Sorry I have removed the body of this post out of respect for anyone and everyone who knew Keith.  I knew his mother and my own mother is probably shaking her finger at me right now.  I don’t get paid for what I write so I have scruples. 

Maybe I want to believe what I believe because Keith and I started life almost at the same time and we spent a lot of time together in playpens where I can distinctly remember he pulled my hair and made me cry.

Actually I wish people who really knew Keith would write me because I knew a different Keith then what the media portrays.  If you write me and ask me to keep your comments confidential of course I will – I only ask that I can tell a story, share a memory so that those who have had to live in the shadow of his name can smile – there were good times and good memories.

CLS

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There have been some replies to feelers I have extended-including a former girlfriend, a TV reporter, and a couple inquiries through my Facebook account.  I am still putting some thoughts together —maybe, hopefully, soon!

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For some unknown reason this blog post gets read more than any other so I will pick up the ball and run with it in the next couple of weeks I will expand on it.  I cannot promise you a rose garden but I will attempt to contact a reporter I know to see what their recall is and I did hear from someone who knew Keith and believes he is not dead too. 

I just find it very interesting that people seem to really be interested in criminal activities – but then again it is no real surprise-after all look at all the TV shows based on criminal activities.

I will be back……………..and if anyone has any interesting information or facts I read all comments here before they get posted – if you want to tell me something that is not for publication I will gaurantee you anonymity.

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I had to travel on an average of twice a month.  I always had the 630AM flight out from Champaign IL. usually to St. Louis and on to my final destination.  I would take the back roads to the airport in Champaign.   The back roads in a rural area are very dark, there are no street lights.  I usually left my house at 5AM and one such morning as I was driving I hit something.  There was a large thump, and when I stopped my car I discovered I had hit a cow. 

Long story short, fence had a hole in it, cow lived, a lot of front end damage to my car and I missed my flight.

The airport in Champaign is small.  US Air had one full sized plane that they landed there otherwise if I was booked on another carrier I had to take a puddle jumper to Chicago or St. Louis.

It was 1990 – and a time when security meant putting your carry-ons through the machine and walking through the metal detector.  The security crew at the Champaign airport was made up of relatives from Larry, Curly and Moe.    I always tried to get there early because they always had some kind of problem happening.  Any little problem always resulted in my missing my plane.

One such spring morning I happened to be behind a family traveling to Florida.  Each child had a carry-on and a backpack.  4 kids, 2 parents – do the numbers and you get 12 pieces of luggage to be scanned.

That particular morning all I had was my purse as I was heading to San Francisco and I had a connecting flight in St. Louis.  This family had it all jammed up and I was the next person behind them in line.  While they were dealing with 12 pieces of carry-on and 6 humans and coats and whatever, I excused myself to them and placed my purse on the belt and went through the metal detector.  My flight was leaving in 5 minutes.

Oh boy was that a mistake.  This gargantuan female security person put her hands on me in an attempt to stop me for “being rude” as she called it.  I wanted to slap that bitch but instead I chose the better part of valor and I smiled ever so sweetly and apologized to the family and her.  She wanted me to go back to the end of the line-and that was not on my “to do” list that day.

Other people in line started to complain at her because they were about to miss a flight also, so she allowed me to proceed.

I thought nothing more about this until the next time I flew.  I approached the machines and there she was, Brunhilda in the flesh, and she was on a mission.  She took everything I had carefully packed out of my carry-ons.  She wanded me, and patted me down.  She tried to say I could not carry an unopened bottle of wine on board – but I told her to pull the rule book out on that one.  I knew I was being harassed for my previous rude behavior.

The following week I was flying again and sure enough she starts in on me once again.  She did not do this quietly either and of course curiousity seekers were always standing there looking at me.  That was the final straw for me. 

I do not remember who I called but I called and I complained and after that day I never saw her again.  I realize things are different now and since 9/11 calling and complaining about a TSA employee would probably get us nowhere. I have seen some really stupid things at airports since they took over security.

I only lived in Champaign for a year but it was an interesting year that changed my life significantly.  When I reached the end of the year funding for our research stopped and I got on the phone and networked my way into a position back in medical auditing in Richmond, Virginia.

I took a drive down and found a place to live in an area called The Fan, came back and packed up everything I owned including my black cat Miss Scarlett and off we went on our next adventure.

It is tough to be a Northerner in a southern town.  No doubt about that statement.  I was not an FFV-first family of Virginia and I did not hold a pedigree.

I did not know a soul in this town, and I was starting life all over again.  Richmond is where I ended my relationship with Bob.  We saw each other one last time when I first moved there. 

I became acclimated to my new job at St. Mary’s Hospital and made some great friends there in the business office.  I had an adorable 2 bedroom apartment in a desirable neighborhood close to all the cool things to do in Richmond.

I liked the climate, I liked the beauty of the area, but I was still very much alone.  One of the women I worked with suggested I look at the ads in one of those newspapers matching people.  I took her advice and that is when EBL entered my life.

In my continuing life story I have told the many stories about living with and eventually marrying this pathetic soul.  However as a friend recently pointed out EBL was a Divine Master in my life. 

There are Divine Masters who enter your life’s portal and help you and there are Divine Masters who are sent to you to learn from, EBL was the latter.  If I had not changed my pattern of thinking and living life after leaving this man, I would not be where I am today – in a happy secure relationship forever.

