I was born at the center of the universe, and have had good fortune for all of my days. The center was located at the corner of Washington and Maple streets in Urbana, Illinois, a two-bedroom white stucco house with green canvas awnings, evergreens and geraniums in front and a white picket fence enclosing the back yard. Hollyhocks clustered thickly by the fence. There was a barbeque grill back there made by my father with stone and mortar, a dime embedded in its smokestack to mark the year of its completion.
There was a mountain ash tree in the front yard, and three more down the parking on the side of the house. These remarkable trees had white bark that could be peeled loose, and their branches were weighed down by clusters of red-orange berries. "People are always driving up and asking me about those trees," my father said. He had planted them himself, and they were the only ones in town--perhaps in the world. They needed watering in the summertime, which he did by placing five-gallon cans under them with small holes drilled in their bottoms. These I carefully filled with the garden hose from the back yard, while making rainbow sprays over the grass around.
My bedroom was the one with the window overlooking Maple Street. It had a two-way fan, posing the fundamental scientific question, is it more helpful on a hot night to blow cooler air in, or warmer air out? I had better get to sleep quickly, because Harry With His Ladder would come around to look in and be sure my eyes were closed. I lived in fear of Harry, and kept my eyes screwed tight until I drifted off to sleep.
Of this room as a very young child I remember only a few things. My mother putting me to sleep in a bed with sides that rose up to prevent me falling out. A nightly ritual of love pats. My small workbench on which I hammered round pegs into round holes. A glass of water which was filled to the rim, but which I could see straight through, so obviously there was room down there for more water. My tears when I was accused of playing with water and spilling it, when I had been following strict logic.
A little later, I had my own bed with a headboard, and could charge down the hallway and leap onto it like superman. Warnings that I would break the bedboards. My own little radio. I would lie on the floor under my bed, for safety, while listening to "The Lone Ranger." I thought "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" were friends about my age. I had a bookcase in which I carefully arranged first childhood books, and then books about Tarzan, Penrod, Buddy, the Hardy Boys and Tom Corbett Space Cadet. Also Huckleberry Finn, the first book I ever read and still the best.
When I was sick it was the best time. I could stay in bed and listen to "Our Gal Sunday," which was "the story of whether a young girl from a small mining town out in the West can find happiness as the wife of a wealthy and titled English lord." Before that there was "Penny for Your Thoughts," where people got a penny just for calling up Larry Stewart and talking to him. Larry Stewart was also "The Voice of the Fighting Illini," my father informed me. The Illini were the University of Illinois, the world's greatest university, whose football stadium my father had constructed--by himself, I believe. It was there that he had seen Red Grange, the greatest player of all time. Also in that stadium were seen the world's first huddle, the world's first Homecoming, and Chief Illiniwek, the world's greatest sports symbol ("Don't ever call him a mascot," my father said. "Chief Illiniwek stands for something.")
Annabel and Walter and their boy
The University also had the world's largest arched roof, over the Armory. The cyclotron, where they worked with atoms. The Power Plant, with its towering smokestacks. On nights when there was a downpour, the phone might ring and my father would say, "Come on, boy, the lights are out." We would drive in the maroon Plymouth through the darkened streets to the Power Plant, a looming coal-smelling building which my father would enter with a flashlight and do something. "All right, boy," he would say. "Stand by the door." He lighted my way with the flashlight. Then all of the lights on the campus would come back on, and we would drive home, me asleep in the car, although I could tell when we hit Race Street because the bricks smoothly rumbled beneath the wheels.
There was also the Illiac, in a whole building filled with vacuum tubes that could count faster than a man. My dad worked in there. "Your father is an electrician for the university," my mother told me. "It can't run without him. But I'm afraid every day that he'll get shocked." I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded almost as bad as being "fired," a word I also didn't understand, although thank God that had never happened to my father. There was the Natural History Museum, with its stuffed owls and prehistoric bones. Altgeld Hall and its bells, which could be heard all over town in the summer, and which my father had personally installed, I believed.
Click and enlarge to see the shiny new dime
The town also contained a cemetery where we would go to watch see the swans float on the pond. And a Cemetery Graveyard, next to the Atkinson Monument Company in a lot overgrown with trees and shrubbery, where pieces of broken gravestones were there to be picked through for the rock garden my father was building. If you got lost in the Cemetery Graveyard, the ghosts might come for you. There was the Boneyard, a creek running through town, where the Indians had buried their dead. An airport where we could see Piper Cubs taking off. A train station north of town, in Rantoul, where we could watch the Panama Limited and the City of New Orleans hurtling through, the world's fastest trains.
I attended Mrs. Meadrow's Tot's Play School during the day. This was because my mother was a Business Woman--in fact, the president of the Urbana Business Woman's Association. She was a bookkeeper for the Allied Finance Company, up a flight of stairs over the Champaign County Bank and Trust Company. It was run by Mr. Willis. On the first of every year they worked all day to get the books to balance. When they succeeded, Mr. Willis would take us all, including my father and me, to dinner at Mel Root's two doors down Main Street. In between the bank and Mel Root's was the Smith Drug Company, where Mr. Willis bought me by first chocolate soda. My parents smoked Lucky Strikes, but Mr. Willis smoked Chesterfields.
Our house had a concrete front porch on which rested four steel chairs you could rock in. On summer nights my mother would make lemonade and we would all sit out there. They would smoke and read the papers, and talk to neighbors walking past. Later you could see fireflies. The sounds of radios and voices, sometimes laughter, would float on the air. On spare days, there were jobs to do. Pulling up dandelions. Picking tomato worms off the tomato plants in our vacant lot. A riskier job, climbing a stepladder to pick bagworms off the tallest evergreens. A more exciting job, in the autumn, dressing in old clothes and crawling up the air pipes from the furnace while dragging the vacuum cleaner hose, to pull the dust out.
In winter I was awakened by the sound of my dad shoveling coal into the stoker. In summer, of the clip-clops of the horses pulling the wagons of the Urbana Pure Milk Company. Sally Hopson's family owned the milk company. The whistles of passing trains could be heard all through the night. My dad took me to see the Round House of the Big Four Railway. My grandfather came from Germany to work there. He made things from metal. We had a carving knife that he cut from a single block of steel. There was a railroad man's diner next to the Round House where we would go for meat loaf and string beans, but my first restaurant meal was at the Steak 'n Shake on Green Street. "A hamburger for the boy," my father said. "But I don't like ham." "You'll like this ham."
My dad and his fellow University electricians
When you entered the house from the front porch, you were in the living room, with our fireplace. My father would place little tablets on the burning logs that would make the flames burst into many colors. Here we sat on Christmas Eve to listen to Bing Crosby and His Family. He had a son named Gary who I thought was just about my age. Off the living room was the dining room, nearly filled by the table. Most of the time the center boards were out, so my mother could let down the ironing board from the wall. Then came the kitchen, where my father made his chili and let it sit in the icebox overnight.
A hallway had doors opening to the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, and both bedrooms. When Chaz and I revisited the house 20 years ago, a woman named Violet Mary Gaschler, who bought the house from my mom, asked us to come in and look around. I was surprised how short the hallway was. When the phone would ring at night, my mother would hurry into it, grab the receiver, and say, "Is it Mom?" My grandmother had heart trouble. Having a Heart Attack was worse than being shocked or fired. On that same visit with Chaz, I went to the basement, and felt chills down my spine. Hardly anything had even been touched. On my father's workbench, a can of 3-in-One Oil still waited. The chains on the overhead electric light pulls still ended in toy letters spelling out E-B-E-R-T. She let me take an "E." The basement's smell was the same, faintly like green onions, and evoked summer afternoons in a lawn chair downstairs, reading Astounding Science Fiction.
A member of the Urbana High School class of 1960. (Photo by Hal Holmes)
It was from the basement that I operated the Roger Ebert Stamp Company, buying 10-cent ads in little stamp magazines and mailing out "approvals" to a handful of customers. One day two men came to the door and said they might want to buy some stamps. I proudly showed them my wares. My mother hovered nervously on the stairs. The men left quickly, saying they didn't see anything they needed for their collections. Nevertheless, they seemed to be in a good mood. My dad walked in from work. "What did those men want?" he asked. We told him. "Their car said Department of Internal Revenue," he said.
On April 22, 2009, the city of Urbana honored me by placing a plaque at my childhood home. At first I demurred. I argued that far greater figures had lived in Urbana, such as the sculptor Lorado Taft, the poet Mark Van Doren, the novelists William Gibson, David Foster Wallace, Larry Woiwode and Dave Eggers, the newspapermen William Nack, James Reston, Robert Novak and George F. Will, the Nobel-winner for the invention of the transistor, John Bardeen, and the Galloping Ghost himself, Red Grange. You see that Urbana truly was the Center of the Universe.
Their dream house as they first saw it
The city fathers promised they planned to dedicate plaques to many worthy sons and daughters of Urbana, and so I agreed. As I stood in front of 410 E. Washington, I reflected that this was the first and only home my parents owned. Here they brought the infant Roger home from Mercy Hospital. Here they raised me, and encouraged me in my dream to be a newspaperman, even if it meant working way past midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Here my father refused to let me watch him doing any electrical wiring. Here he told me, "Boy, I don't want you to become an electrician. I was working in the English Building today, and I saw those fellows with their feet up on their desks, smoking their pipes and reading their books. That's the job for you."
In the 1970s, an article appeared in The News-Gazette about the restoration of the bells in Altgeld Hall. It said the crew had found a note tacked to a beam up in the tower. It said "We repaired these bells on..." I forget the date. It was signed with three names, one of them Walter H. Ebert.
On that early visit to Urbana, I took Chaz to visit my parents' graves. Close by, my father's parents are buried. My grandfather's name was Joseph Ebert. Joseph is my middle name. My father's middle name was Harry.
¶
The Fountain of Time, by Lorado Taft, an Urbana boy.
¶Red Grange. My father was in the stadium for some of these games.
¶Chief Illiniwek's Last Dance
¶
IM THE FIRST!!!! let's face it... this is going to be my 15 minutes...
congrats on everything you've achieved... it's truly something to aspire to
J.C.
Thanks again, Roger...I almost always want to say thank you after I read your column, but when you talk about Urbana or when you talk about science fiction...those are some of the best columns, I think.
We're glad to have you back in town for the week...
*hugs*
I sat down to read this entry after tucking my four year-old daughter into bed. I immediately fell into a languid reverie. It washed over me in waves with each quaint remembrance. As I read, I felt little nostalgia for my own upbringing, which could not have been further from your placid, purely American childhood that I cannot help feeling is an antiquated reality. Urabanas must exist all over the country. And sure, millions of Americans likely claim that their small town experience is the center of the universe. And I have no doubt that it is.
But I cannot help feeling that you write of a time America has forgotten, or simply an era that is growing increasingly unreachable. Of course, you can consider me biased. I was raised in an affluent Houston neighborhood where, if you hoped to catch a glimpse of an adjacent neighbor, binoculars were a necessity. My parents divorced when I was two. My mother committed suicide when I was seven. My childhood was the antithesis to yours. But I feel nostalgia for it, and I can only hope that my daughter will one day relate, in such refined poetic prose, the electric comfort of her early years. If such is the case, I'll consider myself a successful father. Thank you for this piece. I found it profoundly moving.
Not to sound sycophantic, but your blog has given us some of the most erudite, touching, insightful modern nonfiction reading I've ever come across.
Personally, I'm astounded that the man I used to watch as a kid for his movie reviews --- since our family rarely went to the movies, your show was almost all the footage I could ever see from new films in theaters --- has made me feel like a personal acquaintance I've known for years; that's the mark of a truly talented writer.
Thanks for the great stuff.
My mom still lives in our old house, and I get there maybe once a year. Similar to what you mentioned, I am always surprised as how small it seems now. It (along with the small neighborhood I grew up in) was my entire world at one time; it's surprising to me at just how... inconsequential it appears now.
I still like going there and poking my head around (and going into the woods to the old "crayfish spot".) But it's definitely different through adult eyes.
When are you writing another book, Roger? Doesn't really matter what it's about. I just love reading your stuff.
I don't understand what the point of this article is. Please explain.
I'll also say that I don't get many of these ebert journal articles. I'm not attempting to be rude, I read the articles but I'm not really getting them at all.
Ebert: Thanks for reading, anyway.
When my home town dedicated a plaque at my childhood home, these memories stirred and I wanted to share them.
Just about 1,000 miles from Urbana, in the early '60s, I sat in my bedroom in NJ reading Dandelion Wine and dreamed about Green Town, Illinois. In 1979 I was in grad school at Indiana U. and met a guy, Al, from Cleveland, a true working-class kid and wild (Cleveland) Indian--and a plant geneticist. Harvard had given him a full ride, but he wasn't happy among the ivy, and headed to the grain belt. He's a brilliant guy, and a year after finishing his doctorate landed a job at the University of Illinois. He bought a house across the street from a corn field, and we stood at the bottom of his driveway and he grinned like a kid in a Bradbury story and spread his arms and said, "This is where it all happens."
Well, he's not there anymore--building genes for Monsanto now--but that's my Center of the Universe story. And wouldn't you know it? I'm the one who ended up the Midwesterner, two hours down the interstate in Galesburg, in my own Center.
I could go on about my South Jersey childhood, but it's your party, Roger. Thanks for inviting us.
Ebert: I read Dandelion Wine about the same time. The Green Machine. My house was a block from the cornfields, but in about 1947 they built a subdivision there.
Knox College? A good school.
I see these blog entries collectively forming a pretty compelling autobiography. Any plans to publish them all together as such?
Ebert: It's an idea.
Thank you for sharing your memories. How lucky to revisit your home and find the E-B-E-R-T in the basement! I wish I had never had to sell my childhood home, but had to. I hope the person there knows how many memories came with it.
Ebert: Did you notice the letter at the top of the entry?
"I'll also say that I don't get many of these ebert journal articles."
.
.
.
“There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.”
Louis Armstrong
Ebert: That quotation is so handy.
.
..."Harry With His Ladder?"
Ebert: If you want to see him, just dare keep your eyes open. He can see right through your curtains.
Wow. You have a way of bringing out the best memories. I've never been to Urbana. I grew up in Chicago and a small sub-division on the Far South Side. It was the center of the universe for me. The last time I visited I could see the traffic on the cross street at the north end of the block (my mother's house is three doors from the south end). I couldn't believe how short the block was. I still refer to the houses by the name of the family that lived there when I was a child. Some original owners, including my mother, are still there. My parents were pregnant with me when they moved in. Wow.
Congratulations on the honor from your hometown. And have a blast at the film festival.
Ebert: I can still tell you the name of every family on my paper route for the Champaign-Urbana Courier. And the names of their dogs, who all hurried wagging to greet me.
The honor that Urbana bestowed was well deserved. The other famous Urbana-ites should be proud that they are in your company.
Your posts often reveal that you have one special gift that is valuable to a writer - an excellent memory. I doubt that I could remember that much detail from my childhood. But, thank you for sharing yours. It will stir up a lot of memories in your readers, which is a good thing.
And what a good tribute to your parents. You did well by them with this post. And you paid it off in that last line!
You gave me a good memory tonight of sitting in a calculus class in Altgeld Hall. The classrooms in that building have a unique feeling of the passage of time, of people coming before you in that building - one of them being your Dad. I'm remembering also the underground tunnels that connected the dorms like Forbes Hall to each other, which had all the good pinball machines that I wasted many hours on at night. Wow. Seems like a lifetime ago.
Were there other places on campus that have especially good memories for you? The Quad, Student Union, or the underground Library?
Ebert: The Daily Illini, the Union, the Great Hall of the Library.
Thank you.
Each sentence I read stirred eddies from my remembered childhood. It is amazing how much is there, just below the surface.
I will say that I was concerned by your introduction. When I went to college, my good friend and shipmate (I went to the Merchant Marine Academy) was from the center of the universe. He apparently thought it was a short distance outside of Dekalb, Il.
I imagine the center of the universe travels a bit with time and perspective. He is a good man and I thank you for reminding me of him.
I've lived in Champaign for about 5 years now. This is a nice area to live, and I'm enjoying my time here, but to me, Chicago will always be home. I realized the other day, however, that my 9-month old won't see it that way - this town will always be his hometown. This is the kind of story that I want to show him, to teach him a little about where he's from. Thanks.
Ebert:
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
Thank you for sharing your story, and for causing me to experience my own flood of childhood memories. Most of the memories I have of my youth center around my grandparents' home in the little farming town of Shelley, Idaho. I spent hours up in the treehouse my grandpa built reading and dreaming. The branches swaying around me in the wind almost made me feel that I could soar away and see the world. They too had a backyard fireplace with a tall chimney. We had many of what we called "weenie roasts" in those days with my cousins.
My favorite visual memory of that house is of the white picket fence, with red climbing roses over the arched gate. In my girlhood fantasies I would stand beneath that gateway of red roses in my wedding dress. As with many things in life, that did not happen the way I imagined it. However, when my grandparents were both gone and it became necessary to sell the house, I asked my mother to make arrangements for me to come and dig up cuttings from the rose bushes before the new owners tore up the fence. I brought the rose cuttings back to my home in Utah, where some of them found a new life. So I still have a little piece of those sweet memories now, and the passing of time makes them even more beautiful.
I can barely see what I'm typing through the tears. Thank you so much.
That rocks that they honored you with a plaque on your childhood home! Great choice on the part of the city fathers (and mothers? :D). Thank you for sharing your memories of home and of your parents, who live on for us through your words. As one of your readers, I'm grateful that they were so encouraging of your talent and ambition!
Roger Ebert...AND THE FOUNTAIN OF TIME!
Premise: Roger in his days running the Roger Ebert Stamp Company.
Thanks for the article Rog!
im going to live on a house off of Springfield and Lincoln in urbana. its so nice. i love the towns and the school.
Ebert: Nice trees thereabouts
I don't have memories of my homes as much as you. First of all, my parents moved a lot when I was young and we always lived in apartments. My father has worked for Korea National Housing Corporation, and we moved whenever he was promoted or transfered. It seemed that we were finally settled in some apartment complex in 1993. However, in 2006, my family moved to new one nearby, better and larger. It didn't matter to me anymore. Since 1998, my life has been in dormitories(High School, University, Graduate school, all the way).
I didn't have home garden outside and was not a newspaper boy. We have newspaper delivery boys, but it is much duller job in here. At dark dawn, you just put the paper at the door and proceed to the next house or apartment, and nearly nobody cares.
However, I had some fun with apartment complex buildings. When I was 7 in 1989, we lived in some apartment complex region at the north end of Seoul. There were more than 20 divisions. Mostly they were same ('I' Shape) but there were different shapes here and there and they amused me a lot. Besides, we had small forest mountain behind my elementary school, my parents usually took me there every Sunday and we came back with 2-3 liters of fresh water from the fountain.
Four year ago, I visited this place again. Things had been changed. They had new roads and new shopping mall and video rental shop I remember well was gone although the building remained intact. Still, there were same apartments buildings and same schools. In case of some school, I had been curious about how teachers manage kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school at the same place. I'm still curious because this school is not changed. I went there, and I found it still functioning. I didn't expect anything from where I had lived. It must have been changed a lot, and owners could have been less cordial than your case. I was just glad that most of my childhood memory remained intact.
In case of the apartment building our family lived for 13 years in Jeonju, I witnessed big change around me. First, apartment buildings were at the intersection of two small streets. Then, when I was in middle school, they widened the streets and build the apartments more and more. I can't help being amused everytime when I see the big prison nearby. So many hiding place for them!
Meanwhile, my love of movies had grown with video rental stores around my town. Around 1996, I knew every rental stores in the radius of 5km from my home and I was even regular member of rental stores at downtown(First videos were "Jaws" and "2001: A Space Odyssey") If someone ask me where he or she can find some "Friday the 13th" movie, I can tell which rental store to go(However, in the age of DVD and Blue-ray, most of them I know are out of business). I've seen censored version of Part 2 and Part 3 on TV. As a 11-year-old boy, I could not understand why some big guy with bag or mask try to kill some nice students older than me. They seemed to have good times just like my summer camp. The movies not that impressive, and it was more fun to find sequels in the dark corners. Anyway, I watched remake version of "Friday the 13th" and the movie brought me warm nostalgia of that time even though I didn't like it.
I usually went to bookstores and bought many books. I wish I could have seen more than Agatha Christie, Stephen King, and James Joyce(I have seen the movies but has not read "Huckleberry Finn" yet). "Ulysses" was great and is still great. Fortunately, we had renowned James Joyce expert. He translated the novel veyr well and he made wonderful guideline book. Although some chapters contains more than 600 hundred footnotes, I had wonderful nights during autumn of 1996. And still "Finnegans Wake", both original and translated version(he finally did it!), is on my bookshelf and they still look new.
Okay, I think I also had enough memories about home even though my family moved a lot. Family have new home recently, but my hometown have been Jeonju for 18 years and still it is. Next week, I will visit Jeonju for film festival. They will show "Goodbye Solo" and I immediately bought ticket. I already bought "Chop Shop" and "Man Push Cart" DVD and will see them before going there. Thanks for sharing your memory and reminding me that I also have some small, nice memories.
Ebert: Yes, when you grow up they tear down paradise and put up a parking lot.
Ulysses? I'm impressed.
Wonderful entry, Roger, as always. It certainly got my own fond memories going as well. Urbana has done well.
I just hope your bookshelf included Homer Price.
Roger, from your graduation photo it is obvious that your looks resemble your mother's ... and more so probably as you have aged. You are, as they say in my native Indian language - 'Matrumukhi' - literally meaning 'a child with his mother's face' ('Indian' as in from India, not American-Indian) Generational wisdom has it that such children grow up to be very affectionate & share special bonds with their mother.
Hi Roger,
I'm a huge fan of your writing.
For many years I felt like I was born as far from the center of the universe as you could get. A very small mining town (6000 people) in northern Australia. It used to get up to 113°F in summer. The nearest town with a small cinema was almost 150 miles away, there was no internet, and the selection at the local video store was understandably quite limited. Sports, especially rugby, were the major interests of my school friends. As I care very little for athletic pursuits I had a difficult time making friends. Needless to say, boredom was a major problem for me growing up.
For a long time I really resented my upbringing. I would lie to people when they asked where I was from because I was ashamed of what I perceived to be a lack of life experience. But it drove me to explore the world and make up for lost time.
These days, I am living and working in Japan. There are too many distractions and boredom seems like a luxury. Recently I went back to my hometown for my 10 year high school anniversary. The place hasn't changed at all. But I everywhere I looked, there was a story from my youth. The creek where I had my first kiss, the video store that allowed me to rent R rated movies, and of course the liquor store that I once stood in front of asking people to buy a beer (or 24) for me. I couldn't help but smile at those wonderful memories, as I approached the store to buy some supplies for some pre-reunion drinks.
Interestingly enough outside the store 2 mid-teenagers sheepishly asked me if I could pick them up a few beers. They were exactly like I was all those years ago. I could almost taste the boredom and resentment at the town. Not wishing to break any laws, showed them some Japanese Sake I had bought back as souvenirs and placed it on the ground. I told them I was going for a walk and would be back in about 15 minutes or so.
I hope they will fondly remember that story when they revisit the town for their high school reunion.
Ebert: The universe is large and has many centers.
I see these blog entries collectively forming a pretty compelling autobiography. Any plans to publish them all together as such?
Ebert: It's an idea.
Roger,
As always, you write it, I'll read it.
Side note: loved your words of encouragement to that kid in the last blog who showed a talent for writing. Class act, sir.
Inflation alone would make that shiny new dime worth about a rock and a half today. That dimes were struck in silver back then would make it worth even more. Was it a Roosevelt or a Mercury dime, and is it still there? Some day it could become a valuable Ebert collectible, like Barry Bond's home run balls. I did notice the "E" straightaway. So, the new owner got to keep the "BERT?" Maybe she'll offer them on E-bay soon... at least the "E!"
Sorbus americana: your mountain ash trees. Never heard of 'em before, so I looked 'em up on the google. Very striking flowers and berries. I've always tried to plant botanical curiosities, like "living fossils" or trees bearing extravagant fruits or flowers around my houses.
I love that you share the details of your childhood, your thoughts, motivations and philosophies with us. If nothing else, it makes your opinions about all these movies more interesting and understandable. You're a genuine, highly educated, reflective person, not just an opinion generator. A polished but mercenary writer can crank out opinions to please anyone and everyone. It's clear that you don't write just to meet your space allocation. Sorry that "point after touchdown" didn't get it.
You are correct in that Champaign-Urbana has counted many accomplished people amongst its residents for at least a portion of their lives. Most of those have been associated with the university, either as educators, researchers or students. You rightfully belong in a smaller elite cadre: those who have been both town and gown in your little universe out on the prairie. How that universe has expanded. Your "red shift" must be astronomical.
Ebert: As a young man my dad moved to West Palm Beach and opened a florist shop. He lost it all in the Depression, came back home, apprenticed at McClelland Electric on Main Street, and then, as they said, "got on at the University." He loved to plant flowers around the house.
What an honor for you and your family. Urbana was my "home" for the four years I spent at the Big U. Thanks for the memories. I wish I could visit with you and hear more stories.
Ah, memories. So many artists share memories of broken, stalled childhoods that it has become a shock to the system when one shares an early lifetime of love and support. No wonder you loved "A Christmas Story." it must have seemed like a page ripped from your own diary! How magical it must have been for you to see your father perform Oddyssean feats (downed university power may not be stringing a heavy bow and shooting an arrow through five axe-heads, but it's still pretty damn cool) and still find treasures in unlikely places years after your parents have gone.
I don't miss much about Texas, but we have no fireflies in Arizona. It's been years since I've seen them, but I do right now, in my mind's eye. They're so beautiful. I love the look on peoples' faces when they describe first seeing them. They always say that "I'd heard of them, but never thought they were real."
You'd have thought that the IRS agents could have bought at least one stamp. It would have been tax deductible.
I just finished reading the Studs Terkel reader "My American Century" today. The best things he did were listen, and write everything down. The same goes for you. This trip down memory lane has been a chocolate ice-cream soda on a hot summer day. Perfect and refreshing and cool.
A place which has grown such memories deserves to be preserved, so that others may discover why there's an "E" at the top of your post. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine, Roger. Li'l Orphan Annie is counting on you.
Ebert: Is that encrypted? Wait--I've got my secret decoder ring right here. It finally came in the mail.
Note to self: Do not read Roger Ebert's blog while alone and innebriated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2eKB_fZryY&feature=related
Ebert: That is uncanny.
Now that is great writing, and Harry With His Ladder would be as proud of his son as his son is of his father.
Definitely a Bradbury-esque entry. I love Dandelion Wine.
I'm convinced that there is something about the Midwest that is special, that Easterners will never comprehend. A slower way of life. An empathy for one another. A glow.
I know that's not true even as I type it, for certainly Midwesterners can be narrow and bigoted. The best of them, however, are the salt of the earth.
I should quit reading your blog. Every entry like this makes me homesick for St. Louis.
I've been meaning to send you a letter for some years now, thanking you for the way in which your writing has enriched and enlargened my life. As a young animator in Australia in the late '90s your writing via the web was one of the sites I checked regularly. You genuinely loved movies, and whilst I didn't always agree with your conclusions there was always the pleasure you took in movies themselves, and in writing.
It seems to me that you've really hit your stride these last few months. The Bradbury parallel another commenter drew seems an apt one; I found this piece as compelling as any of dear old Ray's "Douglas Spaulding" storys.
Anyway, your writing gives something to the world and I wanted to let you know that. Thanks again.
As an Army Brat, outside of some relative stability during the occasions when we lived in Germany, I moved and moved and moved and continued to do so during a military career that spanned just short of three and a half decades. I have always envied those such as yourself who actually had the chance to have roots while growing up. I cannot even recall all of the schools I attended prior to high school -- we once thought it was about 12, but later my Dad said it might have been closer to 15. I openly admit that I am a complete sucker for pieces such as this one. Along the lines that someone mentioned, it seems that we could sit down for lunch and it be like having a meal with an old friend.
Wow, you like stamps, and even ran a little "approval" business. I recently got back into stamps (old U.S. are my favorites) after many years in and out of them. Relaxing going over approval selections at the kitchen table has become a nice little pleasure again. Some stamps I buy are worth something, though most are just pretty selections costing maybe a buck or two, that draw my attention for some reason. My quaint little hobby- enjoyed by a person who otherwise goes for genre movies and other edgy fare- produces tolerant amusement from my wife and daughter. Do you still like stamps?
Ebert: Yes, I often use them as illustrations for blog entries.
Mr. Ebert: What a wonderful piece. But I sincererley hope this was not an elegy, musings that come as we age and move toward the latter part of our living. As I read, I was transported back myself to my childhood, in Oak Park, MI, where I lived on a block only half finished (at least, when we first moved there), leaving the rest of the block an open field for discovery and baseball. As a child, baseball was everything; the evenings were spent with the neighborhood kids, boys and girls both, playing 500 in the field. Winters still found us trying play ball. School was a daily revelation; I, too, was reading Ulysses before I left high school (where my mother was a teacher, and in fact, my teacher).
You are a treasure. When I read your reviews, I konw that your insights are the ones that I trust most, and you have never let me down (well, there was that review of Anaconda...).
Stay well.
Ebert: Any movie where Jon Voight is swallowed by a giant snake, regurgitated, winks, and is swallowed again, cannot be without interest.
I have always enjoyed your movie reviews. Even when I was quite young I enjoyed your writing style as much as the review themselves. Your journal is so enjoyable to read and is usually quite touching.
Luckily my parents still live in the same house as when I was a child. In a portion of the garage my father built a loft where my brother and I could put all our books, magazines and toys and get away from adults. Much of what is up there is now nearly 30 years old and is never touched. Occasionally I go up there and it is like a museum of our childhood.
It's amazing how the human mind can recall seemingly (at the time) mundane details. Just recently I went on a golf outing, and was having a horrible round. On one hole I was literally inches away from a small river, looking for a lost ball that I sliced the hell out of. Living in the center of a bustling town I hadn't been out with nature in a long time, other than when I hit the links of course. As I'm looking for my ball a memory of growing up and playing with friends down by the river in town flooded over me and the next thing I know its almost 20 minutes later and I'm in la-la-land recalling all the time I spent down by that river when I hear my partners are all hollering at me to 'find the goddamn ball already!'. Once I snapped out of it the quote from Richard Dreyfuss at the end of 'Stand by Me' popped into my head:
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
Thanks Mr. Ebert.
What a lovely essay.
My folks used to go to work so my grandmother took care of me during my formative years. I used to sketch all the time as a kid, and I used to sketch on anything I could find. One day, when I was particularly bored and, thus, hyper, my grandparents decided to take me to the cinema to see Dumbo (my first Disney on a cinema screen). I loved it. When we came back home, my grandmother gave me a pad, I rushed to my favourite spot in the apartment, underneath the dinner table, and started drawing little pictures of Dumbo and Timothy. Eventually, I drew a Dumbo under the table surface.
I visited my grandparents' place for the first time in 15 years in 2007. I checked under the table. Dumbo's still there.
Ebert: Once when Bill Nack was visiting Chicago he had me drive him to the Old Town Gardens, where his family had an apartment. He had hidden a quarter in a chick of brick under his window. Still there waiting for him.
Google Earth only has a blurry image of the neighborhood, but I see you had a short walk to Urbana High.
Ebert: Yes, but it felt like a very big day the first time I walked it. A whole blog could be written about high school in a university town before drugs and guns. I believe sex was just then being discovered. The University wouldn't hire spouses, so many of our teachers could have been teaching college, except they were so nice. Mrs. Marion Seward, who taught Senior Rhetoric, was a legend who shaped generations of UHS students.
Mrs. Seward gazing out the window: "Oh, students, this morning I was standing in my farmyard listening to the worms, and I was so very happy, until I had to come in here and help you to express yourselves."
We were given lists of "rhet words" we had to search for in our reading. Duplicate discoveries were frowned upon.
To those who say my recent entries sound elegaic. Mrs Seward: "Ebert, why are you always writing about death?" The answer, of course, was Thomas Wolfe. He was a goldmine of rhet words.
Sadly, it looks like the Altgeld Bell Tower is not going to be restored anytime soon again, especially now that there is a new bell tower on campus with pre-fab music, built for a donor.
Story here.
Dear Mr. Ebert--Thanks for writing about a place close to my heart--Champaign-Urbana. I had a house there for 3 years when I was in graduate school. When I went to visit a few years later I was nearly ill will nostalgia. I think I was nostalgic not just for the place itself, but its friendly and down home spirit, previously unknown to me as a child raised in cities and suburbs. I was also surprisingly soothed by the long drive from Chicago through endless corn fields, a drive that had once felt like a nuisance. I have fond memories of falling asleep in C-U to the sweet sounds of a train and raking leaves on a fall day to the college band practicing for football games. My favorite part of your piece is your memory of sitting on the porch hearing voices and radios on a summer night. I got a glimpse of this atmosphere the the day of the mass blackout in the east the summer of 2004. That was one of my favorite days and for many others I know. Technology, and air conditioning in particular, have separated us from one another.
Ebert: And, when leaf burning was allowed, the scent of burning leaves in the air. Devastating nostalgia. Every household should be allowed one small leaf fire per year, just so kids could smell them. Maybe only half a bushel.
And here I thought a small town in Northern Minnesota was the center of the universe. Though I grew 600 miles away and twenty years later than you did, your childhood was completely familiar to me. My wife will never understand the joy I take in visiting my small hometown. The memories that flood back are almost uniformly pleasant. I have no interest in living there now, but I wouldn't exchange that childhood for any other. Is that kind of childhood even possible today?
Ebert: In grade school I rode my bike to and from St. Mary's Grade School in Champaign. Three miles one way. Kids played outdoors until dark. We ran to the park on our own. Walked downtown to the Princess Theater. Drug addiction has warped the American reality.
"Rarely had the words poured from my penny pencil with such feverish fluidity. I remember to this day its glorious winged phrases and concise imagery."
I thoroughly enjoy your reviews and movie essays. You probably write an entertaining grocery list; but when you write about your memories, you light up the page. Thanks for the great trip home.
"I was born at the center of the universe, and have had good fortune for all of my days."
I think ole Chuckie "D" himself could not have written a better open. Captivating as always. Thank you Mr. "E".
This entry touched me so much. I grew up in a tiny town north of C-U, spent my college days at the U of I and just a couple years back moved back to Urbana. It is the most awesome place to live and to raise children. I live at the corner of Race and Mumford because I wanted to be close to the university that is so much a part of my past and my dad's past. I hope to live the rest of my life here. Your writing here captures so much of the feelings I have about this place too. There is no place on earth better than Urbana.
You look like your mother.
"I argued that far greater figures had lived in Urbana, such as the sculptor Lorado Taft, the poet Mark Van Doren, the novelists William Gibson, David Foster Wallace, Larry Woiwode and Dave Eggers, the newspapermen William Nack, James Reston, Robert Novak and George F. Will, the Nobel-winner for the invention of the transistor, John Bardeen, and the Galloping Ghost himself, Red Grange."
Yeah, but they didn't gave their own TV show did they and ergo are not important. :) Your father looks like Eamon De Valera, the greatesst politician ever.
Neat-o! My wife and I just walked home from the plaque dedication ceremony. The weather was really nice, and made for a lovely setting for us to welcome you both (Roger and Chaz) for the event. It was so nice to see you enjoying a bit of nostalgia in the neighborhood we have since come to love so much ourselves. (We moved into the Kurtz house across the street and down the block - do you remember them from your paper route?) As a 40 year old couple raising happy kids here, it is inspiring for us to see such a loving couple as yourselves enjoying each other's company so much at this happy gathering. Thanks for bringing cheer to the old neighborhood today.
Ebert: Yeah, I remember them, all right. They subscribed to The News-Gazette but not the Courier.
Ebert: Yes, when you grow up they tear down paradise and put up a parking lot.
You know, I am aware that's a line from a song, but I've never liked it. Surely one puts DOWN a parking lot? I know, nit picking. :)
Roger,
By now you must know that just about every blog entry you write makes the rounds at Fark.com. Today rather than your blog, the article in the "Show Biz" tab is the Sun Times article about your house. The Fark comments are not as high brow as here, but they are interesting nonetheless and a testament to the extent of your audience.
Roger,
It was great to see at the corner of Washington and Maple today! Thanks to you, your wife, Dennis, Laurel et. al. I was touched to hear you say that the commemoration was more of a tribute to your parents than anything else (very nice). And... I can't finish without telling you how much my friends, wife, and me appreciated and enjoyed your Squeaky column. Thanks for your courage and efforts, George
Memory: I sat in a bar with my father a few years ago and argued about the phrase "Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!" For the life of him, Dad didn't get it. We called a waitress over and tried the line on her, and she didn't get it. I couldn't see how they couldn't get it, so I drank some more, though I would have anyway.
Also, I often think I am the only person who finds the word "panties" funny. Not for any juvenile reason; I just think the word is inherently goofy. This isn't a memory, of course, but an ongoing-type deal.
Ebert: I continue to find califlower hilarious.
I enjoy this sort of mid-western nostalgia and borrow it all the time in my own daydreams. It's especially poignant for those of us with different memories. Love pats, picket fences and front porch rockers trump drunken rages, midnight bedroom visits and blood pools any day. If the universe is infinite, how do we escape it's centre?
Paul Marasa and Lynn McKenzie beat me to it, but I immediately thought of Bradbury's nostalgic writings while reading your reminiscences, as well as those of another personal hero, Rod Serling. Both shared a mutual mentor in Norman Corwin.
Astounding became Analog around the time you graduated high school; you probably remember the words "Astounding," which had grabbed so many a young reader's attention when they spotted it on the dime rack, slowly fading out, replaced by the more staid words "Analog: Science Fact-Science Fiction". This was now a magazine for adults, the title change heralded. Maybe it was symbolic of your coming-of-age, and intellectual maturation.
Urbana produced another Nobel Laureate: physicist Philip W. Anderson. His father was a professor of plant pathology at the U of I.
Ebert: The mayor claimed at the ceremony this morning that Urbana has more Nobel laureates per capita than any other city.
As someone whose childhood address was 104 N Washington St, I endorse this post.
The video of Lorado Taft's "Fountain of Time" reminded me a bit of "Cradle Will Rock" and "Frieda." Not for any great cinematic reasons, obviously, but for their shared scenes of the destruction of Diego Rivera's mural in the Rockefeller building. How fortunate Chicago is that a great work like Taft's has been preserved, and not allowed to fall into ruin, the site of a future parking lot. It must be magnificent at night, with those lights!
I'm hoping that there are still hanging letters in the basement, leading children and grandchildren to ask, "Who's Bert?"
"Ebert: The universe is large and has many centers."
Creamy nugat or crunchy peanut? (I make a little joke.)
According to astronomers, any point in our curved, expanding universe appears to be the center. You can no more reach the edge than you can reach the horizon.
Really, what would you say or do if you did reach the horizon? All that Leela, Fry and the gang did when they reached the edge of the universe, which was designated with an historical plaque in Futurama, was to turn around and drive back, remarking about never getting out except when company shows up.
Excellent writing. Well done, again.
I still have my Penrod books, and Tom Corbett, and a slew of others. Only the Penrod books have proved to be timeless.
Ebert: As they still do.
Roger: someone questioned you about writing an autobiography. Marvelous idea. But you know what I'd pick up from my local bookstore (aside from a Roger Ebert autobiography)? A novel by Roger Ebert. What do you say? Maybe something irreverent and anecdotal like a John Irving, or horrific and eviscerating like a Stephen King. Legal thriller? Serial killer thriller with a James Patterson-esqe nursery rhyme title? I’d buy any one of these. Hardcover. Canadian price.
That was a good article. It reminded me a little bit of growing up in Leroy Illinois (a town near Bloomington Ilinois). Although you got lucky. I moved atleast 7 times before I graduated from high school. But I was in Leroy from age 6-10. I hope you publish your autobiography. You are a good writer and it should be a good read.
You've made me think of billowing sheets and clothespins, the old wooden clothespins that my mother would use to hang the wash on the lines between the garage and the apple tree in our backyard in the summertime. My sisters and I would play tag in between the billowing sheets and my mother would pretend to be mad when we would giggle uncontrollably and fall into the sheets. We had a dryer in the house, so I'm not sure why my mother and the other women in the neighborhood would hang their wash out when it was nice. Maybe they just liked being outside in the sun.
Ebert: In the basement I found my mother's lines with her clothespins still on them. Violet Gashler let me have one.
I've only had time to read a few paragraphs of this, but already it reminds me of early Ray Bradbury - and that's a compliment of high order. I am looking forward to finishing this piece.
Greg Russell: I don't get your "money" joke, either. Could you please explain it?
Ebert: Mamet: "Everybody likes money. That's why they call it money."
No explanation is possible. The circular word use itself is funny. The line must be said with urgency and with conviction, as a self-evident truth.
Ebert: The mayor claimed at the ceremony this morning that Urbana has more Nobel laureates per capita than any other city.
I looked up Wikipedia, and I found the additional laureates: Robert Holley, Paul Lauterbur (spellcheck just asked me if I meant "litterbug"), Hamilton O. Smith and Edward G. Krebs in Physiology/Medicine, Anthony Legget in Physics (the work for which he won the prize is very closely related to both Bardeen and Anderson's prize winning research; Anderson even coined the word "condensed matter physics" to describe their specialty), and James Tobin in Economics. I thought maybe Leon Lederman would also live there, but it turns out the distance between Urbana and Batavia (home of Fermilab) is greater than I thought it was. I forgot to ask if you'd read Sir Arthur's memoir Astounding Days, a chatty, lovingly nostalgic, but not at all uncritical account of how he grew up with the magazine, from his early adolescence in Somerset, when the magazine was still edited by Harry Bates, through the Tremaine years, and finally, and the most important era of them all, when John W. Campbell took the reins, and Clarke himself became an active figure in fandom and the nascent space movement. It ends with the end of World War II, not just because this was the end of the Golden Age, but because this was when Clarke went from a casual reader to selling his first story to Campbell. So that you won't have to repeat yourself, here's a link to an article you wrote about life in fandom for Asimov's Science Fiction. I hope everyone else here enjoys it as much as I did:
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0501/thoughtexperiments.shtml
Zach: There's a lot of similar great artwork preserved throughout Detroit, including a mural dedicated to Diego Rivera. Similarly, when driving through the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, which is very poor compared to the surrounding areas, there's a burst of beautiful artwork by Native American, Chicano (a haunting mural of La Llorna is absolutely mesmerizing), and now East African artists. I witnessed all this while driving up to visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. A coming attractions reel prior to the main feature, if you will.
This post tells us more about the universe than any fractal. It's the job of scientists and mathematicians to get to the basics of things by removing the "noise," but in human experience, the basics of things is the noise. The off-color spot on the wall next to our beds that we forget about, but that we spent countless hours marveling at as very young children.
As humans we have the capacity and the need to ask "Why?" but it's still the what that touches us most deeply. Imagine, if we could replay our lives, all the tiny habits and sights having nothing to do with plot that would thrill us out of sheer familiarity.
You know that E is more than what it is at the quantum level.
Ebert: Yes, when you grow up they tear down paradise and put up a parking lot.
A wise man once said, "You can never go home again, but at least you can shop there."
Thanks again for the look back into your history. That's fantastic that you could still go back to your childhood home, and large measures of it are still familiar. My folks sold ours five years ago, amidst Northbrook's McMansion boom. When we emptied the house, I took a few moments in each room, particularly mine, trying to imprint it one last time in my mind, knowing it would be demolished in a year or two. There's so much I still recall, and so clearly, but I couldn't describe it half as well as you do. At least for now...
I got my engineering degree north of Green, and spent a lot of time biking and rollerblading around the two cities. The streets and some of the sites you write about are familiar, and it's such a trip when you show us what they used to be like, and in some measure, still are.
Chief!!!!!
some necessary comments...
Have you put on weight.
What has this got to do with god/evolution/quantum physics.
You think drugs are to blame for erosion of neighbourhoods? Perhaps drugs are a high-profile symptom. I think families are the base for neighbourhoods, families that believe in the future, that teach people to believe in the future. Of course, you were among history`s chosen - those that grew up post-World War 2 in the golden age of capitalism. What you witness in neighbourhoods now and likely for some time is the decline of that golden age. The future is no longer `there for the taking`. It was sold a while back to investors who will likely never visit your hometown, could care less about your park quality, and whether families have a future. Sure, the era of properity you experienced (you lucky devil you) during the 50s and 60s was unsustainable, riding the bubble created by the destruction during war. But, I think that once the ownership of production etc - in a word, capital - is more and more abstact in relation to the communities it effects, iow, the further the distance (not just geographically but thats a significant part) ownership is away from labour then yes for the reasons mentioned the most significant effect will be families who cannot seen how the present connects to a viable future. Oh. And do not underestimate television. If you want to see drug addiction that addles brain cells and coddles apathy and passivity go for a stroll down any neighbourhood street some evening and observe that insidious blue glow coming from the windows. Its everywhere. (it may sound like i jest, but im serious: lifestyles wherein tv plays a central role are profoundly diminished, as are the communities. television makes you stupid.)
Am curious, are you a baseball fan at all? Your blog has been, until Red above, conspicuously short of interest in sports so I assume perhaps that isnt your thing, though Chicago is a great sports town and given your access to access perhaps youve taken in a season or two. No wait. I recall your blog on a colleague who played serious softball. Any blog-worthy stories relating to Sox, Cubs?
Ebert: Neighborhoods began to die with air conditioning. Some suburbs have no sidewalks. Guns make life almost unlivable for children in poor neighborhoods. The loss of reading cripples the imagination. Professional sports are replacing local and personal participation. Television should be a brief resource for specific content. It has become a hypnotic transfusion of consumerism and trash values into society. The election of George Bush was an indictment of American political perception. He was so clearly inarticulate and intellectually helpless he would have been laughed off the stage in the eras of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon. The election of Obama was like an unexpected remission. Dumbing-down doesn't begin to explain what is happening.
I've become much thinner, but I can't say I recommend my weight-loss process.
When I first moved to Champaign in 1999 I would drive around a lot, trying to get my bearings and learning the new town that I'd spend the next decade living in. I swear at one point I got lost on those redbrick streets of old Urbana and saw a small sign out in front of an old white house that said, "The Eberts." It made me feel that moving there had been the right decision.
Mr. Ebert,
Thank you for this wonderful post. I had the privilege of living in Urbana with my partner last summer, and I hope to return soon. Unfortunately, I was, at the time, crippled with depression, and I could not fully enjoy my experience there. The surest source of happiness was when my partner would come home from school and we would take the dogs on long walks and admire the trees. When I think about last summer, it is with sadness, because I knew I was in a lovely place but could not appreciate it fully. I feel as though you've given me something, here, and I don't know how to express my appreciation adequately, so I hope a simple thank you will suffice.
Jess
Roger, as I was reading this I began to suspect your father was an amazing man. When I learned that he wouldn't let you watch him do electrical work I became certain of it.
Ebert: In those days, when few people went to university, he is one who truly should have. His encouragement of my reading and writing was constant. He said I could get an education by reading every issue of Life magazine and Reader's Digest. This was probably true (I was in grade school at that time). He followed all the news programs and Meet the Press, etc., we took the Chicago Daily News as well as both local papers, and there were a lot of books in the house.
The son of my father's partner in the Florida florist shop (which they lost in the Depression) came back from the war and studied psychiatry at the University of Illinois. He and his wife and their two little boys were constant visitors. Their voices would drift in from the front porch until late at night. They visited us about ten years ago. "Did you ever wonder why we spent so much time over at your house, Roger? It was because your dad was the smartest man I had ever met."
Oh how annoying!
The one time I didn't save a post, it seems to have floated off into cyberspace; sigh! I sent it April 22nd around 4:00 am PST. You didn't get it? (As I can't believe you thought it was a mud pie.) It was full of cool stuff I'd found - wonderful old pictures of Urbana: the movie theater, the News Gazette on Main St, the library, the church - including interior shots of the restoration work they've done, the bricks on Race street, etc.
Buggers - as they were such nice photographs and mostly B/W.
That E in the photograph at the top of your blog entry, presumably the toy letter E you took from the EBERT at the bottom of a chain of an overhead light pull -- I can't picture it at the bottom end of a light pull. (But then again I couldn't picture a dime embedded in a meaningful way in the smokestack of a barbecue, until I saw it in context.) How big is that E?
By Alan Coil on April 21, 2009 10:34 PM
"I'll also say that I don't get many of these ebert journal articles."
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“There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them.”
Louis Armstrong
Ebert: That quotation is so handy.
Why is Alan Coil busting my chops? And you getting in on the put down? I don't post a lot online but why does everything get degraded? Ebert answered me and I was appreciative of the response, now i get it. But i guess if you can't tell somebody what they don't know, forget em right?
Ebert: In the case of the Mamet quote, your failure to "get it" is nearly universal. I admit it. One reason I keep at it, like a dog with a bone, is that it meets with so much resistance. I didn't intend the Armstrong quote to seem mean. We're pretty good on this blog about not degrading participants, allowing flame wars to rage out of hand, etc. Stay aboard; you will be very welcome.
I too find the mamt line, "Everybody likes money. That's why they call it money." Although, I don't think "Heist" is a good movie, and only Danny Devito could get away with that line.
I also like this Eugene O'Niel line from Desire Under the Elms: "Bacon's Bacon!"
Such a beautifully evocative piece, Roger. Thank you. Congratulations on the recognition you received from your hometown. And also for the brief list of other noteworthy Urbana natives. I was unaware of many of them. Let us hope that liberally-minded folks (and I include myself in that category) do not sully this page with comments that seek to remove Mr. Novak or Mr. Will from said list. One simply cannot deny the doggedly skillful reporting of the former, nor the gracefully intelligent writing of the latter. Their influence among the political class throughout the years have been without peer.
I do, however, believe you deserve the recognition, Pulitzer prize notwithstanding. Before you and your late partner, Gene Siskel, came along, the deepest we ever got whenever we discussed the movies was, "The movie was great, it had a really good plot," or, "The movie was OK, but it didn't have a very good plot," or sometimes even, "The movie was lousy, it had a really bad plot." And sadly, that was the extent of it.
Then we turned on our idiot boxes and saw two neatly-dressed, well-spoken, if sometimes adversarial, individuals, passionately talking about movies. They introduced us to such foreign concepts as cinematography, script-writing, nuanced performance, skillful direction, tone, mood, message. It took a while, but we have almost managed to catch up. Much like the undocumented workers hired as a film crew in "Bowfinger," who at first don't know how a camera even works, but by the end of the film are debating Scorcese and DePalma.
At the very least, anyway, colorization never really took off and I will always believe your forcefully presented views against the practice contributed greatly to its demise. That, and most people nowadays PREFER letterboxing to pan-and-scan, another happy result of your tireless campaigning. Those two achievements alone deserve a hometown dedication cermony, in my opinion...
Hope all goes well at your festival, too.
Exhaust Fans: Our house had one in The Boys' Bedroom. Never understood the point until I fell asleep in my parents' bedroom under a window. The air was so much fresher than what The Boys experienced that I lobbied to transfer the fan into The Girls room.
Bag Worms: We were not allowed to touch the worms so we would use two sticks to grasp the creatures, pull them off the bush, and then experience a satisfying SQUISH as we stomped the life out of them. This was in DDT America so I never understood why it was that we had to pull individual worms off of the bushes.
Lightening Bugs: I remember evenings when our brood would catch dozens of them, place them in an old peanut butter jar with "breathing holes" punched into the lid. The intent was to employ the jar as a night light, but all that ever happened was a morning jar of dead & moribund insects with a distinctive acrid scent.
Air Conditioning: Before it became common, people would sit outside to acquire even the slightest breeze. That meant that kids would socialize with other kids. Social skills proliferated.
You grew up in the ultimate middle class american dream life.
Your recollections are fascinating and thorough and i agree with others that you should write an autobiography.
The time and place that you lived had a degree of decency and safety that may never be repeated.
By the way, your mom was fine!
Ebert: I guess we were middle class. We were certainly working class. A working man could make a decent living in those days. My father was a staunch supporter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
America needs a rebirth of the union movement. Managers who rail against unions have no problem in rewarding themselves.
Yesterday, when the Chicago Tribune laid off about 53 reporters, it also announced $13 million in executive bonuses. The Trib has been an adamant union-buster, locking out its printers, hiring scabs, refusing to recognize the American Newspaper Guild.
They didn't even have the good sense to announce those actions on different days.
Oh, one of those fired was Lou Carlozo the author of their blog "Recession Diaries." He wrote about it in his blog. It went online. Then he informed management. It was taken down.
What a pleasure to find this article. For years, I have read your volumes of movie reviews like novels, delighting in mentions of Urbana. My husband and I spent the first six years of our marriage living on the second floor of a four-flat at Orchard and Ohio Streets. It was a lovely neighborhood to be young in, with little money, but within walking distance of downtown and the movie theater - how could I forget its name? Our oldest son, Patrick, was born at Mercy Hospital during an early-March snowstorm.
While Tom attended graduate school, I taught sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at Holy Cross in Champaign. Two of my colleagues were former classmates of yours, at St. Mary's School, I believe: Liz Johnson and Gloria Graham (not the actress).
Might you write about your days in Catholic school?
I'm not going to do a formal search of Nobel laureates like RWA did, but the list he found is conspicuously missing the name of Salvador Luria, who was a mentor of Jim Watson, one of the co-discoverers (together with Sir Francis Crick) of the molecular structure of DNA. I just mention him because he won the prize when I was a graduate student at U of I and many of my professors personally knew him when he worked in C-U. Most of his colleagues also felt that Professor Sol Spiegelman should have won the prize. I believe that both of these great men were on the faculty when you were an undergraduate in the early 60's, Roger. Perhaps you took a biology or biochemistry course under one or both of them. The man from my era (graduate school, late 60's) who should have won a Nobel was Carl Woese. He still might. My field, so I'm obviously partial.
Your remembrances of things past in this blog are powerfully evocative, Roger. You could be the 21st century Proust. One can almost believe the past is still there somehow. I mean in some place more substantive than our minds. My mother also hung the family laundry on lines in the basement during the cold months and in the backyard on warm sunny days. We also used a coal-stoked furnace to heat the house and raked fallen leaves into little piles for burning during the Fall. Our family's first car was a 1940 Chevrolet coupe. Gosh, in your last entry you had me reminiscing about Catholic school and now all of this... You bring long forgotten bits and pieces of other lives back into focus when we readers savor the beautiful descriptions of your own experiences.
As co-editor of The Echo at Urbana High School, I am truly honored to be following in your footsteps. The other day, as I was flipping through the archives, I pulled out an issue from 1958. You had an article in there that discussed what new classes students could take that year. I think you noted Latin as the language to take.
Regards,
Cody
Class of 2010!
Ebert: Mrs. Link's class has done me a lot of good. But I wish I could speak French.
Reading this journal article I immediately recall your review of "Shiloh," and how connected you were with "Blackie" your "half beagle, half mutt" companion when you were 10 years old.
"One weekend I was sent on my first plane journey, to visit relatives. When I returned, I was told that Blackie had been hit by a car and killed. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now, and inside of me, all of these years later, is fury that has not gone away. Adults may have the power to take away a kid's dog and tell him a story about it, but they do not have the right."
It is truly refreshing to hear this 1st person voice that is not afraid to reveal personal connections with a character or a character's situation. It makes your reviews so much more memorable.
Ebert: I wrote a blog about that:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/02/blackie_come_home.html
My Dad grew up with five siblings in two houses: a ranch with a living room basement; and a two-floor, four-bedroom home built in the year they moved in. My grandparents stayed in the second home when my grandfather retired at the age of seventy-three- well after the last child had left to form families of their own. When I was born, and my parents were forced to leave their cramped condo with a broken stove, they chose a modest colonial, two houses down from my grandparents’ place. I grew up on Sunday dinners at Grandma and Grandpa’s, and a steep hill that ended in their backyard provided the incline needed for a splendid day of sledding (which always concluded with me and my two sisters warming up in my grandma’s kitchen, sipping hot chocolate and each devouring a dozen freshly-baked oatmeal cookies).
Then it came time for my grandparents to move onto retirement and into different house. The final Sunday night dinner felt like all the rest, and we all said goodbye. The next owners seemed nice enough, and we became friendly with them. Then they began complaining about all of us kids sledding down the hill in the snowy winter and “messing up” their grass (a complaint we never heard from the three owners whose backyards formed the actual hill; my grandparents’ backyard was only its end). That summer a bold statement was made by the proprietors when they built a pool and fenced off the entire backyard. The hill was gone, and with plenty more years of sledding in my blood, I was forced to drive the five miles to the local High School, where the slopes are crowded and icy.
I have given up on getting to know the neighbors. All those that I do know have either lived there for half a century, or are my friends from school or work. What’s the point of trying to be friends with the people who already have enough friends thank you very much, and would love it if they could barbecue with their out-of-town posse by the fenced-in pool in peace?
