The Book Tour Begins!

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 area (and the Midwest) for two weeks, starting Wednesday, October 8. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by. For a complete list of appearances with links, check out my website. I hope to meet some of you!

FALL 2008

Saturday, October 04, 2008
BRADDOCK, PENNSYLVANIA
8:00 p.m., Reading/Signing for GHOSTS OF CHICAGO
The Convent at St. Michael's
1137 Braddock Ave.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Columbia College Chicago, Fiction Writing Department, "Fiction Writers at Lunch"
PART ONE:
11:00-12:30
Reading and Discussion of new short story collection, GHOSTS OF CHICAGO
12:30-1:00 Book signing
PART TWO:
1:15-2:30
Reading and Discussion of my anthology, WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?, with some of the book's contributors.
The Hokin Annex
623 S Wabash
Chicago, Il, 60605

Wednesday, October 08, 2008
BURBANK, ILLINOIS
GHOSTS OF CHICAGO official book launch!
Prairie Trails Library
7:30 p.m., Reading/Discussion/Signing
8449 Moody Ave.
Burbank, Illinois
1-708-430-3688
Please Note: You Must Call in Advance to Reserve Seating!

Thursday, October 09, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
Irvington Branch Library
6:30 p.m., Freight Stories Reading Series.
Books will be available.
5625 East Washington Street
Indianapolis, IN 46219

Friday, October 10, 2008
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Chinaski's Bar
8:00 p.m., John McNally reading with Windy City Story Slam. Books will be available.
$5.00 cover @ the door
1935 N. Damen
Chicago, IL

Saturday, October 11, 2008
BRIDGEVIEW, ILLINOIS
Duke's Italian Beef Drive-In
11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Book signing.
8115 South Harlem Ave.
Bridgeview, IL 60455
708 599-0576

Saturday, October 11, 2008
NORTH RIVERSIDE, ILLINOIS
Tamale Hut Cafe
7:30 p.m., John McNally reads, followed by Open Mic. Books will be available for purchase.
8300 W. Cermak Road
North Riverside, IL 60546

Sunday, October 12, 2008
CHICAGO RIDGE, IL
Borders
1:00-3:00 p.m., signing for GHOSTS OF CHICAGO
Westfield -- Chicago Ridge (formerly known as Chicago Ridge Mall)
Ridgeland & 95th
Chicago Ridge, IL
If I'm remembering correctly, this store is located near the anchor store at the north end of the mall.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
IOWA CITY, IOWA
Prairie Lights Bookstore
7:00 p.m., Reading/Discussion/Signing for GHOSTS OF CHICAGO
15 S. Dubuque Street
Iowa City, IA 52240
319-337-2681

Wednesday, October 15, 2008
PALOS HILLS, ILLINOIS
Green Hills Public Library
7:00 p.m., Reading/Discussion/Signing for GHOSTS OF CHICAGO
8611 W. 103rd
Palos Hills, IL

Thursday, October 16, 2008
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Book Cellar
7:00 p.m., Reading/Discussion/Signing for GHOSTS OF CHICAGO.
4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, Illinois
773-293-2665

Saturday, October 18, 2008
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
Nebraska Book Festival
more details to come

What We Read

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 write a bit about it. Since I write books for a living now, people sometimes assume that I was reading Dickens and Shakespeare when I was a kid, but no: My favorite was Mad Magazine. Spy vs. Spy, anyone? Or what about that last page that you folded so that it became a different picture?



I even bought the paperback collections of Mad Magazine, which I read (looked at) on car trips.

Dynamite (see above) was another favorite, probably because the covers featured whatever I happened to be interested in at the time (i.e., Land of the Lost).

Whenever I could, I would by music magazines like Cream; occasionally, I would buy magazines that featured nothing but the song lyrics to a song. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of those magazines was called Song Lyrics. That way, I wouldn't botch the lyrics when I sang along to my transistor radio. (Did I mention that I wanted to be a rock star?)

Lastly, I loved ordering books from Scholastics. Remember how the teacher would pass around little order forms (I don't even remember catalogs, just a list of books), and you'd check off the ones you wanted? My favorite books were ones about Houdini, the Lochness Monster, and motorcycle daredevils. (Ironically, those are still three of my favorite subjects.)

Oh yeah...and every year I'd have to buy the new Guinness Book of World Records.



Remember the dude with the longest fingernails? Or what about the guy who could smoke something like, I don't know, a hundred cigarettes at once? (You think he's still alive?)

Ripley's Believe It or Not also made for some fine reading.



But my all-time favorite reading? TV Guide. In the eighth grade, using my dog walking money, I actually ordered a subscription. Good stuff. I still own this issue. Not sure why. I saw it in a box in my basement just the other day. Along with some copies of Dynamite. And a book about Houdini.