EBL – whose identity was revealed in a previous chapter-picked me up outside work in his sports car.  He told me he would park under the portico so when my day ended I left work and there he was.  Picture this-he is in a convertible sports car left arm along the door side and right arm across the back of the passenger seat.  He wanted me to take in the complete view, arms open, perfect hair, perfect smile, perfect asshole.

He has passed on to hell I would presume.  Not all perfect assholes go to hell, but when you are as evil as EBL, God is not sitting in His sports car with His arms open welcoming you into heaven, I can guarantee that!

I gave 6 years of my life to this man, and they were not all bad.  When I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had nowhere else to go I did what I had to do at the time.

This is Domestic Violence month and ads against it are running constantly on the national TV channels.    Verizon is sponsoring giving old cell phones to them for use by women in shelters. 

When I was ready to make a break for it from EBL I did not have a cell phone.   However I did have the means needed to pull out of this sick relationship and as much as it took every ounce of courage, I left.

I was living in a foreign country which made it even more difficult to leave, and just this past autumn I heard that he had died.  The relief I felt that day I cannot describe.  I firmly believe that those of us who have been abused and left still have fear in our hearts that we could see this person again.

While leaving took courage I will never forget my return to the States.  Before leaving Costa Rica I bought Cohiba cigars for friends.  Contraband – and I could not carry these cigars in my baggage so I carefully taped them around my torso and when the plane landed in Miami and I went to get my baggage I found myself staring at………………

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The store was being remodeled and there was scaffolding and electrical wiring all over the place.  I picked up two pair of blue jeans and went back to the dressing rooms to try them on.  I was very familiar with this store as I had shopped there for quite a while.  I put all my packages on the floor, took my pants off and slid my legs into the first pair of jeans.  They fit like a glove, so I pulled them off, put my pants back on and picked up my packages to leave when I heard someone ask “Aren’t you going to try on the other pair?”

I froze in place.  Then I looked up and there was this man up on scaffolding looking down at me.  I quickly picked up all my belongings and basically ran to the front of the store.  I told the clerk about the peeping Tom on the scaffolding, and she told me that I had gone to the wrong dressing rooms and that I must have missed the signs.

I put my shopping bag down on the floor next to me so I could pay for my purchases, and when I went to reach for it, no shopping bag.  I turned to look for it and there he was – the peeper – holding my bag and smiling at me.

I was not in the smiling mood, but he refused to hand it back over to me until I accepted his apology for startling me and yes, peeping on me.  I was softening, it wasn’t hard to soften.  He was very handsome, about my age, and he had incredible eyes.

That is how my long-term rough and tumble love affair began with a man who lived out west to my east, and somehow we could never get it right.  It was a great way to meet someone though. 

Love affairs have too many emotional ups and downs especially when you live so far apart.  After this one ended I promised myself I would never have another long distance relationship.  Unfortunately my heart and head did not listen.

Enter Glenn P a man whom I happened to meet on my girls night out.  Born in Florida and living in San Francisco and he became someone I allowed my life to revolve around for many years.  He liked to be called “Glenno” and signed all his cards and letters that way.

His career and mine made it easy to see each other because we traveled for our work, and we could meet in the same cities.  One night I thought we were going to die in each other’s arms because while we were in bed in Youngstown, Ohio a tornado ripped through the area.

There was no way we could make this love affair turn into something more permanent.  I had three kids that were in their teens, and I could not uproot them any more than I could foist them off on a man they did not know. 

We had planned on meeting in Florida for a 5 day long weekend when Glenn made the decision that I should not come down.   That was probably one of the worst moments of my life in the romance department.  Like Scarlett O’Hara I took to my bed and I remained in the bed for 3 days.  I was devastated, heart broken, overwhelmingly sad.  I finally had to leave my bed, I did have responsibilities and life does go on.

Further down the road, the inevitable happened, he called me.  I do not know how much time had passed, but when I heard his voice my heart leaped out of my chest.

Glenn talked about how he had actually gone to the airport that weekend to meet the flight I was supposed to be on, he really believed I would still arrive.  That made me very sad because I believed if I had gone we might have been able to make a plan and work things out.

Naturally we fell right back into our affair but in the meantime I met and married another man and the love affair ended again.

Years went by and this marriage was not doing well.  We had moved to Chicago and we were living in a great apartment on the north side, life was exciting, the man wasn’t.  I admit it, I settled, and I lost. 

When the marriage was on it’s last legs my daughter Kristen actually called Glenn unbeknownst to me.  The next afternoon my phone rang and there was that familiar voice. 

He came in and out of my life over the years but it was different and I realized it was stuck – and nothing was going to get it unstuck.  I moved on, we stayed in touch as friends.  By the time I moved to Costa Rica that was all that was left.  He envied the fact that I lived there, because Glenn loves deep sea fishing.  We were entertaining the idea of a visit there when I needed to come back to the states.

The last phone call I had with Glenno he was writing a mystery novel and putting me in the book.  I do not know if he was ever published.  We drifted apart after that and I have never spoken to him again.

I know many people like long distance relationships.  There are married couples who live apart.  I know now I was not cut out for that.  I like having someone who comes home to me every night.  I also admit I do not do “alone” well.   I love the life I have chosen as a now married woman to the love of my life.  If it were not for Glenno I would not have Larry.  It all worked out.

However when I hear Springsteen sing “I’m on Fire” it is the 1980′s all over again.

The 80′s was a great decade.  My favorite TV show MASH aired it’s final episode, we found out who shot JR Ewing, Prince Charles married Diana and I found it to be one of the more romantic decades in my life.

