“Welcome To Woodman’s. How Can I Deceive You Today?”

I am a savvy guy. Nigerian princes gave up asking me for money years ago. The Mexican drug cartels never got beyond a first phone call with their phony attempt to buy my timeshare in Cabo. Are you a Facebook “Friend” contacting me for a favor or a donation? I’ll make you confirm your identity before I lend a helping hand or send you my credit card number. In short, Mama didn’t raise no fool.

But Woodman’s Market…this time, you got me. I was making a quick stop at the Buffalo Grove outlet. I didn’t bother with a cart, I was just planning on picking up one 12-pack of Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi, my latest go-to soda pop. In the beverage section, the face of the Pepsi shelf was leafed with bright blue store coupons “Save $2.00,” the coupons blared. “Buy Two Pepsi Brand 12 Pks. Woodman’s Saves You Money!”

I like paper coupons. I find them easier to use than the digital variety. I stripped one of the blue rectangles off the shelf and maneuvered a 12-pack of CFDP to a spot under each arm. Now wishing I had taken a shopping cart, I staggered to the nearest self-serve check-out aisle.

I am a whizz at self-checkout (remember, I was a star cashier at the Rogers Park “Jewels” in 1976.) I scanned the bar codes on my purchases and sent them flying down to the bagging station. I then scanned the blue coupon, expecting a $2.00 discount to show up on the check-out screen along with the standard instruction to push the coupon through the slot below the register.

To my surprise, the notice that showed up was quite different. “Coupon Not Accepted. Required Items Not Purchased.” I tried to scan the coupon again. Same message. I stared back and forth from the coupon to my two 12-packs. Certainly, Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi should qualify as a Pepsi product! What was the hangup?

The people behind me were impatient so I waved over the store employee monitoring the frequently persnickety self-checkout aisles. He looked at the coupon, then at my 12-packs. He entered his secret store code into the register and tried another scan. The screen returned the same message. The kid mumbled that he would contact a manager and shuffled off.

I examined the coupon one more time. I finally saw what had previously escaped the eyes of the Woodman’s employee and me. A tiny picture, accompanied by the words “On Gaorade” in size 2 font, was hidden on the coupon. I didn’t want a sugary sports drink, so despite buying the required 24 cans of Pepsi product, I wouldn’t be getting a $2 savings. Me, the ever-alert, always vigilant, won’t get fooled dude, had been conned.

Barb and I shop at Woodman’s weekly and have done so for years. I am a rare soul who enjoys buying groceries there. They have a ginormous variety of products and offer reasonable prices without forcing you to purchase in bulk. But this $2 gimmick, minuscule as the dollar amount may be, ticked me off. A cheap trick. I won’t avoid the store in the future, but now when I shop there I will keep my eyes wide open.

What about you? Let me know what little annoying gimmicks you have come across.

And Woodman’s, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice—well, there better not be a second time!

Follow-up: There is a large number of readers from a site I cannot identify. Please email me at chidoc@post.com to tell me where you are reading the blog or how you got referred to it. thanks!

Choo Choo Chronicles: A Whistle-Stop Adventure at Des Plaines’ Iconic Restaurant”

A train horn blows. Whistles toot. A bronco named Champion bucks kids for a quarter while the aroma of french fries wafts from the kitchen. In this suburban equation, Grandkids + Spring Break = The Choo Choo restaurant in Des Plaines.

Barb and I brought our three oldest grandchildren to the landmark diner last week to welcome spring and shake off residual winter gloom. The tiny restaurant is not much bigger than a breadbox. Train trinkets fill every nook of wall and shelf space. The line of eagerly anticipating diners stretches out the front door.

There are half a dozen booths, into which owner Dale Eisenberg can squeeze half a dozen half-size diners, but we snagged prime seats at the U-shaped counter. Soon after we ordered our lunches, a train horn tooted, and an HO gauge model train pulled our burgers, hot dogs, and BLTs to a spot in front of us, where we were served by the always on-the-go staff.

The servers never rested, but none were more on the move than Eisenberg. As we waited in line, he peppered us with questions. “How many are in your party, where you are from, have been to the restaurant before? What’s the weather? And WHAT is in the brown paper lunch sack you have in your hand?”

When asked why he had removed booths that once lined the front of the restaurant Eisenberg told us “The kids couldn’t see the train from those booths I didn’t want families to take the trouble to come here, wait in line, and then be unable to see the main attraction–so I ripped them out. It may make the wait to sit down a little longer, but that’s ok.” As he spoke with us, he passed out quarters to the kids in line, giving them free rides on the Champion the Wonder Horse. We could see he didn’t want any child to be left out.

