Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, which isn’t a good thing…

So, as I passed the local gas station and its adjacent car wash, I saw a man out in the cold drying cars… and was reminded of where my experience of “work” began.

As a very young child, we got a very simple idea from my father… ‘If you want something, work for it.‘ He had a very effective image for conveying the notion, which was reminding us (usually in a lazier moment) how he shoveled coal as a kid during the Great Depression.  In hindsight, a pretty effective (and conveniently unassailable) example to have in his arsenal… but it worked, and you really couldn’t argue with it.

The result was that, from a very early age, when it came to getting the things we needed, there was a clear understanding that we’d end up working to earn whatever the money was.  Certainly the times were different, but for my brother and I, this translated into us grabbing a bag of old towels my mom kept around in our utility room and walking down to the local car wash (about a half mile away), and we’d spend hours drying cars.

The image seems a little surreal these days, because I can’t imagine young children doing such a thing (I was in grade school when we started), let alone walking over, crossing a major street, and doing it on their own, without their parents sitting close by to make sure they were “safe”.  Unconscionable.

In any case, go we did.  Every year for several years growing up, it was our primary means to make the money we needed for Christmas presents.  As the youngest two children in a family with eight kids, our only practical option was to pool our resources and buy gifts for our siblings and parents.  So, as the holiday season would approach, we’d get together a plan for everyone’s gifts, develop a basic budget (sometimes the budget would precede the gift ideas), and then we’d be off to the car wash to make the money we needed… in the Winter, in the cold, and in the snow.  The good news was that, given Chicago Winters tend to be awful, there was generally going to be a number of cars, and therefore the opportunity to make a few dollars was relatively good as long as we were willing to show up with some dry towels and wait for people to let us do the work.

I suppose that’s the first lesson we learned at the Car Wash… It takes the right conditions.  All the motivation in the world would not have mattered without the environment being conducive to doing the work in the first place.

The second point was pretty equally important… It helps if you have a goal.  In our case, I’m not sure that we would’ve been so motivated to brave the conditions if there wasn’t the imminent necessity of the upcoming holiday shopping.  I doubt most kids would characterize the experience as particularly “fun”.  It wasn’t.  It was, however, expedient and necessary if we wanted to have something to put under the tree.

The third, fairly obvious point in our case… It helps when you have a partner… Beyond the practical matter of either of us being too young to probably go on our own, the experience of sitting in the cold for hours by yourself would probably have been more miserable without my brother slugging it out with me.

The last couple lessons would require a little explanation…

In the first case, I remember people who would get out of their car, inspect the work we had done, point out imperfections, examine the towels (asking if they were ‘dry’ enough), jam our finger into some crevice the car wash could never have cleaned in a million years, and so forth.  In most cases, these were people who gave you 25 or 50 cents for the entire thing.  In hindsight, what a ridiculous situation when you remember we were little kids in grade school just trying to make an honest buck.  Lesson four… There will always be people so focused on getting a “good deal” that they become completely unaware of their surroundings and behaviors (and not always to their credit).

Finally, I remember being at the car wash in the middle of summer, where a guy driving a Trans Am asked me to help him put his roof panels into cases he had in his trunk (taking the “top down”).  He just needed an extra pair of hands… and I didn’t mind.  He gave me $4.  I remembered being so excited, because the most I think anyone ever paid us was about $1.  I remember the experience nearly forty years later.  Final lesson… Sometimes that extra little effort turns into a lot of reward.

While I didn’t set out to write anything particularly profound today… it does seem to me that there is some fundamental truth in the experiences we have in life.  Goals matter, having people on the journey with you matters… and there are times when those with whom you will interact will both inspire and disappoint you… the point is to show up and keep things in perspective.

At a time when I feel some reflection and introspection is needed, perhaps this was a good place to start.  Back at the beginning.  From here, we’ll see where the road leads next.

– CJG 03/01/2015

Having just returned to this blog from a hiatus, I am a bit surprised to realize it’s been a little over two months since I’ve written anything.  There are some reasons for that, but I’ll write about that on another day.  Time hasn’t been abundant, and perhaps this has suffered as a result.

In any case, I’m stalling, I suppose, as the topic is a bit sensitive and I’m not sure where to begin…

I never knew my grandfather.

In qualifying that remark a little, I did know my maternal grandfather(s) but not my paternal one.  My mom’s parents divorced and both remarried, so technically I had a pair.  I just never met my Dad’s parents, who both passed away before I was born.  My “grandfather” growing up was really my mom’s stepdad, which is probably a different story for another day, as he was pretty cool as I’d imagine grandparents go.  Either way, both sets of remaining grandparents lived in other states by the time I was born, so we didn’t have a lot of direct exposure to them growing up beyond the visits to Arkansas or New Mexico/Arizona over time.

All this as a backdrop, I never had a chance to meet my Dad’s father and it’s something I’ve always regretted.  He, like the rest of my grandparents, came over on the boat from Italy (Genoa in his case) as a young man, made a life here, and set my father on the path of his life.  He fought in WWI, serving in France, was wounded on the battlefield, left for dead, rescued, lived to come home and see his son enlist in the Air Corps for WWII.  He was injured in a factory accident and lost part of his arm.  He was the father of two girls and a boy (my father), who was the youngest.  He lived to see six of his eight grandchildren (by my parents) born… and I don’t really know much about him at all.  The sum total of what I know is probably about what I just wrote above, and it’s like a list of hollow data points.  It certainly says some things about having courage and living through adversity and change, but some of that was really a sign of the times in which he lived and not much about who he was as a person, what he valued, how he made choices, and most importantly how he helped influence the man I ultimately came to know as my father.

