Dave Hoekstra

The author at Dark Angel Towing 1/24/24. (Portrait by Nick Kam.)

I’ve spent a lot of time on America’s highways.

There was a 1991 Chicago to Santa Monica, CA.  trip on Route 66. There have been a few memorable jaunts from Chicago through Memphis and Natchez, MS. to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, including getting caught in a tornado near Kingsland, AR. The Mississippi  River Road. I’ve put 68,000 miles on my 2015 Ford Transit camper van featuring excursions that I turned into a book. I’ve never had a roadside calamity.

Until now.

And where did it happen?

On the Eisenhower Expressway [...]

Sanford Cohen at the Homewood, circa 1981. (Photo by Tom Cruze; Suburban Sun-Times.)

I’ve been writing about people for more than 40 years. It has been a cinematic parade of characters, misfits, rogues, and dreamers. Some memories are starting to fade away into a winter horizon. Other figures remain for years, bringing common warmth to a random thought.

Sanford Cohen was one of those subjects.

From 1977 until 1984 Cohen was the effervescent owner of the Homewood Theatre, 18110 S. Dixie Highway in Homewood, south of Chicago. He was larger than life itself, to coin a Roger Ebert documentary. I met him in the [...]

“Doubles on Ice is a previously unheard Lou Whitney composition and I always wanted to use the image of a figure skater in a celebration of Lou.

A couple of years ago recording engineer Eric Schuchmann was doodling around The Studio, the beloved recording space on the outskirts of Springfield, Mo. He stumbled across a DAT tape marked “publishing demos 98-99.” Schuchmann had been long-time right-hand man for the brilliant bandleader-bassist-singer-producer Lou Whitney.

Whitney was also the spiritual force behind the great American rock n’ soul bands The Skeletons, The Morells, and the seminal [...]

Jimmy Buffett was a best-selling author, songwriter, businessman, airplane pilot, sailor, surfer, father, husband, environmentalist, tequila drinker, dog lover, and more. Yes, he lived a huge life.

Buffett died on Sept. 1 from cancer. He was 76 years old.

The thread of all his magical pursuits is how he paid attention to detail.

Jimmy Buffett listened for every heartbeat.

He found a twinkle in the eyes of everyone he met.

I have dozens of Buffett stories. Twice I brought Richard Harding and his daughter Catherine to Buffett shows in the Chicago area. Richard Harding was the grizzled owner of the Quiet Knight music room south of [...]

Design by Janet Hill.

The future is the foundation of finding every right house.

People bring visions and dreams into a new landscape. Midcentury Modern, or Post WW II architecture came along at the right time. Midcentury ranch homes emerged in 1949, four years after the end of World War II. Americans were looking towards a different tomorrow, one with a more approachable ceiling. The affordability of automobiles led to the growth of suburbs. People downsized from colonial homes to ranch houses with ample windows and open space. Midcentury architecture became clean and linear.

Westchester, IL. is [...]

Bob Matonis, we loved you yeah, yeah yeah.

One of America’s greatest rock n’ roll fans known as “Beatle Bob” Matonis died on July 27  in his native St. Louis, Mo. He was 70 years old. He died of complications from ALS.

Matonis spent decades dancing a mosh-up of the Twist and the Frug in the front rows of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest in Austin, Tx. FitzGerald’s in Berwyn and hundreds of other music clubs. He often wore black suits that matched his black bangs, even as the world spun into global warming,

Matonis said he saw 9,439 days of concerts in a row.

That number was in an e-mail he sent out earlier this year [...]

Early “North Country Blues” in Hibbing.

HIBBING, MN.–I drove alone into the north country unguarded. I carried no expectation or pretense. A songbird hovered along a roadside lake. A good highway leads to connections.

Hibbing did not disappoint.

I thought Hibbing would be a nice companion piece to last summer’s trip to the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Ok. Robert Zimmerman was born May 24, 1941, in Duluth, 75 miles to the east of Hibbing. But he spent his formative years in Hibbing. When Dylan was seven years old his father Abram moved the Zimmerman family to Hibbing where he opened [...]

Scorecards from the author’s basement.

The promise of Cubs opening day never gets old.

Time is a stiff wind, but when baseball’s opening day rolls in, I am young again. There is hope in the air. On April 1973 I attended my first Cubs season opener at Wrigley Field. I have not missed one since.

On March 30 I will attend my 50th consecutive home opener. I’ve made it through snow, rain, sun, lockouts, marriage, divorce, illness, a thousand woo-woos, and a pandemic. And I have a scorecard from every game. That’s the longest streak for anything I’ve done anything in life except for writing. And [...]

Dancing Mr. President and Mr. Bill. (Courtesy of  Robinette family.)

William Robinette was more than the ringmaster of the amazing Stay Out All Night Disco in west suburban Stone Park.

He was a ringmaster of life.

Mr. Robinette died Tuesday afternoon after an extended illness. He was surrounded by his family and grandchildren. He was 73 years old. On March 12 he celebrated his 52nd anniversary with his wife Darlene.

Affectionately known as “Mr. Bill”, Mr. Robinette was an accomplished bassist-vocalist who in the early 1970s played in the touring bands of the Marcels and the Vogues. In the [...]

Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Jan. 13, 1968 (Dan Poush photograph.)

WEST BRANCH, Ia.—This road of incongruity was too much to pass up.