Roger, I take exception to your reply to Scott. For someone who has made a living in front of (and on) a screen, you do not give television enough credit. Although a vast majority of it may be absolute crap, we have some modern Shakespeare's, Miller's, and Dumas's at work. That stories on television may takes weeks or years, rather than hours, to tell should not detract from their worthiness. Dickens, Doyle, and King might have some words for you were you to disagree. For every Apocalypse Now there has been ten Gigli's; for every Les Miserables a Carrie The Musical; for every The Sopranos a Joey. Of course eyeballs need a rest so that we can enjoy great books, just as our ears need a rest from whatever pop so that we can enjoy the classics (even if they are digitally downloaded). But don't disparage or ignore an entire medium, or you will miss out on some of what the best artist's of our day have to offer.
BWWeaves --
Mamet seems to be saying here that lust for money was around long before money was. :)
Several years ago I attended the funeral of Frank. I only knew him as the husband of a lady who sang in our choir. He was a nice man and we exchanged greetings and small talk almost every week as he would drop her off and pick her up. Or more often than not, he would just stay and listen to us practice.
It was only at his funeral that I learned of the interesting life he had led. I wish I could have another chance to get to know him! To my knowledge, Frank did not write of his life experiences.
I feel there are two hinderances to writing about your own life: 1) you think there will always be time to write 'later' or, 2) you don't think your life would be interesting to anyone else.
I am fortunate that both my father and grandfather wrote about their life experiences. Both state they don't think it would be of interest to anyone but I hang on every word.
Thanks, Roger, for sharing your life with us.
And, as always, I hang on your every word.
Roger, It was great seeing you and Chaz after so long! It was exciting watching you in from of your childhood home. Isn't it amazing how the scale of things shifts from memory? I visited my childhood home for the first time in 25 years a few months ago. I could still see the apparitions of my brother and me jumping on the bed and sliding down the banister. I hope Ella has as warm memories of growing up in Historic East Urbana as you. Here is a better view of your old home.
Welcome back!
Ebert: I was so touched that you came to the ceremony!
How well I remember how your dad loved the movies! I always kidded him that his profession was crucial to the viewing of film. He was such an engaged participant in the festival. Tell your mom we're saving a seat for her. It would also be a chance for some family time in Urbana.
This column was a very peaceful read. I'm sure you're thankful to have such fond memories. Thank you for sharing them, I enjoyed it.
By the way Ebert, last weeks column was great. I share similar thoughts on the subject.
Wonderful essay, as always.
As an Urbana native now transplanted as a teacher in California, I think I will send students a link to this in case they are interested in considering the U of I. Somehow, it seems like you find a way to capture all the good stuff that I could never articulate myself.
I wish I could be there for the film festival. Alas, we did not yet have when I lived in Urbana. Have a great time!
It is the center of the universe! Why else would AC Clarke have 2001's supersmart HAL computer come from Champaign-Urbana?
Ebert: Ahem. As an Urbana native, I clearly recall that HAL says he was born in Urbana. If you had the opportunity to attend a Champaign-Urbana game, you would understand.'
The reason it is officially called "The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign" is that the campus is almost wholly in Urbana. That includes the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, birthplace of the web browser.
Oh Roger. Your house looks just like the house I grew up in on Kotenberg Avenue in San Jose, California: small, white – vaguely Spanish (lots of arched doorways). So many memories - good and bad. Thanks for sharing yours. I've been hoping you would do this ever since reading your essay on being a newspaper man. Tell me – do you still think of it as ‘home’? Even after all these years?
I grew up on Maple Street just down the street from you but was a number of years younger than you. I remember once me and my little brother snuck in your yard and pulled up some of the flowers in your parents garden. We got in a little trouble over that one :-) we also grew up on movies at the Princess Theatre and eating hamburgers at Steak and Shake.
Seongyong Cho,
"As a 11-year-old boy, I could not understand why some big guy with bag or mask try to kill some nice students older than me. They seemed to have good times just like my summer camp. The movies not that impressive, and it was more fun to find sequels in the dark corners. Anyway, I watched remake version of "Friday the 13th" and the movie brought me warm nostalgia of that time even though I didn't like it."
It took me a few minutes to read this part because I couldn't stop laughing. For me nightmares or nightmarish images from horror movies feel me with such nostalgia (yes, nightmares). I had one nightmare when I was little that I will never forget. I am riding in the car with my cousins who I love and it's an empty neighborhood late as can be and there is a little waist-high fence and we are at a stop sign. I believe we are driving on the wrong side of the road (feels more claustrophobic) and Jason (from "Friday the 13th") pops out of nowhere and kills everyone in the car and right before I get killed I wake up. (Don't they say if you die in your dream you die in real life? Well, I always wake up before I die. I like to killed myself once in a dream (rode bicycle of mountain top that looked like MI:2, with Tom Cruise) and then wake up--it's a fun way to wake up..haha). I have another image from a horror movie (or imagined) that was a little shack with a modest radio control center and it's daytime and the door is open and you can tell outside it's the middle of nowhere with a field of wheat right outside and then a few army guy enter and opens the door to a little mini-fridge and there is a decapitated head inside. I don't remember any reaction shots to that, it's all I remember, but I'm obsessed with it. I watched scary movies when I was little...about 4 or 5 with my eyes covered but would make an opening with my fingers if I so dared. I also watched "Nightmare on Elm Street 4" at the theater when I was about 5 with said Jason-slaughtered-family (There was no blood in my nightmare of that, btw), and the creative killings were quite something for a little kid to see--not scary at all, that.
I've kind of wanted to make a scary movie, and who knows, maybe I will one day and steal some of the said images so I can stop obsessing over them. Anyone can make a movie these days (Blairwitch, anyone?, which I liked, and everyone else didn't because they didn't see a monster or something.) Horror genre is definitely my favorite genre whose linked into my thought processes, as I suppose movie techniques do.
It's hard not to reminisce about one's life I suspect and not think of some perfect camera angle. We are the directors of our lives. And it's really hard to struggle with the urge to want to put in a perfect camera angle to all the images Roger has written about so well. His writing is very filmic.
Come on Rodge..
Judging ones worth as a president by how articulate they are is a lousy rule of measure.
History is full of articulate individuals who also became known as the greatest of con men.
Roger, did you ever hear this one? Urbana - A great place to live but I wouldn't to visit. You know, the weird and near-solemn looks your out of town relatives and friends telegraph during their arctic winter or amazonian summer visits... And me, stifling my inner rebuttals, "No, no, no, it's not like this at all!"
Mr. Ebert, I've been reading your blog for quite some time, and I often feel I'd like to respond to what you've written -- so moved am I by what you have expressed. I thought that this was another entry to which I should somehow respond. I'm certain, of course, that you receive a great deal of feedback (having read all the comments), much of which already thanks you for what you share with the rest of us. So I really have nothing to contribute that another reader has not already said.
I was reading your reply to a comment, however, and it reminded me of something...
Television should be a brief resource for specific content. It has become a hypnotic transfusion of consumerism and trash values into society.
I was at a catholic mass with my husband some years ago, and during the homily, the priest said, "Television is like a sewer backed up into our homes." It's a turn of phrase that once said one simply cannot forget. And I agree. I wish I could shelter my daughter from it, but as others have mentioned, it seems impossible to find a nice, small town with white picket fences - to even attempt to offer a truly innocent childhood, the likes of which so few truly know.
I've lived in Urbana for about 4.5 years now just a few blocks from your boyhood home. I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, went to college in Chicago, and moved down here to take a job at U of I. Although I won't live here forever, I'm really glad I have lived here for the time that I have. Urbana is a special place, and your stories make me glad I got to spend some time here. There is some real history to this place.
Thank you for the wonderful memories, Roger. I am one of the Shaw twins, sister of Steve, John and Chuck. I really enjoyed reading your memories of growing up on Washington Street and living in Urbana. I remember how nice your mother was to my sister and me. She sent us a gift on our birthday for many years. She was a very sweet, classy woman. I remember sitting in front of her at mass. We always seemed to sit in the same pews each Sunday. God bless you.
Ebert: I was a little old to be your playmate, or I would have been. I would run out of the house shouting, "I'm going to see the Shaw Boys!" I remember when you moved to that big old house on Race Street. After a Western at the Princess we'd walk back there and play cowboys and Indians in the basement, hiding behind the furnace and ambushing each other.
One year at Ebertfest I was able to have a nice talk with your mom Ruth on a bench near the Quad. Many, many memories. Such a good and sweet woman.
To this day I have a recurring dream maybe once a year when the Shaw Boys and I are in some kind of a strange World War Two tank. Chuck is up in the conning tower and is driving, and we all want to get up there but we can't. Whatever that means.
Ask your brothers sometime about The Hole we dug together in the vacant lot. In my mind, it reached epic size. We used it for war games. I think it got to the point where my dad and your dad Albert went out there and filled it in. We all cried. "But we NEED it!"
I remember the rabbits in your back yard hutch. They were our pets. It was wartime and we had a victory garden. We took lots of tomatoes over for Ruth to can, but I don't remember ever getting any rabbits--although I was afraid to ask too many questions about the "chicken" we dined on that curiously lacked the same parts as regular chicken.
Your article made me homesick. We moved from C-U two years ago. One of my favorite things to do was walk through Clements cemetery on High Cross road. My mom used to take me there to pick blackberries when it used to be overgrown in the 70s and early 80s and I kept going back until I moved.
Dear Roger:
I lived at 411 E. Washington St (i.e. the Southeast corner of Washington/Maple) in the mid-1990s, and never knew you grew up across the street! It was, and is, a great neighborhood. Thanks for sharing your experiences with us.
Chad
Ebert: Many a time I mowed that grass! The house was occupied in those years by Prof. T. K. Cureton, his wife Portia and their son Curt. Tom Cureton was a distinguished professor of physical education at the University, and at a time when it was unknown, he was a jogger. He later set records at an advanced age in the Senior Olympics.
"Tom Cureton pays you a quarter to mow the grass," my father would chuckle, "and then he goes over there and runs around Huff Gym."
He is in the U. S. Swimmers' Hall of Fame. He founded the Kinesiology Department at the University and was instrumental in preparing Roger Bannister to break the four minute mile. https://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/handle/2142/1866
Sadly, it looks like the Altgeld Bell Tower is not going to be restored anytime soon again, especially now that there is a new bell tower on campus with pre-fab music, built for a donor.
Story here.
Woese is unlikely to win a Nobel Prize, but I do expect him to win a Crafoord Prize someday, maybe shared with Gunter Wachterhauser.
One of the most groan-inducing of many such moments in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was when we are told that John Cleese's Dawkinsesque scientist won the Nobel Prize for "biological altruism". Unless he was able to apply this idea effectively to economics, or maybe evolutionary medicine, there is no way that this alone would get him a Nobel. Ironically enough, biological altruism was the discovery which won Robert Trivers the Crafoord Prize just a year earlier.
I have disagreed with Mr. Ebert before, but I have always felt slightly guilty about it. This time, however, I am very confident. Roger, you are wrong. You were not born at the center of the universe, which I know to be Hammond, IN. How am I so certain of this? Well, sir, obviously, that's where I was born, and the axis of the Earth has been scientifically proven to be shoved up my own. Ahem. Excuse me.
Mr. Ebert, thank you for some fond memories of a different time. I too grew up in Urbana and was a former editor of the Echo. We had archives of past issues and I enjoyed reading your articles in those old issues, wondering if I'd be able to flourish in the same way as I grew as a writer. I also interned for the Daily Illini and News Gazette (the Courier was long gone by then, I've only ever known it as a restaurant). Journalism didn't take for me though perhaps it would have had I been born ten years earlier. Perhaps this is because classical journalism is changing into something else and the writing was on the wall even 15 years ago.
I feel like I'm home when I go back to C-U every year or Thanksgiving. I always think of running as a boy through the trees in Orchard Downs being somewhere else, anywhere or everywhere. I don't think there was a better place to grow up.
I do hope you write an autobiography from these memories. Putting all this writing into a blog seems to me like shooting Lawrence of Arabia on a camcorder.
Ebert: Yes, when you grow up they tear down paradise and put up a parking lot.
I attended Niles East High School, the school they used in the movie Sweet Sixteen, it was a gorgeous ivy covered high school built I believe by the WPA in the 30's. And yes in the early 1990's they tore down paradise in the form of Niles East. And left the ugly post modern high schools in town. Your article brought back such memories. Houses were actually built with front porches like the one I grew up in, I remember on hot summer nights lying in bed listening to my parents and our neighbors laughing and reminiscing about a Chicago that unfortunately I would never know, one of gangsters, the Chez Paree, the 6300 Club (I think) where Danny Thomas got his start, the Edgewater Beach Hotel which I remember was a gorgeous hotel Miami Beach style at the north end of Lake Shore Drive. I always felt safe on those wonderful nights, I would give anything to go back and revisit them but it would be too bittersweet. When you were living in Champaign did you ever go to Allerton Park? I went to school in Lincoln (in the late 1960's) and it was like a pilgramage for us to go there such a beautiful place. Thanks for letting me go on I guess its a sign of getting older when you look back so fondly.
Well, seriously though. That is perhaps my favorite essay. Maybe second only to your last essay - the one which perfectly encapsulated my feelings and ideas regarding God. Or, at least, just shy of the next essay, the one you are currently formulating.
I wonder, I must admit, about people who have such clearly formed recollections of all the small and mighty important things that they have experienced. Surely, nostalgia forces each of us to make some of these things up? At least, blurring the hard edges of things.
Probably, I am just jealous because I cannot match your "things" with my own. Or, more likely, as I am the one born in the scientifically-approved Center of the Universe (you owe me royalty just for beginning with the phrase!), I've the memory of a dullard while my things remain worthy.
Fireflies have forever been ruined for me. One night with my brother and his family, my toddler niece was marveling at them. My brother called her to him, and, right in front of me, he grinned at her like an insane Harry With His Ladder. He had evilly snatched a firefly out of mid-air while we weren't looking and smashed its abdomen across his front teeth so they glowed vomitous yellow-green.
Roger,I just read your review of Planet Earth and that combined with this journal entry whisked me back to the early 60's and sunday night dinners.Our church had two services.Dad and I went at 9am,he to the actual service me to my sunday school class.Dad left at 10 and went home to pass the car to Mom who arrived with my brother and sister for their sunday school and she went to the 11am service.I stayed through and at first helped in the cradle room and as I got older taught sunday school.Dad would cook sunday dinner,roast and veg complete with gravy which was eaten at noon when we were all home from church.
Sunday supper was special.We ate sandwiches (made from the above mentioned roast)on tv trays and watched television.I remember hoping that the Wonderful World of Disney would be something with Tommy??and not a documentary on the planet.Your review brought that memory slamming back so hard I could taste the velveeta!
I love the journal entries about your growing up days..more please and if you could I am sure I am not the only one fastinated to know more about the how and why you were in SA for university.
PS..Sunday school and regular church going petered out in high school but sunday suppers continued till I left home.
Okay, I've run out of patience. Ever since this blog first began you have dropped little notes of upcoming great films that are circling to land. A long, long time ago, before our nation even had its first black president, you had promised us The Thief of Baghdad (The 1940, Michael Powell version, assumedly), one of, if not the, greatest fantasy films of all time. You also promised Shadow of a Doubt, but one unnecessary complaint at a time. So either get going on this entry or stop foreshadowing things months in advance.
By the way, this is not in reaction to the latest initiation, Chop Shop. In fact, I was very pleased to see/read that.
Ebert: I did write it, but it was misfiled, I"ll run it in two weeks.Thank you for the privilege of accompanying you on that journey, Roger. We really have lost a world. I feel that my own childhood, in the New York exurbs of the 1970s, teetered on the cusp: Some parts of your account have a familiar ring, while others hit me as sepia history.
I admit you had me worried; until you revealed your "news hook," the local honor you were receiving, I was afraid you were working your way up to news that something bad had happened to your family or former home. Whether deliberate or not, it was a masterful use of background tension.
After reading this post, I am disposed toward you as happily as always, but loyalty compels me to pick a nit: The first use of the huddle in football is claimed by my alma mater, Lafayette College, in 1924. Fair to say you folks have done more with it, I suppose. But Beat Lehigh, all the same.
I've often used a Louis Armstrong quote myself but my memory of it was "If you got to ask, you'll never know." in answer to a question about jazz. Anyway, great article. I also made that trip to the infamous Rose Bowl game. Great trip, horrible game.
Ebert: I took the train. Great trip, yeah. But we were crushed.
I lived at 310 E Washington from 2001-2005. Roger, rest assured, it is still a great place to live. Best neighbors we've ever had!
Hi, Roger:
What are your feelings or memories about the Champaign-Urbana winds?
I ask because I have recently read David Foster Wallace's essay, "Deritative Sport in Tornado Alley" (featured in his collection "A Supposedly-Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.")
In the essay, Wallace talks about growing up in Philo, Illinois. He talks about his teen years when he was a junior player in Midwestern tennis tournaments.
He describes how many of his tennis opponents were driven to madness during the games by the powerful and unpredictable Champaign-Urbana winds. When his opponents hit the ball, the wind would often blow their serves out of bounds, giving Wallace an easy point. Wallace explains that he won many games after he learned how to hit the ball into the wind, so that it would spin back around and drop just inside the court.
Wallace was an exceptionally-talented writer. It's too bad that he could not bring himself to stay with us longer.
nice, roger.
in our minds and hearts, each one of us secretly writes like this - like you - and with the same, soft elegance.
you speak to that.
thanks.
Pat, its like this --
YOu ever take a course where the instructor provides a topic for the lecture or tutorial or classtime and then you just spend the time kicking around ideas, perhaps identifying themes, perhaps seeing something differently by the time you leave? Its kinda like that. Only theres no instructor, no credits, no papers due. And its for no real Reasons, other than the enjoyment of involvment. Eberts pretty good at coming up with discussion topics too.
America needs a rebirth of the union movement.
Id hate to say never, but unions are not the American way, at least not for the working classes. Odd that. Of course, for the capitalist and executive management classes, its all about organizing.
Ebert: "The American Way?" Why should the workers not have power to organize themselves? Why should they enter into an employment contract where they lack all power?
Why is union-busting the American Way?
When I moved to Chicago I stayed with Rita Maier, a childhood friend of yours. She moved to Rantoul when her father, Boots Maier, bought the bowling alley that my father later owned (he now owns a tavern across the street from the Rantoul Train Station).
As you of course know, Rita later moved to Chicago, and joined the Sun-Times as a nurse, and she said that she stood in your door shortly after joining and said "Roger?", coyly, and you looked at her for a moment, and then said "Rita Maier!" When I asked what you were like as a child she had nothing but good things to say about you, and related that she remembered you always sort of holding court on the School Bus (?perhaps I'm misremembering that part?) until one of the older boys would say "Sit down Ebert!" and pull you into a seat. Rita, as you know, died several years ago and is buried in the family plot south of Thomasboro. I will never forget showing up at her funeral to see the large floral arrangement you sent - It was very kind of you, and her mother was most appreciative.
I know that your feelings about the Chief have evolved, but I do hope that one day he can return as Official symbol of the University. He does indeed stand for something, and the manner in which he was removed by a relatively new administration was so disrespectful of the many good-hearted people of Central Illinois.
Ebert: Rita Maier was one of the kindest, most cheerful, biggest-hearted of all people. There were so many. I have met wonderful people in Chicago, but those early friendships, as the world was unfolding, have the freshness of discovery.
"Sit down, Ebert!" Oh yeah, On my first grade school report card, Sister Ambrosetta wrote: "Talks too much." I also hummed.
The Chief. *Sigh* I understand intellectually why Chief Illiniwek was retired. I agree with the decision ideologically. But my heart cries out, as in my memory he stands proudly on the 50 yard yard line and the Marching Illini conclude the school Song, Illinois! Illinois! Illinois! He was so much more dignified than a buckeye, a wolverine, a badger, a boilermaker, a spartan. He was greatness. I'm glad I was there.
Dear Roger - I attended the ceremony yesterday afternoon and was happy to be able to shake your hand. I was touched by your speech, particularly when you mentioned your parents bringing you home from the hospital. My husband and I purchased your home from Violet's family in 2001, the year we were married. In 2003, we brought our daughter home to that house. Her bedroom was also the room that faced Maple Street. We absolutely loved that house, but unfortunately had to move to a larger house with the impending birth of our son in 2005. I hope my daughter has memories of her first home like you do. Take care.
Ebert: It must be a house with good feng shui.
As I read this, I heard the quiet strains of Springsteen's "My Hometown." Your memory is amazing, Mr. Ebert. And the storytelling is, needless to say, par excellence.
Roger,
Nice comments about our old neighborhood. The coolest thing I remember about your home was your play house in the back yard, I always wanted one.
I had not thought about rhet words for years. There many good teachers at UHS in those years but Dan Perrino is still my favorite.
Ebert: I saw Dan again this year at the festival. What a good man.
I'm a long-time fan, newcomer to this blog. I visited your hometown when I was a kid of 16 or so - there was a church conference at the university. If I'd known it was your hometown, I'd have been so much more impressed. You're one of my favorites! Thank you for being an inspiration to me as a writer. I just ended a short and sweet 15-year career in community newspapers. And boy was it fun while it lasted. I was lucky enough to get in when you could still sneak a cigarette out of the ladies' room window and pop a beer after deadline. Good times! Things changed quick when the corporate drones took over. My best to you and your family. You had your fans real worried during that health crisis. I'm so so glad to hear your voice in my head again as I read your work.
Yours, Beth
Concord NC
For a long period of time my husband has been promting me to read your blog. My resistance stemmed not from a lack of affection for your writing but because I was frighted by some physical parallels. I was in a car accident 7 years ago. I am a quad. I have had a trach since the beginning, along with several other adaptive parts. I went two years without audible voice. I now have a soft voice, still trached, but know to be grateful. My inital surgery was at Northwestern. Given my injuries, I know I owe my life to them. My family still talks about the food there. You have been in my thoughts since you first became ill. You have always seemed a kind, insightful, and fun man. You have been a part of my married life - hubby and I never failed to tape your episodes with Siskel and later Roper- as your opinion tipped the scale when we picked that weekend's movie. I am glad I began reading your blog. Your writing connects in a way that feels like great radio (that feeling that happens during a Saturday night listening to Prairie Home Companion and Vinyl Cafe). All of that is a long winded way of saying thank you for this entry and oh so much more.
Ebert: That you can speak is a blessing. We share that special love for the Companion. I wrote a couple of entries you might find interesting:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/i_think_im_musing_my_mind.html
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/siskel_ebert_the_jugular.html
A very well written anecdote about growing up in Urbana, Illinois Roger. I commend you. It almost makes me wish my childhood was that innocent and idyllic.
Wonderful reminiscences, Roger. My childhood experiences were quite different than yours but the underlying wonderfulness in your story resonates with mine.
I know it's natural for a man of a certain age (and who has had acute health issues) to reflect on his origins and the mysteries of existence, but I hope you're not planning on going anywhere.
My Director's Cut of Life doesn't leave many of your scenes on the cutting room floor and I still need a lot of material for Act III.
Doggoneit, Roger, I have a slight lump in my throat, and like the lump and tears you get from certain movies, it's not from sentimentality but from goodness. I had a childhood that started 11 years later than yours but has so many of the same types of memories. I miss that world of neighbors and their dogs, of sitting on the front porch and talking in the summer, of parents who really did want more for their children (good for your father!)
Thank you for this memory of yours--and every time you write one of these, there are a lot of us who take a deep breath and remember the worlds of our own childhoods, and the pictures of our parents with tiny us, and trees, and neighborhoods, and lawns, and summer jobs, and the people down the street, across the way, and across the hall.
Dear Roger,
This post was awesome. In addition to the wonderful (much appreciated) peek into your life, the first time I went through it it reminded me of that nostalgic longing I felt when watching the recent animated movie "Bolt."
But, then something happened in the second run-through. You mentioned the tree. It's the type of tree that sat in the front lawn, that my next door neighbor and I often peeled as we enjoyed those endless summer days. I think it's been nearly 30 years since I've thought of that tree. My goodness.
Thank you for that. Thank you.
Omer M
My dad's fiance and her daughter are from Urbana, Illinois. They moved to California a year ago. She was going to move back to Urbana, but has decided to stay in California and marry my dad this coming July.
My dad's fiance had attended one of your overlooked film festivals, and she also met Gene Siskel in the early 80s. She said that Gene was the brother-in-law of her friend.
RWA: I wasn't familiar with the Crafoord Prize so I googled it, and guess what? Carl Woese has already been awarded the honor. I think I recall hearing of it at the time but forgot all about it. I know he's won a number of accolades. The Crafoord award rotates amongst astronomers or mathematicians, geoscientists, bioscientists and specialists in rheumatoid arthritis (a disease from which the award's benefactor suffered).
From the Crafoord site: "2003, Biosciences, Carl Woese, United States, for his discovery of a third domain of life."
There seems to be about ten to twelve major awards for achievements in science, medicine, mathematics, economics and technology, not all given every year. Some are awarded only every fourth year, or only when deserved. The Nobel is the most prestigious, and maybe the Lasker Award comes in second (it's often considered a stepping stone to the Nobel), though as a life scientist I wouldn't sneeze at the Robert Koch or Paul Ehrlich awards.
In any case, Roger Ebert with his Pulitzer Prize, which is the most distinguished award given in journalism, is in good company with the numerous other scholars who have made the University of Illinois proud. He certainly deserves having a department or program named after him, which he now will. "When the principal of the Roger Ebert Program reaches $5 million, it will become the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies, which will house the program's activities within the new department." (From Phil Rosenthal's blog in the Trib)
I grew up in Urbana some 5-6 blocks from your home.
Now, I live in northern California, which only thinks it is the center of the universe. Fortunately, I have a bunch of good students, some of whom actually end up going to the U of I. I shall link to this blog entry in case any of them have questions about what awaits them.
Nostalgia is grand.
Wish I could be there for the film festival. Have fun!
I enjoyed reading your recollections of growing up in Urbana on Washington St. It was a great neighborhood for kids. One of my memories is going to the Princess Theater with my brothers and neighborhood kids to watch the movies, to see Sheriff Sid do tricks between shows, and watch the yo-yo contests. We had so much fun in your back yard, playing in the fort-like playhouse. I still have the picture of you, Hal Holmes, and me standing out in front of it. I also remember the time your basement flooded. The water was halfway up the stairs. We were on the edge of town. Vine Street was not paved then. Washington Street would flood and we would all go out in the street and play in the water. It was great fun riding on the back of the Urbana Pure Milk Wagon, pulled by horses as you mentioned.
Your mother was a wonderful person, and very special to me. She recommended me to a contractor she knew, and that is how I got my first job as an electrician. I later got into the union and "on at the university," as your dad did. I later left the UI, but worked as an electrician for 41 years.
Ebert: Chuck! I haven't seen you in a few years, but it is so good to hear from you. One of your sisters also posted here. I share all those memories so vividly. I mentioned some of them in my reply to your sister. If you search for "Shaw Boys" you'll find it.
I worked and worked but never got good enough at the yo-yo. I think I won a carton of Coke once, but I wanted that Schwinn bike. Sheriff Sid. Our local television hero. And when we would walk home from the Princess, the cowboy and Indian games started immediately.
We played in those days. We were inexhaustible. These days parents are afraid to let their grade-schoolers run around outside or walk downtown by themselves. Several people here have said they envy us our "perfect" childhoods. Well, there were some scrapes and tears, but they were about perfect, weren't they?
I always thought your dad Albert's red truck was so neat. The winch on the front bumper. What else could anyone desire? I mentioned in the reply to your sister that you and your brothers are still in a dream I have. We're in some kind of a World War Two tank, and you're up in the driver's seat. We all want to get up there, but you won't let us. What's that all about?
Age is funny. You were the youngest of the first three Shaw Boys, but in my memories it is always Steve, John and Chuck, as a trio. Nothing "little brother" about you.
When they dedicated that plaque in front of my house, I mentioned all of you, plus Karen and Linda Weaver, Hal Holmes, Gary Wikoff, Jerry Sailor, Johnny Dye, Steve and Joe Sanderson, the Yohe boys, and the Ormiston boys, who were younger. Mrs. Sallie Ormiston, mother of Fred and George, was actually there! She taught me how to tell time on a big wooden play clock. She was amazed that I remembered that, but how could I ever forget it?
Was my comment skipped! I know I took you to task on the "God" arguments, but I certainly never said anything inappropriate!
Oh well. I guess what I'm more curious about is why there doesn't seem to be a review of the movie "Observe and Report" done by you. Was this intentional?
Hope all is well Roger. It's cool that you're doing the film festival down here. I've never had the time to come out to it and don't think I will be able to this year (I still have one year until I graduate!), but I hear great things from my fellow students.
Roger,
That is an endles story you wrote. It is my life in Urbana 20 years later. Born and raised in Urbana. Spring was my favorite time of year. McCullough St in between Washington and Nevada,what a wonderful neighborhood still today. Thanks for the memories.
Fred
I'm just curious, Roger. Are you in the process of writing an autobiography? It is just speculation on my part, but I could sense you may be planning to put all your Journal entries together in a book for posterity. :)
Roger,
My first daughter was born while I was doing my Ph.D. in Urbana-Champaign, and many times I pushed her stroller by your old house. It's still a lovely ride under those trees. Thanks for the memories.
Mario
Wow!
First two movies on Thursday at your movie fest begin to open the rusty gates to my childhood memories...and then I belatedly read this blog. I grew up in Champaign (yes, not Urbana), worked on the DI with you for a year, hung out at O'Rourke's in 1967-68, and have always appreciated your excellent writing...although I still wish you were doing more political writing. Oh, those discussions late into the night at the DI!
But your responses to some of the comments are even more of a prod into my brain. We had a great empty lot next door...on WEST WASHINGTON in Champaign...where we kept digging 'foxholes' and 'played war' with 'real stuff'...WW II helmets, ammunition clips, water canteens. The adults kept filling in the holes for they were dangerous.
You have unhinged the thoughts, the processes, and even Woodstock on Wed night drilled into this dense muscle, bringing back awesome and wonderful memories.
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane...and for sharing your reflective writing with the world.
Bonnie H.
Ebert: I was just on West Washington today, driving past the old Seed House.
"Those Were the Days, My Friends" was released in 1968. I realized I was living in the days I would still remember many years later.
Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do
Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
Roger,
I wonder why in the world anyone would take the time to write a comment on your blog saying that they don't understand the point of this blog to which they're responding.
Is anyone else puzzled by those responses? Isn't simply reading, and responding, the very point?
I found this particular entry of yours very touching, if for no other reason than I consider Roger Ebert to be a very important voice in our culture, and I am elated to find that he is perhaps a regular guy, from a regular place.
Allow me to respond to your blog only with firm understanding, growing curiosity, and deep admiration.
Why is union-busting the American Way?
I would say, essentially, because the socialist values associated with labour movements in Europe and Canada were never part of American identity. I have studied this and could go on about theories pertaining to how national identities congeal. But will just suggest that US nationalist identity and power (power defined as authority, that is, legitimate) had already been solidified before the arrival in Europe of socialism. (for example, compare to canada whose identity was still forming and thus enabled socialism to be imported with immigration. not so the United States, though immigrants came from socialist backgrounds.)
I am aware, as every American ought to be aware (i am not american you probably guessed this) of the tremendous and bloody and murderous battles fought and lost and for a time won by organized labour during the latter 19th and early 20th century. I would bet that school textbooks spend very little if any time on it. My point is that its not that unionism must lose to management and capitalist classes. Its that there is much in American self-identity that is very different from the Canadian and European examples that, lets say, once the spark is lit, fans the flame into a fire. With the US, the spark becomes a flame but it does not spread. AMerican identity is formed much on Lockean notions of society, an ideology, the legal emphasis on individuality, which is interpreted as moral grounds. THe AMerican frontier enabled this American dream of each individual making his way to linger long past normal shelf date, the pattern: whenever a new community went from initial free, unspoiled utopia to being politically monopolized and the small guy started getting squeezed out he could always move a little further west, to a new utopia. (though, as early as 1819 Hawthorne (i believe) was writing about the merits of communalism and disallusionment with the AMerican dream.)
Roger, after looking closely at the pictures above, I've determined that you don't look like either of your parents.
However, you do look like the guy standing between them in the barbeque picture.
Continued health to you and your fingers.
You're writing lately is "en fuego," as Marv Albert would say.
Ebert: I'm not absolutely certain who that man is.
Speaking of the decline of society, I just ran across some interesting information that shines a little hope: Floyd Norris's latest blog talks about a recent Pew research poll that shows only 52% of Americans deem television "a necessity" of life. He says that number is down from 70% in just 2006.
Why the sudden plunge? Apparently, it has little to do with computers. Those were seen as "necessary" by only 50%, a number I understand to be relatively unchanged from three years ago.
There's more. Microwaves and dishwashers and other life-simplifying devices are also apparently in decline in people's minds.
One might hope that with our recent economic despair, we've given ourselves an inquisitorial glare, and gotten a little more serious about what constitutes a Necessity.
But, oh, has the damage been done?! Norris states that television's plummeting percentage is "the lowest figure since that question was first asked in 1973," so we've evidently had 36 years of television's ruling our lives. And isn't that evident?
Find the blog entry here:
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/whats-a-necessity/
I have never been particulary interested in movies, other than just watching them, unitl I discovered your website a couple of years ago. I have known who you are and watched your tv show, but I really love your writing. Your reviews often make me thnk or see things that I would have never realized before. There are also so many great movies that I have seen only because I read about them on your website. If I ever have make it to the center of the universe I will make sure to drop by your childhood home. Thanks for what you do!
Dear readers,
am so deeply immersed in Ebertfest that I have fallen behind on posting your comments. Keep them coming--I'll get to them as quickly as possible.
Roger
If I may also add one other caveat, as related to this touching portrait of your childhood memories of Urbana and (tenuously) to your previous musings about God. I was a child of '70's suburbia. Adult supervision was still minimal then--my mom would occasionally poke her head out the window to see what we were up to, as my brother, our friends and I played and wrestled and carried on endlessly in our backyard. Once in a while, we might've even tried to persuade a hapless neighborhood girl into showing us her underwear. By the way, Michelle, if you're reading this, thanks. That was pretty cool.
My upbringing was by no means without conflict or pain. But when I look back to when we were kids, I tend to leave the bad parts on the cutting room floor and instead, grandly remember the good parts. The sheer joy and wonder of it all. Each day lasted a lifetime, filled with snowball fights, the first robins, lawn sprinklers on hot days, and, yes, of course, leaf burnings. There's a great line from an old Monkees tune, "Take a Giant Step" (and where else can you quote old Monkees tunes without fear of reprisal but Roger Ebert's blog): "Remember the feeling as a child/When you woke up and morning smiled." Stated as perfectly as childhood is itself.
So...if there is an afterlife and I somehow make it to Heaven, let it not be all pearly gates and clouds and harps and angels. That sounds deadly dull to me. Let it be a chance to re-live my childhood, leaving the bad parts on the cutting room floor. And maybe a great historical figure could stroll up from time to time and sit next to me at that Big Picnic Table in the Sky. Now that would be paradise. Would you mind passing me the potato salad, Mr. Lincoln? Me and my buddies are playing Whiffle ball after lunch, you wanna come too?
Ebert: Whiffle Ball. All the outdoor games. Jacks. Marbles. Dodge ball. Kill the Guy That's Got It. Mumbly-peg. Why were girls invariably better at jumping rope than boys?
Thank you for sharing your memories. What a delightful story.
My hope is that as my children stare out of their bedroom windows (Harold Holmes' house at 503 E. Washington), they too will experience a the peace of the neighborhood.
Joy Kimberlin - red brick house, east of your house on the north side of Washington street - would tell us stories of the old neighborhood, how they lived in the garage while as her husband built the main house. She mentioned that her son "Kim" used to hang around with you. She told to story of how Mr. Johnson made sure that he had parking on the south side of the street. Delightful neighbor who made it to 92 years of age before passing away last year.
Ironically, we still have a "Roger Ebert" in the neighborhood - they're on Maple south of Washington right before the bend.
Thanks again for your beautiful story.
Ebert: I have looked out through those very windows. Yes, I remember the house that started as a basement and grew beautiful as the money became available.
Harold Holmes was an editor at The News-Gazette. He took me on a visit to the paper and sealed my life plans. His son Hal, my good pal, was a champion gymnast.
Ebert: Why should the workers not have power to organize themselves? Why should they enter into an employment contract where they lack all power?
They should have the power. They shouldn't enter into an employment contract where they lack all power. Being against unions is not the same thing as being against workers and their rights to organize or quit or whatever. There can be a middle road.
The arguments against unions center on economic efficiency, unemployment issues arising from unionization, unsustainability (see General Motors), coercion from union bosses, and union boss pocket lining (Is that somehow better than CEO pocket lining?).
It's not helpful to set up a straw man like you did. Reminds me of how Barack Obama keeps harping that some people favored doing nothing as a response to the financial crisis and recession, which is quite untrue.
All of that said, I enjoyed the post and the comments.
Thanks for the Red Grange clip. I'd read about him, but until I saw him I never realized what a great athlete he was.
I've never been to Champaign, but I've visited Ames, IA, my wife's hometown and home of ISU, many times, so have a sense for that idyllic upbringing in a Midwestern university town.
But I do have a Champaign story. In '79, not long after we moved to a Seattle suburb, our next-door neighbors were also newcomers, recently arrived from Illinois. They had a daughter about 8 years old who was born in Champaign when her dad was in grad school. On the other side of those neighbors was a Filipino family, with a daughter the same age. One day, the two girls were playing in our neighbors' yard and I overheard this conversation:
Filipino girl: "I'm a Filipino-American."
Girl from Illinois, not at all aware of what or where the Philippines were, but knowledgeable about her own geographic origins: "I'm a Champaign-American."
She was right, of course, and it's clear why you also say, proudly, that you, too, are a Champaign-American.
Ebert: Close. I am an Urbana-American. Unless you grow up there you have no idea what a competition there is between the Twin Cities. In high school, this was dramatized by the popular conviction that the males from the other school were sexual predators, and the females from your school were virtuous maidens. If you said of an Urbana girl, "she's dating a guy from Champaign," that was all you had to say. The annual football game between the two schools was on the level of Illinois-Michigan, Army-Navy or England-France.
Roger:
I enjoyed your reminisces of life growing up in Urbana. I was surprised by how many places you described I could visualize in my head. I grew up in East St. Louis, but spent eight years of my life in Urbana during what was the happiest, most innocent and most promising time of my life—four years during high school and four during college (1964-1972).