There were of course many other truly historical happenings then too.

Life went on, without Glenn, with the bad marriage behind me and by 1990 I was single again and back on the road with my career. 

I had to travel on an average of twice a month.  I always had the 630AM flight out from Champaign IL. usually to St. Louis and on to my final destination.  I would take the back roads to the airport in Champaign.   The back roads in a rural area are very dark, there are no street lights.  I usually left my house at 5AM and one such morning as I was driving I hit something.  There was a large thump, and when I stopped my car…….

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We were busy working getting the teamsters in and out as quickly as we could and I had three donors in my unit all with bags filling very nicely.  It was hot and I was getting tired, I remember turning to look up at the doors of the auditorium when I heard them open and all I could see was the bright sunlight filling the space as the door opened and then all of a sudden all the lights in the entire Masonic Auditorium went out and my friend and co-worker Barbara said very loudly “Is this when we are all supposed to hit the floor?”  The air was pregnant with heavy silence and then penetrated with soft scattered laughter.  The moment passed, the lights came back on, and every one of us resumed breathing.

The business of donating blood resumed and Jackie Presser was walking around pressing the flesh of the men and women whom he represented as president of the teamsters union.  He did not miss a donor.

That was as close as I ever really wanted to be to anyone possibly connected to organized crime.  If you wiki Jackie Presser you will see that even he was an FBI informant.  To this day with the limited exposure I had to all of them I still do not know or believe for sure that Keith Ritson was murdered.  I know what his brother told me and I know what an author and former Cleveland Policeman told me. Two different stories and no definitive answers.

My career at that time was working with blood donors.  Blood donors are incredible people. I loved working with people who are willing to allow a perfect stranger to insert a 16 gauge needle into a vein in their arm, hand them a rubber ball to squeeze  and leave 10 minutes later a pint lighter.

I met so many wonderful people back then.  The American Red Cross covered about 1/4th of the state of Ohio.  We worked crazy shifts and we all had our favorite donor sites.  My favorite sites were located in Amish country.  You would be amazed to see how many of the Amish would show up to donate blood.  I learned so much from the Amish.

One such site was located in Kidron, Ohio and to see all those horse and buggies parked all around the gymnasium just reminded me how easy it is to have misconceptions about people who choose a lifestyle that is different from ours.

We would easily have over 300 donors on those days.  I did some asking around (the Amish are friendly people) and I was told that a young girl had been in a vehicle/buggy accident and left a paraplegic.  That was one of the reasons they donated.  She needed blood.  She was also a donor, talk about giving back, she certainly did.

The Kidron Amish also had a second event that brought them out to give literally from their hearts.  A young Amish woman had gone into the hospital to give birth and she hemorrhaged badly.  When they did a cross and type on her blood the results came back that she had a very rare marker on her blood type.  A plea to find a donor went out nationally and internationally since this was such a rare blood type. 

When the phone rang the hospital was told there was a matching donor in Germany.  The connection became clear.  Many of the Amish are from Germany and that meant there had to be a genetic tie.  Immediately the hospital asked the family members to be tested and that spread to the entire community.  Most of these Amish had this special marker on their blood type.  Her life was saved and they gave gratefully as well as regularly after that.

The other site was near Orville, Ohio – you know that town – it is home to Smucker’s and many of the donors worked at the plant.

That is where I met a very sweet man who had 13 children and needed a wife.  Over a period of time he got up the courage to ask me out for ice cream.  I did not wear jewelry on the job so he did not know I was married.  I thought it was very sweet but I was curious as to why he wanted to “date” an English woman.

I made some inquiries from other donors and I was told he needed a mother for his 13 children and none of the Amish women were interested, so he had to look outside the community.

To this day I wonder if he ever found a wife and I also wonder how the two communities are doing.  Times have changed even more since those days in the 1980′s.

I do hold those memories close to me because the Amish taught me courage.  Think about it, they were willing to bond together and come together in offering the gift of life to people they would never know, people who possibly misunderstood their beliefs, people who might even have made fun of them.  They are made of the right stuff there is no doubt.

One more thing I learned is it was more pleasant to be assigned to work these sites in the winter than in the summer.  You see the Amish do not use deodorant.  After you give blood you are instructed to raise your arm over your head for 5 minutes.  Whew-that was a rough 5 minutes times three donors per unit.  With an average of 9 donors per hour in your unit and a 6 hour blood draw that always lasted 8 hours to get those in line through the entire process deducting an hour for breaks and dinner still left every nurse with at least 300 minutes of arms in the air with no deodorant.  It was an experience.

I know all of us have had smelly experiences in our lives and thinking about other bad smells takes me back to memories I don’t intend to write about.  Over the years in nursing especially my nasal passages were exposed to many odors that should remain in the memory vaults.  However there are smells in my life time that bring back interesting memories. 

As a kid I loved the smell of new tires when I would walk past the gas station.  I loved the smell of the shoe repair shop where all our shoes would go for new heels.  I even wrote about how walking into Cook County General in Chicago made me homesick for my years of working at Cleveland Metro General Hospital because both county hospitals carried the same smell.

Then there was my own personal smell.  One of my former supervisors always knew I was in the building because back then I only wore Obsession by Calvin Klein.  I even had a former lover who went as far to buy his wife (when he married) Obsession.  I thought that was very strange and possibly kinky.

