Flashback 2003: A dirty joke to honor today's greatest humorist

Allen & Ginter cigarette card,1891 (Metropolitan Museum)

     A surprising number of readers said they enjoyed yesterday's joke. That's why I used to run them at the end of the column,  for a number of years—the brainchild of Michael Cooke, by the way—as a bit of music hall fun. I was walking a cigar up Shermer Saturday afternoon with a pal, who remarked upon the naughtier version of that joke, and I said how I once ran a somewhat risque joke in the paper. I was emboldened to print it because Garrison Keillor was coming to town with a show of dirty jokes. In 2017, he was fired from Minnesota Public Radio for alleged harassment of female coworkers. He denied the misbehavior, and I can't judge whether he is the aggressor or the victim. But I do know he was an original America comic voice, and I would hate to see his work fall from popularity because of his personal lapses. 

     I know only one dirty joke, but it's a good one. The chicken joke, I call it. Normally, I'm not the dirty-joke-telling type—too inhibited and awkward. But my chicken joke is special, beloved really, though, now that I think of it, not exactly family-newspaper material. Maybe later . . .
     Left on my own, I would never be bold enough to tell a dirty joke in my column, except that Garrison Keillor, of NPR fame, is hosting an evening of "bawdy humor" Monday at the Steppenwolf. Maybe that surprises you—it's like Norman Rockwell painting a scene of civic turmoil.
     Which, of course, Rockwell did. In the same way people try to marginalize Rockwell by forgetting, for instance, his painting of black girls hurrying past a mob during the civil rights era, so those dismissing Keillor as a folksy yarnsmith, his Lake Wobegon a bit of kitsch Americana alongside Reader's Digest and Currier & Ives, ignore his sharp and edgy material, usually because they've never heard or read him.
     I've done both, and I think he's a genius. Don't be fooled by the bumbling Lutheran pastors and clueless senior citizens of his radio stories. Keillor is slyly subversive. Like his outraged teenager nailing 95 complaints about small town life on the church door (and, really, how many Martin Luther puns does one get in life?), Keillor has issues with the town he so obviously cherishes. During the Gulf War, he offered a stark parable of dissent about the one boy in high school who refused to wear a yellow ribbon supporting our troops.
     He also wrote the funniest baseball story since Ring Lardner, a joyous, unhinged, taunting victory strut celebrating the Twins' championship. "My team won the World Series," he began. "You thought we couldn't but we knew we would and we did, and what did your team do? Not much. . . . You thought we were quiet and modest in the Midwest but that's because you're dumb, as dumb as a stump, dumber than dirt."
     Keillor will last—if I had to pick three humorists since the Civil War who will still be read 100 years from now, I'd say Mark Twain, James Thurber and Garrison Keillor. Who am I missing? H. L. Mencken? Maybe. But his references are so obscure now that half his pieces already read like Chaucer. Robert Benchley? Still funny, yes, but who reads him? To survive, you have to create a world, and Keillor's main setting—the mythical American small town trembling on the brink of extinction, its residents caught in the final moments before the modern behemoth steamrolls them away--will remain. Just as we yearn toward Huck and Tom, free on their raft, so our nation will--as we wander, rootless and placeless--grope back toward Lake Wobegon.
     Dirty joke alert: Skip this part!
     OK, on to the joke: A timid man goes to a brothel. He tells the madam that his wife is out of town and that for this, the lone transgression in his life, he wants the wildest thing she has to offer.
     The madam thinks, puffs her cigarette and casts an appraising eye up and down the timid man.
     "I have a chicken . . ." she says at last, "who will give you a back rub" (for our purposes, though "back rub" is not the act in my non-family newspaper version).
     The timid man agrees, and is ushered into an elegant room—circular bed, a big mirror on one wall. A small hatch opens and the chicken is shoved in (this is why I love this joke; the poor, bewildered chicken, skidding into the room, feathers flying). The man tries to … umm … interact with the chicken. But it's just a chicken. Nothing much happens. Still, the next day, he thinks, "That was fun." He returns to the brothel and sidles up to the madam.
     "Um, excuse me," he stammers, "is the, ah, chicken available?"
     "No, I'm sorry," coos the madam. "The chicken is with a customer. But, if you like to watch, there's a woman in the next room wrestling with a dog." Again, in the version I tell, it is a more specific form of wresting-like activity.
     The man is ushered into a dim room with a one-way mirror. Another patron is seated before the mirror, gazing raptly through it. The timid man joins him, and together they watch a woman rolling around with the dog. "This is incredible!" exudes the timid man.
     "You think this is something," says the first man. "You should have been here yesterday. There was a guy trying to get a back rub from a chicken."
     Dirty joke over: safe to read now.
     Another great thing about Keillor is how he rescues so much that falls by the wayside in our culture. Old pop songs and spoken stories, singalongs and, yes, raunchy jokes. It is safe to say that I would have spent my career, such as it is, and never been bold enough to tell my chicken joke, were I not given strength by Keillor's example.
     Not that Keillor is perfect. He loathes journalists, for instance. He has his reasons, I suppose, but it still stings, personally, and seems ungracious. Were I a comic genius, at the top of my craft, producing deathless humor entertaining the world, I think I'd extend a little pity toward the middling mediocrities brushing against the hem of my robe as I stride by.
     But that is quibbling—no wonder he hates us. I'll be in the audience Monday. Tickets are sold out, sadly, but he'll be back, and then there are all those books and tapes and radio programs. You shouldn't miss him just because you think you know who he is.