Where Have I Gone?

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-effects, went off, went on some other medicine, had bad side-effects, and went off. I've also been finishing the draft of a new book, doing publicity for my new anthology, dealing with various things having to do with the book coming out in October, and wrapping up revisions of a screenplay. Somehow, I forgot I was keeping a blog about all things Burbank!

I'll be in and around Burbank in October promoting the hell out of my new short story collection, Ghosts of Chicago. Check out the book tour section of my website, and if you're in the neighborhood, stop by. (I'll be adding more events over the next few months.) I'd love to meet the folks who've left messages here.

As for the blog, not to worry. I'll be back. I'm going to Los Angeles for two weeks, and when I return to North Carolina, I need to do some home repair, but I'll start posting again in the fall, especially once I return home from my jaunt to Burbank in October.

So: Hang tight. And I'll see you on the flip-side.

Don't Know Much About History -- Burbank History, That Is

The wisdom teeth extractions -- I had all of mine pulled last week -- didn't go as smoothly as planned. Thank God for Vicodin! One thing I learned: It's damned near impossible to knock me out. The doctor gave me a sleeping pill to put me under. An hour and a half later, I was still reading the book I'd brought along. "Do you want us to top that off with a little gas?" he asked. "Sure!" I said (I'm never one to turn down legal drugs), and so I sat there for the next half hour with the mask over my mouth and nose, looking like a pilot on one of the Apollo missions. Nothing. They probably should have begun shooting at me with a tranquilizer gun or blowing poison darts at my neck, but they finally just gave up and pulled the teeth.


Enough about my teeth. Here are few fun facts about Burbank from The Encyclopedia of Chicago.

Did you know...

One of the earliest roads to run through the area was the diagonal State Road...By 1871, State Road attracted the attention of a Pittsburgh investor who laid out a subdivision along this route that apparently never materialized. Instead, German and Dutch truck farmers settled in the area.

1871 was the year of the Chicago fire, by the way.

Anyway, Burbank's history is apparently full of such false starts. A dude named A.B. Stickney -- name ring a bell? -- made plans for Burbank (before it was Burbank) to become a transfer station for the freight railroad, but the depression of 1893 nixed those plans.

In the 1920s, developers bought up a lot of the land with the hope of capitalizing on the subdivision boom, but "the ongoing drainage problems, poor roads, and inadequate water and sewer systems, as well as the Great Depression, dampened enthusiasm of many would-be buyers."

So, what changed Burbank's luck? The creation of the South Stickney Sanitary District in 1952, back when Burbank was known as South Stickney or Burbank Manor. Population tripled, "reaching an estimated 20,720 in 1960."

To avoid annexation by Chicago, Burbank became incorporated in 1970, taking the name from the already-existing Luther Burbank Elementary School. (Luther Burbank was a famous horticulturist, and, yes, he's responsible for the Russet Burbank potato that we all know and love, but...what's his connection to Chicago's southwest side again? Hmmm... Must investigate this futher.)

Oh yeah, one last tidbit: Burbank's population peaked in 1976 at 29,448.

Class dismissed.

John McNally's Burbank Book Club

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 you're all jealous! Why does HE get to have all his wisdom teeth pulled today? What about ME?

Okay, the first book recommendation -- Who Can Save Us Now? -- is a plug for a new book I coedited with the writer Owen King. It's an anthology of twenty-two short stories featuring brand-new supeheroes. But...WHOA...WAIT A MINUTE. Check it out. My story in the book is about a superhero who lives in Burbank. Duke's even makes an appearance in the story. Stevenson Park is in there, too. How can you pass up reading about a Burbank superhero? I mean, really.

The book should be hitting the bookstores by the end of the month, but you can pre-order one now by clicking on the title below.


Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

***
This next book -- The Golden Age of Chicago's Television -- is one of my favorite books on Chicago pop culture of my era. Inside, you'll get the skinny on Bozo, Ray Rayner, Frazier Thomas, and any other Chicago child's icon from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. It's a fun, fun book with great photos.


The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television.

***
This next one -- Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows -- is a good companion book to the one above, but its appeal may be more limited. What I appreciated were the lists of horror movies that were sold as "packages" to WGN and other stations, along with the histories of individual shows, like Creature Features. Still, it's hard to beat The Golden Age of Chicago Children's Television with Bozo, Garfield Goose, and Dirty Dragon as subjects for a book. This one, on the other hand, is definitely more for the hardcore collector of Chicago childhood nostalgia.


Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows

Where We Shopped: Scottsdale

Scottsdale: 79th and Cicero (southeast corner)


If you do a GOOGLE photo search of "scottsdale shopping chicago," you'll see all kinds of beautiful stucco shopping centers with tall, majestic palm trees out front; and if you're like me -- often sleepy; frequently confused -- you'll start wondering, "Did I really live in such a place? Was Burbank even more beautiful than I remember? Was the southwest side actually Xanadu, and I just didn't realize it?" And then you see the word "Arizona" attached to one of the photos, and you realize that, no, where you grew up was full of mostly ugly strip malls, and the sky was often overcast.

Let's face it: the glory days of Scottsdale are over. In fact, I'm not sure I was ever alive during its glory days, but it was certainly more of a staple for shopping when I was a kid, and it certainly had more character than today's strip malls, what with its big-ass sign (not the one pictured above) and its asymetrical design. I realize I'm pushing my case a little too hard here, but I'll go so far as to say that Scottsdale Plaza was ahead of its time. If you go to L.A. today, all you hear about is the trend of the "open air" shopping center, which is usually a couple of blocks of stores, where walking outside, usually amongst some professional landscaping, is a huge plus. Now, Scottsdale didn't have the greenery, per se, but it did have the potential for it. And, as I said, it was structured interestingly.

The anchor store was GOLDBLATT'S.


Here's what I remember best about Goldblatt's: the pet store. If I remember correctly, it was just inside the entrance and off to the left. Just before my fourth birthday, I talked my mother into buying me a baby turtle.


A few days later, our trailer (we lived in Guidish Park) burned completely down in the middle of the night. (We made it out safely.) My father threw a few things out the front door before the fire engulfed the entire trailer: our finch (in its cage, of course -- it was probably brain-damaged afterward); a Code-a-Phone answering machine (a high-dollar item back then), and a few other strangely disparate odds and ends. It wasn't until a few days later that I remembered the turtle. When I asked my mother where it was, she had to break the news: the turtle, whose name I no longer recall, didn't make it out alive. So there you go: my indelible Goldblatt's memory for you. (Hold on a second: I need to blow my nose and dab my eyes.)

But hey: Do you remember the photo store? I believe that, too, was a Goldblatt's enterprise, but it was in a building by itself. I loved going in there and looking at the Super-8 projectors and seeing what movies they had for sale. (For the younger readers, here's a "I-walked-fifty-miles-in-my-bare-feet-to-school-every-morning" story for you. Probably about a year after Star Wars came out, a Super 8 movie of Star Wars was released. This was a BIG DEAL for anyone withe a Super 8 projector. I'm assuming Star Wars ran about two hours, give or take several minutes, at the theater. Well, a Super 8 movie ran, on average, 8 minutes. With sound (that is, if you wanted sound), it would cost probably twenty-five bucks. If you were wealthy, you might be able to spring for the twenty minute version, which cost probably in the neighborhood of forty or fifty bucks. To own even the eight-minute version of the movie back then would be the equivalent today of, I don't know, owning a Hummer and a Rolex.)

For the life of me, I can't remember any other store in Scottsdale. Help me. There was a furniture store down the way, right? But what else was actually in Scottsdale?

All right, folks: time to chime in with your own Scottdale memories. And if anyone has any old photos of Scottsdale, please (please) send them to me at bookofralph@aol.com for posting.

Ah, but to imagine what Scottsdale could have been with a little imagination...


(Photo of Scottsdale sign, courtesy of Renee Greco)

Where We Played: Rice Park

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 Burbank's parks. Maybe this was an urban legend, but I'd heard that the electric company donated some of the land to the city where several power line towers and transformers are amassed. (Most cities fence those areas off, by the way.)

In any event, the park where I spent most of my time wasn't one full of power line towers: Rice Park.


Rice Park sits behind Kennedy Grade School. I wasn't an athletic kid (in fact, from the second grade until eighth grade, I grew increasingly fatter by the minute), but I spent a lot of time at Rice Park. But doing what? I owned a tennis racket that I'd bought at a flea market, and I loved knocking tennis balls around, often over the fence, but I never learned how to play. I also loved playing Horse at the basketball court. But as soon as any other kids came up, I left. I was a magnet for trouble (maybe all fat boys are), and so I learned quickly to remove myself from situations before they happened.

One time that I didn't remove myself was shortly after our family had moved to that part of Burbank, and I was riding my bike up and over the dirt hills that sat over from and behind Rice Park. What I didn't realize was that Rice Park was a little bit like the island on Lost in that there were the kids who hung out in the park, and then there were The Others. The Others hung out over by the dirt hills, and they didn't like it when some fat, younger kid came riding up and over their hills. As was usually the case, I was outnumbered: about six or seven of them to me. The one I remember the best was this red-headed kid who was notorious for causing problems -- their pack-leader. He grabbed my handlebars while The Others surrounded me. I honestly don't remember what happened next -- they may have knocked me off my bike and given me a warning -- but I do remember that such incidents weren't uncommon in Burbank in the 1970s. The upshot was, I stayed away from the hills after that.


