Beautiful Downtown Burbank (Illinois)

Thank you to everyone who has checked out this blog over the years. I moderated this blog for the few years that I added posts to it. You ca...

What do you want to know about Burbank? The odds of your neighbor being over 80? (The answer: slim.) Median number of rooms in houses and...

Yes, that's right. I'll be at Duke's Italian Beef Drive-in on Saturday, October 16, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. selling and si...

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Have I run out things to write about? Maybe. If someone could send me a photo of He...

Hello, folks. I'm in Chicago and North Riverside this week (March 3, 4, and 6) to promote my new novel, After the Workshop . For informa...

Hello, folks. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by Prairie Trails Library at 7:00 on March 2. I'll be there promoting my new nove...

On April 21, 1967, a twister hit Oak Lawn and nearby towns. According to WGN's website, "The storms resulted in 58 fatalities. The...

No, it was the Blizzard of '79. Remember it? Where I live now, in North Carolina, schools are shut down at the hint of snow. I'm...

I was a Kennedy Falcon and a Reavis Ram (I also went to Fry and Maddock but can't, for the life of me, remember what I might have been ...

I found some interesting new stuff on a blog called Mall Hall of Fame . For starters, here's the original design for Ford City. And here...

This probably seems appalling today, but, yes, kids used to be able to buy cigarettes for their parents. I did it all the time. Oftentimes...

There are many reasons why I'm not a famous rock star (I can't sing; I can't play an instrument), and yet I still sometimes wond...

Yes, I have a new book hitting the bookstores -- Ghosts of Chicago . Check it out. What this means is that I'll be all over the Chicago...

This is less of a Burbank post than it is a 1970s nostalgia post, but since the two are inextricably connected in my mind, I figured I'd...

Good question. First, I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Then: I found out I had high blood-pressure, went on some medicine, had bad side-effect...

The wisdom teeth extractions -- I had all of mine pulled last week -- didn't go as smoothly as planned. Thank God for Vicodin ! One th...

I'm cheating with today's post because I'm going to the dentist in a few hours to have all my wisdom teeth pulled. And I know y...

Scottsdale: 79th and Cicero (southeast corner) If you do a GOOGLE photo search of "scottsdale shopping chicago," you'll see al...

It's a wonder, really, that every kid in Burbank didn't end up sterile because of all the power lines that are draped across some of...

You can find edible pizza outside Chicago, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a pizza as good as even the average, run-of-the-mill Chicago pi...

Most of my friends' parents worked manual labor or trade jobs of one kind or another. Some worked for the telephone company; some were ...