​There are two things that I haven't felt like doing since March 17, 2020, which for me was the start of the pandemic - take pictures and write this blog. 

It's not that I don't want to remember how it all went down and what it looked like. It's something else and I can't figure it out. For now, let's just try to figure out one day of radio. 

I couldn't sleep last night. I laid in bed for hours waiting for dreams. They finally came, but when 4:22 rolled around, I couldn't hop out of bed like I usually do. I read the text newsletter that Paul Goddard of Region News Source texts me every morning. (Okay, not every morning. I only do the show four mornings a week now.) I finally pulled myself out of the warmth, took a shower and walked to car. 

"Crap. Garbage day." 

That took a good ten minutes, pushing me further behind schedule. By the time I turned on the last light and adjusted the last camera, it was 5:58am and I had to live on the air without a moment to dance. I like to dance for a couple songs before going live. Now it's on TV so it looks either really cool or stupid. You decide. 

It's Tuesday, so Verlie comes in. She brings me a large coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I start salivating at 5am Tuesdays. We didn't waste much time getting into a story about the city of Hammond raising water rates on surrounding communities. It's not a sexy topic per se, but if you saw Hammond mayor McDermott's animated speech to a city council, they you might want to hear more. In the end, towns and cities around here fight like hell with each other. But deep down we're good people. 

Another topic was the Lake County cop caught wearing black face in a photo from a few years ago. It wasn't much fun trying to boil the story down to a few sad facts. Verlie was seething, rightfully so.

After the show, I talked with Mont Handley, the entrepreneur in residence at PNW, about all sorts of projects that could lead to innovation and the establishment of a venture capital culture in northwest Indian. I did another show at noon while training new producer Andrew Garcia. A bunch of people called. It's a different vibe at noon versus the morning. When I start talking at 6am, I better be on. My motto for the noon show is "no rules." It releases me from having to prepare stuff and allows me to retreat to my natural state, which is laziness.

I forgot a couple of shows in there. At 8am, VJ Damasius of Vyto's Pharmacy talked about the three types of Covid tests and about the efficacy of the different vaccines. With many more people wanting a vaccine than there are vaccines, vaccination talk draws calls and questions. 

At 8:30, Damian Rico and Sarah Ticich of Hospice came on. Since, as of yesterday, 500,000 people had died of Covid, there are a lot more grief-filled people walking around than there used to be. Covid sometimes means that your relative gets a little cough, then a fever, then extreme body aches and trouble breathing. You usher him or her into the car and to the emergency room. People in blue suits come out to the car. They put the love of your life in a wheelchair. They motion for you to get the hell out of there. For many, that glance at the back of a wheelchair is the last time they see their loved one alive. To top it off, you really can't have a funeral. 

Damien Rico's recently died. Damien talked about being part of one of the grief groups at Hospice led by Sarah. At the end of the show, I asked Damian about his dad - Viet Nam vet, snappy dresser, an amazing grandfather. Damien held it together for the most part but from my vantage point in the front row, you could see his eyes tear up. You would never think that a pharmacy show and a show about the dying process could garner so much interest. But then again you never lived through a pandemic before.

That should be it. I'm teaching myself how to design quality emails. Like pharmacy and death, email design doesn't sound like the most tantalizing of topics. But work habits have changed. No one shakes hands at a Chamber of Commerce meeting and picks up a few leads. It's all digital. And I've been lax in addressing our marketing, digital or otherwise. Nothing like an email in your inbox from someone who called a couple weeks ago for an advertising proposal... and they're still waiting. This is bad business. I know, and I'm working on it while listening to the Grateful Dead from 1976. Slipknot/Franklin's Tower. The video is in black and white or really faded color. Remember when a lot of TV was still in black and white? Of course you don't. You weren't even born when I graduated high school. 

I don't have any guests scheduled until 8am tomorrow. That gives me two hours to screw around. Maybe I'll sing ishka maloofka and whiz during a tirade. Whizzzzz you hear on the radio. Cindy or Gigi called today and said she hates when I talk ishka maloofka and when I go to the bathroom during a segment. I'm guessing you can hear the hollowness of the urinal. Oh well. I broadcast from the moon. I am alone in space. There is no one else in the building and, it seems, on the radio planet. It's just me. I don't have anyone to turn the show over to when I gotta pee. So EXCUSE ME, as Ralph Kramden would say.

You don't know who Ralph Kramden is, do you? In the old days we would say that he was a fat bus driver who liked to shoot his mouth. Nowadays, he's a man (no reference to body stature) who likes to exert his first amendment right. It's time that I go to bed and you watch Jimmy Kimmel and on the other side of another Jerry Garcia guitar solo I go to sleep. If not, there's always Yahtzee. 