Eisenberg’s generosity extends beyond the Choo Choo. He is also President and Co-founder of the Veteran Business Project. This non-profit organization assists veterans and their families in pursuing small-business ownership opportunities. If you are interested, you can read more about the organization at www.veteranbusinessproject.org.

Our family didn’t linger at our counter spot. We ate quickly, paid the bill, and moved on. Another family quickly piled into our seats. As we left the diner we could hear the train horn blowing all the way to our car in the parking garage across the street. It was a wonderful sound.

Chicago Venue Triple Play. Where Have YOU Been Lately?

Like so many of us, I have been out of the habit of going to Chicago’s great live venues. First Covid made it impossible, and now the city’s perpetual construction season has made it a chore to visit any of our town’s popular arenas. But an unlikely series of events had me in three different stadiums during three consecutive weekends.

Barb and I have seen live performances by both the Eagles and Steely Dan pre-Covid, so when I heard they were coming to the United Center I thought we should pass on this bit of nostalgia, especially since the bands were lacking (apologies to Bob Stroud) the late-greats Walter Becker and Glenn Frey. But when a neighbor logged into Ticketmaster and grabbed 4 tickets for the Saturday night show, we agreed it would be fun to spend the evening with our friends, along with Donald Fagen, Don Henley, and Joe Walsh et al.

Having dinner at the UC’s in-house restaurant allowed us to beat the traffic crunch and the burden of parking first at a restaurant for dinner and a second time for the show. We were barely in our upper balcony seats when the show began. Steely Dan sounded a little muddy, but the Eagles rocked, or rather countried, with country superstar Vince Gill handling much of the lead vocals. A good night at the United Center.

Ever been to a minor league hockey game? I never had, but last autumn my silent auction bid for Blackhawks tickets at a charity event was a winner and the Blackhawks prize was accompanied by two tickets to the American Hockey League Chicago Wolves. I couldn’t attend the Blackhawks game, but I took my 9-year-old granddaughter to see the Wolves at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont.

On a sound meter, the roar after a Wolves goal was loud, the cheer after the singing of the National Anthem was louder, but nothing broke the sound barrier like the on-ice fireworks. The sound was intense and a bit scary. Only a pretzel and Blue Gatorade gave my granddaughter enough staying power to last until the second intermission.

Did you know Cirque de Soleil was back in town? The French-Canadian troupe played several weekend performances at the Now Arena in Hoffman Estates. Friends invited us to join them at the show, and we decided “Why not?”

The show was called Crystal and was unique for Cirque de Soleil in that the performers were all on ice–except when flying through the air on their trapezes! It was a two-hour spectacular that surpassed my childhood memories of the Ice Follies and the Ice Capades. Great creativity and skillful performers left the crowd cheering for more.

My arena triple play was fun, but now spring is here. Time for outdoor venues, concerts, and festivals. See you at the ballgame!

From Bedford Falls to Beyond: The Journeys of Our Beloved Travel Companion

You remember George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” right? He needed a suitcase big enough to be his flying carpet, big enough for labels from Italy and Samarkand, big enough for 1001 nights. His old boss, the pharmacist Mr. Gower, surprised him with the perfect bag. Sadly, as far as we know, George never got to take that trip.

But Barb and I have had a flying carpet of our own. I can’t recall when we purchased it–it might even have been a wedding gift. But that big old black bag has been our companion as we have traveled the world together over the past 45 years. With the red “Raff” sash, a gift from some long-forgotten travel agent, it has greeted us on baggage carousels around the world.

That bag has taken us all over Europe, first as twenty-somethings on an “if this is Tuesday we must be in Belgium bus tour,” and in later days via more upscale means of travel. It journeyed with us to Israel, to Southeast Asia, and to the wonders of South America and Machu Picchu. We left it at home for our African Safari, only because the travel company required that we use the duffel bags that they provided.

Friday we returned from a three-week journey through New Zealand and Australia. Our bag supported us on seven plane flights and one long train ride as we visited wine countries, and salmon hatcheries, and geothermal springs. It waited for us in our hotel as we witnessed the Southern Cross. the Milky Way, and Orion’s Belt, star-gazing at midnight at Mt Cook, one of the darkest spots on the planet.

Our bag got us to Melbourne where we toured the street art scene, to a luxury resort in Tasmania where I took an unexpected tumble into an ornamental pool, and to the heights of Sydney’s magnificent Harbor Bridge which we ascended like alpine mountain climbers. Only the Cessna Constellation that Barb “co-piloted” from Milford Sound to Queenstown had no room for our rectangular companion.