Most of my time was spent at the University of Illinois, initially as an Upward Bound student and later as a journalism major at the University of Illinois. I lived at the Scott Hall dorms during my high school year and the first year of college and later at Newman Hall to be closer to my classes at Gregory Hall and to the library (heaven on earth). Urbana was the center of the universe in those days, especially the computer universe. U of I engineers were ecstatic that the HAL 9000 computer in 2001 was “born” at the University of Illinois, and the seeds of what would become the Internet were being planted even then.
Like you I worked at the Daily Illini and also at WPGU-AM and FM as a weekend newsman and beat reporter. I was active in Sigma Delta Chi and served one year as editor of the obscene and satirical Illini Tumor distributed during Homecoming. Those were also the years of the protests against the Vietnam War and the terrible destruction of the campus town area during the riots.
I had many close run-ins with the state police and National Guard in those days, not because I was a violent protestor. You could be out on a date and walk in a phalanx of baton-swinging state troopers headed your way with a surprise group blocking every possible exit.
Even so, Urbana was a magical place. The colorful leaf-colored streets around fraternity row the weekend of a big football game in town. The street heating vents strategically placed on corners around campus for those bitter winter days when Urbana seemed colder than the Arctic and with more powerful winds sweeping across the prairie. The underground library that seemed my second home and where I listened to the Beatles White Album and the Moody Blues Threshold of a Dream albums while studying. The Amory where I slogged many a long mile and the Huff Gym weight room where I tried to stay in shape. Your memories freshly rekindled mine. Thanks.
John L. Cleveland
johnlcleveland@johnlcleveland.com
Ebert: The Tumor! Once a year. Hit-and-run humor. Did you know that WPGU stood for "Parade Ground Units?" Those were the quonset huts thrown up to house married veterans after the war. The first radio station was in one of them.
Here I am, finally discovering this writing you've been doing. Cheers and all the best to you!
We first crossed paths when I came to Champaign-Urbana in 1963 to work for the U. of I. Motion Picture Service. I last saw you at the Toronto festival in about the year 2000, when you were crossing a cinema lobby, someone (it was not me) greeted you and asked how you were, and you shouted back, "Tip top!"
Again I wish you well, and now to enjoy the writing you have given us in these recent times at this website.
--Martin Fass
Loved this one, evocative. In my dotage, I am now employed at a university, managing the administrative office at the physical plant (including an electrical shop), a place and a role that are new to me. At least once a week, I muse about how grateful I am that this place has a "mature workforce" and I am glad to be a part of it.
Seems like just yesterday that as a youngster, I, too, would disappear from the house in the morning and not surface until evenings. No questions asked, no worries. At least one weekend afternoon would be spent at the local movie theatre, watching the same two movies for as long as I could take it.
Roger,
The Cureton's son is Kirk, not Curt, and followed in his father's footsteps. Kirk is a professor of Kinesiology at the University of Georgia. I remember that neighborhood and Kirk's dad always running somewhere. Kirk was a classmate. UHS Class or 65. Thanks for the memories.
Ebert: How did I get that wrong? Kirk was five or six years younger than us, so in a way he was sort of off of the map. When you're 10 and a kid is five, well...
I was so happy to learn today that his mother Portia is still living in Urbana. I remember both Curetons as warm and friendly. My dad spoke of "Tom Cureton," but I was instructed to call him, not "Mr. Cureton," but "Professor Cureton," because "he studied hard to get to be called that."
Two high school classmates (class of 64) recently died and as a result some of us reconnected. One classmate and I started sharing memories of growing up in Pana, Il, in much simpler times. Your memories rang a sweet bell. I also spent 6 years at the U of I getting my BA and MA. Although it wasn't Pana, I have some fond memories of great times. Thanks for sharing good memories.
How can all those other childhood homes that everyone writes about be the center of the universe when everyone KNOWS the center is on Kenilworth Avenue in Glen Ellyn, IL, where my brother (mystery writer Jeffery Deaver) and I grew up in the 60's? That was where we'd burn leaves in the driveway every fall, sit on the steps and have ice cream in the summer, and shovel the darned sidewalk every winter.
I suppose, though, that there can be many universes, and I hope to read about many other contributor's childhood universes as this wonderful blog continues.
Ebert: Because we were on a corner lot with a vacant lot behind us, I had a long snow shoveling job on the side of the house. And I had to do it, because of my father's concern for "the old professor," a Polish immigrant who always walked home from campus with his hands clasped behind him and his head bowed in deep thought.
Dear Roger,
Like a small time capsule, bursting with a poignant sense of time and place; you have paid tribute to your beloved family and home with a truth and honesty which is stunning in its simplicity and love for yesteryear. BRAVO Roger!
Oh, if one could go back to the world of our fathers, our mothers and the memories of small pleasures.
The smell of fragrant flowers in the garden. Whiffs from the kitchen of baked pies and goodies to delight the family seated around the table sharing tales of everyday adventures, both large and small.
It delights me to know that you have such wonderful memories to share with us.
Judy Shuster
Ebert: OMG. Pies cooling on window sills.
A child of the 1990's, I rode Amtrak one a month or so from Chicago to Springfield, where my dad was a lawyer for the AG's office [under AG Roland Burris...haha]. Even then, I thought of [fellow Evanston native, but noted Cub fan] Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans" [Willie Nelson's version, as would play on numerous road trips with my father], and imagine the train continuing on past my destination, traveling 500 miles when the day was done. Although the Ann Rutledge was merely going to Kansas City, or if I was lucky, the double-decker [whose name I can't recall] going to Los Angeles via Texas. Not the romantic train travel of lore, but I liked passing Summit, Joliet, Pontiac, Dwight, Bloomington and Lincoln before disembarking in the state capital, to a life seemingly millions of miles away from the big city, if only actually 200. As he traveled throughout central and southern Illinois for work, my father often took me along, when I was on summer vacation or some other break. My only trip to Champaign was to an Illinois-Michigan football game; I hated the maize-and-blue, as Evanston was seemingly ripe with Michigan grads; and in a purple town, I grew up loving the orange and blue [both parents were U of I grads, plus my HS's colors were of the same hues, as the Bears too were similar]. I recall a hard fought game that the Illini nearly won in an upset, but a bad call on a fumble went Michigan's way, and the Wolverines won an exciting game on an Indian summer's saturday night. The next morning we ate a delicious breakfast at a pancake house in Champaign [or Urbana...not sure], that was reminiscent of my favorite Wilmette haunt Walker Brothers. My only experience with Champaign-Urbana; I could only have dreamed to attend the school with my favoirte college sports teams, as Evanston Township HS being so competitive, graduating in the top 60% of my class with a B+ wouldn't cut it for the U of I.
In HS, I competed on Speech Team, in Radio Speaking. More so than anything else besides Piven Acting School growing up, it really helped me grow as a person. One year I was looking back at champions in my event in previous years, I remember seeing two familiar names--a meteorologist on a local news station in Chicago [I think on WLS...can't remember], and the name Roger Ebert. An avid watcher of Siskel and Ebert growing up, I thought seeing a familiar name was pretty cool, and I could only dream of winning state some year. Alas, it was not meant to be--I finished 4th at Sectionals [after qualifying out of Regionals for the first time, having finished one place short the previous year] at the relatively new Carl Sandburg HS in the south suburbs of Chicago my senior year, one place short of qualifying for State. Only in college did I start becoming the film buff [some would accuse me of being a film snob] that I am today.
Ebert: Radio Speaking was a tough event. I remember we were handed a newspaper and given one hour to write a five-minute newscast.
Lovely column. I am sad for my children, and the children that are growing up now, because that steady cadence of routine and stability and morality are not in their lives. My childhood memories are of leaving the house in the summer as soon as I finished my lucky charms, returning for a quick lunch of bologna on wonder bread, cherry koolaid...then back outside, coming in only when it was dinner time...then back out after dinner to play kick the can, or catch fireflies. My kids spend all their time with electronics - hand held games, internet, cell phones. What will their recollections be like when they get to be my age, your age? I can't imagine that they will have the charm and patina that your memories have. It seems a little is lost with each generation - and that is sad. Thank you so much for sharing your memories...I could smell, see, hear the past, and it made me sigh with contentment. And now, back to work, back to the computer.
I miss the Chief and I didn't even go to Illinois. Big Mizzou fan. When UI vs MU play at the annual "Braggin' Rights" B-ball game the highlight of the game was the performance of Chief Illiniwek. People stayed in their seats during halftime to watch the Chief. To bad the PC , spineless UI administration caved into the blond haired blue eyed "Illini Indian" who complained....
Ebert: As I recall, the school was threatened with losing its accreditation.
After all these years, you have written something that I utterly disagree with. "[Chief Illiniwek] was so much more dignified than a buckeye, a wolverine, a badger, a boilermaker, a spartan. He was greatness. I'm glad I was there." For the record, there is no more dignified entity on earth than the Michigan Wolverine.
That aside, your writing has once again touched the hearts of thousands of readers (or more). I am 25 years old, born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit. There is no college around. And yet this blog brings me back to my (relatively recent) childhood. I remember the days when we, as kids, could run around the neighborhood til dawn, our parents never concerned about kidnappings, guns, drugs, and the like. This, mind you, was only 20 years ago or so. I often ask myself what sort of childhood my kids will have. I am sure it will be nothing like mine, and even less like yours. What a shame. Your comments regarding the problems of modern American society are, as are so many of the thing you write, spot on. They resonate with all of us readers, from all generations. Remarkable.
Ebert: The wolverine is a noble beast, largest land-dwelling species of the weasel family.
Thank you Mr. Ebert. As always, eloquent and moving. Thanks also for your generous gift to the U of I for the film study program. I heard about this on the radio this week, and as a UI alum and avid reader of your blog and reviews, I was touched.
Once Lou Grant assigned a reporter to do a piece on alcoholism. The reporter asked to be relieved because his father was an alcoholic and he was having a hard time dealing with the subject.
Lou snaps back: "That's why they call it work."
The election of Obama was like an unexpected remission
Serious? You know, nothing is changing. Those responsible for the recent destruction of your country`s well-being, though their culpability makes a strong and obvious case for trial and imprisonment, are getting wealthier under obama. they will continue to do so. this is rich. well, at least he`s black. and he can form a sentence. you know why aig was bailed out? because it provided insurance for wall street, particularly goldman sachs. aig was a means of funneling moneys to financial houses cozy with the new administration. what does this have to do with neighbourhoods? like i said, you sell off the promise and prosperity of the american dream and all thats left are unpaid bills. it really is astonishing that level of cynicism.
The memories keep coming back..the fifties as a kid..what a great time..
In our back yard was the perfect climbing tree,a maple.In fact the backyard of our house in Toronto (Leaside area) was like a changing stage every season. During the summer we had a tent pitched,and had sleep outs. We could see the ball diamond in the park at night,and watch the baseball games under the lights..I still recall the sound of the floodlights being switched off. The cheers or boos from the crowd of local neighbours, watching the junior league players, play good hardball.
The tent was our fort,and we had our wooden carved rifles,or our toy cap guns for protection against the night monsters!!
Of course we had a stash of cookies,maybe a bottle of Hire's Root Beer,and a box of Cracker Jacks, to keep us fed.
In the fall I remember setting up a target for bow and arrow practice,using field tip arrows,which were the arrow tips used for shooting into tree stumps.
My sister and I had a fist sized chard of glass, we called the 'moonstone' that we kept as our treasure inside a Crown Royal blue velvet bag.We used to bury it in differant places,and always kept a map for the burial site. I think it is still buried in the yard,close to the maple tree.One time my sister painted the clear treasured chard with ruby red nail polish.
Many hours were spent in the winter in the back yard,with mounds of snow piled high,and we would play war in make believe fox holes,or make caves out of the high piles of snow.
We could jump over the fence into the park, and go sledding or skating in the park next to the house.
A little older in grade seven or grade eight, I skated with my first girlfriend.We held hands and skated to the music piped over the rink,to such tunes as Frankie Laine's .'Moonlight Gambler' or Sonny James singing 'Young Love' or that bothersome tune 'Mr. Sandman'.
Long bike rides and long hikes with our canteens of water.
One summer while hiking in the Don Valley, we walked through a field with hundreds of grass snakes..it was like a night mare,and of course we boys kept our cool,while my sis and her friend screamed the way girls do.
Our friend Susan was with us one time on a hike in the Don Valley, and her dog "Joey" a cocker spaniel got his paw snared in a muscrat trap..We were able to free his paw,but it took some doing.
Walking up to Bayview Avenue to the show, to see Flash Gordon,or Hoppie, or Gene Autry. Twenty five cents went pretty far back then.
Sunday night television always included the Ed Sullivan Show, or was it called Toast of The Town?
The test pattern from the Buffalo station had a drawing of an indian chief.
My Mom always watched Arthur Godfrey..I remember something about Julias LaRosa being fired because he was 'seeing' some female singer from the show.At noon she watch Search For Tommorow,and The Guiding Light.
Also the radio was often on, to Sgt. Preston of The Yukon,Gunsmoke,The Inner Sanctum, and The Lone Ranger.
I recall our first television,with a smallish round screen, and 'rabbit ears'.We could watch the CBC and a station from Buffalo N.Y. I think it was W.B.E.N. TV.
Anyways, those or just a few memories,and there are tons more.
Thanks Roger.
Ebert: Poor Julius La Rosa. He was also accused of lacking "humility." But he was seen as the victim in the incident, Godfrey's image was forever tarnished, and La Rosa survived and flourished:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_LaRosa#.22That_was_Julie.27s_swan_song.22
I want to add one more thought about the comment from Pat who questioned the "point" of this and some of your other Journal posts. I am assuming that this person, as he/she later claimed, was simply asking an honest question, although the tone did come off as somewhat critical.
There is no lack these days on radio, tv, or in the blogosphere, of commentary with a "point" - telling us what to think, what beliefs to value or dismiss, who to respect or hate. Less common is the "reflective" essay in which the writer simply reflects back the world as they received it, not a perfect zen-mirror reflection but flawed and colored by personal world view and life experience. The thing about a community like this one is that many others then add their own reflections of your reflection, creating a marvelous kalaidoscope that just keeps growing.
Of course we know you can also mold words into something with not only a sharp point, but deadly barbs all over, when that's what's needed!
I have nearly every issue of the Echo from 1962 to 1965. Stanley Hynes was the advisor. But Rosemary! That’s for remembrance (Hamlet). Carol LeSeure was the advisor. Marien Seward? Now that’s the non de plume for “rhetorical discipline” in the strictest sense.
The Courier I delivered was 20 cents per week, but one got comics on green pages. My route was California street.
Mrs. Portia Cureton is at Clarke-Lindsay, along with my mom and dad. Son, Curt, a classmate, last I heard was at the University of Georgia.
Recall Huey’s at five points: If it’s not on the shelf it’s on the floor.
Roger –
Your writing is superb, serving as a nostalgic afflatus to times that will never be again and, perhaps, never were. But then, just where on the matrix were we?
Electricians like your father were vitally important on many spacecraft we launched from down here at Cape Canaveral, including the soon-to-be retired shuttle.
Last night we saw NE TOUCHEZ PAS LA HACHE (THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS), the movie of Balzac’s novel concerning reality and non-reality, matrix-like reality and times that will never be again and, perhaps, never were. Have you reviewed it? Thanks for your good writing and good work.
Ebert: I have indeed reviewed it.
Huey's Store! "What's not on the shelf, it's on the floor. If it's not in the floor, we ain't got it no more."
All this stuff is still there in my memory, just waiting to be triggered. Do we ever forget anything? Maybe we just forget to remember it.
As with so many others here, reading this put me in mind of my own childhood - this one in the 1980s in suburban Kansas City. I remember playing superheroes with the other kids on the street, and touch football, and a nice old gentleman (I never knew his name; we called him "the candy man") who passed out Werther's Originals to any kids on his lawn in the afternoon. I remember when a couple of us filled an envelope with dog poop and left it in the mailbox of the neighborhood bully, addressed to him in crayon. I didn't get in as much trouble for that as I thought I would have.
One winter, lacking a sled, I repurposed an old laundry hamper, crouching in it like a mouse in a teacup while it spun down "Suicide Hill" (which you couldn't find on a map, but everyone knew which one it was); and one summer a couple other boys and I packed cheese-and-mayonnaise sandwiches and cans of Dr. Pepper in plastic bags and resolved to ride our Big Wheels along the drainage creek behind our houses as far as it would go, which turned out to be the interstate nearly a mile away. A whole mile!
There was a week there where the other kids on the street thought I was really cool because my dad had been hired as an engineer at the local defense plant, which made "non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons", and black-suited FBI men came to everyone's houses and asked if they thought he was a Communist. That and Rambo on the TV were about the extent of our Cold War paranoia.
You worry that the landscape has changed, and that perfect childhoods are no longer possible. Maybe you're right. That nice neighborhood was my grandparents', and I lived there half the week because my folks were divorced and my dad was staying with his parents while he got his master's degree. The other half of the week I lived with my mom in what she liked to call "the historic" parts of town. She never had much money and I later found out the reason she couldn't hold down a job was because she was mentally ill. All I knew at the time was that she would never let me out to play - was that because the neighborhood was bad, or was it the beginning of her illness? At some point it becomes academic. My father remarried when I was ten and I spent my adolescence living with him, my stepmother, and a stepbrother, who committed suicide because he was terrified of failing high school. So it goes, as the man said.
At any rate, none of that matters. The good times were still good, and there were plenty of them. More than enough, really. I'm nearly thirty now and three of my best friends are guys I met in grade school. Their parents are all divorced as well, their families riven with private problems just like mine - but they've turned out okay. We all have.
What I ask, Mr. Ebert, is for you not to worry so much. There were drugs and guns, pedophiles and heartless greedheads in the 1980s too. And the TV was worse. I don't want to minimize anyone's problems, and god knows it's a cold world out there, but I honestly believe that life will find a way. The world is full of good people - though I'll grant you that Urbana might be even more full than most, if Ebertfest is running right now.
Ebert: Yes, I must resist doom-mongering. What I am reminded of by you, many others, and indeed Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, is that kids can survive a great deal, and grow up strong and true.
I'm just back from Ebertfest -- which was "awesome"! It's one of the things that is creating fond memories for me of C-U (U-C). During the course of the festival, and while reading your journal, I keep coming back to memories of "Before The Rain" (1995) which I would love to see on the big screen at The Virginia. Any chance for that?
I hope that you enjoyed being back home and can't wait for next year ... see you CAN come home again!
Ebert: That was a great film. Its director (from Montenegro, as I recall), attended Southern Illinois at Cardondale.
I read all the comments and feel like I have been on a nostalgic trip back in time. Our family lived at 507 E. Washington - next to the vacant lot owned by the Holmes' family. I was in the class with Kirk Cureton, George Ormiston, and Kim Kimberlin Our family's memory of you is that you wrote a Washington Street newspaper. My mom looked for a copy but never found one. Did you write that paper? I knew the Shaws from St. Patrick's and enjoyed their entries. I will forward this blog on to my two brothers and I am sure they will enjoy reading it.
Ebert: Yep. The Washington Street News. Printed by Hektograph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hektograph
Your family must have purchased your home from the Lutala family.
Roger! It was great to have you back this year! You looked healthier and happier than ever and your warm spirit is inspiring! I can't thank you and Chaz enough for bringing your warmth and generosity to us year after year.
