Spinning the Yarn

I first heard of the Cimrman story when my daughter sent me something she had found on the internet about the TV contest that he was so unjustly deprived of winning.  I found some more stuff myself, mostly disjointed anecdotes with little cohesive continuity.  Even by then, the story had evolved beyond the material provided by the original authors, so I figured that I could put my own creative spin on it without hurting anybody's feelings.  I first presented it at an annual storytelling event that was held in Petoskey for some 15 years, and it was big hit.

I am not conversant in the Czech language, but I became familiar with its rules of pronunciation when I learned a few Czech folk songs to sing for my family.  I used to be kind of an amateur singer-songwriter, but I haven't done anything with it for years.

The article about Czechs in Chicago was interesting.  We lived on the South Side, so the only Czech neighborhood with which I am familiar was the one the article calls "Czech California", although I never heard it called that back in the day.  We lived a few miles south of there on 51st Street, but my father was a partner in Lawndale Meat Products on 27th Street.  I looked it up on Google Earth one day, and the building still stands, but somebody has converted to a martial arts center.

Here's some recent news of the Caravan:

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBQOUUP?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare