The Danger of Quality - Bill Knapp's is Delightfully Pestiferous!

 

One of the things that our customers grew to expect from our restaurants was quality food. They could count on the fact that the Bill Knapp's name stood for good, traditional, quality food. Retail shoppers today have those same expectations. If it has our name on it, they expect it to be good! - Bill Knapp

Family owned businesses are the only places I choose to champion.  I grew up on 79th Street, which according to Professor Eileen McMahon had businesses for every need from obstetrician to mortuary.
We went to Weiss's Five and Dime, Frank's Full Service Department Store, bought Whoopee Cushions and fake Dog Poop at Reilly's Trick Shop, got regular boys haircuts at Max Esposito's Barbershop, bread, cakes and cookies at Highland Bakery, bought new gravel agitators at Shapiro's Shoes, fidgeted at DuBois' Studios for 1st Communion and Graduation pictures and browsed Raymar's Terminal Merchandise for low-end values and Civil War era chewing gum at a penny a dozen. My Mom would take me to Lithuanian Doctor Anthony for a tetanus shots after every unsanctioned visit to Raymar's .

People bought good food at neighborhood groceries and National Tea Company, or the Hi-Lo until Jewel ran them out of business and suits, sport coats and dresses that lasted.  Quality meant it tasted, looked, felt and proved that working people purchased good things.

Now, we have CVS, WalGreens,WalMarts, Targets, TJ Max, Marshall's, Doc in the Box Med Depot, TGIF and WTF Friday's Eat Same troughs.

Quality is something that stirs memories.

No south sider of my three score and change years can ever forget the glories of Dressel's Cream Cakes at 6630 S. Ashland Ave. - they were what special occasions are all about.

In summers we would go to the Irish Riviera's of Wisconsin, Michigan, or Indiana.  The Hickey's tended to pilgrimage on Michigan's Red Arrow Highway and stay at Cassio's Cottages owned my Mr. Cassio from St. Mary of Mount Carmel Parish on 69th & Hermitage.

On the way up, we would stop at Bill Knapp's restaurant outside of St. Joe where they had exquisite donuts called Dunkers - two inch cakes shaped like a Pierogi for dunking in milk, coffee, or tea. They were of the fry-cake variety and extra crispy on the outside. But the Cadillac breakfast supplement was the glazed dunkers and the Rolls Royce was the Enrobed Donut & Dunker - a great donut enrobed in thick real chocolate.

County Fair Foods, owned and operated for more than 50 years by the Baffes Family, sells Bill Knapp Dunkers.

I have no kids at home . . .at the moment . . .and I dare not buy a box of eight - because I'll ate all eight.

Quality is out there. It is not under Arches, or in a big box warehouse.

Moms, Bundle Up Those Little Guys

Today is one windy and cold twenty four!  Even my old chill friendly pelt feel the sting of winter's slap on this October 29th of the year of Our Lord 2015. At Leo High School, Sangamon Street seems to act as a concrete HVAC -winds blow particularly strong south to north and getting the damn door to open with my key (attached to my identity lanyard and a stout pound or so duplicate and out-of-date keys to whatever) was daunting task.

I almost, almost mind you,  turned on the boilers at 4:30AM.  Nah, these brawny stalwarts can take it and it will be warmer by class time.

Out in the neighborhoods, Moms, or widowed Dads like your humble correspondent. should start boiling the water for oatmeal and hitting the cedar chest of winter togs.

One of my favorite parenting obligations was getting the bairns bundled wrapped and hatted to meet the challenges of Chicago's Hawk.




" You're gonna be warm . . .too bad about you. Now, get!"

MSNBC Hates Real Nuns and Why I Can't Tea Party - for Real - It's A South Side Thing -My Problem, Really.

I mean, by the MSNBC definition they would be racist: After all, 79 percent of those polled were white. That's a lot of white people and Chris Matthews must reckon, a lot of hoods*.Why the Left Hates the Tea Party
I count three Hoods - Old School South Side-ism for Nuns.
My buddy John Rubery - the Marathon Pundit - sent me this great photo of three nuns attending a Tea Party event in Rockford, Illinois.

I witnessed the first big Tea Party event last year in Chicago, when I was in the Loop on Leo High School business. It was a very tame, respectful and nice crowd of people.

N. B. -Given the fact that I aged ( we say 'dragged up') on the south side of Chicago, where mothers and fathers; extended family; neighbors; friends; teachers and coaches protect the young from ridicule ( ' Murtagh!, you are not wearing that cape out to play again; you are a senior at Marist, for Crissakes! Only Mike Joyce can get away with that and you are no boxer, Honey.') very early in life, Tea Party sports wear does not suit me. Therefore, I feel uncomfortable intruding in mufti. For example, were I to don a tri-corner hat, black vest and swell knee-britches and hose worn only by serial bicyclists on Milwaukee Avenue, Gino Ford, Eddie Carroll ( 'Put a net over Hickey') , Mike Regan ( "Get Him That Canvas Sweater with Tuck-Away Arms," Joe Capagna, Tommy Kordas, and Boz O'Brien ('Don't let His Kids Know') would call the CFD paramedics and have me shot up with animal tranquilizers until I got better. Thus, due to cultural cowardice, I am not a Tea Partier.

You see, the lovely lady with whom I am utterly flattered by her tolerance and acceptance of my Gordian psychic package and I stroll the tony streets of Chicago's Gold Coast and the delightful and impish Old Town. She is charmed by the sight of thirteen and fourteen year old boys decked out like Harry Potter and remarks on that sight. She shudders when I offer the insight, "Victims."

My heart goes out to these uninhibited young fellows festooned as they are in whimsical garb on a blustery April Sunday. I can well imagine the drubbing these romantically inclined boulevardiers would take at the hands of the less whimsically inclined denizens of 108th & Rockwell ' "Hey, Harry,is Hogwarts' Off for Easter? Get over here and empty your pockets for me and Frankie, Buzz and Knuckles or Hermione’s Time Turner will zap your nuts!"( 5th graders at St. Cajetan's). It is my hang-up.

However, I admire and respect and envy the many, many, many Americans who stand up!

These three wonderful women are an example to us all. It nice seeing Nuns without needing to shudder, flinch and recoil from their folly of escorting kids to an abortion factory, or encouraging goofballs to toss blood at Easter Mass - which some nuns did, as a matter of fact, - and avoided getting bracelets put on their flabby wrists when the cops showed up.