I ran into him years later and we talked for a while and when he told me he did that I looked at him like he was weird and he told me I should be flattered.

Flattered?  I don’t think so but in a wicked way I did get a brief moment of satisfaction out of it.  Seeing him again years later took me back to the day I was out shopping for blue jeans at The Gap at Parmatown Mall. 

The store was being remodeled and there was scaffolding and electrical wiring all over the place.  I picked up two pair of blue jeans and went back to the dressing rooms to try them on.  I was very familiar with this store as I had shopped there for quite a while.  I put all my packages on the floor, took my pants off and slid my legs into the first pair of jeans.  They fit like a glove, so I pulled them off, put my pants back on and picked up my packages to leave when………………

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Well that little adventure (Dec 8th posting)  took me down memory lane.  From the drag strip to the autobahn and Dachau, but my life has always been like that!  I have always been full speed ahead and always loved speed.  That brings me to the glorious days of going to nursing school. I had three little ones to get off to school in the morning and classes to get to by 8AM.  It was always a mad rush.  By the time I got them to the sitter’s house before school, to pointing the car in the right direction of my classes, I was speeding. It was never really a big surprise to hear the police sirens behind me.  I was stopped more than a couple of times and I am not proud of that fact-believe me I am not.  I was young and had a great set of legs.  Everytime I was stopped I hiked up the skirt of my uniform and made sure enough leg was showing as the officer approached my vehicle.

We all do what we have to in certain situations.  I certainly did not offer any bribes or promises (other than to drive more slowly) of course.  Of all the times I was stopped I got 3 tickets, the rest of the time I got off with warnings. I have great legs.

Nursing school was not easy.  I had three children at home and I was one of the first married students that my school of nursing allowed to live off campus.  Prior to that year even married students had to live in the dormitory during the week.

I am amazed I made it through to graduation.  We were an unruly group.  First of all anyone who has gone to nursing school knows that most of the instructors were absolutely the nastiest people.  They were drill sergeants and yes while learning was a matter of life and death experiences, they were hateful.

I just wanted it all to be over.  I had started nursing school years ago and was in my third year when Willy got ill.  After that I came home and went to work to help my family out with expenses, got married, had three kids and finally 15 years later I was about to get my stripes on my cap and my pin.

The cap lasted about a year, no one was really wearing them that much any longer, and mine met it’s demise in the middle of a code blue when it fell off my head and ended up in the middle of CPR only to be knocked off the bed, and onto the floor.  The cap went into the trash after that night.

I went to work at the local county hospital that I have written about in the past in my continuing stories.  Before I was honored to be working in the ER I was a floor nurse.  One night I was asked to float over to the Rehab floor from Internal Medicine.  Rehab was less stressful nursing.  Most patients there were closed head injuries, motor vehicle accidents and the like, head traumas, coma patients but no one was critical.  I looked at the patient names and was so surprised to see a name I recognized. The name was Robin Ritson and I only knew one person by that name. 

Robin was the son of one my my mother’s high school girlfriends and the brother of Keith Ritson, known lieutenant to Cleveland mobster, Danny Greene.  This was the early 80′s.  I had not seen Keith in person in years.  Even though we had been playpen mates as kids, and we had attended many family get togethers over the years, I did not keep company with the mob. 

I asked Robin where Keith was, and he told me he was in witness protection.  I do not know how true that was because Robin was dealing with a closed head injury, a traumatic brain injury, and I did not know if Robin could process thoughts in the time frame we were in at the time.

I do know that in doing my research back into that time frame I came across many court documents and articles about the Danny Greene.  I vividly remember the day he died after leaving his dentist’s office in Beachwood, Ohio.  I knew Keith had been involved with the mob.  His mother had died years earlier and my parents were never impressed by his father.  The family owned a bar in Parma, Ohio right off Brookpark Road called the Vanguard Lounge. The original bar had been on Ridge Road but there were many complaints and they moved their location.  I was there one time at the ripe old age of 18, and Keith was working behind the bar.  If my parents had found out I would probably have been grounded because even then the Vanguard had a bad reputation.

I can remember when Keith and I were in the playpen and we were about two years old.  He pulled my hair hard, he was a bully even then.  His life obviously went down the wrong road, and he was accused of doing many things.  One of the last times I heard of him, he had been arrested at Cleveland Hopkins Airport for cocaine possession.  I had heard he was giving up names and offering up a mob graveyard in Lorain County, and I thought Robin might be right.  Maybe Keith had turned informant and was in protection.

I don’t know.  Public records say he was shot in the back of the head and murdered in November, 1978. 

I had never heard that story, of all the many times that I had seen articles in the paper or heard about Keith on the evening news, somehow I had never heard he had died.  Considering my mother was still in touch with all her high school girlfriends, and that they all went to high school with Keith’s mother, it strikes me as odd that none of them knew that Bea Ritson’s son had been killed.

Since I did not know that Keith had been murdered I asked Robin one night if Keith had been to see him.  That was when he told me Keith could not come because he was in witness protection. 

All I know is I had one more very strange happening 2-3 years later in which I was approached by a man at a hotel bar in Independence, Ohio.  He and I talked.  We laughed, we danced, and as I said we talked a little.  He got up to leave, and he turned to look at me one last time as he was going out the door.  He came back in bent down, cupped my chin in his hands and whispered in my ear “Thank you Carole for taking such good care of my little brother.”  I sat there totally surprised because we had never exchanged names.   Then it dawned on me.  I ran out into the hotel lobby – only a minute had passed and there was no one there.  I ran out into the parking lot, and there was no one walking to a car.  In fact there were no cars even pulling out.  I cried.

