What becomes of old family photos? Do we wither away into history?

It was recently that I attended a party when one of my cousins gave her brother what might appear to be an odd gift – a giant frame containing more than a dozen family photographs.

My father (right), uncles and aunt as kids at Riverview

Before one presumes this is a home-made gift with meaning, consider that the people in those photos are someone else’s family.

FOR IT SEEMS this cousin found these framed photos at a second-hand store, and she bought it because my other cousin apparently has an interest in the way people pose for those shots meant to preserve the family for posterity.

Particularly in the older days, but he also enjoys a contemporary shot or two as well.

Now that night, we were going back and forth having fun mocking this off-the-wall holiday gift, for it seems the family in the photographs is Filipino (or maybe Chinese, the captions written on the back of the photos were sort of vague). Such as the idea that when my cousin turns old and begins to suffer from dementia, he’s going to presume THESE people are his family.

Bye Bye to all of us!

BUT IT DOES have me wondering what should we really expect to happen to all of those alleged family mementos – particularly since nothing truly lasts forever. And there’s always the possibility that some knucklehead down the road will decide these “mementos” are little more than trash taking up space.

My maternal grandparents upon birth of twins (my mother's the baby on right)

That seems to be what happened to this particular family’s photographs – which were nicely framed and organized in a way that you literally could follow this woman’s story from being a Filipino immigrant to the graduation of her grandchildren.

Somebody’s life became someone else’s space-taking nuisance. Is that what is destined to happen to all of us?



My paternal grandparents in front of their (then) new home

Perhaps I’m thinking this too deeply because, with the death of my brother not long ago, I wound up becoming the family member in possession of the old family photographs.

WHICH NOT ONLY document my own childhood and that of my brother, but also contain the shots that were taken throughout the lives of my father and mother during their respective childhoods.

In fact, I know one of the things I was able to do to make my father happy in the days following the death of his other son was to give him some five dozen prints of photographs from his own childhood that had somehow passed down to us.

My father and Uncle John (my mother's twin)

I know he’s planning on taking actions meant to preserve those photographs – some of which already have had some significant fading and deterioration (what with being five or six decades old by now).

But what happens after that? What happens if the day comes when this big, clunky photo album that my now-late mother started to put together when I was a baby winds up being stray stuff.

DOES IT WIND up being put up for sale in a second-hand shop as a potential antique? Or worse yet, in one of those landfills near Pontiac where much of Chicago’s trash winds up these days!

It would be all too easy for me to see how such a scenario could happen – even though I’m sure someone is going to retort that by such a time, I would be deceased and it wouldn’t really matter to me any longer.

Me, with my Uncle Art, when I had a whole life ahead of me

So perhaps some of these old photographs ought to be seen now, what with the idea that I could at least try to pass along their significance.

Otherwise, they could all become just dusty images that wind up being someone else’s conversational piece before they move along to more “revelant” topics such as the weather or whether the Chicago Cubs will manage to go two full centuries without winning a World Series title.

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I can’t figure the weather, but my mother still helps keep me warm

At first, I thought it was my imagination.


I was walking to a Metra commuter rail station Saturday morning when damp little driplets began to pelt my face.

IT WAS CLEAR that it was not rainfall. But snow? This early in the season. When we’re officially still two months away from the beginning of winter?

Sure enough, it was.

A snowfall so light that it barely registered. But it is what we got hit with in Chicago this morning, and the cloudy overcast day and cold temperatures made worse by the fact that I spent a part of the morning right on the shore of Lake Michigan (at the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site) where there were no big buildings to alter the breeze.

I got hit with a blast of chill. It felt like a winter’s day. And when later in the day it started to actually rain, I got soaked and seriously cold.

SATURDAY NIGHT, the temperatures were to hit levels just above freezing.

I guess what I’m really trying to say here is that I got spoiled by what essentially was a mild summer. It was fairly comfortable. We didn’t get many days of excessively high temperatures.

I definitely got spoiled by the notion of comfortable temperatures. I’m not ready yet for excess winter cold.

Particularly if it is anything like those excessive days of heavy snow and sudden chill that we endured over and over and over again back in January and February of this year.