During the summer of 1979, I spent a lot of time by the Little League part of Rice Park, not because I liked baseball (I didn't) or because I was friends with some of the players (I wasn't). No, I started going because a girl from another part of Burbank -- a girl I didn't know but had started seeing riding her bike around our part of town and, as these things happen, developed an intense, heart-pounding crush on -- had begun going to the games. I had started losing weight, so my confidence should have been on the rise, but it wasn't, so I would merely situate myself and my bike near her in the hope that I'd catch her attention. And one day, while I was eating Milk Duds, she came up and asked me for one. That's all that happened. She asked me for a Milk Dud, and I gave her one. The fact that I still remember this should give you some idea of just how fricking excited I was! I didn't see her again until the fall, when she was (miraculously) in my high school Geometry class (I was a freshman; she was a sophomore), a class I would end up failing because I spent all of my time either talking to, or pining for, her. She would even walk with me to my locker after every class. There was only one hitch: She had a boyfriend who was three years older and could easily have been one of The Others. And one time she warned me: "I can't let my boyfriend know I'm walking with you."

Too bad. But at least we'll always be bound by shared Milk Duds at Rice Park and, uh, Geometry...or at least our mutual hatred of it.


P.S. I took Geometry over during the summer and got an 'A' in it, which further proves just how damned smitten I was of this girl.

What park did you hang at? Memories, anyone?

(photos of Rice Park courtesy of Renee Greco)

What We Eat: Pizza!

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 pizza once you leave the outer edge of Chicagoland. Trust me. I’ve lived in central Illinois, Southern Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, Nebraska, Florida, Wisconsin, D.C., North Carolina, and L.A. I’ve found some pretty good pizza in L.A. and in New York City (though, usually, I’ve been out drinking in NY by the time I end up at a place selling slices, so I’m guessing cardboard with tomato paste would probably have tasted okay by then).

As I’ve already noted here about a thousand times, I haven’t lived in Burbank since 1983, but I still get back there maybe once or twice a year, and if I’m in town for more than a day, I usually end up eating pizza somewhere in the neighborhood. Down below, I’ve listed places I either frequented or remember. Please correct locations and names if I’ve made any errors, and by all means, tell us about your favorite South Side pizzas.




Italian Villa

Italian Villa is located in Southfield Shopping, and it’s been there since at least the early or mid ‘70s, if not earlier. This is the pizza that my family ate the most, and this is where I tend to go when I’m back in town. Even when I haven’t been there for a few years at a stretch, the waitress recognizes me and, often, remembers my order. The best features of Italian Villa? For me, it’s the whole package – superb sausage; tasty sauce; excellent crust (thin but a bit chewy). Plus, there’s a blurry, enlarged photo of Pete Townsend doing the windmill to his guitar in the men’s bathroom. Also: Could the food be any cheaper?

Gino’s Pizza

If memory serves me, Gino’s was on 79th and Central. To the best of my knowledge, it wasn’t affiliated with the famous Gino’s downtown. I’m not sure why we ate here. Did my brother work here? Possibly. Anyway, our Gino’s experience was short-lived. I can’t even remember anything about it. Gino's was definitely around in the '70s, but I can't vouch for it before or after that.

Tafte’s (Tafde’s?)

I ate here only a few times, probably in the ‘70s. They were located somewhere on 87th, I believe, on the Oak Lawn side. Is that right? Not far from Central, I’m thinking. Here’s what I remember: A corn-meal crust? Yellow with holes poked through? Cracker-ey? A few years ago, I started talking to a Law professor here at Wake Forest, and we quickly discovered that we were both from Burbank, and so we started trading anecdotes. Apparently, his first job was delivering pizzas for Tafte’s (Tafde’s?). A small, small world. And if anyone knows for sure how to spell the damned name of the place, please enlighten me!

Phil’s Pizza

Phil’s was across from the Jewel on Ridgeland. I went through a brief – but intense – Phil’s stage. When I was in high school, before I could drive, my father took a roofing job in Indiana and had to stay over night while my mother was in the hospital, and so I started ordering Phil’s pizza, almost nightly, to have delivered since I couldn’t drive. (We never had pizza delivered, so this was true decadence.) I can almost remember what it tastes like, but what I remember for certain were the enormous, meatball-sized chunks of pale-colored sausage. I'll have to try it again next time in town; it'll be my first Phil's Pizza in 27 years. Oh, and if you're reading this Phil's, you can send coupons to me @ P.O. Box 7387, WFU, Winston-Salem, NC 27109. :)

Fasano’s

Fasano’s is located around 83rd and Roberts Road in Justice. This was our default pizza when we tired of Italian Villa. I haven’t had one in years, though about ten years ago, when I was living in Iowa City, buy an extra-large one, throw it in the trunk, and drive it three and a half hours home. This place was all about the toppings – tons of toppings. A good pie, as I recall. It may be the heaviest of the thin-crust pizzas on the South Side.