          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 3, 2003

Flashback 2006: Took shot at a politician, got call from a man

     Monday's column on the tempest over the Daily Northwestern daring to cover a news story mentioned that I once got was chewed out over the phone by Barack Obama. Regular reader Holger Meerbote was skeptical: "Barack Obama really called and yelled at you?? Over what, may I ask?" I sighed, and was about to explain it all, when I remembered I wrote a column about it—how could I not?

    It was back when my column filled a page and ended with a joke. I've kept the joke because it's an oldie but a goodie.

     The late Steve Neal was vigorous and unrelenting in his attacks on Sen. Dick Durbin. Eloquent, razor-sharp keelhaulings, again and again, for Durbin's bobbling O'Hare reconstruction, for his not commanding respect, for a variety of sins. This did not go over well with the senator. I remember Durbin once showing up for an editorial meeting. "Where's Steve Neal?" he demanded. "I want to see him!" You could tell he was angry. I, as the junior member of the board, was dispatched to Steve's office to go fetch him. But Steve had vanished, through luck or design, a skill I wish I could master.

                                                            * * *

     Late Friday afternoon. The Sunday column's in. Nothing much to do but clean off the desk, best I can—it never gets clean, or even close—drink one last cup of coffee, and call it a week.
     Phone rings. Barack Obama, from Africa. As if he's in the next room, as the cliche goes. My skin goes clammy, and I get a sinking in my gut, the way it felt when, as a kid, I'd get in bad trouble. Oh no. . . .
     He's mad. Not hopping mad, or temper-flaring mad, but steely, calm and controlled mad. We've crossed paths before, but that was politics, he says, and this is personal, and he's offended.
     "I didn't mean to offend you," I say, weakly, and that's true. I thought I was parsing the Gordian knot of racial politics. I presented his trip to Africa not as the sincere personal odyssey that the seal pack of journalists following him are describing, but as calculated political theater.
     Only Obama didn't read it that way. How could he? He saw it as my suggesting he's ashamed of his mother. Or neglecting his grandmother, whom he visits regularly. He was just Downstate, he says, just in Cairo—the press certainly covered it, though of course not to this extent. It wasn't the big deal Africa is because he only gets to Africa once every 14 years.
     I try to explain to Obama—I don't know about his personal life. I'm speaking of images, of politics, of how America views race, a subject that endlessly fascinates me. I didn't think he'd be offended—heck, I didn't even think he'd read it. Africa is far away, or used to be.
     He knows politics, he says, he knows the give and take. But we're friends, and this is over the line.
     "I'm sorry," I say, surrendering. "How can I make it up to you?"