Which brings me to my next point… my girls will never know their paternal grandfather either, and it is a very sad reality to bear.  Certainly they have a sense of some aspects of my father, and they know what he meant to me in the simple fact that they will go scrambling for a box of Kleenex when I begin to speak to them about him, but that’s not enough.  They should have had that chance to see and experience who he was, to ask him questions, understand what made him tick, his value system, and so forth.  My father was a very strong and sometimes very difficult person.  He had as much strength of character as anyone I think I’ve ever known.  He wasn’t afraid to disagree when matters of faith or his values were questioned, and he’d do so with the full force of his convictions.  He saw things in black and white.  In right and wrong.  He didn’t seem to accept the existence of grey.  He did, however, understand the concept of tolerance and living with other people’s different perspectives, he’d just let you know (if asked) that he didn’t agree.  He ran his own business, but his priority was his family.  He never seemed to aspire to be rich, just to have what he needed to provide for his kids.  He lived for Christmas, both in giving gifts to his kids, which he always handed out from under the tree, as well as going out as one of “Santa’s Elves” with the guys from St Vincent DePaul on their annual gift giving campaign to the needy.  He would always stop and hold the door for other people going into McDonald’s (or anyplace else for that matter).  He loved doing puzzles and we did many of them together.  The harder, the better, even if he was having a lazy day, waiting till the very end, and dropping in a couple pieces so he could say “he helped”, which was ok by me.

He didn’t come out to shoot baskets or play catch much, but when he did, you felt like the luckiest kid around.  When he shot baskets, he’d take a moment to point out his “follow through”, at which point he immediately broke down your mental game, and you couldn’t make anything in a game of horse from there.

He could be confident and reassuring, and yet ask you what you were thinking in a way that completely made you question your entire thought process.  He had the benefit of relative certainty in an uncertain world.  I have no idea how he arrived there, and I wish I had a chance to ask him about that.  He spent a lot of time worrying about some things, but seemingly less than he should’ve on others where he just made a quick judgment and moved ahead.  He never really seemed “unsure”, which is perplexing to say the least.

He never seemed to be lost, and you knew you could always pick up a phone, pretty much anywhere you happened to be, and if he didn’t already know where you were, he’d pick up a map (yes, in the days when they had a paper atlas) and find you a way to where you were going.  I honestly think the first day I ever worried about getting lost was the day after my father passed away… up until then, my only concern would be reaching him when I was (in those days, probably from a pay phone somewhere).  As a seemingly insignificant observation to reinforce that point, when I was younger, I always used to drive somewhere with at least a quarter in my pocket in case I got lost, so I could call my dad to help me figure out where to go… in a way both physical and emotional, when he left us, it occurred to me that from that point forward, I’d always have to find my way back on my own and there wasn’t anyone to call anymore.  It’s a hard reality to accept, but that also says a lot for who he was and the sense of safety he created for everyone who depended on him.  In fairness, I should note that his directions weren’t always easy to decipher, as he always seemed to know where you were and where you needed to go, but at times he forgot that they didn’t call Route 64 “64” anymore, and it’s “North Avenue” everywhere… that turn could be a little tricky when you weren’t looking at the right sign…

In any case, that last point is part of why I feel regret on both missing out on getting to know my grandfather, and why I miss the same for my girls.  Even people that mean the world to you are people… and it’s not right to idealize them to the point that our kids grow up with a faulty notion that their humanity isn’t “normal” and “ok”.  As much as I loved my father, he could be a very difficult person at times.  From a disciplinary standpoint, he was scary as hell and you didn’t want to hear him raise his voice.  Even though I don’t remember him ever being physically aggressive, just the anger he could summon in a short period of time to try and rein in whatever bad behavior he saw going on was quite a thing.  My siblings and I have often joked about how the simple act of him taking off his watch (because he didn’t want it to hurt you in the event that you were about to get spanked) was enough to stop whatever was going on in the room.  Sometimes he didn’t even say anything, but you just saw him take it off and… ok, maybe I don’t want to be doing or saying whatever I’m doing that much… In hindsight, it’s pretty darn funny the power he had without really doing anything.  I’ve known some parents with absolutely no influence over their children’s behavior.  That’s not a problem he had.  That being said, just when he’d given you a huge amount of grief for having put him in a stupid position to bail you out of something, he’d come through and shield you from the harm.  Regardless of whether he’d just complained about it, he’d take the bullet because he loved his children and he had his priorities in the right place.