There was one more Ritson brother – but I never really knew him as well as I knew Keith.  I only knew Keith and that relationship was one of family picnics and birthday parties and a stolen kiss or two as teenagers before our lives went in different directions.   Bad boys are so easy to fall for, and my parents made sure we were miles apart in our later teen aged years.

If Robin was right then I know who I spent the evening with, if the articles on the internet and the court documents are right then I spent the evening with a ghost or this man had the wrong girl and it was all coincidence.

Then again my life has been a series of amazing coincidences and Keith Ritson was not the only connection I had in my life with organized crime.

The time frame is 1983 and I was now working for the American Red Cross as a blood mobile nurse.  I really loved that job.  I was extremely skilled at placing a 16 gauge needle in a small vein and getting a pint of blood in return.  I had a great donor record of completed pints of blood and this would be my first Teamsters Union blood donation.  I had heard the stories and believe me there were stories. 

The event was so big it was held at the Masonic Hall on Euclid Avenue.  Every nurse employed by the ARC was there.  Any teamster who came in to give or attempt to give got a day off with pay.  It was an enormous undertaking on all of our parts.  It was so big it was even covered by the local TV stations.  If memory serves me right it lasted several days.

Rumors flew around that in years past a donor or two had been found dead after donating blood.  I do not know, I am only repeating what I was told. 

Normally we had two men per blood mobile event that processed the bags after collection, and a team of volunteers that escorted the donors to the recovery area where they were given food and drink.

Since all hands were on board and our drivers were busy moving blood product back to our service center, the event was staffed with teamster bosses and labor leaders as the escorts.

I clearly remember when one of the donors was getting up off the chair and became lightheaded.  I jumped up to help the teamster escort and as I went to assist him my hand came to rest on a gun in his shoulder holster.  I just acted like I had not realized what I had touched and the day went on.

It was mid-afternoon and everyone was waiting for the one and only Mr. Jackie Presser, newly elected president of the teamsters union to arrive.  All high ranking teamster officials paid their respects to their workers over the course of this event, and Mr. Presser was due to arrive at any minute.

If you google Jackie Presser you will find out that in all actuality by the time he was elected union president he was one of the most prized informants the FBI ever had on organized crime.   He even carried a radio device that he could use to check to make sure his car was not wired to explode and  that device was given to him by the FBI. 

Those were rough years in Cleveland.  The history of the Cleveland mob is deep and filled with violence and truly bad people.  Jimmy Hoffa was one such person and we all think we know what happened to Hoffa.

We were busy working getting the teamsters in and out as quickly as we could and I had three donors in my unit all with bags filling very nicely.  It was hot and I was getting tired, I remember turning to look up at the doors of the auditorium when I heard them open and all I could see was the bright sunlight filling the space as the door opened and then all of a sudden……….

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Once upon a time there was this crazy brunette with many blond highlights.  She lived all over the country and sometimes outside the US.  Her favorite city in the whole wide world was Chicago, Illinois.  Many years ago when  she was a very young girl her parents had taken her to Chicago on one of their family vacations.  She knew the moment she saw that skyline in 1960 that she wanted to live in that city someday, what she did not know is that it would take more than 25 years to fulfill her dream.  Nor did she ever consider she might lose that dream and work hard to regain it again.

It was in the late spring of 1987 that she found herself standing on the back deck of an incredibly beautiful apartment in an newly urbanized area known as Uptown.  This particular apartment was located on Malden Avenue off Wilson and the building was just stunning.

The lease was signed and the deal was done.  She finally was going to live in the Windy City and her dreams were coming true.

Or so I thought, you all know this is my story, no surprises there.  I was remarried, my last child was finishing her sophomore year in high school, and it was time to leave the suburbs of Cleveland and follow my dreams.

Those were such fun filled days.  We would leave our apartment early in the morning on weekends and we would walk all the way down Broadway to Fullerton, window shopping as well as meeting people along the way.  One of the most interesting people I met back then was Lily Monkus.  If you google Lily Monkus you will find her theater credits.  She was not an attractive woman, a character actress by trade who had starred in many Chicagotheatrical productions.  When the play E/R Emergency Room was written she had a lead as the head nurse.  This play later turned into the precursor of the TV show ER.  In 1984 Elliott Gould had the lead role of the 30 minute show and yes George Clooney was there then too.  Lily did fly to Hollywoodto audition for tha part, but alas it was not to be hers.

I think one of Lily’s best works was when she was chosen to be in the Wendy’s commercial we all came to love back in the 80’s.  She played a Russian fashion model. Reader’s of a certain age should remember the ad. She wore the same thing only the props would change.  In a very Russian accent the announcer would say “day wear” followed by “beach wear” and Lily would have a beach ball, and then “night wear” .  The ad was pulled at a request from the US State Department because relationships with Russia were improving.  It cracked me up every time it was on.

The point of the ad was to show that at Wendy’s you can always have change.

Lily starred in many other commercials and many were very funny.  She had a Sear’s ad in which the grill blew up in her face, she had an ad for Alaskan Airlines,  but she was best known by me for her role in the movie “The Fugitive”.  She played the desk sergeant in that film.  Hell I loved it that she got to meet Tommie Lee Jones.