                                                             * * *

     After Steve died, I felt duty-bound to take up the Durbin beat, to seize the bastinado and go after the senator. It was easy and fun.
     Then one day, the senator's office called—would I like to have breakfast with him?
     "You realize who you're calling?" I said. Yes indeedy.
     This put me in a pickle. I knew if I started taking meals with Durbin, I would never be able to lay into him the way I once had.
     On the other hand, a senator calls, you go. At least I do.
     At breakfast, Durbin waved off past misunderstandings. He was either sincere or masterful—probably both. Either way, I decided he wasn't the bad guy I once thought he was. We've been pals ever since. Co-opted? Educated? Probably both.

                                                               * * *

     Frankly, I can't even write about Obama's call without being aware that there's an undercurrent of bragging on my part—look at me, not an anonymous mediocrity trying to fill his space, but a real pundit, phoned up by God's chosen vessel in American politics, all the way from Africa on a Friday afternoon. Well, that's journalism. People hate us for a reason.
     In our defense, like politicians, we have various audiences. Readers who dislike Obama— and I've got 'em in droves—wonder who's paying for the trip, why he isn't at home, bringing the bacon to Illinois, instead of campaigning in a foreign land. They applauded my candor.
     Those who revere and respect Obama—and I've got them, too—hooted and questioned what I could possibly be thinking.
     My wife is among the latter group—she ran me over the coals so thoroughly Friday morning ("Africa is interesting. . . ," she said) as if warming me up for Obama, I asked her if she was on retainer.
     And me? I meant what I wrote when I wrote it—I always do—but I'm not the Jedi Council. Half the time, I write something because I'm trying to figure it out. I don't always succeed.
     After our phone call, I reeled into the newsroom, green around the gills, and bumped into the editor.
     "What's wrong?" he asked, reading my expression. I told him, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around and sent me back here to write this.
     As the sky darkened, I found myself thinking about my own father. I took a trip in his honor, too, once. We took his old Merchant Marine ship across the Atlantic together. I thought I was writing a book of remembrance, of love and reconciliation. He hated it. He thought I was lashing out at him, and didn't talk to me for a year. I was shocked.
     I wish I could portray that oblivious quality as courage—I write, and consequences be damned. But that isn't it. I never think of the consequences; they always surprise me.
     When I parsed Barack Obama, the politician, I never imagined I'd offend, and hear from Barack Obama, the man. Very few politicians would do that. I've been slagging Mayor Daley for years, and not a peep out of him. Frankly, I prefer it that way. But Obama is extraordinary—everybody knows that—and we expect great things of him. I certainly do, and if I resist joining the hallelujah chorus, well, that's just me doing my job as best I know how. It's nothing personal.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE

Nancy Rudins, of Champaign, offers this one:

     A guy goes to a supermarket and notices a beautiful woman smiling at him and waving.
     He's rather taken aback because he can't place how he knows her—he'd certainly remember a face like that.
     She walks over.
     "Do we know each other?" he says, tentatively.
     "I think you're the father of one of my kids,'' she says.
     The man is shocked. His mind races back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife.
     "My God," he says, "are you the stripper from my bachelor party when I laid on the pool table, with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped me with wet celery???"
     She looks into his eyes and says, "No, I'm your son's math teacher."
                     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 27, 2006

Impeachment: A boring train wreck well worth watching

Rep. Adam Schiff begins the impeachment hearings.

