LOS ANGELES, Ca.—Merle Haggard was a friend of mine. And if you liked America’s back roads, honky-tonks and remembered to open car doors for women, he was a friend of yours too.
Haggard died April 6 on his 79th birthday.
He died at his home in Northern California,. which was poetic. Haggard is as essential to the California landscape as John Steinbeck or Cesar Chavez. No person was too small for this musical giant, whose reach went beyond country into jazz, swing, blues and pop.
Merle was an empathetic songwriter, a bandleader, a romantic and a huge slice of American history. He was a loyal friend of the downtrodden. This one hurts.
Merle, his long [...]
Jim and Pete’s restaurant, 7806 West North Ave. in Elmwood Park opened in 1941 serving hand rolled, thin crust pizza on the gritty west side of Chicago. The restaurant has since expanded to feature risotto of the day, steak vesuvio and baked clams drizzled with the house wine sauce.
Jim and Pete’s never closed, even to bust a union, like Berghoff’s did in Chicago.
Italian Village, 71 W. Monroe in Chicago (opened 1927) has a legitimate streak under its third generation.
Current Jim and Pete’s owners are Michael Bucchianeri and Jim Sorce, Jr. which gets a first time visitor to wondering why the [...]
Vicki Shepherd camper van artwork
WARSAW, Ind.—The meaningful solitude of driving reaches a higher level by taking a trip in a camper van. I don’t mean an RV where you bring along friends and family, or even hitching up with an Airstream trailer. I mean a small camper van: where you are alone as a question mark, one bed, a workspace, a fridge and Greg Brown music about backroads and broken hearts.
And that’s where I’m going.
While driving around America for the past 30 years I’ve learned how the real American pastime feeds the imagination. Reflections in the [...]
Photos, Nov. 2015 by Dave Hoekstra unless noted.
RAPA NUI, CHILE–Some have fallen and some stand tall, which is the story of mankind.
Any pilgrimage to Easter Island, a.k.a. Rapa Nui, must begin at the Rano Raraku quarry where almost all the majestic moai (carvings) were made. Visitors can see nearly 400 of the island’s 887 moais in various stages of artistic endeavor on a healthy hike through Rano Raraku.
Some moai look out towards the ocean, others are horizontal on the ground. I saw one moai tucked in the crevice of a volcanic cliff. Scattered across the [...]
RAF Chicago Executive Director Joanie Bayhack delivering smiles. (Courtesy of RAF)
Life isn’t so daunting if you break it down into a series of small gestures.
The non-profit Random Act of Flowers recycles flowers from weddings, parties, funerals and grocery stores. Volunteers then deliver floral bouquets to Chicago area hospitals and long term health care facilities.
Knoxville, Tn.-based Random Acts of Flowers (RAF) has only been in the Chicago area for a little more than a year. From January to December of 2015, RAF delivered bouquets to 16,142 people in the Chicago [...]
Something was lost here.
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Two herons on a pier
Redemption at every sunset
The winter circus comes through town
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Questions splatter on the windshield
The old mystic answers in her home on Hwy. 1
Wednesday Karaoke at the Caribbean Club
A prune-faced lady leans over to sing “Cabaret”
Songs are tickets to another time, old chum
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“We had it all, like Bogie & Bacall”—Bertie Higgins
Bare feet dance on blades of [...]
Printer’s Alley, 1960s (Courtesy of Skull’s)
NASHVILLE, Tn.–The joke about Nashville’s rapid growth is how the city skyline consists of tower cranes.
Traffic is a major issue. Former Mayor Karl Dean was so concerned about the city’s outdated public transportation system he tried to take buses to work–but locals stopped to pick him up in their cars.
Things in the rear view mirror are larger than they appear.
“The preservation of historic landmarks in Nashville in crisis mode,” said Robbie Jones, past president and board [...]
Just when Chicago needed him the most, Otis Clay traveled to a higher ground.
Over the past 50 years Mr. Clay became the city’s greatest soul singer, one of the last of America’s pure soul singers and a cultural ambassador. Mr. Clay died of a heart attack Friday night. He was 73 years old.
What is soul?
Soul is eternal love, soul is brotherhood, soul is empathy.
Take notes.
Mr. Clay must be on a mission to get things straight in the city he called home since 1956.
Of course Bob Seger had a smash hit with Mr. Clay’s 1972 regional hit [...]
Lock myself out, the first time in 20 years
Am I becoming my parents, losing my memory
Bit by bit like the drip from an unforgettable icicle
Outside of the house I grew up in.
I wait for the locksmith on the back steps.
A cardinal stops on along the driveway
I see my Mom who grew up near St. Louis
Until the man arrives with his box of magical tools
The man says it will not take long and begins to chip away
The [...]
The Matchbox: Room with a view
These are the darkest days of the year in Chicago.
And every winter I think of the abundant outdoor flower stands in rainy Seattle, San Francisco and New York City that illuminate the day and your thoughts.
The older I get, the more I appreciate flowers. For the last couple years of her life I would bring my Mom a small bouquet of fresh flowers for my weekly Sunday visit.
That made my Dad happy. As a middle-aged man he planted dozens of roses in our backyard.
Since my parents passed away this spring [...]