Looking forward to April '10!
Mr. Ebert, as I was reading this, I caught the profound hint of Ray Bradbury being evoked. Interestingly, another comment noted this as well. Another reader was promtpted to reminisce about reading Dandilion Wine as a child. Still another reader mentioned how your non-fiction and science fiction blogs were your best. I am not exactly sure what the connection between you and Bradbury is, but someday, someone will write his or her English Master's Thesis concerning Bradbury's nostolgic stories, perhaps with a chapter on Booth Tarkington, and you deserve a chapter as well. Damn I wish I could write with the simple clairity of profundity like you.
First of all thank you very much for the rich story of your life at Maple and Washington. I live across the street in a cooperative house on the 3 acre lot where Maple terminates. Being able to read everyones' comments and learn more about the history of this community is really wonderful. This season we have invested a lot in a permaculture that is growing in our yard and have uncovered several artifacts from past childhoods: pocket knifes, lighters, rusted out buckets (time capsules perhaps). We dug up a bunch of cinders while installing a post for a clothesline. It gave us an interesting look at the stratification of the dirt over the years. We have fragments of the history of our coop, La Casa Grande Colectiva, through photographs and notebooks. From what we gather, the Coop started just a few years after the event that was the subject of a film in the recent Ebertfest, Woodstock. That choice seemed like you were reminding us of a time when cooperative efforts were seen as a real solution to difficult circumstances.
We wanted to keep a more dynamic diary that could communicate across time, so we started a blog to chronicle our activities and inquiries. Earlier today I blogged about your recent visit and the story you shared on your blog. It is inspiring to see the online community that you are building with your generous thoughtful words.
Ebert: I have a feeling that the big house on that property was the headquarters of a small heating oil delivery company, and my friend Jim and his family lived in it. A smaller tarpaper house, wartime housing, was home to two Polish graduate students and their mother. They were on my paper route, and gave me piles and piles of Astounding Science Fiction going back to the 1950s. Van Vogt, Heinlein, etc.
Thy prose grippeth-down three paras.
Thanks for a being a mentor in film.
Through this interaction, I have gained in manifold ways,liguistically, intellectually in a way which was not possible in pre-internet. One more thanks.
Tokyo was just past its blossoms but the fragrance lingered.
And its the headiest of aromas !
How developed is the developed world.
I grew up at 507 E Washington Street ten years behind you. My Mom and your Mom were in a sewing club together. I love the story about you learning to tell time from Mrs. Ormiston and you have brought life and put words to what it was like to grow up in Urbana between WW II and Vietnam. The easiness of going downtown without an adult, the Natural History museum and the freedom that, yes, Urbana was the center of the universe. Thank you for sharing.
Ebert: Sewing circles! Bowling leagues!
I grew up on Nevada St./ Urbana class of '77. A group of us from that graduating class have been sharing similar memories on a yahoo site. It was the greatest place in the world to grow up. Thanks so much for your reflections! I couldn't be more proud to claim you as our native son!
Tell us about your memories of St. Patricks on Main st. Eileen
Ebert: Midnight mass. The first time as an altar boy, when I went behind the altar, I was astounded to discover it was a set. I always thought it was carved from solid marble. Serving during the Stations of the Cross, singing, At the cross, her station keeping, stood his mournful mother weeping; close to Jesus to the last. Climbing the circular stairs to sing in the choir with the organist, Sarah Marquardt. Incense on the charcoal. Getting tipped 50 cents by the best man after a wedding. Orange juice and sweet rolls in the rectory basement on Good Fridays, served up by the Altar and Rosary Society. The lending library in the vestibule, where I checked out Death Comes for the Archbishop when I was in about fourth grade.
Hi Roger, very nice piece. One of my uncles was a math professor at UIUC, and those cousins, now in their 40s and early 50s, grew up on Evergreen Court in Urbana. My husband and I visited about 20 years ago. We are from Baltimore and had lived in Boston and Philadelphia. The main things I remember about that visit were that it was incredibly hot, and that when we came to a four way stop intersection, my cousin, who was riding with us to direct us, kindly informed us that in Urbana, you always let the other cars go first.
Back after a few days away. How refreshing to find lifts from Robert Frost and Joni Mitchell within the space of a few replies! ;)
You're description of the smell of your childhood home's basement sparked nostalgia for me. Both of my grandparents passed away over the past 6 months and I said goodbye to a home that has been the one steady family location my whole life. I will never forget the smell of that house. In words, it's just a musty, stale smell, but just one whiff brings to mind a myriad of happy childhood memories and that indescribable feeling of "home."
Thanks for the great read.
One of exactly three author (counting Magic Johnson as an author!) appearances I've been to in my 2+ years in Vegas (read: hell), was Michael Chabon, in which he gave an unpublished presentation on his theory about the differences between our age cohort's childhoods -- he and I are roughly contemporaries, if not peers -- and the overprogrammed, overprotected childhoods experienced by subsequent children. The gist of his theory: the freedom of our unplanned, exploratory, peripatetic childhoods was doomed for later children by Wacky Packages, representing the co-opting of child-like anarchy for commercial purposes by adults. (Trust me, in the context of the times he discussed, it made sense.)
I tried to get a copy of the text of the piece, but he's considering publishing it, so nothing doing. :(
Thanks for the grins - now and then. Our Urbana Pure horse's name on Indiana Ave. (before we moved to Race St.) was Charlie - the last one standing. Also, thanks for the times we spent together at UHS and at the U of I, especially when the politics got "warm". My kids can't quite fathom what we were up to in those days :-).
Ebert: Sally Hopson's family held onto those horses long after they had disappeared elsewhere. No gasoline expenditure. The horse knew the way, and knew every stop. You didn't dare cancel your delivery and make the horse unhappy. Is there a child in America today who has been awakened in the summer by the clink of milk bottles going into the little insulated box by the door?
Ah, cherry blossoms--
Some scatter, while some remain
To fall in the end
http://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/nature/nat-essays/nat-13.html
You were blessed with your mother's smiling eyes!
I grew up in a little town called Thirlmere, famous for its train museum, which is to say it isn't famous at all. We had a semi-acreage.One of my fondest memories is of an old water tank that my friends and I had turned over on its side so that we could walk in it and push it up against the blackberry bushes. There was something idyllic about those days.
S M Rana,
Yes, cherry blossoms. THe Japanese have an interesting soul. So free from Western orthodox tribalism. Cherry blossom and tea ceremonies. Did you take in a tea ceremony?
Ebert: To S. M.: Welcome back!
Hello Roger
This is a wonderful wonderful essay.
For all of us who grew up lucky in the US of the 40s and 50s, it rings so many deep chords of thankful memory.
-- stanley krute
ps -- There are, of course, an infinite number of Centers of the Universe. Wherever a child grows up happy and safe is a large subset. My own CotU was 30 Barnesdale Rd, Natick, MA.
Hello Roger -
You captured the magic that is Urbana beautifully. When I first took my teenage stepchildren 'home' (from Dallas, TX) they were amazed that people actually walked, jogged, and wheeled around the town. They remarked how green everything was - and were astonished by the endless miles of corn, soybeans and wheat that surround C-U.
Though I've completed too many years of college and degrees, and travelled extensively, I still attribute most of my life's success to the midwestern values of growing up a 'small town girl'.
(this part may be personal and not blog-worthy)
I'm glad you're feeling well enough to travel and continue your blog. Last I heard, you had fallen and broken your hip. I've wanted to e-mail you for several years. I too grew up as a St. Pat's kid. You know my family: you went to South Africa with my father, Paul Luedtke. I think you probably know that he passed away last year. One of my favorite stories about you is from the South Africa trip. Upon hearing that your passports were being 'held' by government officials, you apparently became rather excited, resulting in Louise Jones telling you to shut up. Louise is particularly tickled at the thought of telling Roger Ebert to shut up ;-). You'll know, too, that Tom passed away last year - four months to the day after Dad. They were great, great friends - and Tom and Louise were the closest thing I had to an uncle and aunt, as both of my parents were/are only children.
My mother (Mary Ann) gave your mom rides to and from church as they got older. Miss Marquardt was my piano teacher until she died - and I too vividly recall the twisting staircase to get up to the choir loft. The new staircase doesn't have nearly the charm -- although it is probably safer. My Saturday morning memories echo yours: of CCD class followed by doughnuts and chocolate milk (in real glass bottles) in that same dark, rather scary, Rectory basement
Ebert: "Miss Marquardt was my piano teacher until she died." She was my piano teacher until I failed miserably.
Your father was a dear friend. That wheelchair tour was a logistical triumph, and so beneficial in countless ways. Yes, I sadly know that Tom Jones died. (For readers: Although a quadraplegic from childhood, he became a popular sportscaster and play-by-play announcer at Champaign-Urbana's top TV station.) Please say hello to Louise and give her my very best. Tom and Louise attended several Eebrtfests.
Your reminiscences about Urbana are absolutey lovely, so evocative of sights and smells for those of us who grew up in C-U. Perhaps they are the making of a short book? I rarely read, and never respond to, blogs. But yours I will even bookmark and add to My Favorites.
Best wishes for your continued recovery of health!
Kathy Luedtke-Hoffmann
What a wonderful article. I grew up in Champaign, graduating in 1954 from high school and from the U of I in 1957. My dad was the Chief Building Engineer at the Illini Union and no doubt knew your dad. It was an ideal little world and it has served me well. Thank you for your warm description of a very special time.
(Karen and) Linda Weaver. My mother's name. She grew up on Wabash St. a few blocks east of your childhood home. I don't suppose it's the same woman, though. No sister named Karen.
Do I detect (more than) a hint of My Winnipeg in this journal entry?
Dear Mr. Ebert,
I was born and raised just across the Illinois Central tracks Hamilton Drive in Champaign. I thought the street was named after me. I heard the same trains at night from my bunk bed. I saw the milk trucks from Adair's Milk Company pulled by horses. The cars on nearby Kirby Avenue went very fast; up to 35 mph. You didn't want to ride your bike along Kirby. My mother always loved movies and she took us to the Virginia Theatre. I had my first Nib's licorice bits while watching Ben Hur. In winter when the trees were bare, I could see the smoke stacks from the U of I power plant. My father was a commercial building contractor and I thought that he had built most of the newer buildings on campus with his own hands. I was disappointed when I learned he hadn’t built the power plant building. Kick the can was our favorite game on summer evenings. The games weren’t supervised by adults. I knew just a few kids whose parents were divorced. My world looked a lot like the Cleavers and the Nelson. My parents still live in Champaign and will celebrate their 60th anniversary this fall. They met while attending the U of I. My grandfather, Paul, saw Red Grange dedicate Memorial Stadium in 1924. He and his brother, Tiz, announced all the Illinois home football and basketball games for over 40 years. My grandmother taught me about the line of scrimmage and the words to Illinois Loyalty. People from Champaign/Urbana believed in loyalty. The Chief symbolized that. My grandparents are now buried across Fourth Avenue from Memorial Stadium close to the 50 yard line. That was loyalty. When I was 19 I decided to leave the cornfields and prairie skies for a grand adventure in Alaska. I wasn’t into loyalty or tradition at the time. I still live in Anchorage, Alaska to this day where I practice law with my wife. Despite my travels, I always wondered why Champaign felt like the center of the universe. Now I know why. Thank you for sharing your sharing your childhood memories with us.
Ebert: So I heard your grandfather's voice many, many times.
I spent four year, second grade - fourth grade in Urbana and later got to come back and receive my bachelors and master's degree at Illinois and meet my future wife.
My parents bought their first home at 1605 South Grove St. at the corner of S. Florida Ave. in a new subdivision in 1955. Our next door neighbors were the Brauns, he was the Urbana high school principal at the time.
Across Florida Ave was a corn field the first year. The field mice would regularly migrate across the street. They would sometimes jump from the steps at the kitchen door into our open trash can in the enclosed garage. My mother would hear the frantic mice trying to escape. Having grown up on a farm she quickly took my baseball bat on more than one occasion and proceed to crush to death the panicked mouse. Some of our neighbors would catch mice and then release them back in the corn field. My mother was always disgusted by such useless behavior.
My father always had a company car and one day he must have been out of town or had ridden to work with someone else. His office was in the Robeson Department Store in Champaign. My mother was driving in Urbana when she was stopped by the Urbana police checking for city sticker on residents' automobiles. They found it hard to believe that she did not have an Urbana city sticker for this car registered in Champaign when clearly she lived in Urbana. When mother got a hold of Dad she made it plain that the family needed its own automobile so she would not have to put up with the indignity of explaining to the police why she was driving a car without a city sticker on it!
On another occasion our new neighbors across the street,who seemed to lack some of the qualities we valued in neighbors, invited the neighborhood children to the Champaign County Fairgrounds to get pony rides in a buggy. Their two teenage children were driving their pony towards us from a stable and I was seating in our own automobile and the rest of the children and my parents were standing around outside. The pony became spooked and race toward the group and at the last minute turned so it narrowly missed our car. Unfortunately the neighbor's daughter sailed straight into the back door panel of the automobile. She had a severe head concussion. She was hospitalized but recovered in a few days. I did not really know what happened and was fine. Her brother was thrown clear and was fine. The door had a huge dent in it which the neighbor gave us an insurance settlement check for. He also announced that his prize pony had not been the same since some dogs had spooked it sometime in the past. My parents and the other neighbors shivered with the thought of what might have happened had their much younger children been in the buggy in a similar situation.
Those years in Urbana were the most enjoyable ones of my childhood. My years at the University of Illinois in the late 60's were also very good even though I was in perpetual fear of the draft and there was a lot of turmoil on campus and in the country. Upon graduation from the library school at Illinois I headed for three year in the U.S. Army having received the honor of pulling number 11 in the draft lottery!
Fortunately I was able to convince my sweetheart that I met at Illinois to marry a low ranking soldier. There was only one condition that she come to my next duty station in South Korea if I could find a place for her to live. We ended up getting married in the same church in Champaign my parents had when they were students in 1947.
Thank you Mr. Ebert for sharing some of your memories and giving me the chance to remember some of mine as well.
Ebert: The Library is a great and world-famous institution, the fifth-largest in America, the largest among state universities, and is of course the single most remarkable thing in town. The Great Hall or reading room is on an awesome scale. When I first saw it in my youth it symbolized in one moment what a university meant.
Robeson's Department Store. Another anchor of my youth.
Did your bride go with you to South Korea? That was a safer posting than Vietnam, and in fact might have been a wonderful life experience.
My sister forwarded your blogs. The memories of St. Patrick's Church and St. Mary's Catholic School always bring a smile to my face. 3 bus routes for St. Mary's..one pretty old bus!I recall being in church with your Mom. Rhetoric words..still immediately come to mind whenever I spot them when reading. ..Mrs. Seward's stories about you do too. I was back in Urbana last year. We lived between Busey and Washington. Each time I return home the neighborhood appears to be shrink-wrapped..streets appear much more narrow. I also delived papers for the Courier with Bob Vedder--one of Byron's son. Fortunately I was able to visit with Byron-a long time family friend, before he died this year.
Today in Montana we have had 15+ inches of snow but no winter here matches the ice storms we had in Urbana. Thanks for the memories.
Ebert: Waitaminit! Waitaminit! Mrs. Seward had stories about me? I shudder to imagine. She never quite approved of me, and my notion that because I had a job at the paper I knew the first thing about rhetoric. Certainly she cured me of one-sentence paragraphs. Mr. Ebert! The paragraph is a unit of thought, not one of typography!
I remember all the Vedders. And you have struck another memory: We had ice storms unlike anything I have ever seen in Chicago. In the morning, the entire world coated with bright new ice, every twig on every limb. Every step was hazardous.
Ebert--Is there a child in America today who has been awakened in the summer by the clink of milk bottles going into the little insulated box by the door?
Perhaps not, but in my childhood in North Dakota, the milk was delivered right into your fridge. That's right--Mr. Knudsen walked right into your house and put it in your fridge while you were at work. Can you imagine?! (nobody I knew locked their doors back then, even at night) I guess the insulated boxes weren't enough to keep it from freezing.
Thanks Roger and guests for evoking these wonderful childhood memories for me!
Ebert: Good gravy!
What glorious memories you have evoked! I am one of the five Cedusky kids that grew up on North Lincoln Ave. I have a picture of you as an altar boy standing next to Fr. McGinn at my First Communion. The last time I saw your Mother was at my Dads funeral at St Patricks in 1981. I always considered her to be the Grand Dame of the church. I was home last year in November for my Great Nieces Quince and a lot has changed and then again somethings never change. Urbana will always be home! Thank you for a great Blog and I hope one day Clint Eastwood will make a movie about your life or the life you remember so well.
Ebert: I remember the Ceduskys, especially your brother Danny, a pal.
Roger,
Beautiful post, as always. Thanks for sharing these memories with us.
I am utterly amazed at the detail of your experiences and the manner in which you are able to recall and recite them to your readers. I am half your age and would struggle to regurgitate the detail that so eloquently do. Are you aware of how special your capacity for memory is?
Also, one Urbana-Champaign note: I visited once in 2000 and had the distinct pleasure to sample Zorba's Greek restaurant. To this day, still the best gyros I have ever had!
Cheers!
Chris Ortman
Ebert: Must have been, if you rememeber it after nine years.
Mr. Ebert-
Your prose is exceptional, as always. I live in Urbana, and even spent a couple years (6-7 grade) living about 3 houses away from yours on Maple street. Now I live on Glover, a straight shot down Washington. I have a little girl and I hope her memories of growing up in Urbana are half as positive as yours are.
I worked for seven years at the Urbana Free Library. My most stirring moment at the circulation desk was seeing you come in through the front doors one morning when you were in town for the festival. Around here that means more than a visit from the Queen.
As others have noted the passage of time has changed our collective childhoods. I had a paper route, but my parents were divorced and I was exceptionally cynical from a young age. My teenage years were a nightmare- of the drugs and depression variety- not just a bad case of acne (although I had that too).
I look at my little girl and like every parent I worry for her. Her mother (my wife) and I would give our lives for her to have a safe and joyous childhood. Part of me wonders if it is still possible in this culture. Your writings left me sad and, strangely, burdened. But I am glad I read this memoir- it is a beautiful one and I am glad you took the time to share these memories. May Washington and Maple always be a place for children to grow and flourish. Many thanks.
I guess I'm pretty late getting to this one. It's been busy at work -- thank all that's holy.
I loved this, though. Reminded me of my own home town and recalled to my mind the fact that other people remember home in just the way I do. I feel less alone. Many it's crazy, but I think Roger would feel at home in my home town.
Roger,
Between your piece and the comments, I'm all soft and poetic inside (with thanx and a tippo to Wordsworth):
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
(Still ...)
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
'Nuff said.
Whereabouts in Urbana is the HAL Plant? I was hoping you would make mention of that, Urbana being the home of sentient computing, after all.
Ebert: It is within a 40-story-high black rectangular monolith on the site of the old lily pond, and for security reasons is cloaked in invisibility.
Though I only lived in Urbana for four years, it always felt like home to me. Many fond memories of devouring Hitchcock and Kurosawa flicks thanks to That's Rentertainment...