FOR THE RECORD, this is not the earliest snowfall on record in Chicago. The national Weather Service says that in both 1928 and 1944 on Sept. 25, the Second City got hit with traces of snow.

So 2014 will be the year we can chant “We’re Number 3!!!” when it comes to snowfall. But that fact does not make this weekend any more pleasant.

The fact that Sunday was a bit warmer than Saturday only means we had to appreciate the slight uptick in heat all the more, since it is clear summertime is over – although the fact that baseball is still being played without Chicago ball clubs ought to have been the ultimate evidence of that fact.

Despite all this attitude that really is one step up from a whine, I can’t say I would want to give serious thought to leaving Chicago. The city has way too much going for it for me to consider leaving just because of a dose of cold.

BESIDES, THE FACT is that in the “real” world, temperatures get cold. I don’t know that I fully trust any place where people think a 30-plus degree day is a cold spell and evidence of the polar vortex.

If anything, the most unpleasant aspect of snow in Chicago is that it will get all the nitwits worked up who think they have a right to stake claims to parking spaces on public streets by dredging up all their summertime lawn furniture.

I’d suggest citing those people for littering, except that I realize our police officers really do have more significant things they ought to be doing with their time while on duty.

What I’m going to dredge up is one of my warmer jackets – one that I tucked away back in March and haven’t worn since.

IT IS ONE that I got as a present from my mother for Christmas 2009 – a leather jacket (although I do have one of those heavy, bulky down jackets for the truly shivering days).

That happens to be the last Christmas I celebrated with my mother prior to her passing. It was a last gift she gave to me.

So as I go about in coming weeks managing to stay warm despite the chill in the air, all I’ll have to say is, “Thanks Mom.”

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Holed up like a hermit? Or using what little common sense I still possess?

The scene along Chicago's State Street, or any other shopping scene, bore no resemblance Friday to this 1935 Christmas holiday parade. Photograph provided by Chuckman's photos



I was not amongst the many people whom retailers would have you believe were so eager to start their Christmas holiday shopping that they felt the need to take their turkey-bloated carcasses out to whatever shopping mall or big box store is near their homes to begin expressing their love by blowing away their money.

Nor will I be amongst those who will feel the need to make the special trip to State Street (which is a “Great Street” every day except on Friday), or to any other retailer.

I’M SURE SOMEONE is going to think I’m expressing an “un-American” spirit by refusing to do my part to bolster the economy at this “Black Friday” time of the year.

Actually, I’m just doing my part for common sense by refusing to indulge in this shopping mania. I’m going to wind up spending my share of money in coming weeks. I don’t feel the need to be a lemming and throw my wallet over the financial cliff.

Not quite yet, anyway!

Call it my own personal tradition. Friday is the one day that I try to go out of my way to avoid shopping.

MY AVERSION TO having to go out and join the crowds of people who think it is their “duty” to spend money and bolster the financial status of their local retailers is so much that this is the one day of the year that (if everything goes alright) the only money I’m likely to spend is a couple of bucks for newspapers (or maybe close to $5 if I decide to not be so cheap and pick up a copy of the New York Times -- which gives me less of a headache reading it on paper, as opposed to off a digital screen.

Part of it is that I’m not that fond of crowds of unruly people. It’s the same reason I don’t think much of the Taste of Chicago or parades (you’ve seen one, you really have seen them all) in general.

But there is something about the spirit of the day on this Day after Thanksgiving that troubles me.

I don’t like the idea that some people feel like it is a requirement to shop. They really could avoid much of the hassle of dealing with crowds by simply pacing themselves a bit better during upcoming days (or weeks),.

I DON’T WANT to feel like I’m following the rat pack (unless it’s in the spirit of Sinatra, Martin or Sammy Davis, Jr.). Then again, I’m also the type who thinks that Opening Day for the baseball season is overrated.

It’s cold, miserable and the second game of the season is just as good an introduction to a ballclub for the season as the first – except you lose all the people who could care less about baseball and are there because they want to partake in a spectacle.

Friday’s holiday shopping is way too much of a spectacle for me to take seriously.