Referring back to my grandfather, I don’t know ANY of these things about him.  How he was to deal with, how he behaved, what his “buttons” were, etc.  Somehow, I’d like to understand that linkage into my father and see how one influenced and related to the other.  My girls won’t have the benefit of seeing that interaction either, and it’s sad.  I try to tell them stories (good and not so good) to show them that balance of his humanity, because I don’t want them to grow up thinking or expecting that, as imperfect people, we aren’t worthy of love and respect.  As young women in the making, that’s an important lesson I feel very strongly about.  Idealism is wonderful, but not to the extent that we don’t accept ourselves for who we are, faults and limitations included. My father was an incredibly generous, charitable, and giving person, but he wasn’t perfect.  He had more courage than probably anyone I’ve ever known.  He was a very loving person who seemed oddly uncomfortable telling people he loved them.  He was strong in a way that created an incredible sense of safety around him, yet he was forceful or stubborn in ways that could be infuriating at times.  It was impossible to win an argument with him, and I honestly only remember him apologizing to me once in my life… not because he was only wrong once, but because I think he went so far off the reservation that time that even he couldn’t justify it to himself the next day.

With all these things said, there really is no happy way to package it all up and make it feel better or more fair.  It is what it is.  That loss and that regret is there.  In the case of my father, I’m trying to tell my girls what I can so they know more about him than just what they experience from me.  They have the benefit of my mom and their mom’s parents.  It’s on me to try and fill in what I can of the gap, though it will never be good enough to make up for such a powerful figure.

What’s most difficult in all this, I suppose, is the realization that perhaps the reason I spend time trying to explain myself, and my beliefs, values, and thought process to my girls is that I’m afraid one day the same will happen to them, and my grandchildren won’t have a chance to know me either… (a very difficult thing to write)… I don’t want them to have all the questions I have about their father, any more than my father before me.

As someone pointed out to me many years ago (and very correctly so), I spent a great number of years thinking I wanted to “grow up” to be the man my parents described to me as a kid.  What I actually want to be is a fraction of the man my father was.  That is still a work in progress, but at least I’m trying, faults and all, and hopefully he knows the respect and love that is still here that I’m working on it, for my daughters, and the grandchildren who someday deserve to be told a good story about where they came from.

On that note, and with a lot of emotion now having been poured out, just this thought: I never met my grandfather, but he must’ve been one hell of a man to have given me my father.  For that, I can always be thankful.  And for my Dad, a Happy Father’s Day, and all our love… wherever you are.  Please continue to watch over us… because we could never ask for a stronger guardian angel than the one we have… and if you can please look away from time-to-time while I’m still trying to do a slightly better job bringing up your granddaughters, I’d appreciate that too…

Love, your Son… Charles.

– CJG 06/15/2014

Not having written in a while, I thought I’d take a large step into the personal with a story that probably qualifies as one of the most romantic experiences in my life.  Something that was quite amazing and cool at the time and that today, unfortunately, would be impossible to pull off.

As a footnote, it may seem odd to be sharing, given I’m divorced, and this is something that was part of our married life, but I don’t honestly care.  Good memories last, and this one qualifies.

Explaining the background…

Back in April of 1997, I was starting a new consulting job that required us to travel out to Boston for three consecutive weeks of training/orientation.  Given that the job was formal attire at the time and it was a full-week schedule, it was a not a “traveling light” situation and there were bags to carry, which made slugging through the airport a hassle (the relevance of this part will be explained later).

On a separate note, a month or two earlier, Kathy had planned a weekend to visit her best friend in Houston, and the dates ultimately overlapped when I was traveling out for training.  This meant that she’d be out of town over one of the weekends when I was only home for a couple days.  When we realized the conflict, we decided not to do anything about it, though it wasn’t fun to have almost two weeks without seeing each other.

Bending the space/time continuum…

When the week eventually rolled around where this was going to happen, it became apparent that there was a chance I might be able to wrap up my training on Friday a little earlier than expected and try to see Kathy before she flew out to Houston (my original flight was late in the day and hers was mid-afternoon).  While I knew Kathy’s flight number and take off time, I didn’t tell her what I was trying to do, figuring that it would be really disappointing if it didn’t work out (and it would be better if I was the only one disappointed, as opposed to both of us), and to pull it off as a surprise would also be pretty cool.

As luck would have it, we finished relatively early, I blew out of the office and told the cab driver in Cambridge that I was in a life and death situation and needed to get to Logan.  He got us there in a timeframe that would be better not to think about, I threw him a huge tip, grabbed my garment bag and smaller (but relatively heavy) carry-on and ran to the United terminal, putting myself on standby for the first available flight back to Chicago, which I managed to get.  I eagerly rode out the few hours of the flight, and tried to figure out what to do when the plane reached the gate.  Upon touchdown and eventual ‘debarkation’, I grabbed my carry-ons and fought though the crowd to reach the terminal.

Thirty minutes and counting…

I landed about 30 minutes (at most) before Kathy’s flight was scheduled to take off.  She was booked on American Airlines, and I had just landed in United Terminal 1 – C Concourse.  Anyone who knows O’Hare airport now realizes that I was in the farther United terminal, needed to run (with the two heavy bags) through that terminal, down the stairs, into the tunnel with the rainbow lights and famous “the moving walkway is now ending, please look down” voice, back up the stairs, through the B Concourse and over TWO terminals to where the American Airlines flights are…

With a healthy fear of failure to keep me going, I eventually reached Terminal 3, ran to the Departures monitors and located the gate for Kathy’s flight.  Feeling like I was about to experience a moment worthy of TV commercial footage, I raced to the gate to find… no one but the woman at the ticket counter.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“We just finished boarding the plane.”

