With the windows wide open

“I like to drive with the windows open. I mean, before you know it, you’re going to spend plenty of time sealed up in a box anyway, right?” Tom Magliozzi

The first time I heard Tom and Ray Magliozzi was on a Saturday morning running errands. The car radio was tuned in to WBEZ, Chicago’s public radio station.

Saturday morning and public radio were as much a part of weekends here in Chicagoland as high school football games and caramel/pecan coffee cake from the corner bakery.  As I drove, two guys who, except for their strong Boston accents, talked and laughed and could just as easily been sitting around the kitchen table of my childhood. There they were, on 91.5,  bantering back and forth, one ribbing the other about who was smarter – and they were discussing cars!  Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers; graduates of MIT who managed to engineer a living talking to folks from around the United States about their cars.

As time went on, Car Talk became a Saturday morning ritual.  Cleaners, grocery, softball practice – and Car Talk. Whether making the bed, folding laundry, or heading to a cross-country meet, Car Talk was our conversation of choice. Tom or I would make sure the other was “tuned in” if we weren’t together – and if we were, we laughed out load, puzzled over “The Puzzler”,  and smiled as the audio credits rolled, attributing the show to illustrative talents such as the law firm that represented them. Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe.

They were that kind of funny!

Car Talk. A radio talk show as much for women as men.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi reminded me of my father, uncles, and the rest of the gang “discussing” life’s events around the table of my life, while they also taught me a bit about cars and a bit about life as big brother, Tom, and younger brother, Ray, gave folksy advice to listeners calling in, with some armchair therapy along with it.

Tom Magliozzi has passed on to that great garage in the sky. My Tom sent me an email message with the news while I was in a meeting on Monday. That sort of news just couldn’t wait until I returned home, and I know it is one sad bit of news Tom did not want me to hear on the radio, the media that mad the Magliozzi boys famous.

As I read the message,  I swear I could hear Tom Magliozzi’s infectious laugh, the windows to his car wide open, as he entered the Pearly Gates Auto Shop.

Image from Boston Globe via Google. Also on Car Talk website.

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Doin’ the Pigeon

Did you know that the names Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street were rumored to be plucked from the iconic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Do you remember Bert and Ernie, the policeman and the taxi driver of fictional Bedford Falls? Do you know the famous Muppets, Bert and Ernie? I adore both sets of buddies; partners in adventures and friendship and it really matters not if one set inspired the other. They make me grin and feel good and are a reminder of friends sticking together, no matter what, like setting up a honeymoon for George and Mary or involving a rubber ducky on Sesame Street.

The Sesame Street Bert came to mind yesterday as I headed home from the library, listening to our local public radio station, WBEZ, where a discussion aired on Rick Kogan’s program about a news segment exposing the deportation of some seventy (70) pigeons from a Chicago neighborhood. In short, a Chicago alderman had arranged for an Indiana farmer to net and remove pigeons from his ward, stirring up questions of whether or not this was legal, what would happen to the pigeons, who paid for the pigeon transport, the crossing state lines, etc.

Pigeons can be problematic. If one lives or works or visits Chicago, or any metropolis, he or she is a target for random pigeon poop; a plop on the shoulder or, horrors, one’s hair, is a risk one takes walking in the Big City. A short sit upon a park bench is enough to attract a flash mob of  pigeons, cooing in unison, bobbing about for morsels of bread, popcorn, or whatever crumbs may congregate in a coat pocket or purse corner. There are even monetary fines in some places for feeding pigeons on street corners, by golly by gee, but a posse herding pigeons like a Wild West show seems a bit drastic from my dove cote here on the Cutoff.

The radio segment finished as I tossed my mail into the drive-up box. As I headed home,  I found myself humming “Doin’ the Pigeon”, thinking about Bert and Ernie, and Bert and Ernie, how pigeons stick together, and of how, when our girls were little, Jennifer, Katy and I would bob our heads and pump our knees and dance around the living room, doing the Pigeon.

C’mon, folks. How about clicking on the video above, sit through the pigeon clip, and do the Pigeon with Bert. C’mon. You can do it!

Bert and Ernie, from It’s a Wonderful Life. Image courtesy of Wikepedia

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