Regretfully, while Barb and I have recovered from our voyage, our beloved suitcase has not. The zipper pulls are gone, the interior plastic shoulders are crumbling, and the cloth fabric is starting to tear. It is no longer willing and able to be our raft to a million far-off places.

We’ll buy a new piece before our next adventure–a case with a tough, light-weight, shell, one with better wheels, and a smaller turning radius. I’m sure many more travels await us. Japan and the Arctic are still on the bucket list. And if we are lucky, we might even find the way to Bedford Falls and a chance to invite George Bailey to come along.

Reflections in A Three-Way Mirror: An Encounter with Self-Discovery

Reflections of the Way Life Used To Be. The Supremes, 1967.

“Who is that man in the mirror?” I thought to myself. “It couldn’t be me, could it?”

I was standing in the dressing room of the Lululemon store in Northbrook Court. The shopping mall was its usual semi-deserted self, though I suspect a crowd was forming at the Apple Store to play with Vision-Pro, Apple’s new virtual reality gizmo.

Barb had suggested I go to Lululemon to pick out some comfortable slacks for our upcoming long airplane voyage. I asked her to meet me there, knowing she was much more stylish than me and would be a valuable asset. We selected several styles of lightweight gray and black pants. I headed back to the dressing rooms to try them on while Barb continued to search the shelves.

On my way to the back of the store. I was intercepted by one of the store sales associates who directed me to one of the small try-on cubicles. I gave her my name and she wrote it on a whiteboard on the changing room door. I thought this was a nice touch; they don’t do that at the men’s store I shop at. I was particularly impressed that she spelled my name correctly.

Once in the booth, I dropped my jeans to the floor and began trying on the various pairs of slacks. The first was too large, the second too small, but yes, the third did feel just right.

And that is when I discovered that I am no Goldilocks. A full-length three-way mirror took up one corner of the cubicle. I’m sure the main purpose of the mirror is to allow women of all sizes and shapes to see their butts as they try on skin-tight leggings, but I wasn’t looking at my tush in the mirror, no matter how shapely it might be. No, I was staring a little higher…at the back of my head to be precise. And instead of the thinning whitish-gray hair I expected to see, all that greeted my gaze was an unfettered glistening scalp.

I am not naïve or overly vain. I suspected that at age 68 I have a bit of a bald spot. My dad had one at this age too. But what I didn’t expect to see was a clearing the size of a pair of mating tarantulas. I was stunned.

This explains so much. Why the grandkids rub my head for luck. Why the top of my scalp is always cold. Why Tina, my hairstylist for the last 30 years, schedules shorter and shorter appointments for me.

I left Lululemon with a new understanding of myself. I now know it is time to start putting sunblock on my dome as part of my daily routine. My African safari hat is going to get a lot more use. And maybe I’ll start checking out those hair growth ads that keep popping up in my Facebook feed.

But I think I’ll keep away from three-way mirrors for a while. Wouldn’t you?

Looking Back and Wishing All A Happy Holiday Season

A little while back my friend Rick handed me an old holiday card he had received from Barb and me years ago. “We were decluttering the house while we renovated, ” he said. “We came across years worth of your cards, and thought we should save at least one for you.”

I added the card to an orange folder I keep, a folder containing a somewhat incomplete roster of all the cards we have sent through the years. This morning, I added the 2023 edition and spent much of this dreary day looking back on all the old cards, as many past memories came my way. It was my personal TBTOAS (Throw Back Thursday on a Saturday.)

The collection begins with the very first picture holiday card we ever sent. In the photo, Barb, Michael, Laury, and I are enjoying an English Tea at a small shop on Vancouver Island. The kids, aged 7 and 5, daintily raise their cups, little fingers extended, bubbling over with sophistication. It is almost impossible to comprehend that in the photo on this year’s card, a card featuring the entire family at Disneyworld, both our kids are parents, and our grandkids are now 40% of the clan.

Where has the time gone? As I look through the cards, I see it in the many photos we have selected to send to our friends every December. Pictures from birthdays, from weddings, from marvelous vacations, and from everyday life. There are reminders of beloved pets that are no longer with us and a photo that stands as a memorial to our former home in Long Grove, the home in which the kids grew up and from which Barb was so reluctant to leave.

