Who The Heck Is This Guy? (Hint: Just Me)

 I’m a 75 year old white guy. I was going to say “dude,” but implies a certain level of “coolness” that I have never achieved.

I was born and raised in Chicago. I moved to Wisconsin to finish school, met the first woman of my dreams, and stayed there with her for over forty years. Her name was Cathie.

While there, I worked several jobs. A stock boy in a women’s clothing store and a private security guard were menial minimum wage positions. Factory jobs in a packaging company and a battery manufacturer was better paying union work that helped pay bills.

I got my Masters degree and eventually taught high school English for almost 35 years. I loved that job and probably would still be doing that if the Republicans in power had not taken away union rights. So I retired to a decent pension and early Social Security.

I wrote some poetry, had some published. For about three years, I wrote a weekly column for the Racine Journal Times. They have some of them online still. Some are pretty good if I do say so myself.

I played some bad golf. I still followed the Cubs and White Sox, but one of the requirements of loving a Wisconsin woman meant that I had to become a fan of the Packers.

I got to spend three more years with Cathie until she passed in 2013.

When she did I picked up my old guitar and started playing more and writing some songs. I started going to open mics. One year I went to 215 of them.

One night before Thanksgiving I was at a bar listening to a band I know. A friend of mine called a friend and invited her over. She ended up being the second woman of my dreams. Her name is Susan

We started playing music together. We are Wattle & Daub. We have three albums out and make tenths of cents on the streaming services.

We get some gigs in the Chicago area, mostly northern Illinois and SE Wisconsin. We don't stray from home too much or too far anymore. She gives private lessons, I play some golf with long time friends. We root for different baseball teams. We keep busy and are still writing songs, playing them when we can.

We are more active in our local folk club, The Lake County Folk Club. We host the monthly open mic, play in the monthly song circle/jam, and help out with a monthly concert.

We have several new songs we're working the kinks out of, and eventually we'll make tenths of cents with them on the streaming places. Our latest is "Patch of Blue."

I am enjoying life. I’m like this blog site, but am also posting at a new place called Substack. I realize that it’s really nothing more than a blog like this, but it does have a feature where it will notify you if you subscribe. 

I’d appreciate if you’d subscribe. I don’t expect to make money at this. But, I play folk music. There’s no money in that either.