Lily and I used to sit down at my apartment many evenings for dinner and throw back shots of vodka while talking about life in general.  She started her career by being a groupie to Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead back in the days when she lived in Haight Ashbury.  Lily lead quite the life.  I was saddened when I tried to look her up years later only to find she has gone on to the great acting assignment in the sky.

We lived on the second floor of our building.  Our landlord lived above us.  Next to the landlord were our gay guys, Jim and Paul.   Next to me was Kathleen, the corporate attorney I came to be good friends with over the time I lived there.  The first floor tenants came and went.

I can tell you that we threw some awesome parties on our back deck in the summer and some fantastic gatherings for the holidays as well.  The apartment has a double living room with a wood burning fire place, the master bedroom and master bath were off one of the living rooms and accessible by a sliding pocket door.  When you came in the door there was a long hall and right next to the door was a peer mirror from a salvage yard.  It was so lovely.  As you continued down the hall there was the main bath room, the dining room, a large eat in kitchen and a second bedroom which belonged to Kristen, my daughter. 

It was a very pretty place and I have very fond memories of living there.

One such memory was the night we could hear the commotion coming from the landlord’s apartment.  At first we thought it was a commotion of bedroom acrobatics until we heard loud yelling, jumping, thumping, banging and cursing.

My then husband (that would be Dan with the roses) and I followed the noise down to the main bathroom in time to see a body fall past the bathroom window.  Now the noise in the building was the landlord running down the stair case yelling to call 911.  Dan joined him as they high tailed it to the basement.  The body that had sailed past the bathroom window was that of a burglar and Tom, the landlord, had knocked him out of his apartment through his main bathroom window.  That opening actually went all the way to the basement and the burglar kicked his way back into the house through a basement window and got out the front door with Dan the rose man and Tom the landlord hot on his heels.

Who knows how that story ended?  Two men in their underwear running after the burglar was probably not an abnormal site in the neighborhood.

This was the neighborhood where the writers and producers for the hit TV show Hill Street Blues got their material.  I kid you not, the opening scenes were shot down near U of I, but the stories came from Uptown.

Another fond memory which I really did get great enjoyment out of happened early one morning.  It actually began in the middle of the night.  When Tom, the landlord, renovated the building he installed a beautiful antique front door and hinged it on the outside.  One particular night I heard a loud thud, so did Dan, we thought nothing of it.  The next morning I came down to get to my car to go to work and there was no front door.  I sat in my car and watched for the other apartment dwellers to leave because I wanted to see their reactions.  At least now I knew what the thud was.   Dan had already told Tom the door was missing.  The police had come and gone.  The best reaction I saw was from one of the first floor tenants.  He walked through the opening, came half way down the walk before realizing he had not opened the door.  He turned to look, scratched his head and went to work.  Of course this posed a security problem so Tom had to get a new door immediately.  I was wondering if my boss would buy my excuse that I was late because someone stole our front door.  It is like the dog eating your homework.

This past weekend when my son in law was driving us to our downtown Chicago hotel we pulled out of the garage and there in the alley was a mattress.  I commented on it, hell I had seen much worse in all the places I ever lived in Chicago, and he told the story of how he had pulled out of his garage recently with this mom and sister in the car and they had been treated to two rather good sized rats sitting in the alley.  They were all over his case about the rodents of course.  Me, I have seen rodents all over the world, but have to admit Chicago rats are pretty big.

Naturally I have several rodent stories of my own that come to mind. 

Same apartment, two cats, Dan, the rose man, and one daughter besides myself and it took all three humans a while to realize that our cat food supply seemed to be disappearing faster than two cats could be eating it.

One day I was working from home and I decided to clean the apartment.  I went to get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, opened the door and there sitting on the top of my upright vacuum cleaner housing was one big effing rat!  I looked at the effing rat, the effing rat looked back at me and it did not move-thank God.  I slammed the door shut, my heart was beating 180 and now I am looking for a weapon.  It had to die.  I could not stay in an apartment with a rat the size of Rhode Island. 

I went out onto the back deck and saw the snow shovel that the handy man had left there while taking a break.  I grabbed it, ran back into the hall, opened the closet door and the effing rat was still sitting there smiling at me.  Not for long.  Bye bye you mother I remember thinking as I slammed the snow shovel stick end down on it’s head,  not easy to do but the aluminum end of the shovel was not going to get the job done.  I had assessed that situation when I picked the shovel up.  The rat was a goner.  The cats, which had run in fear, peered out to take a look at the crook that had been stealing their food.  I disposed of the effing rat, left a note for my landlord and I thought to myself, end of effing rat story.

Oh was I wrong.  When the landlord came home he pulled out my dishwasher and sure enough the insulation was all gone.  He looked at me and said two words I did not want to hear.  Those words were “nesting material”.  It only took about 2 more hours for us to hear the cries of abandoned hungry baby rats.  The handyman was called, the useless cats went back into hiding and when the flooring in the closet was removed there was the nest. The orphaned baby rats, nest and all were disposed of quickly.  After that the cat food no longer disappeared and cracks and holes were closed off at ground level to hopefully keep rodent intruders aka effing rats out of our building.

Recently I had an email from an acquaintance who told me Chicago was a filthy city literally and figuratively.  I do not agree.  When we were back last weekend, we did not want to leave.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when you are in love with a city, you do not see the bad things.  I love Chicago, I always will, and the good Lord willing, I will live there again.