     I loathe meetings, conferences, seminars, conclaves — assemblies of all kinds. I avoid trials, whether civil or criminal, religious services, whether of my own faith or others, and political rallies of all stripes. Anything that traps me so I must sit, be silent and listen to people talk for an indeterminate time.
     Thus I was surprised, mildly, to find myself Wednesday at 9 a.m. CST parked in front of CNN to watch the beginning of the House Intelligence Committee’s public hearings on whether Donald Trump should be impeached. The “This is history!” imperative must have overridden my natural disinclination to watch parliamentary proceedings. The president is being impeached. It’s like the moon catching fire; who doesn’t step outside and look up?
     Two minutes later it hadn’t started, and I was growing impatient.
     “It’s 9:02,” I tweeted. (Because really, if a thought goes unexpressed nowadays, does it even exist?) “You’re late. [C’mon] Dems, get with the program.”
     Be careful what you wish for.
     Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., gaveled the hearing to order and spoke for 36 seconds.
     “It is the intention of the committee to proceed without disruptions,” he said, then was interrupted by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, asking about the “rules of engagement,” as if this were some kind of battle, which of course it is.
     But an odd sort of battle, a battle where the outcome is unimportant. Anyone who understands that the president put his own interests ahead of the nation’s already knew it Tuesday. And anyone who refuses to see that derailing American foreign policy to grease your chances in the next election is an impeachable offense will never grasp that fact, not after a thousand hours of damning testimony. Not after a century.
     The question, Schiff said, is “what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people can come to expect from their commander in chief?”
     Ooh, ooh, me, me! I know!

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Flashback 1998: Confronting the horror in this political jungle

Bill Clinton, National Portrait Gallery

     America has impeached four presidents and I've written about three of them while the process was unfolding (Andrew Johnson was before my time).
     For Nixon, I was a 13-year-old budding journalist, recording thoughts in a green clothbound notebook lifted from NASA, where my father worked. 
     "As I sat in music class with Mr. Zagar we were listening to the radio when the teacher turned the station we heard the news that Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew has just resigned," I wrote, in cursive, a forgotten skill. "At first I was exstatic [sic] but now I'm not so sure this is a good thing. While I hate Nixon, his vice president, and all the assorted crooks, thugs, tuffs [sic], and assorted evil doers and phone tapers [sic] that associate themselves with Nixon, I feel that unexpected bad things might happen like the fall of American democracy or Nixon seizing the government, but those are remote possibilities."
       Twenty-five years later I had just begun writing a column at the Sun-Times, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton was something to be endured. There are a few errors in the column as well: "Wozzeck" is only 90 minutes long, thank God. And showing off, I name-check Joseph Conrad and quote T.S. Eliot. But can you find the Dante reference as well?