“Oh my God, you have got to be kidding me.”

I looked out the windows, and there was her plane.  The door was still open and people could still board, but I probably missed her in the gate area by less than 15 minutes.  I was standing there, completely out of breath, in a suit, sweating from having literally run across most of the airport with my bags in tow, and I failed…

I looked at the woman behind the ticket counter and said something along the lines of “I can’t believe it.  I literally just flew in from Boston. I haven’t seen my wife in a week.  She’s going to Houston for the weekend, I wanted to surprise her, and now I’m not going to see her for over another week because I’m heading back out of town.”

Without saying a word, she put a piece of paper and pen on the counter… “What’s her name?  Write a note for her.”  She gets on the phone to call the plane as she’s pulling up Kathy’s passenger info.

I wrote a short note (which I’m not sharing here), but part of the message was “It looks like I just missed you.”  I handed it back to the woman at the ticketing desk, she took it over to a flight attendant who appeared at the gate doorway, handed her the note, and she swiftly disappeared.

After thanking the woman profusely, I decided to sit for a minute, rest from all the rushing, and watch Kathy’s plane leave the gate.

A few minutes later, they hadn’t gone anywhere and the flight attendant reappeared.  She handed the ticketing woman the piece of paper, on which Kathy had written a response.  The flight attendants were apparently now in the business of helping pass around our personal notes.  Kathy was surprised and happy that I tried to get there… albeit slightly disappointed at the outcome.

Sitting at the gate, looking at the note for a few minutes, I began wondering why the plane hadn’t moved and went back to the ticket counter to ask.  “The flight crew is delayed.  They don’t have a pilot right now.”  Oh great, they got on the plane and can’t even go anywhere… Had they known this before, maybe they could’ve held up the boarding a little and I would’ve seen her… I went and sat back down.

A couple minutes of inactivity later, the woman behind the desk got on the phone, had a short conversation, wrote something down on a piece of paper, then gestured to me to come over.  I walked to the desk, she handed me the piece of paper (which had a seat number on it) and she pointed to the gate.  “Go ahead.”

WHAT?  “Wait a second, what about my bags?  I shouldn’t just leave them there, should I?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll watch them for you.  Go see your wife.”

At that moment, I could’ve jumped over the counter and kissed that woman… she picks up the phone again, says “He’s coming“, hangs up, and says “Ok.”

With no ticket and Kathy’s seat number written on a scrap of paper in hand, I walked down the ramp, to the entrance of the plane, where all of the flight attendants were standing, with huge smiles on their faces, as if I was somehow participating in a story larger than my own, one of them pointing me in the direction of Kathy’s seat.

At this point, things were a bit awkward.. because none of the passengers seemed to have any idea why the heck they had boarded the plane about twenty minutes earlier, were buckled up in their seats, and now some strange dude was walking down the completely vacant aisle looking for someone.  Having taken many flights over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something quite like that, because everyone was fully seated, ready to push back, and some were looking at me as if I had something to do with why they were still stuck there… Out of a sense of guilt or obligation to explain myself, I said “It’s not me, there’s no pilot on this plane yet…” a couple times as I walked through the plane.

Eventually I got to Kathy’s row, she was in the window seat looking outside and didn’t see me right away, and the other two passengers looked at me like “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen my wife in a month (yes, I exaggerated to get them to move) and they let me come aboard to see her before you leave.  There’s no pilot on the plane right now anyway…”

They got up, she got up, (romantic moment I’m not describing)… people actually applauded… wow.  Finally, I gave her a big hug, told her to have a great trip, headed back to the exit, the flight attendants all gave me another huge set of smiles and nods of approval, I thanked all of them, and walked back to the gate.

As I got back into the terminal, the flight crew arrived, I gave the woman behind the ticket desk a huge hug for creating a memory I knew would last forever (for both of us) and headed home…

It’s truly amazing what people will do under the right circumstances.  There is a line from William Hurt in the movie The Village that I’ve always liked a lot, which is “The World moves for Love…  It kneels before it… in awe.”

On one very special day, many years ago, I can honestly say that statement was very true… and I will forever be grateful to those people who made it possible.

[Re-reading this note, I want to clarify one important point: this story is not about the guy who ran through the airport, it’s about the girl on the plane who was worth seeing, even for the briefest moment.  Many people may want to find a person who is willing to do the running, but I’d rather find the person worth running to… because, when you’ve found them, the running isn’t really an effort at all]

-CJG 04/09/2014

To summarize my day, I…

• Got up excessively early for work
• Hit a pothole in the dark and blew out two tires
• Threw my entire day in the trash before 5am, stranded for 13 hours in a McDonalds
• Did WAY too much walking in bitter cold with a suit on…(not exactly warm clothing)
• Spent $1,200 I didn’t expect, on something no one wants to spend money on
• Had a great day

Something in that list doesn’t fit the rest… and thank goodness, because otherwise it would’ve probably been a pretty stressful and frustrating day.

What made the day wonderful was the luck and many reminders that there is hope and an excess of humanity under otherwise adverse conditions… (but I’ve gotten ahead of myself)… from the minute things ‘got interesting’ on Wednesday morning, I thought it would be worth chronicling the sequence of events as it occurred… because it’s good to have reminders that good people are out there, and they rise to the opportunity to make a difference.

