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My mom worked at a small town newspaper and we got press passes to go to some tractor/truck pulls.

At the Astrodome, they brought out Bigfoot and we got to talk to Bob Chandler who built it. They really did not know what to do with the truck so they pushed up a big pile of dirt for him to drive over.

He was quite upset because he had just barely gotten it back in time from being repaired from the filming of “Take This Job and Shove It” where the main character, among other things, crushed a bunch of cars. That was the birth of the whole monster truck thing and none of us recognized it.

Also met Gene Snow at a truck show at the closed Green Valley Raceway and got to talk to him at length.

Met several of the Apollo Moon landing astronauts when they came over to the house. My dad was one of their instructors. It was more or less a “This is ___, now go to your room.”

Also met the guy that rode his motorcycle up the stairs in “Animal House” in a restaurant right after the movie came out.

Also went to school with some of the later astronauts kids and worked on Jack Lousma’s car quite a few times

One other tidbit of some interest perhaps, in my trip down memory lane, was when I was young and living in Chicago in the New Town area during the latter part of the 60’s. I was working at the time for the Chicago Defender’s Office on the Appeals level, and our office was located very near the relatively new Federal Building downtown, where I would park my bike on their bike rack. (I used to bike to work frequently during the summer months, going down the walkway located right along Lake Michigan; such a beautiful ride.

The Federal Building also had a cafeteria in it where the food was actually quite good. Periodically I would go there for lunch. On one of those days I was there eating lunch, lo and behold sitting right across the long table that I sat down at, was Abbie Hoffman, of “The Chicago Seven” fame*. He was on trial with his cohorts at the time, on charges listed below in the WIKI bleep I have posted below about the trial.

He started to chat me up (in my younger days, I wasn’t a bad looker) and we talked for the entire hour I was there. He was very intelligent, but rather ugly face-wise. Later in his life, when he had some cosmetic surgery done and had his teeth fixed (had really bad teeth) he was much better looking. He asked if I wanted to get together, but I declined (said I already had a boyfriend). I guess that is my one brush with infamy.

Oh, had one other sort of one, in that a Chicago Italian Mafia member whom I ran into when walking to my car one night about a year before I retired from working at UIC (Univ. of IL at Chicago) became a friend, sort of. Between where I parked and the building I worked in on campus, there was a little patch of green field with a running path around it, and I struck up my bit of a friendship with Mafia man there. I found out he was Mafia when he told me his name and I tripped across an article in the Chicago newspaper about him. I’m trying to remember his name (he had been written about in the Chicago newspapers at that time because he had been involved in a major spat (and fist fight) with a fellow old Mafia guy in the Hood who was trying to get my Mafia “friend” put out of business in order to acquire the land under his lemonade stand located on the main business drag of the old “Little Italy” right next to campus (Taylor Avenue). He had a thriving stand with marvelous Italian Ice; the Chicago cops used to frequent it, and everyone got away with double parking momentarily to run over and get their Italian Ice. That stand was a real gold mine.

I was walking slowly to my car because of bad knees at the time, and he was very sympathetic as he had recently had knee surgery himself. He would walk the running path with his grandson for exercise late in the day as he lived nearby and his Italian Ice stand was down the street from my building that was located at the corner of Taylor and Morgan Streets. We would talk when I ran into him periodically just as I was leaving work for the day.

He was very very nice, but I wouldn’t want to have crossed him. I forgot his name now, but I’m going to see if I can find one of the newspaper articles about him again. Carol Marin, a locally well known newspaper/TV anchor woman was quasi friends with him, and would write articles favorable to him about his fight with the other neighborhood Mafia Don.

I loved the old Italian neighborhood. Would get Italian subs from Fontano’s, a well known grocery store down the street with a Deli in the back where you could buy sandwiches, freshly made. The old men would pitch pennies on the sidewalks and there were still all men Italian private clubs where the locals would congregate. Wonderful Italian restaurants. One, Tuscany’s, a relatively new one at the time and right around the corner from where I worked, was frequented by Mayor Richard Daley the Younger, with some regularity. Had an open wood oven where they would make pizza and chicken. The food was delicious. But I digress.

Chicago, minus the gangs, is such a wonderful, historical City with great ethnic neighborhoods. A food lover’s dream. Too bad it gets such a bad rap now because of all of the gang violence. When I worked there it was still relatively safe. There was a park with a big statue of the now not PC Columbus, perched in a fountain where I would go to eat my lunch periodically. On the other side was where the Black neighborhoods began. There was an uneasy truce between the Blacks and the Italians, and as many Mafia types lived nearby; the Blacks never fooled around with the local Italians, as they knew it would not be good for their physical well being. Well, there I go again, more digressing. Off with me!

* The Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight, also Conspiracy Eight/Conspiracy Seven) were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged by the federal government with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois, on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.