Roger--I am a C/U boy ("townie") who started U of I in Fall of '63. I was only 16 but not too young to be forced into uniform as required by all land grant colleges. My good fortune was to have as my freshman Rhetoric teacher Ms. Zoreh Tawakuli (sp?). She was beautiful and very smart and had a fabulous Iranian accent, and best of all, sang praises for THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. To further illustrate her genius, she invited you to speak to my class one day. You appeared on time with a huge stack of books that you insisted were "the most important books we could read." One, I remember, was THE ADVENTURE OF LEARNING IN COLLEGE. I didn't read it and I still feel guilty. I have read HUCK FINN many times and I guess if I could only have one book that would be it.
Congratulations on a spectacular career. Don't sweat the commemorative plaque. Every house deserves one. Keep writing. Kind regards. Brion Kerlin
Ebert: Was that book possibly The Community of Scholars, by Paul Goodman?
Roger,
Another wonderful blog post. You keep mentioning Chaz, and forgive me if I've missed the blog entry where you recount your romance. If you haven't written that yet, would you please ask Chaz if it would be OK? I'm sure many people would like to read about it. Thanks.
Did you take in a tea ceremony?
Not really. My visit had a different focus. I was among old friends I had never before met and at ease and home where my vocabulary consisted on a single word for thank you. It was great to have a common topic of Japanese cinema with an English graduate specially the famous Shakespeare transcreations. She said she weeps every time she sees Grave of Fireflies. The nuclear holocaust was perceptible as a palpable reality.
Only four days -more like four centuries.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
I enjoyed reading your remembrances, which tripped happy switches in my brain. I'm a Central Illinois boy, too, born and raised in southwest Champaign. My dad worked for the UI as a Civil Engineer. One of my childhood pals, Richard Foley, told me about this blog and left a comment a day or two ago. He and I became close friends playing sports together at Jefferson Junior High (now Middle School) and we enjoy a vital, lifelong relationship grounded, in part, in our shared experiences when we were boys.
I won't go into my personal recollections, which are many, varied, and wonderful. The one thing I wanted to mention is that my mother, Bernice Gifford, had you in nursery school, presumably when you were three or four years old. I don't remember the name of the nursery school or any of the details. After you had attained fame as a film reviewer she mentioned it to me and I tried to picture a smallish, oddly bespectacled version of the Roger Ebert I so enjoyed on Siskel and Ebert romping around the playground. (Your photos will allow me to now more accurately envision you). I suspect you have no memories of those very early years, but my mother remembered you, as, amazingly, she seemed to remember all of the children she taught over the years. She now resides at the Inman retirement home downtown, in the Alzheimer's unit.
I'm grateful to my parents (my Dad passed away last fall), all of the solid midwestern folk who invested in me as I was growing up, and the Champaign-Urbana community, for what I saw and experienced in those formative years. So much has changed since then. My wife and I have lived in the Seattle area for over 30 years, since I got my law degree at the University of Washington. I don't get back to Champaign-Urbana as often as I would like, but every visit brings back happy memories. Thanks again to you for pulling back the curtain and inviting me to once again look back in wonder.
Ebert: It was Mrs. Meadrow's Tots' Play School, and I remember a woman named Berenice, and being bitten twice by two different Meadrow dogs, both times because I tried to ride them. I was not at the time nor have I ever been since afraid of dogs. After the second experience, I get it that they don't like to be ridden.
Thank you, Roger, for taking us so openly into your past. I noticed that you look a lot like your mother.
Question: Did your parents get to see you on television?
Ebert: My mom did.
In the fall of 1966 when I became a freshman at the University of Illinolis it was orientation week filled with many interesting goings on.
I remember getting excited about the University Library and immediately went into it and up to the card catalog which took up at least 1500 square feet probably bigger than our house in Urbana in the 1950s!
I loved to go into the great main Reading Room that seemed to me to be as long as a football field and two and half or more stories high. It was beautifully decorated with fine wood carving with enormous oak tables that I am sure were there when my parents were students during and shortly after World War II.
After I got orders to go to Korea in the spring of 1972 I arranged an assignment in the Army Library at the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Korea. I worked at the Army Library at Fort Lewis, Washington part time and was able to use my contacts even as a lowly enlisted man to get help in getting a good assignment.
I spent two years working as a professional librarian albeit a lowly enlisted man with a master's in library science in the Army Library in Seoul. It was great. My wife finished Library School at Illinois and spent fifteen months in South Korea. Our first home was an apartment in a Korean building in Seoul with all the comfort of home, a hot plate, an electric frying pan, one of those little hotel type refrigerators. We even had a western style toilet that you sat on as opposed to a Korea one you stooped over!
I met many Koreans and had some Korean friends and worked part time in a poor Korean middle school teaching English conversation. I had to ride a bus about an hour to get there and walk up a hillside past rice paddies to a building with dirt floors and less than potbelly stove heating in the cold windy winters.
It was a great way to start married life and a much more interesting place to becoming a librarian. It gave much a lot more appreciation for my country and its wealth.
Every Christmas the Army imported Christmas trees from the United States for the soldiers and civilian employees. Because we had strict rationing every soldier and civilian could only buy one Christmas tree at the PX. My boss at the Yongsan Library wanted to make the Library as homey for the soldiers as she could so she wanted Christmas trees. She had the other two civilian librarians and me purchase our one tree for the library. I lived in a barracks the first Christmas and then our apartment was too small for one in subsequent years so it did not matter to me.
Imagine a country that is so rich and caring that it sends at that time about 35,000 soldiers to a country at least 5,000 miles from the west coast of the U.S. and spends the money to ship them Christmas trees each year to make them happier.
At the same time we had hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Vietnam which probably is at least twice as far from the west coast. Similar and probably greater numbers of soldiers were in Europe as well.
Ebert: I used to go into that reading room simply to...read. As a graduate student in English, I took a required course in how to use the library as a research resource, and loved it, partly because I could handle those awesome indexes and guides and card files. Just now I googled the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, and found it still exists, is digital of course, and probably more fascinating than ever.
Roger--I believe the book I was referring to (which I'm claiming you presented in Ms. Tawakuli's Rhetoric class!) was: The adventure of learning in college: An undergraduate guide to productive study by Roger Garrison
Regards. Brion Kerlin
Ebert: I don't recall it, but I was much under the influence of Paul Goodman at that time.
Roger,
You long ago joined the ranks of Mencken, G.B.S., Gore Vidal and A.J. Liebling . On any subject and contrary opinion they/you are worthy of study and enjoyment because of the passion,truth and style in all your works.
Growing up on a poorly paved road that nevertheless sliced a confident straight line through the Indiana countryside, I was always jealous of you people who were raised "in town." Your lives must be different, I thought, and somehow better: There were more of you there, and you were situated closer together, like family, which also meant that you had more friends' houses to run over to after school. When I hopped off the bus, I ran up my gravel drive, trying once more to flip open the front door of my proud little home to reveal (I prayed some of you could see, as you completed the climb up the hill and charged towards your next stop down the road, towards the city) a 19-inch television sitting in the corner of the living room, a plastic tree behind it draping shiny leaves over the VCR sitting on top, as if what forever seemed like the foreign, temporary Christmas surprise it once had been was in fact a permanent fixture, impressive surely to those of you who did not possess our power to capture and manipulate time and view the goings-on of the world on the very best Zenith they ever did make. On a TV tray, on a paper plate, apple butter toast, and on the set, cartoons, a ritual to be taken in solitude, a quiet only broken up by Mom's tune-humming clothes-folding; the sizzle-splatter of chickens or pork chops preparing themselves to be eaten, a rather willing self-immolation that would only surprise those who aren't children of their mothers; and, later, the faint chorus of Mom's bashful rendition of "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" or "Baby Love" or "Crazy" coming from the back corner of the back bedroom, where the record player was hidden beneath Dad's old sport coats. It was then that Mom felt compelled to drag the old vacuum out of the closet - the only thing around our house that wasn't so easily coaxed into action by Mom - and as it began to cough and scream, I retreated outside, to the woods that were stacked in heaps and dribbles behind our house and cast a long, unyielding shadow over the back half of our modest dwelling, making that back bedroom as dark as a keepsake chest, forbidden to all, it would seem, but especially me. The possibilities that resided out there underneath a great army of sycamores and sugar maples and their leaves forming a permanent quilt on the ground, endless! The cornfields that grazed the hips of our slender domicile, fitting us like a corset, stretched on for country acre after country acre of spellbinding maze and mystery to the twinkling lights in the distance that promised, or threatened, "civilization." Civilization, that's where you and your kind lived. How I envied you - you, living in the place that we were always going to, the place that we only visited, before returning to the place that you sometimes noted, in the sly, resentful tones with which you always spoke of the country, we had ALL come from, and you had had the good sense to leave in the dust of tossed gravel a generation or two before.
Ebert: I believe I should have headed out of town.
Thanks for the memories. Wonderful. Several of the comments talk about the Curetons and "their son Kirk." For the record, there were two sons. Kirk and Richard. I just knew you wanted to know that.
As long as we are making sure everyone is recognized,Richard Cureton is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the Cureton's address was 501 E Washington. The Ormiston's address was 411. Although we moved from 507 E Washington in 1965, whenever I drive down Washington Street, I still refer to the houses by the names of the people who owned them while I was growing up. I continue to come back to this blog and read the entries. The blog reminds me of why Urbana was and is special and how lucky I am that I grew up there in the 50's and 60's.
Ebert: As I mentioned, the Cureton boys were a little too young to show on our radar. But Tom and Portia Cureton were always especially nice to me, as were all the parents around. In those days we had a village to raise our children.
Yes, for me it will always be the Cureton home. And a great climbing tree out back.
I think the replies to your description of life as a child and the love that you engender is high praise for you. Your writing about childhood in a small town woke many memories in me despite the fact that I grew up on the South Side of Chicago. While our memories were a bit different, there were the same kinds of pleasant experiences. We walked alleys and smelled the flowers that grew up the wire fences. We ran to the park and rode our bicycles up to the bank parking lot where we played Nancy Drew. However, we spent a great deal more time debating what the story would be and who would play who than in actually acting it out.
However, it is your writing I wish to write about. I remember reading what I thought was your very first column in the Sun-Times, but it probably wasn't, just my first. You talked about going to the movies and buying a Slo Poke, which was my very favorite. It took at least an hour to eat and could be pulled into a long, sharp stick. Your column stuck with me as did your TV series on Bergman. He always had a frog in the movie somewhere. However, as I am now 67, I rarely remember anything correctly.
In the early 1970s, I attended Roosevelt U on the weekends and did a little work for Patrick Murphy who was running for state's attorney. His brother Jack would go to O'Rourke's and so did I. There you were, my movie hero sitting at the bar. I went up and sat down next to you to talk for a bit. You were kind and did. Thank you.
It was Rich Howell who told me to read this blog and I thank him for that.
By the way, through a series of events that had nothing to do with talent or education, I became a reporter for a weekly in Bourbonnais in 1977. The owner died and my husband and I wound up owning the paper and buying another in Chicago, The Beverly Review. We thought they would be something to sell when we retired. However, five of our six children are involved in the newspapers and to sell them would mean we would have to support them their spouses and their 11 children. Of course, in today's market, we probably wouldn't get much and we can only hope they survive.
Anyway, thank you for the years of movie reviews which guided our choices. You have a great talent and good ethics (despite writing the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls).
Ebert: So you've devoted your career to the best damn job in the whole damn world.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/the_best_job_in_the_world.html
I can only be jealous of all the people with whom you have worked, whose names are so familiar to me and who I would give a lot to have have met. My most famous person run in came when Ronald Reagan came to Bradley during his first presidential campaign. A friend in the radio business, a couple of guys from a local factory office and I were waiting in the bar of the hotel for his arrival. However, the secret service were not letting any of us near him. They locked us into the bar when he came through the lobby...all except my tall blond friend who had a radio sticker on her clip board. They let her watch the much tanned and heavily made up Reagan walk buy her. One of the factory guys was Jewish and want to call the ACLU. It was a good night.
You and I think it is the best damn job, but there are lots of people in these small communities who think it is only a damned job, but I have enjoyed it. Thanks.
Aloha, I first realized you were a UHS person of great distinction when Mr. Dan Perino attended my mother's 90th birthday at Paxton Shriners Home about six years ago, he and I emailed for a while and he gave me the scoop on our famous Urbana student!! I had watched you on tv and our son always said, well did you watch Ebert Mom, he says the movie is thumbs up, and my answer was, itisMr.Ebert.
I graduated a few years before you so certainly I was not in your group of pals. The class of 1957 was a wonderful class and we lived in a great small town, at that time. The fireflies were there every summer and we got the jars out with instructions to wash your hands because they can make you go blind if you rub your eyes. We all believed Mom.
So many memories and great times of growing up there. I left Urbana and I am now living in Honolulu, Hi since 1960 but still remember those lazy summers of little kids having such great times that the children of today will sadly, not experince.
We lived on Urbana Avenue for many years and attended Thornburn Junior High...the FlatIron Building at the base of the business district. Such good memories of it all.
Have your heard from Mr. Perino, the best of the best Band Leader in the World! I know he was having some medical problems.
Thank you for putting all of us on the map, especially with our son Kele.
God bless you and keep you always!! Aloha with love, Martha Mock Hara
Ebert: Thornburn had great architecture. My friends the Rasmussens lived across the schoolyard. Saw Dan Perrino at Ebertfest. He's healthy but having eyesight problems.
OMG - WPGU - when I was a student at the U of I 1956-7, I used to have a radio show late Saturday afternoon to early evening. It was a call in to have your favorite song played while you were getting ready for a date show. "Volare," "Memories Are Made of This," "Chances Are," "You Send Me." None of that Elvis stuff or any rock 'n roll for these college sophisticates. The radio station went out only to the college and nearby neighborhoods. Do you really remember hearing WPGU? And our station master, Bill Carmody? At 18, I wasn't sexy and I wasn't hip. Oh, I so wanted to be hip and I used my smoothest sexiest voice. Oh well, the boys liked it.
Ebert: I was actually on WPGU--a morning show, until I got fired for playing a duet between Polly Bergen and her dad of "Shifting, Whispering Sands" one time too often. I was making a point. I forget what it was.
G'day! I’m so glad you CAN go home again. My dad was one of those pipe-smoking English professors at the U of I, and he was most surprised when I tackled Thomas Wolfe’s “You Can’t Go Home Again” in high school. He didn’t know that you had convinced me that I should, probably at an Echo Late Night.
I have to say I much prefer your writing, but of course, until you had actually taken Mrs. Seward’s Rhetoric class and truly understood the meaning of “deadwood”, you couldn’t possibly deserve an A ... whether or not you were already writing professionally! My mother used to sit with the rhet word list nearby when she read The New Yorker, a goldmine for words like “clandestine”.
Last week, I suddenly thought of the insulated metal milk box on the back steps (of West Oregon St), and it’s weird to discover it on your page now. Telepathy? And I was also thinking about the fireflies, caught while playing Kick the Can or Sardines, and how cruel it must have been (but didn’t seem so at the time), to go to sleep with them in a little jar, with holes punched in the lid, of course, where they sparkled away in the dark.
I haven’t been back to Urbana since a quick stop-over at Christmas in 1968 on my migratory way to Australia, but I agree that all of that stuff is stored away in some dusty corner of the brain. I was reminded by a previous post that you announced my name on the radio one Saturday morning to say I’d won a record album (worth $2.98, if memory serves). I don't remember the Polly Bergen duet, but I have certainly enjoyed your dusting – please continue!
Ebert: That's right, albums were $2.98.
Ebert: I remember your dad so well. Arthur, right? And you, Irrepressible. You had to move to Australia just to stretch. Didn't you throw out your lumbar with excessive hula-hooping?
Yep, Art Scott. He really enjoyed having you in his class – said you always stirred things up and got everyone really talking. So I said you hadn’t changed a bit ... you always loved questioning everything.
I got such a shock umpty-something years ago when I turned on the telly and saw you and Gene arguing – on Donahue, I think it was, in MY kitchen outside Sydney. Felt very Twilight Zone, seeing an old Urbana pal there. Now with cyberspace, I can chat online with family and friends all over the place. Who’d ever a thunk it? I still have a passion for learning and language, and now there are so many resources, I just love it.
Doing the Twist (badly) and slipping when I was 19 wrecked my knee, which has finally been replaced, plus I had a couple of back repairs necessitated by many years of chasing sheep and cattle on a rough quad bike, but what the hey...I had a marvellous time getting in this condition!
Me again--born Urbana 1946, U of I '63-'71. A couple of obscure memory joggers for you: Richard _______(?) passing out Bibles on the steps of the main library to anyone who promised to read them. I heard he was a night custodian at the DI. I'm sure you remember "The Green Cauldron", a small booklet published occasionally to highlight the best essays by freshman rhetoric students. One issue gave top prize to an essay which turned out to be plagiarized quite obviously from READER'S DIGEST or some such rag. Quite an embarrassment to the English Department faculty that chose the winners! Brion Kerlin
Ebert: I have momentarily forgotten Richard's last name, but I knew him well. His arrest on the University steps helped to lead to the establishment of a free speech area.
All of the St. Mary's group are proud of you. You have brought back so many old memories for me. Thank you! I can't remember if you were a year ahead of me or after me. It has been a few days ago you know. Marcella F. and I were talking about you a few years ago. We all had good memories of a very nice boy we grew up with. John F. and Shelia B. also had colorful memories of you. Quite a few of us got together again in Las Vegas after so many years apart. Almost all of us grew up to be very sucessful but you put us on the map! Good luck & God bless you in all you do.
PS: If you don't remember the names above just contact me directly at my email address and I will give them to you. Just did not want to put them for all the world to see without their permission to do so.
Hi, Roger. I grew up watching you on the rare Sundays I was too sick to go to church, as that was the time your show with Gene Siskel aired in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. What a surprise when I realized after moving here last fall that my new home of Urbana, IL was your hometown. I began reading your column in the News-Gazette; my husband's colleagues said that we needed to make plans "now" to attend Ebertfest; our first childless date was to see "Casablanca" at the beautiful Virginia Theatre on the street that honorarily bears your name. After reading several of your pieces, it was obvious that you were much more than a movie critic. You are a writer who relishes in the joys of youth and who appreciates his hometown, quirks included. This piece reminds me of my childhood in a mountainous, rural community, something that I think of often and with fondness, especially now that I have a small child and am approaching forty. I think of you each time I ride my bike (true to nostalgic form, a 1967 Ladies Schwinn) past your boyhood home (which, by the way, looked much better in stucco). Next year my son will be in kindergarten and no conflicting schedules or lack of babysitters will keep me from Ebertfest. You'll know me; I'll be the brown-haired thirtysomething with the Southern accent who just wants to shake your hand and say hello. Thanks for being my Sunday morning friend.
Ebert: Welcome to the Center of the Universe.
Roger.......John and I have the same memories and when you spoke of the bells of Altgeld Hall I felt such a peaceful feeling. We both attended the University of Illinois and remember all of the buildings and wonderful times we had in Champaign/Urbana. John lived in Urbana for quite some time before moving to Champaign. He then went on to the University of Illinois - even though it has been fifty+ years, you may have remembered him playing football for the U of I. We are saddened by the fact that Chief Illiniwek is no longer a part of the Illini festivities - we still feel the spirit very much in our hearts. Our best to you - Cindy and John Easterbrook
Ebert: I remember John. I miss the Chief.