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As the saying goes timing is everything.  Two months ago we booked a long weekend into the city where Larry and I met 10 years ago today-Chicago.  Who could have known we would be in our favorite city right when the poop has hit the fan politically?  I am so excited that I will be able to pick up the Chicago Tribune and get more information than any of us are getting from watching TV news at home.  The reporter in me is jumping for joy over being there now.

This is an exciting time to be in Chicago.  Our primary reason of course is family.  Larry’s son, his son’s wife and their adorable 4 year old daughter are the real reason for the trip.  Little Miss Sarah is a Thanksgiving baby like me, and we planned the trip to fall between her special day and Christmas.

We will be visiting Santa, eating lunch at the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s on State Street, and just walking around a beautiful city at the holidays.  Before you ding me, it will always be Marshall Field’s to me, it is a historic building and Macy’s should have at least hyphenated the name in my opinion.

This was actually the only weekend we had available to travel that also fit in with his family’s plans too.  We normally spend this day remembering our first meeting, our first date. 

Larry and I met on line.  He was starting his life over after a terrible divorce.   I had moved back to the Windy City in 1996 after a terrible divorce of my own from the evil man.  Without the internet we would not have met. 

I had only been on the web site known as matchmaker.com for a two week trial period.  It was free for two weeks and a friend talked me into it.  I only had a two week window to meet Larry and now that I look back I see the stars were definitely aligned.

He asked me to meet him for dinner at The Mambo Grill which just happened to be 2 blocks out the back door of my apartment building, Marina City.  I lived in the front building of what many people nicknamed the corn cob buildings right on the Chicago River. If you have been there you know them , they are round.  I loved my apartment.  I loved the address.  I had a view from my living room right down State Street where I could see the Chicago Theater and yes, Marshall Field’s Department Store.  My bedroom window view was even more spectacular, it was the Sears Tower, and at night that was a wonderful site to fall asleep to, it was like basking in moonlight every night.

Larry told me he would be wearing a black leather bomber jacket, and that he is 6 foot 2  and had a head of silver hair. 

I was running late, and I don’t run late.  I flew out of my apartment building, crossed Dearborn, practically jogged over to Clark Street and as I opened the door to the restaurant I tripped and stumbled in, and Larry saw the whole thing.  I walked up to him, smiled, extended my hand and kissed him on the cheek.

We got seated for dinner and dinner was just so much fun.  At one point I finally asked him if we could skip “the dating game” conversation and just be real.  From that point on everything just flowed. 

Larry is a real man’s man.  Tall, sexy, self-assured, strong, somewhat stubborn but very much in touch with his feminine side.  Whenever we go to an event it is no surprise to me that Larry is surrounded by women.   I have girlfriends who would stand in line for him if I jump off this earth first.  They have said so, and while that may sound a little strange, I take it as a compliment to my choice in my man.

After dinner that night I suggested we walk over to Marshall Field’s and see the windows all decorated for the holidays.  Our first date was short.  As Larry tells it the date was the shortest date he had ever been on and my story is that I did not want it to end.  But end it did, what neither of us knew then was that it would turn out to be the longest date either of us had ever been on because 6 months later he asked me to marry him.  A year after that we tied the knot.

December 11 is also Corky’s birthday.  He is 7 today, and my only regret is I never got to see him as a little tiny puppy.  By the time we found him at a shelter he was 4 months old and recovering from being abused.  Corky was originally adopted by a family with 4 children under the age of 6, and who knows the hell they put this bundle of fur through.  Corky was also terrified of being in a car.  I discussed this with our veterinarian and her theory was that this beautiful joyful little guy had to have been thrown from a car. 

If and when I needed to put him in a car he would drool so much his entire chest would be soaked.  Corky used to wear a child’s bib in the car.  It took us 2 years to get him to feel safe.  By the time we moved here he was finally able to go to sleep in the car.  I used to have to ride with him in the back and hold him, the poor little dog.  He still will not go anywhere near a child.  What does that say?   When my kids come to visit it takes him a week to allow one of my grand children to sit next to him and pet him.  His story has a happy ending, he got us and his buddy Taffy, but he has not forgotten his first 4 months.

He will sport a special bow today and get a special extra treat before we head out to the airport.

We have a house sitter, and while Taffy thinks she is the cat’s pajamas, Corky still shies away from her, preferring to sit on a different piece of furniture and look at her.  He is such a beautiful dog, inside and out, and when we first walked into the pet store that April, Larry said he had already decided to add him to our family.

Two much testosterone in this house though.  If there is one more house in our future we need to add a female four legged rescue.  I have her name all picked out.  She will be Willy, named for my dad.  Her full name will be Wilhelmina but who would call a dog that?  No she will be known as Willy, and she will be one more designer mutt like Taffy and Corky who are both Lhasa-poos.

They are already upset.  They get upset the minute the suitcases come out.  However they are in very good hands while we are gone, and everyone of us will have a great time.

That is my story about the meaning of December 11 to me, and I know we will have an awesome time.  We chose a very interesting sounding restaurant for Saturday night, Le Lan, which has a French/Vietnamese flair.  We had many restaurants recommended to us and it was hard to choose.  We had originally chosen SushiSamba.  Then Larry’s son suggested Japonais.  When we looked both of the restaurants up on line we saw that both places are also in Las Vegas.  We are going to Las Vegas in October, so we can try them both there.  We decided we wanted something a little smaller and hopefully more quiet so we chose Le Lan.  I cannot wait to write a review about our meal next week.