Durbin’s

Durbin’s is, of course, on 79th and State Road. I’ve only recently begun eating pizza at Durbin’s, and I only eat there when I’m drinking. It would never cross my mind to go there specifically for pizza, even though the pizza is pretty damned good. But give me about a dozen beers, and I’m all over the menu.

Oh, yeah. One last thing, for what it's worth: I'm a thin crust guy. There. I said it.

Where We Worked

Most of my friends' parents worked manual labor or trade jobs of one kind or another. Some worked for the telephone company; some were electricians; some were plumbers; some painted water towers. My mother worked in box factories until she had to go on disability in the early '70s for health problems. She hated not working and even tried returning to her job until she realized she couldn't do it anymore. My father was a roofer for most of his life, though he took about seven years off to try to make it on his own cleaning rugs and washing walls, but he eventually went back to the roofer's union and stayed there until he retired in 1989.



Growing up in Burbank, you had to be industrious. In grade school, I walked dogs and sold things. I sold knives (yes, knives), concert T-shirts, bootleg cassettes...whatever I thought I could sell. My first "real" job wasn't until my senior in high school when I worked as an usher at the Orland Square movie theater. Mostly, as an adult, I've been a teacher, but I've also worked shipping and receiving for a small electronics company, worked in a cafeteria, scored standardized tests, worked as a file clerk (or something like that...can't remember my title), did data entry, greeted people at a new mall (the most humiliating?), gutted buildings for surplus, worked in a library (mostly processing books and, once again, doing some shipping and receiving)...and on and on.

What did (do) your parents do? What do you do? And what jobs have you had -- the good ones, the bad ones, and all the ones in-between?


1970. Me and my father. The photo-booth at Zayre's.


2008 (this morning). Me and my father. My backyard in Winston-Salem, NC.

Reader Needs Your Help

Does anyone know the answer to this? I don't. Help us out, if you can. Here goes.

Maybe you know the answer to this question...currently there is a Value City and a Burlington Coat Factory on 84/Cicero. What two stores were there before? one of the stores was Polk Brothers the others was??????

Anyone know?

Side-note: I'll get back to posting more blogs soon. I just filed my students' grades. Time will free up soon.

Where We Shopped: Korvettes

Location: the southwest corner of 87th and Cicero (Oak Lawn)
Years? I remember it being there in the 1960s and '70s, but maybe it was around a lot longer. I honestly have no idea.



Click above to watch this 1970s Korvette's commercial.

Korvettes was one of the earlier of the discount department stores. In the mid '60s, our family lived in one of the mobile homes in what used to be called Guidish Park (across the street from Southfield Shopping Center). Korvette's was probably the main department store for my mother during that period, though eventually (probably starting in the early '70s) Kmart trumped Korvette's for us. (And, as I wrote earlier, my father was always a Zayre man.) So, given that I was only two and three years old when we shopped there, my memories of Korvette's are a bit fuzzy.



(Note: The photo above is not our Korvette's. I thought I'd post it in case you forgot what the script looked like on the store's sign.)

One thing I do remember is buying -- or asking my mother to buy for me -- The American Breed album "Bend Me, Shape Me" at Korvette's, which I still own. (The American Breed was a band from Cicero, Illinois, by the way, and the song "Bend Me, Shape Me" was a huge hit in 1968 -- #5 on Billboard's Hot 100). From what I've been told, I was incorrigible, even as a baby, when it came to wanting (demanding) music, and when my mother accidentally broke the Bobby Darren 45 of "Splish Splash" when I was only a few months old, I cried for days until she bought a replacement; so I'm certain that by the time "Bend Me, Shape Me" came out, I was already something of a musicologist, albeit a two-and-a-half year old one (and if not a musicologist, well, then, a pain in the ass).



For those of you who haven't heard "Bend Me, Shape Me" in a while (or at all), here's a treat. This has to be one of the earliest music videos. (I love the exercise subplot, by the way. How bizarre.)



If anyone has clearer memories of Korvette's than yours truly, please share.

Where We Drink...uh...Socialize: The Castle

Location: 5700 W 79th St. (79th and Major)

For those of you who haven't seen it in a while, here's The Castle after they remodeled it.


No, wait. Sorry. Here it is.



Since I don't live in Burbank (or Chicago, for that matter), and am back in town only occasionally, I'm not an aficionado when it comes to where to drink in and around Burbank. That said, I've been to The Castle a handful of times, and one thing I can say with certainty is this: the drinks are cheap and cold, and the jukebox is good.

