The Last Interview at WGN

I just finished up my last interview at WGN in the Chicago Tribune tower.  The revered station is moving across the river to 303 E Wacker and this would be it. It was the last time I would wait in the lobby of the Tribune building with the quotes from Presidents, poets, philosophers carved into the granite walls. The last time to go up to the seventh floor with WGN on the wall and walk past pictures of greats past and present. This last time was on Labor Day and the lights were off which made the old black and white photos more of their time.

I sat in the green room and waited once again listening to Rick Kogans interview before I went on. I held my book Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair and readied myself. It is a ritual that I had followed many times going  back to my novel Rocket Man. Kogan is one of the few men who still read books in Chicago and then have authors on his show.  He is one of the greats of Chicago journalism and harkens back to a time when writers and reporters all gathered at Billy Goats tavern on lower Wacker.

And then I am in the studio looking out the window at the Wrigley building and Michigan Avenue below. The gargoyles sit on the ledges and the speaker warns us we have thirty seconds. Rick and I make small talk and then we are on and for next thirty minutes we talk about the book like two old friends. And then it is over and I'm back out on Michigan Avenue. It is raining and I walk over the bridge and look down on the Chicago river and then over at the Tribune building.

Time passes.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Interview with Rick Kogan WGN

The WGN Rick Kogan Show On a Snowy Night in Chicago

It takes forever to get there but you make it and you are hungry. You duck into Billy Goats and stare at the old journalists on the walls while you eat your two cheeseburgers chips no fries. There is John Belushi on the wall. Hes gone too. But you are there to go on at ten with one of the few real  journalists still left. Rick Kogans show is unique. He reads the books and wants to talk about them. As you emerge from the underground on the slushy sidewalks of Michigan Avenue you can feel Studs Terkel and Nelson Algren maybe Al Capone. They are all there on this cold wintry night.

But you are there to do the show and so you wait across the street  in a Starbucks and kill time. The Tribune Tower is massive and you can see the WGN studio through the window. You used to live not far from the studio in a high rise but that was a long time ago before kids and the suburbs. But the books always pull you back into the city You know you will be up back here one day with all those dead Chicago authors.

So you walk up and down Michigan Avenue and the snow is coming down harder. Not many people out now. It is Sunday night after all. A ten o'clock slot of live radio for thirty minutes is coveted. Especially with a man who can talk books. You finish a cigarette and look at the clock. Its cold. It's time to go into that Chicago night again and fill the air waves. Last of the Mohicans.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

WGN with Rick Kogan

On a Sunday night on the top of the Tribune is the WGN studio where Rick Kogan broadcasts his After Hours show. One of the remaining book shows in Chicago and you want to be on it. Because not only does Rick read your book he talks intelligently about it and you get to sit there and enjoy the company of the newspaper man with a literary nose and believe me when I say he is the last of the Mohicans because newspaper men belong to the last century.

And you have thirty minutes to talk about your book and writing. An eternity in radio time on a station the size of WGN (50KW) and you get to beam out across the state on a Sunday night in September while the city nurses its' first Bears defeat and everyone is pulling down the windows because those first cool nights have rolled in like an early messenger of the winter to come. But for now you concentrate on the task at hand.

And the red light flashes and Rick nods to the producer to cut the music and then you just roll. And he is a pro because he leads the interview and lets you ramble and then takes it over when you veer and you manage to get in all the information (website, signings, multiple books) and you chat off the air and you know some of the same people by now and then you are going back down the elevator past those marble quotes on the wall and you know the digital world is out there still...
but for a moment you saw something greater.

Something better.

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