     If you've ever sat through a really terrible opera, one of those four-hour jobbies, always modern—say "Wozzeck" by Berg—that the Lyric Opera seems to feel compelled to inflict upon its audience, periodically, perhaps as penance for the joys of Mozart and Verdi, then you might have already struck upon my technique of escape visualization.
     It is the second act. Having spent the intermission begging my wife to leave and salvage what remains of the evening (she refuses, out of the charmed notion that the performers, 100 yards and two balconies away, will feel badly if we do), I slump down in my red plush seat. The opera unfolds, hideously.
     So I leave, not in reality, but in imagination. I narrow my eyes and go through the process: getting up, murmuring apologies, sliding down the row, trying not to grind my butt in the faces of seated patrons.
     Quick-step up the aisle. Pass through the door into the light. The relief of the unmobbed coat check desk. The giddy reunion between man and coat. The rush down the stairs. The careful noting of the crooked beige plastic electric wall socket plates in the lobby, an amazing lapse amid the glorious marble and brass (I'm going to dip my toe into philanthropy some day and raise the money to buy the Lyric a half dozen real brass socket covers for its lobby— the Neil Steinberg Memorial Wall Plates). The final release into the revivifying night air.
      I found myself engaging in a similar escape last week, when struck by the tsunami of the Lewinsky; Tripp tapes, followed hard by the typhoon of the impeachment hearings. (We never have thought of a proper name for this nightmare, have we? Maybe we should take a cue from Conrad, and just call it the Horror).
     How will this end? When will the face of the general public—turned away in relief since the elections, now roughly grabbed and shoved, like a naughty dog, back into the noisome mess—once again be permitted to turn skyward and view the stars?
     My personal moment of squirming despair came Thursday. I was in a cab, on Lake Shore Drive. Of course, the radio was turned to Ken Starr (all radios and televisions were; you could keep up with the farce by just walking down the street, like with the Cubs in a playoff game).
     Cab radios only have two volumes, tantalizingly soft and eardrum-piercing loud. Straining to hear Starr's pious palaver, I asked the cabbie to turn the radio up. As punishment, I was forced to endure Starr's voice sawing full volume through my head for the rest of the trip.
     When will this be over and what will that be like? Can we conjure up a scenario that, like a fantasy tiptoe out of the opera house, can give us a bit of balm against the nightmare grinding out before our eyes? Since relief tarries, might we not at least imagine relief?
     My first impulse would be to say: No, it's not possible. Steven Calabresi, a professor of constitutional law at Northwestern University, floated a scenario in which the Senate would still be arguing this issue in January, 2001. And that was his short version. He also suggested the Senate could hold some sort of hearing hounding Clinton after he leaves office (after? after!) to legally bar him from holding future office.
     With all due respect to Calabresi, he's out of his mind, showing the sort of oblivious wish-fulfillment that has led the Republican Party to the precipice and is now inspiring them to leap over into the abyss.
     If this nonsense is still being debated into 2001, there won't be a Republican in Congress to vote on the matter. Bank on it.
     As with all moralists who periodically grab the reins of the nation and drive us toward a cliff, they don't get the idea of a gray region. The moderate mass of America doesn't think in absolutes—we're trying to get through the day, which often requires compromise, a concept lost on zealots. Abortion is bad, but banning it is worse, so the rights of the fetus, such as they are, are trumped by the rights of the mother. Smut on the Internet is a problem, but appointing a committee of bluenoses to try to sweep it clean is worse. Clinton lied under oath, but he lied under oath about his sex life in a proceeding that grew out of a garbage lawsuit mounted by his enemies who hated him prior to all his supposed crimes and only hate him more now.
     But it will end, right? I bring you good news. It will. The inquiry will grind on, the Republicans trying to expand it, desperately. But society, which cares little now, will begin to care less. The hearings will continue, but we won't notice them anymore. New developments will get pushed to the back pages, to the last segment before the weather. Newspapers will run a small box, back by the astrology tables: "Today is the 147th day of the impeachment hearings. Rep. Hyde said . . ."
     This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 22, 1998

The Daily Northwestern’s unfortunate apology

     This was an unusual column. My first inclination, Wednesday morning, was to open up with both barrels on The Daily Northwestern. That went online. Then Medill Dean Charles Whitaker issued a powerful defense of the student newspaper, which is separate from the university, outlining the enormous badgering and pressure the staff faced from their classmates for covering the story. That put the situation in a new context, and I clawed the column back and wrote a more nuanced, if less funny, 2.0 version. Nothing to be ashamed of there. I wrote the first column on deadline with the information I had at hand. When that information changed, I revised my assessment of the situation. A policy I heartily recommend to any and all.

WARNING! THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS GRAPHIC EXPRESSIONS OF RIDICULE, PLUS IMAGES OF NAKED DISGUST REGARDING BELOVED UNDERGRADUATE PIETIES, AND SO MIGHT NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR MORALLY CERTAIN YET EMOTIONALLY FRAGILE INHABITANTS OF WILDLY OVERPRICED UNIVERSITIES WITH HABITUALLY DEFEATED FOOTBALL TEAMS.

Dear Northwestern:

     Hi? How ya been? Thriving, I know. That new music center? Fan-tastic.
     I’m good, thank you for asking. Old now. But hanging on. Still cranking out a column, just like I did for The Daily Northwestern in the early ’80s.
     Sorry I haven’t written in, gee, 37 years. But I’ve been busy, working, in the real world. At a newspaper. Which isn’t easy. Readers don’t always like what I write. Barack Obama once called and yelled at me. Trump fans fill the spam filter with brutalities. Last week my son’s old kindergarten teacher wrote a nasty letter. You need a hard shell, and to focus on your goal: telling a good story.
     You know what was a good story? Former Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions coming to Northwestern’s Evanston campus Nov. 5 to speak, or try to. It was difficult, with protesters pounding on doors and breaking windows, tussling with campus cops. More evidence the Left can have the same authoritarian tendencies as the Right.
     The Daily covered the event, which is what newspapers do. They cover events.
     Protesters caught in the act didn’t like the idea of being documented. They might get in trouble, so harried The Daily staff until it clawed back their names. Unsatisfied, they pushed for a jaw-dropping apology that instantly became notorious for its crushed capitulation.
     The Daily admits covering the protests, then concedes: “We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced.”
     What harm? The harm of having your public misbehavior reported? That’s called living in a democracy.
     “Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive,” the mea culpa continues. “Those photos have since been taken down. On one hand, as the paper of record for Northwestern, we want to ensure students, administrators and alumni understand the gravity of the events that took place Tuesday night. However, we decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students who were photographed.”
     Isn’t that what Counseling and Psychological Services is for?
     Worse follows:
     “Some of our staff members who were covering the event used Northwestern’s directory to obtain phone numbers for students beforehand and texted them to ask if they’d be willing to be interviewed. We recognize being contacted like this is an invasion of privacy.”

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Flashback 1996: Gramm puts foot down right on son's career

Jeff Gramm performs in South Korea. 

     A Chicago public high school asked me to speak at its career day next month. My initial inclination was to  decline—it would take a full day, and I'm not sure I can in good conscience encourage anyone to go into professional journalism. 
     Then I reconsidered, thinking that I might be able to say something about the value of pursing a passionate career long shot versus a safe, though less fulfilling path. And besides, who knows what I'll learn from talking to the students? That is, if I can remember to shut up long enough to listen to what they have to say. I told the school I'd do it.

    At the same time, I stumbled across this column from my first year as a columnist, that speaks to the subject. After the column, we'll catch up with what happened to the budding musician over the past 23 years.

     Hey, Jeff Gramm! Don't listen to your old man, Senator Phil. He was full of beans last week when he said he's giving you an entire year to become successful as a rock musician. One year to try music after you get your diploma, at the ripe old age of 21, and he's going to put his foot down and insist that you become a lawyer or a doctor.
     Geez!
     I read what the Texas Republican told the Dallas Morning News and could feel my jaw tighten: "I don't want him to look back 20 years from now, when he's lancing boils or doing wills . . . and say, 'I wonder if I could have been a big rock star?' "
    That's very generous of him. Very GOP. He's implying, of course, that in 20 years you're going to be either a boil-lancer or a will-maker, that your rock ambitions—your first recording is coming out in November—are a chimera and a lark, doomed to fail.
     Thanks, dad.
     Why do parents always do this, generation in and generation out? Listen Jeff, when you were in kindergarten, my father wanted me to go into computers. "They're writing their own checks," he said. He was right, of course, but that didn't matter. I didn't want to go into computers. I wanted, for some crazy reason, to be a writer. My father thought I was insane, and anticipated exactly the same failure that your dad is so helpfully predicting for you. Now, after it has all worked out, he's proud.
     Pressuring your kids to follow in your footsteps is a combination of ego, love and stupidity. It should come as no surprise that my father was a scientist. And gee, coincidence of coincidences, Jeff, yours happens to have been an academic. Small world. I guess having someone carry on the family genes isn't quite enough—you need somebody to pass your professional books on to.
     Now, I'm not saying that law and medicine aren't honorable professions, and you might eventually decide to go into either. But it should be up to you. Senator Dad should have the restraint not to make grand pronouncements about your career in public. But then, he's a Republican, and they like to blow off their big bazoos.
     Sure, music is risky. But law and medicine are no guarantee, either. I know people who flamed out of medical school and are on public assistance now. I know people who never made it past the bar exam despite the agony of repeated attempts.
     And even those who get through law or medical school aren't exactly tripping down the primrose path. Look at the number of lawyers who end up pitching their careers. I know a guy who quit the law and opened up a mustard shop in Wisconsin.
     Jeff, let me tell you a story.
     I went to Northwestern, a hive of ambition just as crawling with achievers as your University of Chicago. There was a guy in my class named David Friedman. When David got out of school, he decided to go into balloon twisting. He became a clown.
     I pitied David, but felt especially sorry for his folks. Four years at Northwestern—a fortune in tuition—down the drain. For what? So David could make balloon giraffes for 5-year-olds at birthday parties. Nice career move.
     But a funny thing happened. David got really successful. He traveled the world twisting balloons. His clown character, Silly Billy, became a New York fixture. He licensed the character out. He built a Silly Billy empire. He was profiled, glowingly, in the New Yorker. He made a bundle.
     Now, of course, it could have worked out otherwise. No guarantees in balloon-twisting either. He could have been just another anonymous clown, standing on a milk crate on the street corner. But you know what? Still, he would have been better off doing what he wanted than going into a field he didn't care about.
     Even if music turns out to be a difficult, unprofitable living (and it's a good strategy to count on that, and for a lot longer than a year) you might still like it, even if it cheeses off old dad (maybe especially if it cheeses off old dad). I'll bet there are 1,000 lawyers and doctors in Chicago who would walk away from their careers, right now, today, if they could be playing behind chicken wire in a Texas honky-tonk tonight. More like 10,000.
     I don't know how your dad plans to enforce his edict next year. Maybe he expects you to hop on command. Maybe he doles out a stipend and intends to yank it back.
     Take my advice. Let him. You only get one life—a life that dad and mom were good enough to give to you. Don't allow them to fearfully demand it back at the last minute. Have faith in yourself and, trust me, they'll fall in line, eventually.
     And besides. We already have too many doctors and lawyers who went into the profession to please their parents.