——–

It was a day like any other where I head downtown, with a couple exceptions: I expected some conflict in the morning and, as a result, had trouble sleeping and was up a little earlier than normal (3:30am instead of 4:30am).  Despite my best efforts to reclaim the sleep, eventually I just gave in, got up, got ready, and left a little earlier than normal, hitting the road at 4:30am.  It was bitterly cold, with the temp below zero and the wind chills in the -20+ range somewhere.  To be honest, after you get past “holy crap, it’s cold”, I honestly don’t think anyone should measure the wind chill.  It’s cold.  Stay inside.  Point made.

In any event, heading into the first 10 miles of city street driving on the 40 mile trek downtown, it was pitch black out, and the roads were as empty as you’d expect.  That is, after all, the point of leaving so early… to avoid the headache that would be an additional hour at least of driving if I left an hour later in the day.  Once the world wakes up, the drive takes a ton longer, and I don’t enjoy sitting in a car going nowhere that much.  Fifteen minutes into the ride, about a half mile from the expressway entrance, it happened…. BOOOM!!!  I hit a pothole in the dark at 50 mph or so that felt a little like the Grand Canyon.  The jolt was pretty substantial and it didn’t take long to realize something had happened.  With no one on the road, I was able to pull into the left turn lane at the nearby intersection, stop, get out, and take a look at the left front tire, where I assumed the problem existed… oh crap.  It was clearly flat and, making matters worse, it was really cold out… even stepping out of the car it hit me quickly, given I was in a suit and my topcoat isn’t exactly intended for a day at the North Pole. Warm: yes.  Thermally insulated: Not so much.

Worth noting that I knew I was going to need help immediately because, even though I have a full-size spare, I had just used it to replace another flat tire not even a month earlier.  There was no spare anymore.  I now needed two tires.  Lovely.  At 4:45am… in the arctic.

Having taken a quick look around, I tried to figure out what to do and decided to head to the gas station in the next block that happened to be open.  First stroke of good fortune, I was within a block of a gas station that was actually open before 5am.  Going in, the attendant was an older man who provided the first sign of the day to come.  I told him what happened, expressed my despair at the time of day (and cold), and asked if there were any tire repair places around.  As luck would have it, he pointed out the gas station on the opposing side of the intersection had a service station.  They weren’t open until 7am, but they probably could help.  Second blessing of the morning, I also had the flat right at an intersection with a service station.  What are the odds of that?  Pretty infinitesimal, and I realized right away that I was pretty lucky that this happened where it did.  Anywhere else, and I’d probably have been stranded for quite a while.

While the attendant could’ve just pointed across the street, he went a step farther, dug out his phone book (yes, they still make those apparently), and started digging through it, saying that there might be a 24-hour towing place about a mile over from where we were… while he was checking, I looked around for other signs of life and noticed a car in the drive thru of the McDonalds next door.  “Are they actually open?”  I didn’t think McDonalds opened until around 6am, but there was someone getting something at the window.  Third stroke of luck already, there was a 24-hour McDonalds right at the same spot.  They have wi-fi… I can hang out there, get connected, have some coffee, and wait it out.  What are the odds of that?  I thanked the attendant for his help, told him he didn’t need to worry about the towing, because I’d just drive my car across to the service station, walk back over, and kill the next couple hours at McDs.  He didn’t have to go through the extra step to try and find a place for me (technically I guess I could’ve done some looking on my cell phone, but that thought honestly never occurred to me at the time), but I thought it was a nice show of kindness from a stranger when he really didn’t have to do anything.

Taking my car across the street, I parked at the service station, grabbed my laptop and started the short walk (probably less than a block) back to the McDs.  It’s worth noting another stroke of luck at this point.  Even though I shouldn’t technically need them when I drive downtown, given I go straight from my garage to an indoor parking facility, I always bring my topcoat, warmer gloves, scarf, and hat, just in case some kind of emergency happens.  On this day, it ended up that I needed them.  All of us hear that kind of stuff on the news or weather channel and thank God I had them.  That one block walk was brutal and extremely uncomfortable.

Arriving at McDonald’s things returned to a degree of normalcy, because I ordered a coffee, found a spot (the entire restaurant was empty), got connected, and started adjusting the day.  Between a quick call to London and the normal flow of things that come overnight from offshore, the next couple hours passed quickly.

Like Tom Hanks in the movie Terminal, I was clearly going to be around a while and might as well settle in.  The odd thing about being stuck in a McDs for a period of hours is the cross section of people who converge on it over the course of a day. In the morning, there was a single mom with her two teenage kids who settled in near my new makeshift office.  I ended up wishing I could bring the woman around with me just to dispense good advice.  She had a great way of putting things in perspective as her kids were talking about things they were dealing with at school in their relationships.  At one point, her son said a classmate was bothering him, to which she responded “How tall is he? (made a gesture with her hand at about 4 feet tall)  This tall?”  “Yeah.”  She raised her hand up about a foot.  “You’re this tall.  Are you kidding?  You’d have to pick him up a foot off the ground for him to be in your face.”  I couldn’t help but let out a laugh and she and I exchanged a smile before she went back to telling him (and then ultimately his sister) the importance of being who you are, having self-respect, faith (which came in at one point), and not letting others drag you down because of their own insecurities and issues… wow, I love this woman.  Come hang out with me for a while, I have use of your uplifting spirit… it’s empowering, and it was another moment in the morning where I felt like maybe the day was meant to take a left turn to help me hear a different message than the ones I’d been hearing for the many days before it.

