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MY SUN DAY NEWS

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News & Features Columnists Editorials Hang Your Hat Obituaries My Huntley News

September 22, 2011

Chris La Pelusa

Carnivals and scarecrows

Huntley Fall Fest 2011 might just have you spinning … literally.

A streetcar named desire

“A Street Car Named Desire” has a whole different meaning for Sun City resident and history buff Fred Leznek. “When I was a little boy … my mother would always take me on the streetcar to go downtown, and I was always infatuated with streetcars,” Leznek said, referring to the gone-by public transportation service also known as the trolley.

All in one, and one for all … really?

Is it just me or are all-in-one, big-box stores, such the ones found on the Randall Road artery between I90 and Algonquin Road, having trouble knowing who they are or what they sell anymore? They’re like teenagers suffering perpetual identity crises.

The sticky couch

My wife and I were huge fans of NBC’s hit show Friends. It brought us a lot of laughs the ten years it was on. And chief among those came from arguably the funniest scene in the show’s entire history, in which Ross enlisted friends Rachel and Chandler to help him move a new sofa up his New York apartment building’s stairwell. A quick synopsis: the couch was too long for the tight curves of the stairwell, which resulted in numerous failed strategies, and Ross repeatedly commanded his friends to “Pivot, pi-vot, PIV-OT!”

Party like it’s 1799

I had mixed feelings about power outages when I was a kid. All the rules changed in the dark. Dad said, “Don’t open the fridge,” while Mom lit candles, which were both spooky and mysterious, casting long, flickering shadows on the walls. My home was transformed into an eighteenth-century villa, and I wondered if this was what it was like before there were electric lights. What struck me as most sinister was how dark everything was. Not just dark…black.

If you can’t take the heat, get out from Under the Oven

I think most of us like to believe we’re clean people. We keep clean homes (for the most part), we take care of our bodies, practicing good hygiene, and we wash our cars regularly to dissuade the neighborhood kids from swiping the words WASH ME on our rear windows. For the most part, to usurp an idea from Stephen King and Peter Straub’s Black House, we try to prevent “slippage.”

Home renovations. Are you tough enough? Hooyah!

Like many folks out there, my wife and I are so upside down on our mortgage, it’s like living through a polar shift. Today, our condo is worth only about one-third of the price we bought it for in 2001, not to mention how far we are away from what it was valued at five years ago (in Mafioso, all I can say is fuggedaboutit). And since we’re trying to move this year, we’re in a tough position. Well, as tough as any anchor around your neck puts you in.

If the ‘show’ fits

If the shoe fits, Sun City resident Sheila Gillis definitely wears it. As Celtic Club Member and Ted O’Sullivan Show Part II writer, producer, director, she wears a lot of shoes. But when you’re following in the footsteps of Ed Sullivan himself, it would take that to put on a big “shoe” like The Ted O’Sullivan Show Part II, staring Paul Runkel as Ted O’Sullivan, among his many famous guests, not the least of which includes Marilyn Monroe.

I am my own worst critic

If there’s one thing a reporter or editor gets used to real quick, it’s criticism. Whether they can spell the word right off the bat is a crapshoot. But criticism is something we in newspapers deal with a lot, and how each reporter or editor handles it is about as varied as a tiger’s stripes. I knew one reporter who treated them like trophies and hung them on his cubicle wall – the worse the better.

A woman on a mission

If there’s one thing America has, it’s conveniences. From a burger joint in every town down to running water, there’s little not at our disposal, including proper healthcare.

The day time stood still… sort of

Every other week, the Sun Day publishes the terrific and comedic column Geezer Moments by fellow Sun City resident Sam Geati. For those unfamiliar, which I know aren’t many, Geezer Moments is about those funny little “blips” in the aging memory that make everyone think, “I must be losing my mind.” And this week’s Health & Wellness section features tips on keeping the aging memory sharp and its recall intact.

Take a PASS on memory loss

We’ve all experienced lapses in memory: walking into a room and not remembering why we entered in the first place, not remembering where we placed those elusive car keys, not remembering where we parked out car in the parking lot, or where our glasses are when they’re right on top of our head. But despite that we’ve spent our lives “forgetting” these mundane things, studies indicate that the average person experiences increased memory as the mind ages.

CONDO FOR RENT: Eighth Wonder of the World

After ten years and one defunct president, it looks like my wife and I will soon be moving on to greener pastures…but not without lugging with us the mortgage of a 600sq/ft condo posing as an 800sq/ft one. But, hey, you do with what you have to work with, right? It’s not a perfect world, after all. And it’s for certain not a perfect housing market.

Nest egg

All the years Jerry and Patty Case saved for their retirement, they never quite planned on actually having a real nest egg to care for someday. But that’s what they got when robins went to work on their front stoop, constructed a perfect nest inside a decorative planter box, and laid three eggs.

Survey says…?

For almost ten years, and with the help of the Huntley Area Public Library Friends Foundation, professor of marketing at UCLA, Dr. Aimee Drolet Rossi, collected data for her research into the “aging consumer” to determine, among other results, how aging affects a person’s decision-making process, and in turn, how that impacts a person’s buying patterns in today’s market place.

Making news, breaking news, and everything between

Have I ever mentioned the Sun Day is not the first publication I’ve owned/produced/managed? It’s actually the third. The first two, crafty little “zines” called Signature Lit and (the melodramatic) Poetic Thoughts I produced out of my parents basement when I was 18 and 19 years old and probably broke about two dozen copyright laws between the both of them.

In full ‘swing’

It’s not everyone that gets a personal phone call from Tony Bennett whenever he came to “Chicago,” to not only rub elbows with but personally know Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis. And it’s especially not everyone that’s one of only three radio announcers inducted into the Big Band Hall of Fame. But such is the life and career of Chicagoland radio announcer Denny Farrell.

Volleying for competition

Sun City resident Richard Desmond of Neighborhood 27 definitely believes you’re never too old for a little healthy competition, which was why he organized the first Huntley “World” Senior Volley Ball Tournament for the Huntley Park District Senior Volleyball Program.

Illinois Vehicle Code states golf carts need insurance

SUN CITY – Sometimes it’s never too late for old news, especially when there are as many golf carts driving around Sun City roads as there are. With spring finally coming into full swing here in Sun City, residents who own golf carts or other vehicles known as neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) are taking to …

What’s 17 Italians sitting around a table eating Polish food? Easter… in my family

If there’s one thing almost everybody who knows my mother knows about my mother, it’s that if she weren’t a mother, she’d be a nun.

Riding off into the Sun Day

They say it takes a whole village to raise a child. I think the same is true, even truer, for a business because without the support of the community, the business will not progress.

Cruising down Memory Lane

For all this technology, it’s hard to believe that the history of automobiles is a short one.

Ahhh, who doesn’t like that new … vacuum smell

Do you ever want to weep when you buy a product that actually works how it’s supposed to? It’s like reaching the Promised Land after a thousand years wandering aimlessly through the Wasteland of Faulty Merchandise.

The Cody Chronicles

The past year Sun City resident Phillip Cody of Neighborhood 7 has spent cleaning and organizing his father’s estate has been not only an adventure in family history but American history.

Now what’s all this ‘nunsense’ about?

Who doesn’t like a little “nunsense” in their life now and then? So long as it’s fun, bold, and makes you laugh until you cry, there’s no harm. And in some special cases, it may even be better to make a habit of it.

Careful what you wish for

I’ve commented before on the wide age difference between me and my siblings. Seventeen, 14, and 10 years separates us. This means that it was my siblings who turned my father’s hair gray, and it was me who turned it white.