Lenell cookies a new lost icon, just like Magikist lips or Empire Carpet guy

“If you like the cookies, the story I’ll tell,
About a fine baker, named Maurice Lenell.

“He came here from Sweden, to bake and to sell,

The wonderful cookies, of Maurice Lenell.

“One taste will tell, that Maurice Lenell, cookies are just simply … good!”

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Soon to be no more!

Now, it’s just an advertising jingle relegated to the junk yards of our minds that are cluttered with all sorts of trivia collected through our lives. Maurice Lenell cookies will soon be no more.

The company that has been producing them in recent years has decided it’s no longer financially worth their time or effort to do so.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that the current supply of Lenell-brand cookies in places like The Cookie Store and More are it – there will be no replenishment of supplies once they run out.

Although it should be pointed out that the Lenell family that founded the company in the 1920s with a bakery that expanded greatly throughout the years sold their financial interest back in 1985. The new owners closed the iconic company’s factory on Harlem Avenue in suburban Norridge in 2007.

Which for one summer back some three decades ago I actually lived near. It always shocked me to learn the number of people who thought it cool to live near the real-life Maurice Lenell factory. Yes, I am old enough to remember the smell of the cookies baking when one passed through the neighborhood.

It has been quite a while since Lenell cookies were something you could easily find on your store shelves. They had become something that certain people would scavenge stores for – just like Faygo root beer – to bring back some sort of childhood memories.

How do people give directions now w/o the Lips?

MY OWN MEMORY of the company go back to that advertising jingle that was featured in television spots that aired on many programs that were geared toward Chicago-area children.

Such as Ray Rayner or Garfield Goose. Or as my brother, Chris, recalls, a sizable supply of Lenell-brand cookies were among the prizes offered on Bozo’s Circus for those individuals fortunate enough to get a chance to play the Grand Prize Game (I went to grammar school with one such girl – she washed out on Bucket Number Three).

Which is why, as I write this, I can’t get that jingle out of my head. I may have to torture myself with something by Culture Club or the 1910 Fruitgum Company to force it out of there.

It has been awhile since we've seen Hauldren's real image on television

Perhaps it is just a desire to hang on to portions of the Chicago of my youth – some of which probably make no sense to the younger generation. Just as how I always expect to see that whitewashed brick colossus as I approach 35^th Street on the Dan Ryan Expressway – only to realize Comiskey Park was torn down 25 years ago.

THE JINGLE WILL go along with another iconic image that used to exist on the Dan Ryan – the Magikist carpet cleaning company that hasn’t been in business since 2001.

Remember those giant red lips that lit up there, along with locations along the Eisenhower and Edens expressways? How many people used to give directions to their homes by telling people how far they lived from the lips?

Which would make us think those people were imbibing a bit too much on the cooking sherry, until we drove into their neighborhoods and suddenly saw those giant lips hovering over us? Then, it made sense.

I’ll have to confess to sensing a gaping hole, of sorts, at 85^th Street when I no longer see those lips looking down on me as I pass by on the Dan Ryan.

JUST AS IT also seems odd whenever we see the animated image of Lynn Hauldren in the television commercials for Empire Today. The real-life Hauldren when he was alive was the Empire Carpet Guy, whose company could easily be reached at 588-2300.

Bring back real Sanders image?

In fact, I suspect most of you had no clue who I was talking about until I gave the company’s telephone number – which you’re probably now singing in your own minds.

Yet another iconic image from Chicago’s past that continues on.

Although definitely not as lame (my brother insists “creepy” is the proper word) as actor Darrell Hammond’s attempt bring life to Col. Sanders. That would be one image we’d all be better off forgetting!

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T-R-U-M-P – all a matter of perspective

The Trump-less way many would prefer to think of Chicago skyline

I had to be at the Daley Center courthouse last week for another hearing in an ongoing lawsuit I’m writing about these days, and one of the things I like about trips there is when I can cover something in one of the top floors of the 30-plus story building.

You can get some up-close and personal views of the Chicago skyline – such as being able to look DOWN on the First United Methodist Church building located across the street.

Trump contribution to Chicago

BUT BY CHANCE in a bit of down time during a court hearing, I happened to catch a glimpse out of a window facing to the north of what has become an architectural controversy (or travesty, depending on one’s opinion).

The Trump Tower right on the Chicago River that is one of the city’s tallest buildings (albeit not as big as the Willis Tower that so many of us still call Sears).

And from my perspective on the 25^th floor, I could look down on the building and see the letters that are getting so many people riled up.

T-R-U-M-P. As in The Donald wants to ensure that EVERYBODY knows this is his building in Chicago. One with a riverfront view as such that everybody along Wacker Drive can see it – as well as anybody coming in from Lake Michigan into the city on the river.

 

Looking down from Daley Center

THE BUILDING IS just like the man himself – all about garishness being mistaken for class. Just like way too many rap and country/western music stars!

Yet I have to admit that from my Daley Center view, the lettering that gets so many people all worked up seemed to have a proper perspective.

It is, after all, one of the city’s tallest buildings (nearly 1,400 feet tall). So the idea of letters that are 20 feet tall is a matter of perspective.

The “TRUMP” sign wasn’t any more ostentatious than the letters atop the building advertising that Kemper Corp. insurance is located at 1 E. Wacker Dr. I noticed their sign as well.

 

Palmolive Building view before iconic sign

I’LL BE THE first to admit that the New York-based real estate developer is way too overbearing for us to have to put up with. Particularly since he comes across as though he believes the structures he is erecting are permanent reminders of his existence on this planet.