Along with the photo cards are many of the inserts we composed to send along to let everyone know how we were all doing. Those inserts were clearly forerunners to my blogs, with the same tenderness mixed with the same tiny bit of snark. Among my favorites: A letter to a “Dear Kitty” advice columnist in which our new kitten described the past year and asked why we had so much trouble naming her; a newspaper Special Edition announcing the various roles our family would play in the (first) Obama administration; a TV Guide page listing the astonishing TV shows the Raff’s were starring in that season. All fun things to write, and along with the photos wonderful to look back on.

I hope this holiday season is being kind to you all. For all of us, our personal lives and the world around us bring challenges, but to paraphrase the late Danny Thomas, “Give thanks for the good things in your life, and give support to those who need it most”

Happy Holidays from our family to yours.

To subscribe to our blog enter your email in the box below.

The Neanderthal In Me–Why I Am An Early Riser

Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man—The Kinks

I have always been a morning person, an early riser. Before retirement (is that really already a year ago?) I started the day bright and eager at the sound of my 5 a.m. alarm. I’d launch down the tollway well before the morning traffic rush, do a quick walk-through of the lab, and be finished reviewing a tray or three of slides before my associates even got to their microscopes.

Things haven’t changed much in the past year. Although I rarely turn on my alarm clock, I still rise while the house is dark and Barb and our dog Cooper sleep. My only wakeful companion is the kitten. By the time anyone else joins me I have had my morning workout, showered, shaved, fed the cat, downed my gluten-free breakfast, and successfully (hopefully) completed the Wordle, Connections, and Waffle daily puzzles. I am hyped up and ready for morning pickleball or a long dog walk.

I’ve always considered that the morning energy was just “my nature.” I have never given a thought to why I might be that way. And then this morning, I discovered an article in my early morning news feed that explains it all. According to an article in the science section of The Guardian, I am part Neanderthal!

For those of you not up to date on your anthropology, the Neanderthals were a primitive species sort-of related to homo sapiens (the current us.) Probably originating in Africa, the Neanderthal ancestors migrated to Europe and Asia before homo sapiens but interbred with them when the sapiens eventually followed a similar migration pattern. The Neanderthals died out, the homo sapiens flourished.

What does that have to do with me? Scientists at the University of California San Francisco explain that for the Neanderthals to survive the relatively shorter days in Europe, early morning wakefulness was a useful trait and part of their genetic makeup. And today, people with certain Neanderthal genes in their DNA (remember there was interbreeding between the two species) have “an increased propensity to be a morning person.” There was no mention in the article of whether we morning people also inherited shorter arms and legs and big foreheads from our prehistoric forebearers.

So it’s true, I have a bit of the caveman in me. I’d like to write more about it, but I need to start the grill for the barbecue we are having with our neighbors Fred and Barney and their wives Wilma and Betty. It’s a good thing the brontosaurus burgers were on sale at the local Jewel, that Fred can eat a ton.

Subscribe to our blog–enter your email below.

These People Are Why I’m Radio Ga-Ga. Who Did It For You?

I don’t do Spotify. I don’t stream Apple Music. When Alexa asks me if I want to sign up for Amazon music, I ignore her, even when she offers me a 90-day free trial of all my favorite music. I know how 90-day free trials turn into $9.95-a-month subscriptions in a hurry.

I was born and bred to listen to the radio Chicago style. There were WCFL and WLS in my grammar school years. I spent many Fridays walking down Morse Avenue to the local record store to collect their music surveys and see what was at #1. WDAI (pre-disco) and The Loop, along with a taste of WGN, were my companions early in my professional career. Next, The Drive held my attention for a few years but by the late 2000s I had morphed into a WXRT listener, and for the most part, remain that way today.

Behind the radio call letters and station names have been the varied personalities I have listened to. Each epoch had a jock or two who kept me listening, even after the music had stopped. In some cases, they didn’t play much music at all, and that was OK too.

I’ve spoken before about Joel Sebastian, the smooth morning man at WCFL, and later at many other Chicago stations. When Chicago radio, and my own tastes, evolved, I discovered Steve Dahl in his early solo days. I didn’t know what to make of his humor and stunts, but by the time he paired with Garry Meier, I was hooked on his style of very personal radio. I couldn’t have guessed then that his wife Janet’s school board adventures would be a forerunner of my own.

Dahl and Meier served me well on my morning commute, but once I reached my hospital laboratory office, I tuned in to a more “work-appropriate” radio format with my radio-wave friend Roy Leonard. Sadly, I think that I won more radio call-in contestants on Roy’s show than I answered questions correctly during my one Jeopardy! appearance. I finally had the opportunity to meet Roy before a show at Chicago’s Second City–and yes, I was there after winning the tickets for the performance on Roy’s show.