I’ve driven past the sign on I-80 for the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum at least a dozen times on my way to Iowa City, the Iowa State Fair, or a minor league baseball game. I never stopped to see the museum. After all, in a 2021 CSPAN survey, presidential historians ranked the 44 presidents. Hoover came in 36th due to his legacy of economic woes. Months after his 1929 election the stock market crashed and the United States fell into the Great [...]

A good song can take you places. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Iowa singer-songwriter Greg Brown appeared with his compadre guitarist Bo Ramsey in March 2009 at the Harris Theater at Millennium Park in Chicago. Brown is in the upper tier of Americana singer-songwriters along with John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Pat McLaughlin, and Dan Penn. Brown makes every word count and his phrasing dips into rural blues like a baptism.

The Chicago show was a benefit for the PACTT (Parents Allied with Children and Teachers for Tomorrow) Learning Center, which assists children and young adults with severe autism. Many autistic kids connect with music and some PACTT clients [...]

In the darkest of musical Januarys comes word that Beatle Bob has stopped dancing.

Bob Matonis is the St. Louis-based fan that looks like an Ed Sullivan-era Beatle replete in black suits and black bangs.

Known as “Beatle Bob,” he has spent decades dancing a mosh-up of the Twist and the Frug in the front rows of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, South by Southwest in Austin, Tx. FitzGerald’s in Berwyn and hundreds of other music clubs.

Beatle Bob has claimed to have seen 9,439 days of concerts in a row.

That number was in an e-mail he sent out Sunday night announcing that his streak was coming to an end on Jan. 23, 2023. It [...]

Ironing Sam’s keyboard at NMAAM. I was so happy to see this.

NASHVILLE, TN.–For an edifice fixed in time, a museum can move in many ways. There are moments of discovery and minutes of connection. A museum can be a unifier.

Over Christmas, my brother and I visited the two-year-old National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) in downtown Nashville. The magnificent 56,000-square-foot museum is a block away from the historic Ryman Auditorium. There are more than 1,500 artifacts, objects, and photos and many of them have Chicago connections: Chess Records, Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, The [...]

Date Night at the Get Me High (Courtesy of Butchie Dakuras.)

The Get Me High Lounge was completely down to earth.

The tiny storefront jazz club was nestled at 1758 N. Honore near some train tracks in Chicago’s Wicker Park.  The Get Me High flourished in the mid-1980s when gob-smacked noir nightlife was all over Wicker Park like a street hustler.

Neighborhood folks could check out the original Artful Dodger punk club on North Milwaukee Avenue and the Double Door when it was a workingman’s bar lined with commemorative Elvis decanters and Webb Pierce on the jukebox. I lived in a graffiti-laden Wicker [...]

The Historic Red Rooster as the Hillsboro Hotel in the early 1900s.

We are privileged to have our “Beacons in the Darkness: Hope and Transformation Among America’s Community Newspapers” book party become the first public event at the Historic Red Rooster Inn in  Hillsboro, Il. The town of Hillsboro (pop. 6,100) is a town of wonder and it is about an hour’s drive south of Springfield, Il.

The Red Rooster building turns 120  years old on Nov. 21. It opened as the Hillsboro Hotel and the initials were carved into the anchor post of the lobby staircase. They can still be seen today. The free event begins at 7 p.m. on Nov. [...]

Mary Frances and  Bill Veeck in March 1959 when Bill purchased 54 % of the White Sox for $2.7 million. (Photo courtesy of the Veeck family.)

There were clouds, but Mary Frances Veeck never paid much attention to them.

After I heard of the Sept. 10 passing of Mrs. Veeck I began to realize that almost every time I saw her we were sitting outside. The first time was opening day April 1976 in the Comiskey Park bleachers after her husband Bill bought the White Sox. Mr. and Mrs. Veeck looked me in the eye as we spoke. I was just a kid among 40,300 happy fans.

In July 1991 I drove to Cooperstown, N.Y. to [...]

A Tesuque Pueblo player during a pickup game on July 4, 2021 at the Pueblo in Santa Fe, NM. The Tesuques play in the All Indian League, an adult baseball league that includes pueblos across New Mexico. (Courtesy of Jean Fruth)

Grassroots baseball players have always been highway gypsies.

They travel from diamond to diamond with jewels of their trade: bats that are needles of a mystic compass, gloves that try to catch all that goes by, and cleats that are as down and dirty as road tires. And when the journey is realized, the gypsy is safe at home.

The new Jean Fruth book “Grassroots Baseball: Route [...]

Ted Butterman, 1935-2022 (center)

The Chicago Cubs paid regal tribute to the passing of Queen Elizabeth II with a moment of silence before Friday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.

But they missed on Wrigley Field’s King of Swing.

Slugger Dave Kingman? Nope. Third baseman Patrick Wisdom? They’re still here.

Wrigley Field bandleader Ted Butterman died Aug. 31 in a care facility in Buffalo Grove, Il. The Dixieland jazz maestro was 87 years old. He was in hospice for one day. A lifelong musician, Mr. Butterman played to his biggest audiences between 1982 and 2017 at Wrigley [...]

High school-era Pete Crow-Armstrong

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—Maybe this isn’t all about baseball.

I’ve devoted some of the summer following the South Bend Cubs, the Midwest League High-A affiliate of the Chicago Cubs. The future lives in South Bend, the birthplace of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. I’ve followed the team to Midwest League outposts in Beloit, Wi. and Davenport, Ia. Last Friday I saw the Cubs lose 3-1 to the Quad Cities River Bandits before 6,700 fans on a steamy South Bend evening.

I keep a notebook on the passenger side of my car.  I jot down thoughts and observations. [...]