In any event, 7am rolled around, I packed up my stuff, bundled back up, and walked back to the service station.  Another journey across the arctic tundra… only one block, pretty awful.  It’s odd that if I was walking from the train station a few blocks to work on a normal day, I don’t know if it would’ve phased me so much, but somehow the gut punch of the morning just made it a lot more taxing.

A lot more traffic at the intersection at this hour than when it was 5am.  Arriving the service station, the attendant told me that they could help, the mechanic wouldn’t arrive until 8:15am (lovely, more wasted time), but he could order the tire in the meantime.  Like 99% of the world population, I had no idea what size tires I had on my car, so we went outside to check.  At this point, the next shoe dropped.  BOTH of the left tires had been blown out, I just never thought to look at the rear tire once I saw the left front was flat…that pothole really took a toll. Ok then, now I guess I have to replace three tires.  We went back inside and I commented on how lucky I was that this all happened in the right location, but what a day for it.  After giving him my number (so he could call with updates), the attendant asked if I wanted to sit down for a while, warm up, and catch my breath before going back outside… another one of those small moments where I thought “well, that’s an awfully nice thing to say/offer.”  I’m sure I had to sound frustrated, but he didn’t have to really give a darn, he just did, and it felt nice to see another person trying to help.  With the new found energy, I thanked him, and decided to get back over to my office away from home to get some more work done.

After a couple more hours passed, 10am rolled around and the call came from the service station.  It would make more sense to get a full set of tires than order three… yeah, I saw that coming, and agreed it made sense.  No point in replacing three tires.  Now, the good news.  $1,200.  Good morning.  Today’s highlight will be an opportunity to pass a kidney stone.  Making it slightly more interesting, they needed some cash because they’re a small garage, can’t use a charge, the supplier works a certain way, etc.  Ok then… I’ll go over to the bank branch across the street and hit an ATM for whatever I can (knowing there might be a limit).  Oh yeah, lucky break number 4, the other corner of that intersection had a bank, not mine, but a bank… and at this point, we just need an ATM.  I drag myself over there and go inside… “Where is your ATM?” “We only have the one outside.”  “What?”  Seriously, who doesn’t have an ATM inside?… It’s still about 20 below out… and it’s not like I want to be outside screwing around with an ATM machine.  No choice apparently, so I go back out and walk toward the drive thru.  As luck would have it, that’s exactly when a woman in a van pulls up to the machine.  You have to be kidding, right?  I’m going to end up waiting in the cold for someone else, who probably has six deposits and a couple account transfers to do…right?  I’m walking towards her as the woman sees me.  She waves to me, backs her car up, and let’s me go first.  What just happened?  No one let’s another person go before them at an ATM machine… that’s like a shark backing off the chum and letting others have the first shot.  Unheard of, and yet another person does something incredibly helpful and considerate under the circumstances.  I realize maybe this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but believe me, when it’s 20 below out and you’re standing outside in a suit freezing your butt off, she might as well have given me a million dollars.  I hit up the machine for what I could get, which unfortunately wasn’t much given it was another bank, and walked back to the service station.

It’s not enough.  Can I go to my actual bank and get a couple hundred more, so we can work this out?  Um, well, there’s a bit of problem with that, because you see… God didn’t drop my bank at this intersection.  I’ve been incredibly lucky at this point, but there are still some real world constraints in play.  The attendant then decides to blow me away, “Look, I want to help you out… take my car.”  What?  He’s giving me his car?  Who does that?  I thought we lived in a world where it’s every man for himself and screw everyone else… I thought I’ve heard that somewhere, quite a lot actually.  Apparently this guy didn’t get the memo, or he doesn’t watch the news.  Sure, why not.  I’m desperate and that’s a great solution.  He also happened to know where my bank had a branch about a mile away, so I didn’t have to do any searching online to find one.

I jumped in his car, immediately noticing that he had that amount of gas below a quarter tank that isn’t quite approaching the E, but you don’t have a lot in the car.  Made me wonder…is he one of those people who doesn’t make a lot of money and rations himself on gas, given it’s expensive and you’d rather get a quarter or half tank than splurge and get yourself a full tank.  This situation was getting addressed… one good turn deserves another, and I definitely believe in paying it forward.

I set off and drove the mile down the road, found the branch and went inside.  One person working in the lobby, and she was busy attending to the cars.  No one else in sight for a couple minutes until the branch manager strolled out into the lobby and said “Good morning, how is your day going?”  Well, funny you should ask that question…lol.  Pretty freaking awful, but at this point, I am so blown away by all the people who’ve already done something to help me out, that I really feel quite good about it.  Upon hearing the situation, he goes back behind the counter, opens the door to the back, “Joe, leave that for a minute, come out here and help this gentlemen right now.”  Ok then, another minor act that takes a little of load off.  Honestly, if getting that cash meant I was going to have my car back, I really didn’t feel like being patient on the drive thru person eventually paying attention to me… and this was helpful.

