We did afterglow record shopping at Mill Valley Music).
My book editor recently told me about a study where readers looked at a series of contrasting pictures. They enjoyed distant and romantic landscape photographs, but the drama of someone falling down a cliff or jumping out of a building is what resonated with the readers.
Well, that’s a no-brainer, I first thought.
But those are fleeting moments in time.. And every deep moment has a resolution.
I’m a flatlander from Illinois. Never left my home town. Never took the chance.
On that day I did and maybe that’s why I remember it the most.
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Nov. 29, 2011—
November in Chicago brings me down, down, down.
Lower than Herman Cain’s pants.
Its been that way since I was a teenager. I remember getting up at seven on a mid-November Saturday morning and walking in a dark drizzle to take SAT tests at Naperville Central High School to gain entrance in a college I would never attend. I was too sleepy and confused to take a test. I felt like I was going fishing.
I’ve since tried to travel to sunnier climates in November. Several years ago I salvaged a tricked out tiki bar and had it restored with ambiant red lights and bright bamboo to cheer me up on dark November days.
My turntable always comes into play with the tiki bar by spinning companion calypso albums, Hawaiian stuff and early Jimmy Buffett. The other day I reached for the pop, surf and twist of “Chicas! (Spanish Female Singers 1962-74).” The 30-year-old BSR turntable did not turn. I figured the belt was worn out.
I packed up the turntable and took it to my merry friends Ursula and Mitch Lewczuk who own The 20th Century TV & Stereo Center in the north side Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago. I’ve been a customer since way back in the 20th Century and I love the fact they never bothered to change the name of their store.
Ursula and Mitch are feisty Polish immigrants who opened 20th Century in 1970. They don’t smile much. The store is an American Pickers delight of turntables, beta tapes, reel-to-reel machines and between 10,000 and 15,000 needles. Try to ask them about their 15,000 television and audio tubes in the basement. Ursula is in charge of the needle and cartridge department. She has a master’s degree in electronics from the Technical University of Warsaw in Poland, and her degree from the Triton College Consumer Electronics Program hangs by the front door.
Ursula wasn’t on the scene yet last Saturday morning when I walked in with my broken turntable. This may have accounted for Mitch’s grumpy attitude—-but then again, maybe it was the dark skies and steady rain of a mid-November day in Chicago. Mitch took a look at my turntable and decided it would take him at least five hours to fix it. He said there was a sensitive system of parts that needed to be removed, cleaned and made to feel new again.
It wasn’t worth the time.
Mitch also complained about the city’s signage laws, parking meters and a relative of Channel 11’s Joel Weisman who lugged in a couple of huge beige speakers. Mitch didn’t like the fact he had to take care of two customers at one time. In 20th Century DJ talk that would be a “Twin Spin.” Nevertheless I walked out with a new modestly priced audio-technical turntable.
I put the turntable in my car and walked around upscale Ravenswood. This is where our feisty Mayor Rahmbo resides and where the security happy mayor has a city camera fixated on his house, according to a weekend report in the New York Times.
Ironically, the 20th Century Stereo Center is only a couple doors down from a typewriter store that recently went out of business. A block west of the vacant store things turn new again. There is a fine elemenatry public school (our Mayor sends his kids to private schools) where neighborhood kids play basketball, read stories with happy endings and write poetry. People work long hours at this school.
It is worth the time.
Across the street from the school there is a corner bakery where I picked up a three-tiered chocolate birthday cake for my 9-year-old nephew, my 90-year-old Mom and my 91-year old father. Now that’s a mouthful. But somehow, for a moment in the brightly lit bakery things seemed new again.
I had not been to Ravenswood in a while. I thought of old friends. The walleye pike at Glenn’s Diner. I remembered when cartoonist Heather McAdams and her husband Chris Ligon ran a thrift store-used record place a few blocks west of Glenn’s down Montrose Avene. Chris always dismissed framed memories and retro movements.
“When we find stuff, it’s absolutely contemporary to us because it’s new and we’re excited about it,” he once told me. “To me, retro means trying to revive something from the past. I don’t think in those terms. When I go out junk shopping and find records, for that brief second it’s a brand new thing in front of me.”
I thought of all this as I waited for the birthday cake. A midde aged black man smiled at me. Maybe he recognized me from that Channel 11 television show on old Baby Boomers that ran over Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe he smiles at birthday cakes. Maybe not.
I strolled back to my car juggling the cake and a large cup of coffee. I drove to Naperville where my parents still live in the house where I couldn’t get out of bed to take my SAT tests. My Dad told his grandson about how refrigeration had the greatest impact on his life and recalled the ice man making home deliveries. My nephew listened with wide eyes and careful attention. Good things are always worth the time.
And new light emerges from those passages.
