By Sridhar Pappu
But right now the Dirksen Federal Building seems as distant as Guam. Bulldog and I are in a family restaurant in Evanston. As he slides into the corner booth, he lets out an “oooooh,” explaining that his back’s been killing him lately, though it’s nothing compared to last year, when he tore his left rotator cuff and had to have surgery. For six weeks he couldn’t come to a restaurant like this because he couldn’t bend his arm. Putting his wallet in the left back pocket was out too. He couldn’t go golfing or fish or drive the Caddie. “I couldn’t even dress myself,” he says. “For Christsake, I’m a southpaw.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Still, he’s kept plenty busy since his retirement. He’s narrated six A & E Biography shows, the last one on gangster Baby Face Nelson. He also served as a consultant for one of the network’s programs on Helen Brach. Last year he filled in on Cameron Langford’s WMAQ radio show 20 times, and he wrote a book, Thirty Years in the Trenches: Covering Crooks, Characters and Capers.
“I think we’ve lost something,” he says. “I definitely do. Maybe I’m wrong, but you don’t see those types of guys anymore. I think it’s all over. I don’t think people come from the same bottle anymore. I don’t think we have as many characters as we had in those days. Maybe it had something to do with the flight to suburbia, television making us all think alike. I don’t think Navy Pier has that many good stories. No, I just don’t think so. No.”
The Lapper?
As we walk east, the Baha’i Temple looms at the end of the street, just on the other side of an old sanitation canal.
“You’d always tell us about the crimes.”