Leaving the bank, I took a quick detour and filled the attendant’s gas tank, feeling another surge of positive energy for having done a little to pay back the big favor.  I spent the few minutes on the drive back trying to decide whether to tell him or not.  Honestly, I love the idea of doing things without saying anything about it and let the act itself provide it’s reward. I don’t really seek out thanks.  It’s enough to know you made things a little better for someone who might just need it.  In this case, though, I decided to tell him given I wanted to be able to show my thanks in a tangible way for the gesture he made himself.  Upon giving him the cash, and telling him that I filled his tank, the reaction was priceless.  For a second, it was like the guy was about to cry… I have no idea what the heck was going on there, but I can only expect his situation wasn’t so good either and maybe just that little bit of a random act of kindness was a surprise he needed too.  It was a cool moment.  He told me the car would be ready between 4:30-5:00pm and then proceeded to offer to drive me anywhere I needed to go, get me a cab, a rental car… anything.  Holy cow.  It’s all good.  I elected to just go back across the street and wait it out, figuring there’s always a chance that it could be done sooner, and he’d already done his bit to help me.  Twice.

The next eight hours went by much faster, in hindsight, than I would’ve expected. In practice, I could’ve gotten back home, but decided to ride out the day on my fast food island.  The driving back and forth would’ve burned 45 minutes of the time alone, and I’d made it that far.  There was plenty of work to do, I talked Kathy into coming over to have lunch with me, and there was more people-watching in store.

At one point, the Golden Girls took a table next to me for what I would guess was a periodic get together for coffee and some friendly catch up.  When they were winding down and getting ready to leave, I decided to say hello and tell them the story of how I ended up there.  Not something I would normally do, but it was a crazy situation regardless, so why not?  What I found out in the process was that each of them had a story to tell too… of some unexpected situation where they also were in need of assistance, and a random stranger came up to help them.  The day had become even more positive, through the sharing of the stories, and I’m glad I gave it a shot.  People are more connected than you’d sometimes believe… we just need to have our eyes open to look for things we might otherwise be distracted from seeing.

Since I haven’t made mention since the opening, I should share that the challenging day I expected at work played out quite differently as well.  Things went much better than expected, through another unexpected twist of fate (beyond my situation).  We finished the workday with two projects we’ve been trying to win for many months both receiving a go ahead at almost the same time from completely different client teams in different locations.  That will pick you up, even in a McDonalds after a very long, strange day.

As 5:30pm rolled around, I still didn’t have my car and decided to head over to the station to see what was going on.  The garage was now closed, they had taken the car around for a quick test drive to make sure everything was ok.  The attendant had stayed late (his shift was supposed to end at 4:30pm) to make sure I got my car back.  He thanked me again (twice) for filling his tank.  If only it were so easy to lift people up every day… it’s a really small price to pay, isn’t it?

I paid the balance of my bill, thanked them for the help, and set out, back into the dark in which the day began, time to go back home… I effectively drove 20 miles, got nowhere, and accomplished everything.  I got my work done, but more importantly found a sense of hope and kindness that was both unexpected and very refreshing.

In hindsight, what could’ve been a pretty awful day, turned into an amazing experience and I’m glad to have had it.  I needed the reminder.  There is a fundamental good in people.  There are a lot of good people out there too… far more than you’d expect.  We just have to make those little efforts that matter… and the world becomes a better place, even under circumstances that otherwise could be unpleasant.  People can make a difference… and this week, for me they did.

-CJG 03/01/2014

With Christina off on a school outing to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night and Kathy working, I had a chance to spend some daddy-daughter time with Anna.  As the evening moved along, I gave her the remote so she could put on whatever she wanted to watch.  She chose “Chess in Concert” (musical), because apparently her sister has been singing the music quite a bit recently. What followed was a very nice evening of wonderful music and some great performances.

The power of music (or art in general, for that matter) never ceases to amaze me.  Understanding that people don’t all experience it the same, it can bring out such strong and powerful emotions.  Seeing my girls engaging in that is really important to me… it opens up a larger and deeper world to them.  Hopefully they’ll both stick with it, even if only to be “engaged listeners.”

Listening to the show last night brought back a lot of memories, from the exceptional lady singers of Marillac HS, who I had the privilege to support as part of a few pit bands, to gigs I had years later playing music professionally with various types of bands.

In high school, the memories of sitting in the pit, listening to the wonderful voices coming from the Marillac stage are still there, over 25 years later.  To be able to plug into that, even if in a minor way, and try to add a little something extra to the performance is such a cool thing to feel and experience… even when you’re in the dark and all the light is focused elsewhere.  The sound is everywhere and the world is alive in the performance.  One change, one nuance in the tone, inflection, pitch… moves everything somewhere, it’s fluid, and you are just riding along with it.

While I only played with the First Concert Band for one year at the University of Illinois, I can certainly remember the incredible sound of playing Stars and Stripes Forever in the Great Hall of the Krannert Center… it might as well have been Orchestra Hall and the individual and collective musicians (and director) of that band were incredible.

A couple years later, I remember a fusion band gig where we were playing the Nature’s Table (unfortunately no longer there), we had a decent crowd, and were playing a song with an odd time signature… I looked over to the bar to see a woman dancing with her eyes closed.  Given it wasn’t in 4/4, it was pretty strange to see that, but it made an impression that made me want to raise the level of play.  I have no idea who the person was, but the impact of the music was clear and it was cool to experience.