In my twenties and thirties, whenever I was back in town, I usually went to Durbin's, so I'll save my good Durbin's stories for later. I also dragged my friend, kicking and screaming, to any number of places: Stancik's Satellite, which had, as I remember, shuffleboard (now there's a business sign I miss...the Sputnik-looking satellite out front? Remember that?); or over to that bar next to Little Frank's Pizza? Help me out. I can't remember the name of it. But in the last few years, I've been stopping off at the Castle.


For those of you who've never been, I should give this warning: It's very un-castle-like inside, and, no, the people who work there aren't dressed as royalty or wearing suits of armor (though maybe they should think about doing that...just a thought, folks). All of this is by way of saying, if you happen to see me in the Castle and, I don't know, feel compelled to buy me a drink, I'm a Bud Light guy (when I'm drinking beer) or an Absolut and tonic guy (when I'm not drinking beer). Not that you have to buy me a drink. I'm just saying...


(photo courtesy of Renee Greco)

A Little Love from Chicago Reader

If you check out the entry for May 15, you'll see a little more love for our hometown blog, this time from Chicago Reader. Thanks, Jerome.

Where We Went to Church

I'm still not sure why, but our family went to St. Fabian, not St. Albert's, so I didn't know most of the kids I had CCD with (though a few other Burbank strays, such as myself, did inexplicably end up there).

Maybe I would have enjoyed CCD more if I had known more kids, but I have to be perfectly honest: I hated going. One reason was because CCD was the same night as The Bionic Woman, and as a diehard fan of The Six Million Dollar Man, I felt royally cheated out of some quality prime-time television.

Another reason I hated going is that I'm not a fan of repetition. In fact, it makes me sort of looney. And CCD (at least my experience of it) never evolved. Oh, the rituals varied, but the information -- the things we learned -- were always the same, year after year. And so a strange thing happened in that, while I was a law-abiding kid in grade school, I was frequently in trouble in CCD. For example, each year we were shown a symbolic movie about a dying girl and a moth -- does anyone else remember this movie? -- and by the fifth or sixth time, I just couldn't take it anymore. I started laughing maniacally and cracking jokes (I know, I know, I'm terrible...but how many more times could I watch it?). The last time, shortly before Confirmation, I got hauled off into the main office to talk to a priest.




I did like collecting these weekly programs, however, like the one I've posted here. Why? Who knows. And there was a selection of books in wire-racks in the lobby, small picture books about the Prodigal Son and whatnot, and when I was in the first and second grades, I used to beg my mother for enough money to buy them. (As a child, I was a collector of books and curiously worthless artifacts. I still am.)




Take a look at the businesses listed above. How many do you remember? How many are still around?

My father, who was a roofer, worked on St. Fabian's roof. I can't remember if he put the roof on or patched it, but I was out there with him one weekend, helping out. My father was a notorious swearer, and at one point, while one of the priests stood down below watching, my father yelled, "Goddamn it!" And then he saw the priest. My father attended a Catholic grade school in Maine and dropped out of high school because of the old-school nuns, whom he battled with; this would have been in the 1940s. My father said, "Oops. Sorry, Father." I think my father expected lightening to blast him from the church's roof. To his credit, the priest -- an elderly man with snow white hair -- merely laughed and walked back inside the church.

Comments; New Posts. Etc.

Apparently, some people have had problems with their comments not getting posted. Not sure what's up with that. And then -- fool that I am -- I didn't realize that there were a dozen or so comments waiting for my approval. (I'm supposed to be notified via email...but wasn't.) Needless to say, "Blogger" is a flawed site. But keep trying.

Meanwhile, I've been busy wrapping up my semester here, which hasn't left me with much time to post, but I'll be leaving more posts soon...maybe even one later today.

Thanks for stopping by...and for your patience!

Burbank Blog Makes Time Out Chicago

Our little blog gets noticed by Time Out Chicago. Now, watch the housing prices in Burbank soar!

Where We Went To School

One thing Burbank is not known for (and for good reason) is its architecture. That said, two Burbank grade schools are architectural stand-outs: Tobin (no longer among us) and Luther Burbank (still among the living -- the building, that is, not the person). And I have to admit that I didn't appreciate either of these when I was a kid, but click on each one to englarge them and take a close look. They're truly impressive buildings, and they put the other abominations (especially the three schools I attended) here to shame!

So, tell me where you went to school. And what do you remember about the school itself? One thing I remember was showing up before the start of the school year to see whose homeroom I would be in; the lists were always posted on the front door. An event! (Again, this was the '70s, and we didn't have a whole hell of a lot to occupy our time back then.)



Tobin (above). (An anonymous reader of the blog sent a bunch of photos of Tobin to me, including many from when Tobin was torn down, which I'll post soon.) This photo looks like Tobin after a nuclear holocaust. Look at the barren ground, and notice how hard the flag is flapping. Haunting. But a great-looking building nevertheless.


