RIP Uncle Lar

From the Chicago Tribune:

Larry Lujack, legendary Chicago DJ, dies at 73

You can't quite see the Chicago skyline from my mom's back yard, but its presence -- the massive gravity well of Chicago's culture and commerce -- shaped so much of my late childhood and adolescence.

It was so big, you see. So damn big. It went on and on forever.

And so loud.

It was the place where nearly all the men of our village went off to in the morning: they jammed themselves into commuter trains that whooshed away to the Big City, there to do incomprehensible grown-up things, while their wives stayed home, kept house, had babies, made sure the library hummed, and drank.

Much of our teevee came from there. All the radio. All the weather. All the news, written in that distinctive Chicago style.  Chicago in those days took its meat-and-potato public spectacle pleasures in sports, food, newsprint and radio, which is why, just to be heard over the din of the 'el' and the roar of the trading pits, the lords and ladies of food, sports, morning radio and lurid tales of gangsters and corrupt pols had to be larger than life.

For all his faults, Uncle Lar rode with the best of them.