Merry Christmas!

There are still dozens of people in the United States not currently on my Christmas card list, so for you...

Merry Christmas!

(Yeah, it's like that around here.)

The Harrigans

(Note: picture will expand to full size when clicked.)

Pat

Waiting for Kenny

"You call this a snowstorm? Why, when I was a kid..."

We lived in Ashland, Ohio for a couple of years in the late '70's. Ashland is about halfway between Cleveland and Columbus (just off of I-71), so winter storms from the west sometimes steer under Lake Erie and hit hard. That certainly happened in January of 1978, when we got a blizzard they still talk about there.

On winter mornings we boys would get rousted out of bed early by my dad to shovel the driveway. This storm was different: we'd gotten close to 2 feet of snow - schlunk! - and the wind was blowing so hard that there was no way we could keep the driveway clear. After a while we gave up and went back inside, where my dad uncharacteristically accepted our excuse for not finishing a job. (I suppose, too, that it didn't seem useful to him to just drive to the end of the driveway, since the road was impassable.) School was canceled, of course.

One truck driver pulled over to the side of a road in nearby Mansfield during the storm, and his truck got drifted over. No one knew he was even there, so he was stuck in his cab for six days, but was eventually rescued -- cold and hungry, but otherwise OK:

There were cars stranded all up and down the interstate, and the state troopers had been corralling drivers to any rest area they could. The truck stop on the outskirts of Ashland -- the "Stop 250" -- had over 200 people in it. The local radio station was calling for people in town to take some of these stranded travelers into their homes for a day or two. We volunteered, since we were good citizens, and the truck stop manager was a neighbor of ours (Mr. Thurkettle. Really.)

Back then few people had 4-wheel drive, so the local "4x4" club was called into action. They ferried people from the truck stop to various homes around town in their Jeeps, and delivered groceries where needed. I'm sure they were thrilled to be put to work, their hobby suddenly becoming an important asset.

Our houseguests were a woman, her sister, and her young daughter. It turned out that they were traveling downstate to pick up the woman's husband, Kenny, who was being released from prison. My mom took that bit of news in stride, at least outwardly, but it was a secret thrill to us kids. Prison! Ooooh!

The visitors were as nice as could be, of course. We all spent a lot of time playing cards or board games; the only task for us boys was to keep a path shoveled to the end of the driveway, which we had to repeat (thanks to the wind) every couple of hours. I don't remember any of our guests' life stories, if they even shared them; they were pretty frazzled by the whole experience, and just looking forward to the reunion and the trip home.

After a day it worked out that Kenny had made arrangements to have a friend pick him up, and they were going to come to Ashland to get the family when the roads cleared. So we spent Day 3 holed up again, keeping the path shoveled to the street, waiting for Kenny.

By Day 4 the wind had died down, so we got to explore outside a little. The snowdrifts were freakishly large -- swooping sculptures at the corners of houses, from the ground to the roofline. With the other neighborhood kids we made the most awesome snow forts.

Kenny came that day. It was a pretty short visit; they wanted to move along back home, so our guests gathered their stuff and headed out. The only thing I remember about him was his tearful gratitude for taking care of his family.

At the time I didn't really identify with him, as he was a bit player in our four-day drama. (Prison! Ooooh!) But now I try to imagine what Kenny was feeling: stuck in prison after his release, probably watching the news on a crappy little prison black-and-white TV, seeing the storm's death toll mounting (it eventually hit 51). His wife and little girl were out on the road somewhere, and he was powerless to do anything. I'm guessing he said a prayer or two, or ten, and maybe made a bargain with The Big Guy during the ordeal.

His family wound up safe and sound, so I'd like to think he kept up his end of any bargain. Who knows? We shoveled the driveway, the roads got plowed, and after another day or two we got back to school.

Pat

Duke Tumatoe is Not a Real Doctor

Casinos thrive on illusion -- some more than others. But a good bar band is an authentic thing.