Luther Burbank (above). (This photo is courtesy of Sherry Cofer-Logan.) Enlarge this one, and take a close look at it. This is in Burbank? Of course, I saw it all the time, but why was I so oblivious to it as a kid?


St. Albert's (above). I've never been inside St. Albert's. (For church, my family attended St. Fabian's, so my experience of St. Albert's was limited to their carnival). What's a shopping cart doing locked to the hand-rail?


Fry (above). For my money, this is the ugliest school in the district. I attended Fry from 1973-74 for third and fourth grades. I wrote my first piece of creative writing here, a play about a fat superhero who slips inside of a phone booth to change into his costume and gets stuck. And here I am, thirty-four years later, still thinking up ridiculous ideas. Thank you, Fry.



Byrd (above). I suppose if you use your imagination, you can see some Frank Lloyd Wright influences...maybe? (I know, I know, I'm stretching here, but it's not as bad as Fry or the others below.)


And now we come to two schools that are more or less interchangeable: McCord (above) and Kennedy (below). Try to find the differences. Can you? I have to say, though, that these are some sad-looking schools.


Kennedy (above). I attended Kennedy from 1975-79, from fifth through eighth grade. I spent sixth grade in the mobile units out back. Our teacher (let's call him Mr. L.) was a compulsive smoker, and so he would sometimes go into the bathroom and light one up on the sly. The problem was that smoke would come rolling out of the vents. Another time, after he'd driven through a bad snow storm to get to work, he sat in front of the class and told us that he needed a cigarette, and he didn't care if we reported him; and then he pulled out a pack, lit a cigarette, and smoked it in front of us in silence. Ah...the seventies!


Maddock (above). Maddock was my first grade school in Burbank: 1971-72, for first and second grade. It looks a little bit like a factory with that smoke stack popping up out of the roof. Believe it or not, I attended two other schools before Maddock -- one in Argo and one (briefly) in Houston, Texas. Maddock was the third school I attended for first grade; I had fallen so far behind that a girl in my first-grade class at Maddock offered to do all my homework for me. And guess what? I let her. (I'm still in her debt!)

Who Is This Man?

Oh, wait. It's Burbank's Mayor, Harry Klein.

I had already moved out of Burbank by the time Harry Klein became mayor, so I don't know anything about this man, except this... When my novel The Book of Ralph came out, I sent him a copy of the book, along with a letter explaining how it was a love song to Burbank, and how it featured several Burbank businesses, many of which were no longer there. Now, I wasn't expecting him to send me a key to the city -- though how cool would it have been to hang a ginormous key on my wall? -- but I was sort of (kind of) expecting a short note, because, well, how many books are set in Burbank? You know? You can probably already guess where this is going. I heard nothing from him, or from anyone in the mayor's office. So, my running joke now has been that I'm going to run for mayor of Burbank and dethrone him. My platform can be, "I'll bring back the Sheridan Drive-in!" What do you think? Do I have a shot?

Hey, I'm sure he's a good guy. Right? I don't know anything about him, so if you want to leave comments, feel free (though please avoid saying anything libelous or defamatory...I'd hate to get sued). And a note to those who don't know me: I'm just teasing Mr. Klein and the mayor's office. No hard feelings.

A future post: Fitz.

Ford City General Cinema

Remember this? (You see? The Internet is actually good for something.)

I saw dozens of movies at Ford City Theaters, so I'll just hit the high points.



On November 8, 1975, my tenth birthday, my father took me to see Jaws. For those of you too young to remember, Jaws marked the beginning of the "blockbuster" movie (to the detriment of the film business, in my opinion, but that's another story). Anyway, this was the first movie I remember going to where every single seat was taken. My father, brother, and I sat in the last row. I still remember the collective scream from the audience when the bones of a corpse appear in one of the porthole windows.

I saw Star Wars here, too. Lines for Star Wars wrapped around the theater. Every show, hour after hour, week after week, month after month, was sold out. This was the first movie that people went to repeatedly -- five, six, fifteen times. The local news ran stories on how many times some people went to see it. Every time you drove by Ford City, you saw the lines. I wasn't one of the first to see it; I waited months, after the lines had begun to dwindle, if only a little bit. Hard to believe, but the same was true for Superman, which I also saw at Ford City.



I forced my mother to take me to see Steve Martin in The Jerk. It was Rated R; I needed a guardian. My mother, despite thinking it was "stupid" (her word, not mine), laughed the entire time. (She hated admitting that she actually enjoyed it, so I frequently teased her about it!) A highlight, though, was seeing the preview for Kubrick's The Shining: gallons of blood pour from a closed elevator, so much blood that furniture outside the elevator floats away. That was the entire preview, but man oh man, was it effective!

