Olden days

 Let me open this post again with a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzPVqT5vW4M

Most likely I have shown this video before but the dawgs are almost as old as I am and perhaps have forgotten. It happened in 2014 which was not that long ago but I like to think that it captures the attitude of the pre Disneyfication of Wrigleyville.

I returned to Chicago in the late eighties and while the neighborhood had distinctly gentrified, the bars surrounding were still somewhat seedy.  There used to be a Byron's in that odd triangular area just outside the ballyard and just as spring training was closing and spring herself, though still a shy, green-gowned, maiden, was closing in on the windy city.  We'd settle into a booth with our dogs and then we'd pull out our Cubs schedules and figure out what games we would be attending that summer.

Those Cub schedules, they were ubiquitous in those days.  Usually at the liquor store.  You'd be paying for your twelve pack of Falstaff, and there would be this little box of Cub schedules printed on some glossy, but not thick, paper with three folds that, tucked into your wallet and pulled out for consultation often, they would last oh, as long as the Cubs were still in mathematical contention which was time enough.

Now they are an app on your phone.  I would like to think that rather than because he had taken off his head, what had happened was somebody asked when the Cubs would be playing the Phillies again and while Billy Cub was fumbling in his wallet for his schedule that other guy had pulled out his phone and was thumbing through the screens and that's why he clocked him.

Not a jury in my perfect world would have convicted him.

I like those cadence things, a little bit of poetry to them and a nice cynical ring, I guess a way for the marchers to hang onto a little bit of dignity while being marched all over god knows where.

In a month I will have lived here thirty years, not too far from half of it.  The least interesting part of my life but the most comfortable.

Will be leaving for DC on Monday, two weeks later I will be headed to Newark Ohio to see a newly restored Sullivan bank, and two weeks after that I will be getting my other eye fixed.

Probably won't be writing much during those adventures, but I am sure one of the dawgs will step in to pick up my slack.