SANTIAGO, Chile—Lavender petals of the jacaranda tree fall on an empty dinner plate in a bistro patio. Two petals float together like feathers in a dream. They land together where you are alone.
Symbolism is pondered for a few minutes but you cannot linger here. There are places to go. On a 2012 visit to Santiago, there was a climb up to the Cerro San Cristobal adorned by the snow-white statue of the Virgen de la Immaculada Concepcion. This time you return to reflect on those you have lost while offering gratitude for all that they gave.
You walk towards the Lastarria neighborhood and head past the rushing Rio Mapocho river and Parque [...]
The world keeps spinning.
And since the mid-1960s a group of socially conscious Chicagoans have met for dinner at the city’s soul food restaurants to talk about politics, food and moving forward against strong winds. Many are gone now: the restaurants and the members.
The survivors call the group “The Round Table.”
The unofficial leader of the group is Gene Barge, who was a spry 87 years old in November, 2013 when I was early into research on my book “The People’s Place.” Barge has a remarkable pedigree. He was arranger, producer and sax player at Chess Records, 2120 [...]
He wrote New Orleans R&B classics such as Ernie K. Doe’s “Mother-in-Law,” LeeDorsey’s “Working in a Coal Mine” and “Southern [...]
Wisconsin Wiffle Ball Field (Photo courtesy of Steve Schmitt)
MAZOMANIE, WIS.—Every kid who grew up playing Wiffle Ball understands how the game shapes your imagination. You can create a field anywhere. For me and my brother it was a Cul-de-sac in suburban Chicago. For others the game was played under the blue heavens of a soybean farm.
You can play the game by yourself. The plastic ball is light and can easily be tossed in the air with one hand while swinging a plastic bat with the other hand. Flying solo it is difficult to swing and miss ( “a whiff”), which is how the [...]
In the early afternoons of late autumn days, the shadow of a fading sun creates a path from the cemetery driveway to the plot where my parents are buried. A little less than six weeks separated the deaths of my parents this spring.
My Dad died first and in the time my Mom had left I would take her to the cemetery.
Every chance she got.
I pushed her wheelchair through tall grass to the gravesite where seeds were waiting to sprout. Mom never got to see the headstone she was so curious about, but she did fire off a zinger to the headstone salesperson as we picked out the marble bookmark.
NEW ORLEANS—This is a Big Easy encounter that does not involve alcohol.
Well, I did have one Swizzle with my tofu banh mi at Latitude 29, a new tiki bar and restaurant tucked away near the Mississippi River. (The superb venue is named as a nod to New Orleans latitude on the map and has the same designer as Taboo Cove in Las Vegas and Le Tiki Lounge in Paris.)
After dinner I walked back to the Olivier House, my French Quarter stomping ground. A woman stood in the middle of Bourbon Street trying to hustle customers into an establishment. She wore a baseball cap that said “I Love Haters!” She had it tilted on her head like Cubs relievers [...]
NASHVILLE, Tn—The meat and three experience is as unique to Nashville, Tn. as the wigs on Dolly Parton. Despite upscale growth, the metropoliatan area embraces at least a half dozen traditional meat and threes, ranging from Arnold’s Country Kitchen to Wendell Smith’s (no relation to the late African American baseball journalist.)
Meat and threes are exactly that: meat (baked ham, baked or fried chicken, fried pork chop) with a choice of three vegetables such as cole slaw, fresh turnip greens, fried corn, squash, candied yams, snap peas, pinto beans, okra and more.
The meat and three is the country cousin of the blue plate special, where compartments on a china [...]
All photos by Paul Natkin unless otherwise noted.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—The walls of the main dining room at Niki’s West feature assorted anchors and life preservers. A white silhouette carving depicts a fisherman casting a wide net.
The nautical decor does an enchanting job of transporting customers to a far away place.
But where is this place?
Niki’s West was opened in 1957 by Greek immigrant Gus P. Hontzas. It is in an industrial park across the street from the Birmingham Farmer’s Market, which accounts for Niki’s spot-on-fresh vegetables.
MINNEAPOLIS—The legion of devotees to Nye’s Polonaise restaurant and piano bar form a neon ribbon that runs from Hollywood to Manhattan.
Albin “Al” Nye opened his Polish-American restaurant in 1964 at 112 E. Hennepin, just west of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Nye’s charms have been how it remained a period piece in a forthright Minnesota manner. Nye’s is Garrison Keillor with a lampshade on his head.
Earlier this year Nye’s announced it was closing in the autumn. The date keeps getting pushed back and now what Esquire magazine once called “The Best Bar in America” is slated to remain open until January, [...]
Davenport, Iowa, June 29, 2015 (Dave Hoekstra photos)
DAVENPORT, Ia.—Sometimes you reset the odometer.
I buried my parents in April and late May and in early June my 2005 Pontiac Sunfire stopped running at the toll booth on a trip from Naperville to Chicago, a journey I had been making weekly over the last 18 months. Finis. The car was as loyal as an old mare and left only after it had done its job. I’ve spent 30 years writing road stories of small towns and gentle intentions and never had to call a tow truck.
I needed a lift.
When it came time to drive to the Quad Cities for my Midwest [...]