You don't know what Yahtzee is, do you?

​It's December and we're surrounded by Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story." We smell the stench of the Bumpusses' dogs and laugh as a waiter at Cam Lan's chops off the head of a duck. Who hasn't wanted a bee bee gun? It will always be funny when Flick gets his tongue stuck to a metal pole. 

The part of "A Christmas Story" that I think about from time to time is what came after. The movie ends with mom and dad hugging and Ralphie cherishing his bee bee gun. The Bumpusses are still there and the taste of soap still resonates in Ralphie's mouth. It's a feel good movie. It portends well for the future of Ralphie and his family. 

Or does it? As the three or four of you know - and there really are only three or four of you since I stopped blogging through the pandemic - Jean Shepherd started his radio career at WJOB, which I own and, like you, love. He went on to fame at WOR in New York City as a late night personality back when that mattered. Shep grew up on Cleveland Street a few blocks from where I talk on the radio every morning. 

Shep's dad, from what a couple old-timers tell me, worked at a candy factory in north Hammond. I want to say it was the old Queen Anne Candies, but I can't be sure. The part of the story that has always stuck with me is that soon after the Christmas that we relive each year, Shep's dad ran off with a secretary and left the family. This devastated Shep. He watched his mom decline. Shep eventually escaped by going to the Army. 

Perhaps this explains the force at which Shep throws good memories at us. They were good times, simpler times. Pick up your phone. Go to CNN or Fox News. Trump denies that Biden won. There's a scandal about pardons for the president's kids and his lawyer, Giuliani. Little kids got shot in a drive by. There's massive lines at food banks. Hospitals are overcrowded and not taking more patients. We are a divided, hurting nation. We often don't care about each other. 

We did care about each other at one point, and that was during the two hours of "A Christmas Story." Jean Shepherd brought to life the last Christmas before his dad left and his family fell apart. His mom was in love and a sturdy character... in the movie. If you did a sequel, as far as I've been told, you might not recognize her. Despair and sadness have a way of ripping a person apart, even a tough Hessville woman. We watch "A Christmas Story" for the laughs and the feel good. We don't want to know that soon after Christmas Ralphie's mom cried herself to sleep. 

I know what comes after sometimes. My mom and dad and their five kids - me the oldest - lived an almost fairy tale life in Munster, Indiana. We had a big house down the street from the high school and at Christmas every year there tons of presents under the tree. I had dozens of cousins all over the Region and when we got together it was total mayhem... and fun. 

Then the hammer came down. My mom got cancer and died and my dad lost his construction company to one of the many steel recessions around here. If I were to write a story about the last Christmas before all of this happened, it would be idyllic... but would it be real? 

It's the middle of the night and I'm not doing the radio show in a couple hours. Dave Kusiak is. He got Covid and had to have open heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. It was touch and go for a while. "A miracle," Kusiak calls it. He and Lisa came to the house on Saturday - social distancing and masks - and Dave cornered me. He wanted to tell me something.

"This whole thing has given me time to think. I want to be a bigger part of WJOB," he said. I have known Dave Kusiak forever. His uncle blocked for my uncle Charlie at St. Stan's in East Chicago. We go way back. If he wants the mic, he can have it. Life is short.  

The Kusiaks, like Shep, lived through sadness. Dave talks about it from time to time on the air. He and his three brothers and sisters lived around the corner from us in Munster behind Johnny's Tap. One day, Big Tony and his son Sean went to a Sox game. Big Tony never came back. That changed the family forever. Jean Shepherd's dad left with the secretary. Dave Kusiak's dad died in the stands behind the third base dugout at Comiskey Park. My mom died of cancer and my dad lost his business. These things happen. You live through them. You learn from them. But do you want to warch a movie about them?

Not right now. We want Ralphie sitting on Santa's lap, Randy rolling around in a snowsuit. We love the look of a leg lamp in the living room. We don't want to think about what comes after, about Ralphie's mom busting that leg lamp on the corner of a couch. We want escape from a country divided, protests in the streets, massive unemployment, overcrowded hospitals, people dying in the ER. We want to remember when you could actually hug someone, wrestle in the basement, sit next to each other on the sofa. We want, now more than ever, Jean Shepherd's "A Christmas Story."  

​​I don’t suppose that the three or four of you want to hear from me after all these months. I left you when you may have needed it most. I’m still on the air every day holding hands, sorting through the confusion and hate. But I haven’t been here on this blog with the three or four of you. I hope you'll understand.