Being the fundamentally positive guy I am I view the passing of Halloween with a sigh, because I know that it is the last of the fun holidays until New Years. Every year, Thanksgiving seems to come sooner and sooner, often without time enough for me to do the ‘early shopping’ I have planned on doing each year since I got a drivers license. Then the time between ‘Black Friday’ and Christmas is spent at a dead run completing familial obligations, work projects, aforementioned holiday shopping, not to mention my own packed videogame and napping schedule. This is a stressful time of year for everyone so it is only natural that tempers flare and tensions rise.
But in anticipation of that very event, I propose that we in the NWI set take a moment to look at the things that make us one united people. We should brace ourselves against the seasons chill by celebrating our common heritage that comes from our version of oral tradition. We had no Aesop to tell us stories, or medicine men to explane the dancing of the celestial bodies. What we had was something very different, but no less binding in the common experience amongst the region natives…Chicago market UHF television commercials from the 1980s and 1990s.
Those dopy, shoestring budgeted, thirty second spots where a connecting gossamer thread amongst people of this area. One can achieve instant connection with a Rat just by reminding them of Empire Carpet and one of their lame incentive programs. “You mean all I have to do is re-carpet my house at a cost of thousands of dollars and you’ll give me a Michael Jordan branded basketball?” I would hazard to guess that not one of my friends have been on the corner or York and Roosevelt roads, but they are very well aware that you will always save more money. Not only that but it would be pure muscle memory to fan out cash and hold it in front of you while you where saying it.
Like any great appreciator of a medium I have my favorites. But it really is hard not pick a few that absolutely stand apart. For instance, there was a commercial that would always play in the middle of the day, like during Small Wonder reruns that would comfort you by telling you that no matter what condition it was in, “That old car is worth money!” All you had to do was call Victory Auto Wreckers and POOF, a fat guy in Ditka specs would show up to haul your jalopy away and leave you with three -count ‘em, three- twenty dollar bills!
Imagine if you will that you are not actually you but rather two chubby girls from the south side. You are discussing a mia culpa with yourself over not having proper car insurance. Hark! What is that?! It’s EAGLE MAN! Some dingus in a rented mascot suit on top of your 81 civic intoning with his flat, Leonard Nemoy, voice “I’ve got something for you.”. Then he squats and Eagle Man lays an egg. No sooner can you wrap your collective head around this act of spontaneous generation - that flies in the face of all modern reproductive science - the egg instantly hatches and a tiny eagle chick with a insurance invoice clutched in its beak wags its head about causing the both of you to say “look at those low rates!” That commercial was so horrible it was fun, and I am genuinely sad that the current generation of kids might never see the jewel of advertising. Watching it now is like warm hug.
Growing up where I did, we got the Chicago channels but my parents would rarely take us to the city. So the places in these commercials became little more than ideas in our heads. Some of them took on a life and imagination all their own, because we never saw them. In that way Carson’s Ribs became a fucking Valhalla to me. If I could live my life in a morally upright fashion and avoid temptation I would be rewarded in the afterlife with heaps of smoky-sweet barbecue ribs so famous they where on an episode of M*A*S*H* in a place known as Carson’s. I could even take ‘em to go if I where so inclined. Years later my fascination with Carson’s ribs had not abated at all, but I have as yet never gone. I was and am afraid that no barbecue joint built my mortal hands can reach the level of majesty that I had mentally constructed as a child. I just hope that when I go to the halls of my fathers, probably following some embarrassing accident involving drinking lawn darts, that place my soul resides in has ample stock of those white cartons I remember so fondly from the commercials.
I know that all media markets have their own local staples as far as commercials go, and Chicago is not special in that way. If you grew up outside Detroit or Atlanta I’m sure you have some doozies to share, but there is something very special about dispelling the holiday tension by singing “Brown’s chicken! It tastes better!” Immediately we all know we are one people with a common heritage. It’s odd, like we all have the same tattoo or campaigned in Napoleon’s army together. It’s a bond that is stronger than the holiday bullshit and I am thankful for it.
If you should see me in poor spirits during the coming months, please, just sing to me Empire Carpetings phone number and just see if that doesn’t put a smile on my face.
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