Mr. Leonard was followed on WGN by the combo of Kathy O’Malley and Judy Markey. I presumed I was the only male in their radio audience–a feeling reinforced when a male oncologist friend reviewing some slides at my microscope asked how I could listen to those babbling idiots. I think his chauvinism was peeking through.

And then came everybody’s best friend in the whole world, Lin Brehmer. When my daily morning commute doubled in length with my new company and new position, I fell into WXRT. I timed my drive so that I would arrive at the lab just in time for Three for Free, Lin and Mary Dixon’s morning musicology quiz, battling it out with Mailman Jack, Brad Frey, Cathy Chouinard, and many others. Lin’s death felt to all of us like the loss of a valued and loved co-worker.

Lin was my man at ‘XRT, but a shout-out to Terri Hemmert, who last week celebrated 50 years on WXRT with a Saturday Morning Flashback to the year 1973. That was a good year with great music, and even better memories.

Long live Chicago radio–I hope it never goes away.

Like what you read in our blogs? Click below for a free subscription. Never miss a post.

It’s A Classic Rock Connection!

Hey there rock’n’rollers. I know you all are puzzle fans, right? You love drawing the lines from the Yardbirds to Cream and Air Force. And it’s fun to compare lists of your 14 favorite guitar solos of 1974. But have you been playing the CONNECTIONS game in the New York Times? Take 16 words and figure out how to separate them into 4 categories.

I have created a few CONNECTIONS games myself (sorry, NYT) including one dedicated to the great Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park, and the other to Chicago’s north suburban Skokie. And now I have made one just for all the classic rockers out there.

How does it work? In the grid below you will find sixteen words. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, would be to divide the words into four categories. For example, if scattered around the grid you found the words Chrysler, Ford, Chevy, and Mercedes you might place them in an “Automobile” category. But be careful, because Ford could also fit into the category of “US Presidents”. The trick is to establish the correct categories so that each of those can have four members. It gets tricky!

My hint to you for today’s puzzle is that one of the four categories has a definite Classic Rock connection. Figure out that category and its four constituents, and the other categories should fall into place.

When you solve the puzzle, send me your solution at chidoc@post.com. You can send complaints there too! If you enter your results in Comments, please flag it as a spoiler. We don’t want to ruin anyone else’s fun.

Here is the rockin’ connections puzzle. Remember, solutions and complaints to me chidoc@post.com.

Want to subscribe to our blog? It’s always something different. Enter your email address in the box below.

Hi Skokie, This CONNECTION Is For You and Everyone Else Too!

^{(See Full Puzzle Below!)}

In last week’s blog, I had you all take a stab at a home-grown Connections Puzzle. That puzzle contained a special shout-out to Rogers Park, the multi-ethnic Chicago neighborhood in which I grew up. The response was great, with many of you telling me how much you enjoyed the puzzle. Most of you solved it, sometimes after I provided a hint or two.

Rogers Park isn’t the only place I have called home. In 1978, when Barb and I first married, we lived on the second floor of a walk-up apartment building in Skokie, Illinois. The building was on a quiet street just north of Dempster and featured an in-ground backyard swimming pool that we helped the landlord paint, but never swam in.

We stayed in that building for just a year, buying our first home, a townhouse in Niles, during the height of the interest rate panic of 1979. (If you think mortgage interest rates are high now, they were over 16% then!)

I have fond memories of that year in Skokie as a newlywed. And Barb spent much of her childhood and teen years there. So in honor of those days, and the vibrant village Skokie remains, here is Connections Puzzle with a salute to Skokie.

Let’s recap how Connections Puzzles work. I am giving you a 4 x 4 grid, with each space containing one word–a total of 16 words. The object of the puzzle is to separate the 16 words into four categories with four words placed into each category.

The puzzle sounds simple but there is a catch or two. First, the categories are not given. Your first task is to figure out what those categories are. Second, some of the words can be part of more than one category. The challenge is to determine which category each word belongs to so that you finish with exactly four categories with just four words each. It’s tricky, but it’s fun.

By the way, you DON’T have to be from Skokie to solve the puzzle. Everyone should give it a try. Once you’ve solved the puzzle, let me know at chidoc@post.com. Please don’t leave the answer in the Comments section. We don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun.

So with no more delay…here is this week’s puzzle. Happy solving.

Remember to send your solutions to chidoc@post.com

Like our blog? enter your name below to be added to our free subscription list.