I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times, and enjoyed it each time. My favorite thing is the artifice -- the fake gondolier taking you down a fake canal to the fake St. Mark’s Square in the Venetian. Or the fake steam (dry ice) coming from the fake street grates in the fake Greenwich Village in the New York, New York resort/casino. You get a slice of pizza, chuckle and say, “How about that!”

I’m not much of a gambler, as I just can’t get past the fact that every game is designed to take your money away. But when in Vegas I play blackjack; if you play “basic strategy”, hitting, splitting, and doubling down when you’re supposed to, it has the least bad odds of any game -- a house "edge" of about 0.5%. You can usually sit at the table for a good long time before those relentless statistics catch up to you. And if you’re sitting with friends, laughing and having fun, it’s money well spent.

I’ve read a couple of blackjack books, and you can actually turn the odds in blackjack slightly in your favor through card counting. It doesn’t require prodigious memory (like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man), just concentration, but that makes it like a second job. No thanks.

The first time I saw Dr. Duke Tumatoe’s band was about 20 years ago, when they played at Biddy Mulligan’s in Rogers Park, just a block south of the Evanston/Chicago border. (It’s been shuttered for at least 10 years now, sadly.) My old roommate Mike was a big fan of live music, and they’d played his college town (Dayton) regularly, so he knew what fun they were. Off we went.

They were a very good bar band -- lots of upbeat songs and audience participation, and decent musicianship, as far as I could tell. Duke himself was an old man, bald, with a pot belly and a bushy white beard. He looked like Santa Claus, if Santa played a mean electric guitar, sang old and new rockin’ blues songs, and was a dirty old man. (The album he released in 2001 was titled "It's Christmas (Let's Have Sex)", which I don't think Bing Crosby ever recorded.)

The highlight of the show was when Duke switched over to his wireless electric guitar and strolled through the audience during one song. He then strolled right out the front door and into the middle of Sheridan Road, where he stood and whaled away for a minute or two, with cars passing by on either side, and everyone inside pressed against the windows watching and cheering. Crazy!

We did Thanksgiving in Michigan again this year, and had our usual wonderful time. There's a casino/resort 20 minutes away in Manistee (the Little River Casino), which I'd never cared to visit before. But I found out beforehand that the band playing at the bar that weekend was -- you guessed it -- Dr. Duke Tumatoe and his Power Trio. So we all went on Friday night, leaving the kids behind with Grandma.

When we got there we had a half-hour before the show started, so we split up to explore and gamble a little, according to our own preferences. I went looking for the blackjack tables, naturally. They were surprisingly crowded, and I didn't see any table I felt like joining alone, so I just watched.

The rules of casino advertising dictate that everyone is young, thin, beautiful, happy, and having a ball. I'm not a snob, but my observation of the Little River Casino: eh, not so much. A more typical customer is older, plain, heavy-set, and morose, smoking and joylessly pumping coins into a slot machine. (OK, maybe I am a snob.)

Duke's show started at 9pm, and was as fun as I expected. The solid blues songs, the comedy, the audience call-and-response -- it got more crowded as the night went on, as he seemed to pull people in from the casino floor. Duke himself didn't look any older, which is one virtue, I suppose, of looking like Santa Claus when you're in your forties. By his second set he had a fair number of people on the dance floor, off and on. (At one point, though, the lone dancer was a scraggly biker dude flapping wildly by himself in the middle of the dance floor, a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Go figure.)

We chatted a little with the keyboard player between sets. The band is based out of Indianapolis and plays over 200 gigs a year, almost all driving distance. They tour from Wednesday through Sunday, spend a couple of days at home, and then head back out -- almost all year round. It's a living, I suppose, and they seem to have fun doing it. They'll actually be back in Chicago on December 26th, playing at Kingston Mines in Lincoln Park.

So go see Duke Tumatoe and Co. if you get the chance, if live music's your thing -- I don't think you'll be disappointed. And remember to always split your aces and eights, and double down on 11, unless the dealer's showing an ace.

Pat