Gumby Jesus blesses the van, 2016 Eureka Springs, Ark. (Jon Sall photo)
You cannot outrun the road.
It took a while for me to get there. Route 66, Highway 61, Mississippi River Road, Pacific Coast Highway, Lincoln Highway. Nice memories and lots of pictures. Hair blowing in the wind on the way to Key West. Now I don’t have much hair. The high beams are closer than you think.
This marks the 10th anniversary since my blue Ford Transit Van rolled out of the Kansas City Assembly plant into my merry fate. This was the same factory that produced the van for “American Pickers.” In 2014 Ford invested $1.1 billion into [...]
Duke Slater (1898-1966)
Once you learn that a good life comes from a series of small gains you will move on to bigger things. This is the ethos of football legend Duke Slater. Frederick “Duke” Slater was the first Black lineman in the National Football League. He played for the Chicago Cardinals between 1926 and 1931 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.
After his football career, Slater became an attorney on the South Side of Chicago and was the first Black judge to serve on the Cook County Superior Court. He earned his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1928 and practiced law while [...]
In these times it is important to know the strength of one voice: a clarion of dignity, grace, and conviction. When delivered on note it becomes a sound that can move others forward.
That was the sound of Chicago musician Gene Barge.
Barge died Sunday of natural causes at his home in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. He was 98 years old.
He achieved national fame in 1961 with the Gary U.S. Bonds hit “Quarter to Three,” on which he produced and played saxophone. Bonds sang how “I danced ‘til a quarter to three, with the help last night of Daddy G.” That was Barge’s nickname.
Barge was arranger, producer, and sax player [...]
Michael Brewer (L) and Tom Shipley (Dirty Linen cartoon 2005)
Perhaps it would be a reach to call the 1971 folk-rock ballad “One Toke Over the Line” a “one-hit” wonder, but singer-songwriters Brewer & Shipley were mellow about that. During the early 1970s, Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley were based out of Rolla, Mo., a town on a beautiful winding stretch of Route 66 about 100 miles west of St. Louis.
Michael Brewer died on Dec. 17 at his home outside of Branson. Mo. He was 80 years old. He was born in Oklahoma City, OK. No cause of death has been announced.
Brewer & Shipley did have other [...]