On another night my sophomore year in Champaign, about an hour before a big band gig, I received a call from home to tell me that my father had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  Time seemed to stop.  My father had always been a strong figure and somehow the entire image and situation was WAY too much to take in.  I knew I couldn’t get back home that night, and went to the Music building as an utter emotional wreck, trying to figure out what I was going to do.  Sitting down with one of my best friends, I remember asking him what I should do.  I can remember to this day where we were sitting and pretty much everything about the situation.  His question was very simple:

‘What would your father want you to do?‘  (That was all it took.)

‘He’d want me to go on and perform.’

‘Then, you should play tonight for him.’

Over 22 years later, it’s hard not to become emotional sharing that part (Yes, Mike, I remember it that well).  I’ve been blessed with some incredible friends and situations like that remind me that we can have such a significant impact on people without intending to or even realizing it.  In any case, having played in the jazz bands for three years in college, I have no doubt it was my best performance the entire time I was there.  Maybe it was the emotion, maybe it was the intense focus, maybe it was just releasing everything into the music, I don’t know… but it was an incredible experience that I’ll always remember.  If that was meant to be a dedication, it said it all.

Several years later, I had a chance to sit in a few times for a high school friend who is a full-time professional musician, playing with a jazz trio at the Rockhouse Grill in Rolling Meadows.  The club is a little place in a strip mall and nothing particularly grandiose.  The gig was special both because the guitar and bass players were amazing pro musicians and the theme of the night itself.  The band was called “Free Food for Poets” because the evening was set up as an open mic night for poets to come and read their work.  So, various people would get up, read their work, and do a set, then they’d take a break and we’d do a set of trio music, and so on.  Probably 25 people in the place all night…and one of the best creative experiences I’ve ever had.  The audience was so immersed in what was going on that it was an awesome fusion of different energies all night.  Some of the poets were very dramatic, others subdued, some angry, some inspiring… everyone got respect, applause, and 100% of the audience’s attention.  For our part, we literally decided what we were going to play as we went.  We never rehearsed, we just performed, and it was quite amazing.  Both of them were so incredibly talented that it was like a journey in every moment, where we figured out where we were going along the way… they could take it up a notch, back it off, go up a couple levels, change the style…every trick in the book.  The audience absolutely loved it and was right there with us.  In hindsight, it would’ve been really cool to hear them play with my friend, given he’s an incredible drummer and a much better player than I am… I wonder where they could take it.  In any event, it was a very strong contrast to a pop music gig I was playing at the same time, where we’d play a big club with 700 or more people in the crowd on a night, but the experience was entirely different.  Not to say one form of music was any better than the other, but you can feel the difference when the audience is into what you’re doing, and even if it’s a lot less people, it really only takes making an impact on one person for it to feel like you’ve made a difference somehow in a performance.

Along those lines, one last memory that I’ll share came from playing a blues trio job at a place called the Dixie Q on Fullerton on the North side of Chicago.  The owner was a notorious jerk to the performers and insisted that you play in the parking lot, which was quite unpleasant (between light rain and cold temps) a couple times I played there.  One night in particular, though, I remember playing with a blues trio on a cold night where almost no one was there to hear us.  If anyone was out coming to the place, they certainly weren’t staying outside for long, so we probably played for about 12 people all night.  What was interesting about those 12 people is that two of them were a friend from work who brought his girlfriend over to hear us for a while.  It turned out that she worked with another woman who was the lead singer in a pop group that was looking for a drummer.  That turned into the pop band gig I mentioned above, which was a couple years (roughly) of some really fun gigs in a lot of larger venues, including Festa Italiana in Chicago at one point.  The other memorable piece of the night came from a complete stranger.

Somewhere along the way, early in the evening, a guy came along who stood outside and was listening to us play.  He seemed pretty into what we had going on, and he pretty much had to be, because otherwise it was awfully unpleasant to be out there listening to it.  In any case, as you tend to do at gigs, we had a chance to talk during the set breaks and it turned out that he was also a drummer and had played for many years in a band with his brother down in South Carolina before moving to Chicago about six months before.  After checking with the guys, as we got into the last set, I asked him if he wanted to sit in and play a couple tunes.  He lit up at the opportunity, sat down, played a couple tunes, did a nice job, and I gave him the rousing applause in lieu of a larger audience out in the cold.  As the night came to a close, he came up to talk while I was tearing down, to say thank you.  He told me that he had been in Chicago all this time, didn’t really know anyone, was very down and lonely, and was just on a bus on his way home.  He heard the music, decided to get off, and what a difference we just made for him.  Having a chance to play meant so much and it brought back those memories of being on stage with his brothers.  Such a simple thing, with such a cool result… suddenly we only needed one guy in the audience that night and it all made sense.

Overall, while my days of playing live music may be on hold (at least for the time being), I’m so happy to have the memories of what performing can do, what it can mean, and how it can feel… I hope my daughters are lucky enough to have those experiences and to meet the many amazing people that participate in it with you, both on and off the stage, in the lights and outside…

In the meantime, I’ll keep recording the music I love, and hoping some of that experience and joy comes through…

-CJG 02/08/2014