Besides, I have never believed that the alleged “sales prices” being offered for those who bothered to show up during limited hours Thursday night or Friday morning are all that special.

THE AMOUNT OF money being saved just isn’t significant enough for me to have to put up with the pushy people who are prepared to turn fellow shoppers into road kill if they dare get in the path of that special something of a present for their alleged loved one.

In fact, the only times I have been out in this pack have been the years in which my duties as a reporter-type person provided me assignments requiring me to go out and interview shoppers.

A part of me always wanted to verbally assault these people for being nit-wits. I always felt my resulting stories were more mocking in tone than anything else. So excuse me for being thankful that no editor this year has decided they’d like me to find out what the “hot” gift item is this holiday season.

I don’t know, and I don’t care. Those people I choose to get gifts for will get items I think they will find interesting. Because personally, I don’t despise them enough to just grab some item off a shelf on Friday just because it’s “on sale!”

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City split caused by Chicago baseball gains national attention this holiday

The Chicago Bears are now officially a disaster, and the hopes of many a local sports fan is banked on the idea that the Chicago Bulls might be worth something.

Yet to the nation at-large, the attention seems to be going to the split between our city’s professional baseball clubs that has become a part of the very character of Chicago.

ALL BECAUSE OF a twisted, little video snippet less than two minutes long that was shot Sunday morning when children all across the country were ripping open Christmas presents.

One mother made a point of putting her daughter’s shock, awe and disgust upon receiving a present of a pillow designed to look like a bear cub in Chicago Cubs uniform.

For that girl, it seems, is a fan of the Chicago White Sox. She reacted like the six-year-old that she is in expressing the fact that this was a horrible present (while we can see her slightly-older brother off to the side dancing around in joy, and mocking the fact that she wanted a White Sox pillow).

In the end, the mother admits the pillow is a present for her brother, and that her REAL present is in another package – which turns out to be a White Sox mascot pillow.

THE GIRL WAS pleased. All was right with the world. Even with the Bears as awful as they are, and nobody really sure if the Bulls are for real.

This video has been copied over onto many different sites on the Internet, and I saw it over and over Wednesday on CNN Headline News. I even got to hear sports anchor Carlos Diaz take a “dig” at the White Sox by mocking team mascot Southpaw.

For in his view, the Cubs’ pillow depicts a cutesy bear cub. Whereas what exactly is Southpaw – other than a green, fuzzy blob wearing the black and white (with silver trim) of the White Sox?

He may have a point. There are many White Sox fans who will bash Southpaw’s existence on the grounds that they don’t know what he’s supposed to be.

ALTHOUGH I COULDN’T help but notice in the video that is drawing so many laughs and guffaws these days that the White Sox pillow’s depiction of Southpaw makes him bear a strong resemblance to Oscar the Grouch. (Does that make the Cookie Monster a potential Cubs fan?)

Which if a resemblance to a Sesame Street character were true would give Southpaw the most distinct appearance of any major league mascot (a distinction that probably goes to Friar – the bald-headed and robed Catholic padre who dances at San Diego Padres games).

But I honestly can’t say that anything about the girl’s reaction shocked me. It only means that the baseball “bug” has infected a younger generation. It may well be the reason why professional baseball lives on generation after generation – despite the best efforts of baseball people to take down the game with their greed.

There have been some jokes floating around the Internet about the state Department of Children and Family Services being called in on account of a parent allowing their children to be split between White Sox fandom and Cubs backing.

ALTHOUGH I PERSONALLY found it to be more cruel to try such a prank on the girl – making her think that she was getting one of those cutesy-poo teddy bears for a holiday present.

Then again, I’m sure this will be the hilarious home movie that the family will show year after year – and that the girl will have to live down for as long as it comes up on the Internet.

But the idea that a Chicago baseball fan of any age would react so negatively to a “gift” depicting an image of the “other” ball club? It’s not the least bit surprising. And I would expect a Cubs fan (in all their misguided sentiment) to react just the same.

For I know some White Sox fans who, upon seeing the girl being given a Cubs pillow, were probably chanting for her to feed it to that dog that was sniffing around her while opening the “present.”

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