In high school, I reviewed movies for Reavis' newspaper, The Blueprint, and there were some days when I would go to Ford City Theaters for a matinee and then slip into another movie afterward. One day, I saw three movies in a row. If memory serves me correctly, two of the movies were Prince of the City and Southern Comfort; I can't remember the third. I justified sneaking in because, well, the candy and Cokes were so damned expensive.

In the '80s, I saw several forgettable movies at the less memorable Ford City East Theaters, though the one notable movie I saw there (probably a dozen times the month it was released) was Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I saw it so many times, I ran out of money. I had to stand in the parking lot and ask someone for a dime or quarter. Sad, folks. Very sad.



The very last movie I saw at the main Ford City Theater was a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show -- an appropriate end to an era (for me, at least). This was the fall of 1982. By spring of '83, I was working as an usher at Orland Square's movie theater (I know: I'm a traitor), and by the following fall, I had moved away.

Good times.

Photos Needed

If you have any photos of old Burbank -- or recent photos of still-exisiting but old Burbank establishments -- I'd love to be able to post them. You can email them to me here: bookofralph@aol.com

Here are some places I'd love to have photos of...

Goldblatt's (or any store in that shopping center)
Korvette's
Henry's Hamburgers
Topps
Sayre Lounge
Cezar's Inn

Those are just a few off the top of my head...I'm open to any photos, however.

Thanks! John

Where We Shopped: Burbank Records

Location: 79th and Austin

Burbank Records was originally located on the northwest corner of 79th and Austin, in that little strip of shops there (I have no idea what's there now, or if anything is there, for that matter). As with most of my postings, my dates are a little fuzzy, but the earliest I remember Burbank Records was 1975. I absolutely loved this placed. Frickin' loved it!

The guy who ran the store reminded me of an ex-hippie ("ex" meaning that he had cut his hair and trimmed his beard). The store still sold paraphenalia (pipes, mostly), as did a lot of independent record stores back then. I was nine years old for most of 1975 (my birthday is November), and I earned my living walking dogs. In fact, I actually made a pretty good buck doing it. My family had just moved into the condos over by Reavis, and so I spent a fair amount of my time biking down to Burbank Records with a pocketful of dog-walking money, walking up and down the store's aisles, deciding which album I would buy each week.

I bought dozens of albums there, but a few that I remember are Cheech and Chong's Sleeping Beauty and



George Carlin's On the Road. When I brought the Carlin up to the counter, the proprietor asked, "Do your parents mind you listening to this?" I said they didn't mind -- which was true -- and then named off the other George Carlin albums I owned. That was all he needed for confimation: He slipped the album into a bag and rang it up. Five bucks!



I'd like to think that I was one of his best customers, and maybe I was. He spent a lot of time talking to me, and I got the feeling that things weren't always going well for him, though I have no idea why I thought that. (I spent a lot of time listening to older people when I was a kid, which is strange because, where I live now, neighborhood kids wouldn't think twice about talking to me or asking me for any advice or hanging around while I told them stories about my life, and yet that's how I passed a lot of my time as a kid.)

Flashforward: Summer of '76. The owner of Burbank Records knew that I was a huge Elton John fan (remember: Elton John was a mega-star in 1976, at his peak, and he often had not one but two or three albums in the top 40), and he had a stack of tickets for the upcoming Elton John concert at the Chicago Stadium. He was scalping them for twelve bucks a pop, and he wanted to know if I wanted to buy one. (The face value of the ticket was only six bucks. Six bucks!) My parents, unfazed by the scalping, stipulated that I could go if my brother, who was six years older, went along with me; my brother agreed, but on one condition: I had to buy his ticket for him, which meant I had to come up with twenty-four bucks. Somehow -- I have no idea how -- I did, and while I worked on scraping together the money, the store's owner held two tickets for me. "You're good for it," he told me.



I still have the concert program...and, in fact, the ticket stub. A short while after the concert, I stopped off at Burbank Records and bought the disasterous Elton John double album, Blue Moves. The owner, as I recollect, may have even knocked a few bucks off the price for me.



The guy, whose name I wish I could remember, eventually sold Burbank Records. On his last day in the store, he gave me some advice on life and then, reaching over and ruffling my hair, told me that I was a good kid.

I have no idea who the new owner was; I'm not sure I ever did. By the time Burbank Records moved across the street, to the southwest corner of 77th and Austin, I had pretty much quit going there. The last time I went was when they were having their going out-of-business sale, probably around 1981. I stocked up on cheap cassettes by bands like the B-52s and The Kings. I may even have bought a Jim Steinman cassette that day, if anyone remembers him. ("Rock and Roll Dreams Come True," anyone?)

Burbank Records was, to my mind, one of the few stores that truly gave Burbank character, and when it dissolved, the city lost something rather unique.