Along with that review will be more interesting information about the Blagojevich scandal-but here is my message to Rod.  RESIGN NOW.  You do not deserve to hold the position!  He needs to be unemployed for sure.

First Day Home

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You have to have a good reaction time in racing.  My reaction time was still there.  In fact I had an amazingly quick reaction time sitting at the starting line at Thompson Drag Raceway in the summer of 1986, engine rumbling louder than my heart beat which I could feel in my chest but I had an advantage because I knew what many people do not know.  Women have a faster reaction time to the green.  We see it faster than men-now does that really surprise you?

Yes I was queen of the drag strip for several years and I know this will surprise some of my followers.  Dan saw the opportunity to own a race car when my next door neighbor put his 1973 Camaro up for sale.

The standard engine for the 1973 Camaro LT was the Turbo-Fire 350ci V8 with a two barrel carburetor with 175 horsepower.  That car was designed to race and race she and I did.

We painted the car Porsche red, had a very busty blonde graphic applied to both rear fenders, and named her the Strip Teaser. Then we removed everything we could from the inside that would slow this beauty down.  We put in a 2 gallon gas tank, had two front bucket seats, added a roll bar and off we went.

My speed for the quarter mile was 12.5 and I had to hold that speed, if I broke it I was out.  There is an art to this because you have to know exactly how to hold that gas pedal, what pressure to put on it and how to keep it there.

I took my oldest son down the 1/4 mile track in a heat match one day, and he got out of that car looking like he wanted to toss his cookies with a whole new respect for controlled speed versus being stupid on the streets.

This is what my sweet car looked like before we took her in for graphics:

The Strip Teaser

I still love to drive fast there is not a doubt about that.  When I went to Germany back in 1993 after having just gone through breast cancer surgery, I suppose I felt immortal and invincible.   I rented the biggest  Mercedes-a standard shift Mercedes -and headed out on the Autobahn.

I wanted to let this car take over the road so I started out at a mere 80mph.  Drivers are very polite on the Autobahn, they would flash their lights and pass me.  Every driver was passing me so I grew more courageous and inched the speedometer up.  By the time I hit 100mph I was keeping pace with most of the other drivers.  But the “Shirley Muldowney” in me pushed me on and my final cruising speed was 140mph.

The rules on the German Autobahn are as follows:
The German intercity Autobahn, two-thirds of which have only advisory limits. However, a driver must always be able to stop the car within the line of sight, which actually imposes an implicit situational speed limit although this is almost never enforced.

I got that from Wikipedia.

That trip and going at that rate of speed gave my passengers a thrill too that I know.  The Autobahn adventure had to come to an end because we had other plans that day.  It just felt so darn good to go that fast and I would do it again tomorrow.

We had to come back down to earth and get a grip because I had chosen this day trip, we were on our way to Dachau.

As a teenaged girl I had read The Diary of Anne Frankmany times.    I was always amazed each time I read her diary about her courage at such a young age.  I could close my eyes and see her face.  She was my heroine. 

Here is an excerpt about Anne from Wiki:

Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany, and were trapped by the occupation of the Netherlands, which began in 1940. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank’s office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, within days of the death of her sister, Margot Frank. Her father Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl.

The trip to Dachau was very emotional.  I realize there are those who still to this day do not believe that the Holocaust ever happened.  I say to those people, visit a camp.  The camps were not built as props for to improve tourism and the crematoriums well what were they built for?

It was a cold over cast day when we went to Dachau and the skies were heavily clouded with winter.  The dampness crept right through us or was it the sadness of the murders that happened there. I can’t say.   N0 one took a camera, we all knew the pictures would be in our heads forever.

I recently read that there is a new movie coming out with Tom Cruise playing Claus von Stauffenberg.

Stauffenberg was a German army officer and Roman Catholic aristocrat who was one of the leading officers of the failed plot on July 20,  1944 to assassinate Hitler and remove the Nazi party from existence in Germany.  I am not sure that Cruise is going to pull off a good characterization of a German Army Officer but I will probably see the movie because I do like that period of world history.

Sorry to ruin the ending, the plot obviously failed and those involved were shot by a firing squad at 1 AM on July 21st.

Back to my adventure- that was a very sobering day to be sure visiting Dachau.  German students are taken to the camps every school year to remind them of the heavy price they paid for following a mad man.

Desperate people look for answers.  Hitler’s speeches were filled with and spilled over with propaganda.  The 1930′s were under turmoil after the Great Depression.  Hitler took advantage of people’s vulnerabilities promising change.

He garnered the support of industrialists and the upper class.  He used scare tactics and blamed the Jews for the downfall of Germany and their defeat in World War I.  The Jew’s were in control of the German Communist Party and Hitler never stopped blaming the Jews for the problems in Germany.

He made radical speeches and ordered the murder of army and government officials. 

That is my research in a nut shell.  He had charisma.  Everyone wanted to be seen with him or known by him at first.  By the time the German people realized he was crazy, it was too late.  He was too powerful, and they remained loyal to him out of fear.

That is your history lesson for today.  Let us not forget though that in history this type of leader has appeared time after time and can again.

Well that little adventure took me down memory lane.  From the drag strip to the autobahn and Dachau, but my life has been like that!  I have always been full speed ahead and always loved speed and that brings me to the glorious days of going to nursing school. I had three little ones to get off to school in the morning and classes to get to by 8AM.  It was always a mad rush.  By the time I got them to the sitter before school, to pointing the car in the right direction of my classes, I was speeding. It was never really a big surprise to hear…………….

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