Does Trump believe his tower in Chicago is his reminder to the Midwestern U.S. that he was here? That the structure will still be standing some 3,000 years from now?

As though it makes him immortal?

Heck, I’m old enough to remember when the Palmolive Building bore the name of PLAYBOY, and had that “Bunny Beacon” atop the structure that could be seen from several hundred miles away.

NOW, WHO REMEMBERS that the magazine’s sign was ever there. Or even that Hugh Hefner’s attempt at a sophisticated girlie magazine was ever a Chicago-based company?

A large part of the reason I can’t get too worked up at the sight of T-R-U-M-P on the Chicago River is that I know full well the day will come when the sign will be no more.

Do I think Mayor Rahm Emanuel is letting himself get way too worked up with his governmental efforts to try to force the sign’s removal? Of course. If anything, he’s merely feeding into Trump’s ego by making him think he’s all the more important on the Chicago scene.

 

A real iconic sign

Emanuel ought to let this fight go. He’d find out just how quickly Chicagoans would learn to ignore this bit of garishness. Heck, we manage to ignore a lot of tacky (the remodeled Soldier Field, for example) items that exist in our city.

IN THE END, Trump will get his comeuppance when his attempt at a memorable structure winds up getting lost in the skyline shuffle.

And a century from now, nobody will be remembering the T-R-U-M-P lettering as anywhere near iconic as the Magikist lips!

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Chicago evolutions; Is there now a city that lives on only in my head?

Every time I happen to be at State and Randolph streets, it triggers a childhood memory – an old advertising board for cigarettes that used to have a picture of a man smoking the tobacco product.

Maybe I'm not alone in remembering?

With real, live smoke coming from his mouth.

YEAH, I KNOW. It’s the kind of gimmick that only a 4-year-old would find amusing. But if my mind recalls correctly, I was 4, and I was downtown with my father taking in the ambiance of a crowded metropolitan area.

A sensation that still gives me a tingle in my spine every time I set foot in the Loop.

Although I suspect I’m the only person who walks by that intersection and has recollections of a more-than-four decade-old advertising billboard. They’re really getting their money’s worth.

Then again, it is far from the only memory I have that still registers in my memory whenever I’m in this wonderful Second City.

TO ME, A trip up the Dan Ryan Expressway always manages to cause some confusion round about when I get near 85^th Street. Because a part of me expects to see the bright-red with white lettering advertising billboard for the Magikist carpet-cleaning company.

Those of you of a certain age know exactly what I’m writing about – the Magikist lips. Which may well have also had advertising signs on the other expressways. But the Dan Ryan sign is the one so burned in my brain that I always have to remind myself that it doesn’t exist anymore.

A part of me still looks for those lips

In fact, it has been gone for more than two decades – 1992, to be exact.

It is similar to the sensation I experience whenever I ride on the Dan Ryan or a commuter train and approach 35^th Street.

A PART OF me looks to the north side of the street to see the worn-brick building with so many coats of whitewash all over it where the White Sox have played baseball since the days of Ray Schalk and Joe Jackson.

The "Cracker's" old field still sticks in our minds

Only it has been gone for even longer than those lips! Which may be a large part of the reason why the structure known as U.S. Cellular never gets its due respect – seeing it reminds of us what was lost! I suspect at times even the younger generation (there are people old enough to think they're "life-long" Chicagoans who are too young to remember Comiskey Park) knows it missed out on something!

Just on Thursday I was walking along Randolph Street in the Loop when I remembered the buses I used to take back when I was in college, and the way they would take me all the way into downtown from Bloomington, Ill., to the stations along Randolph, which also used to have those garish theaters before the area tried to convert itself into an “upscale theatre” district. One that I suspect is limited and second-rate compared to the "real" theater districts of New York City. Do we make ourselves look silly by comparison?

 

Yes, I recall how seedy the area used to be. Just as in the South Loop (particularly the area around the old 11th and State headquarters of the Chicago Police Department), one didn’t want to linger around either area too long. Although there’s a part of me to which my favorite scene in the Blues Brothers film were those few moments of stock footage (think of the Peter Gunn theme) of the seedier parts of Chicago leading up to the flophouse (transient hotel, to use the proper term) where Dan Aykroyd’s “Elwood Blues” character really lived.

 

WHOSE GHOST WOULD be more appalled at the modern-day status of Chicago -- "Cracker" Schalk in seeing his old ball field paved over into parking, or John Belushi's "Jake Blues" character missing his cinematic home that is no more? All of this always triggers memories to me of what once was, and will never be again.

Of course, it’s not just places that change. So do even the gadgets and gizmos that exist amongst us.



How common will this become?

Just on Thursday I noticed for the first time ever a newsbox that had been rigged up to accept credit cards. Just swipe your card through the slot, and you can open the box and take a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Is this the wave of the future? I could see how it would appeal to a younger generation that wants to think of money as something accessed through a card, rather than cash to be carried with them.

ALTHOUGH I WONDER how good an idea it will seem to be when the first time harsh Chicago weather causes the device to malfunction – either causing it to refuse to sell papers or causing it to charge someone $10 a copy. Maybe that’s a Sun-Times fantasy of a way to keep the paper alive! Or maybe it can record the card numbers of those people who think it's okay to help themselves to multiple copies of the newspaper!

All I know is that in the Chicago of my mind, people carry change on them when they want to buy a newspaper, perhaps after attending a ballgame on the northeast corner of 35^th and Shields and passing those lips on the way back home.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The popularity of the Forgotten Chicago website makes me wonder if I’m not alone in remembering fondly what once was in our wonderful home city?