He was not a happy camper after that one.

You should write this whole thing up as a narrative complete with dialogue & detail.

That would make interesting reading. ; )

You should write this whole thing up as a narrative complete with dialogue & detail.

When we lived in Skokie, Illinois, my Dad was a Lithographer across the street and Rand McNally. He would come home with four pork chops. The three of us kids would get one and he would get one. My Mom had to eat spaghetti. Then she started to gain weight. Too much carbs.

Rand McNally decided to close the plant and move it to Kentucky. But Mom did not want to move there. So we moved back to Chicago.

In winter the boiler that made steam for heat shut down at night and did not start again until the maintenance man stoked it up the next morning. I can recall standing in front of the oven with the door opened to catch some heat to warm up in the morning. The realtor said my Mom left the place spotless when we moved out and back to her family home.

We lived in the 47th ward then and John Hoellen was the lone Republican in the Chicago City Council. He always said my Grandpa was "the good Democrat among us".

BTW, when Harold Washington was elected the first black Mayor of Chicago, Vito Marzullo got up in the City Council and said, "We don't need no Washington."

In other words things would work the same way they always had, with or without Washington.

When I was in Grade School I played the organ at the Chapel on Sunday for two masses. I got paid $5 for each mass. I also got to go into the counting room where the collection money was tallied up. I was able to look for those silver quarters which were still in circulation and pick them out and replace them with paper money.

One time they needed someone to play for a church wedding. It paid $50 and I got to play the pipe organ. Not too shabby for a grade school kid, huh? ;)

Not too shabby for a grade school kid, huh?

No, not at all.

I enjoy your slice of life stuff.

I made my first buck helping dismantle a big pipe organ. We hauled out hundreds of metal and wooden pipes. My uncle kept them for years intending to resurrect them in an organ of his own, which he never got around to. I still have some bits and pieces.

He ended up buying a huge electronic rig with many dozens of stops. Such is life.

He ended up buying a huge electronic rig with many dozens of stops

I played the electronic organ in the Chapel.

One time I turned it off and did not have enough time to warm it up before the second mass started. So the man who did the singing to lead parishoners had to go it alone.

I learned real quick on that one. We had one girl who played the guitar at one of the masses. Her name was Nancy Fishick. I heard she came down with an autoimmune disease several years after. No idea what ever happened to her.

But I knew a girl who was bartender at Willow on Wagner in Northfield. She came down with Lupus. She told me Phil Donahue, who was host of a TV talk show on WLS in Chicago, would come in and look around waiting for someone to recognize him.

Anyway she was pregnant with triplets and none of them made it. That was a sad time for her. :-/