       —Originally published in the Sun-Times, July 28, 1996

     Jeff Gramm's first album, Aden, named for his indie-pop group, was dubbed "an underrated classic" by one critic. The group put out three more, and performed until 2001. Then Gramm went to business school and into investing—he's now a respected hedge fund manager, author of a well-reviewed 2016 book, "Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism." 

     I caught up with him on Twitter. Like most dad's, his father's bark was worse than his bite.
     "He didn’t really enforce the one year deadline!" Gramm wrote. "I played music pretty full time (while temping to pay the bills) until late 2001."
     Does he regret the time lost, playing music when he could have been, oh I don't know, crunching numbers, or whatever it is hedge fund managers do?
     "I think being in a touring band was an incredibly valuable life experience that definitely helped with my investing career," he wrote. "No doubt."
     Phil Gramm, by the way, is doing well at 77, and has no regrets concerning his public skepticism about his son's choice of career.
“I knew Jeff would be successful," the older Gramm said. "I just wanted to live to see it.”
     There you have it. If I impart only one thing to the students, it is to get the single-straight-path-to-success notion out of their minds. Finding your life's work can be like fishing: you usually have to cast your line a number of times before you snag a keeper.

Veterans Day: Talking with one of Illinois’ 628,000 vets

Robert Richmond

     Robert Richmond was 17 when his grandmother took him to the Army recruiting station and signed the papers.
     The year was 1955. The Korean war had just ended.
     ”I went to Korea 16 months,” he said. “I got over there in July of ‘55. I was on the clean-up.”
     Why did he enlist?
     ”There wasn’t anything going on around here,” said Richmond, who grew up on the South Side, near 37th and Indiana,
     I met Richmond last week on the No. 3 King Drive bus. I noticed his Army baseball cap and we got to talking. He was on his way downtown on a few errands and I tagged along.
     Richmond, who like most vets never saw combat, has no regrets about enlisting. He’s glad.
     ”Yes,” he said. “Because it gave me the ability to be a man. Responsibility. I learned how to get up in the morning and do manly things. Things that I needed to do, like taking care of myself.”
     Richmond is one of about 628,000 veterans living in Illinois, according to the Veterans Administration, with 20.4 million veterans nationwide.
     The bus stopped at Randolph Street.
     ”Coming out, wheelchair,” he called out, working the joystick on his electric chair.
     First Richmond visited —choosing my words carefully—a social organization whose commitment to anonymity is equal to its commitment to temperance. To buy a commemorative coin for himself—18 years in January—and one for a relative.
     ”It’s a blessing,” he said, of the anniversary. “It’s a miracle.”

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