Well, our "Big Day" (Valentines' Day, Carol's nunnayer bizniss Birthday and our 49th Wedding Anniversary) came off pretty well. In spite of some "old married couples acting like old married couples" sniping, squabbling and screaming. You need to do that every now and then just to clear the air, you know? Brings you closer together in the end so long as no sharp, pointy objects or loaded firearms become involved.

We didn't do too much special. I assembled a book shelf from Amazon that we wanted (they finally sent us the right one after two--count 'em, TWO!--cases of receiving the wrong book case back around Christmastime. Same style, but 5' tall instead of the 3' tall we'd ordered (they would no way fit the space available) and they were happily taken back for full credit both times. Although a bit of schlepping was involved. But for Valentines Day, I thought I'd try it one more time, and damn if they didn't come through with the right thing. Finally. Maybe Amazon's motto should be: "We get it right...eventually." Fortunately, it could indeed be assembled "with simple hand tools" by anyone who ever owned a classic British sports car. Or a wheelbarrow, which is almost the same thing.

For dinner, I made Carol my famous (well, semi-famous) "Twice Cooked Chicken and Root Vegetables" followed by entirely too much dessert. That's another thing about getting older. The plumbing issues...

I even cleaned up the kitchen afterwards. Not to Carol's standards, of course (don't be ridiculous!), but not bad for a guy with my general hygiene profile and a personal history that includes coming home from Boy Scout camp-outs with the sticky/gooey remains of three or four samores matted into my uniform and the lining of my sleeping bag. Followed, years later, by messy, oft-smelly stints in unsupervised, off-campus housing at college, several low-dollar apartments with far too many residents and habitually angry landlords and the highly populated-and-polluted communal house I shared for awhile whilst working for that hippie leather clothing company in Oakland, CA during my odyssey years. The one with 8 employees and 14 "partners."

But I digress...

Speaking of those long-ago college years (I DO remember some of it), my blood ran ice cold the other night when the news of that horrible and senseless shooting on the Michigan State campus hit the airwaves. I attended that enormous and truly handsome institution for the first two years of my so-called "college career" (a career as yet to be finished, BTW) and seeing all those cop cars and ambulances--lights flashing--lined up alongside Berkey Hall, where I once attended classes...well, it brought a lot of things home in a way they never came home before. I'm not going to get all political here (in case you haven't noticed, it doesn't do any good) and I should mention that I have a very dear and responsible, gun-owner brother-in-law who feels about cool, powerful guns the same way I feel about cool, powerful classic, sports and racing cars. That said, we're the only country on earth with this serious a problem, and I'm thinking that legal gun ownership, at the very least, should require a license and mandatory background check, and that gun and ammunition manufacturers and sellers (both commercial and fly-by-night) should have some legal/financial responsibility and culpability for the damage and heartache caused when these things get into the wrong hands and are used in the wrong way.

You can take my soap box now, sonnyboy. I'm done.

And hold all those outraged counter-arguments and hate mail. I've already heard it...

This past week featured the Chicago Auto Show's Thursday press day and I was eager to attend. If for no other reason that to see how many and which manufacturers, in this day of the Home Screen Universe and touch-less business transactions, still believe in the Auto Show circuit as an effective way to get their models and messages to the public. And the press.

To my eyes, there was more space taken up by fewer brands this time and, IMHO, Subaru blew everybody away with their massive and impressive, Hollywood-esque, Disneyworld-scale display-cum-production-cum-presentation that didn't say much about performance figures or features but instead orbited somewhere around a love of/respect for and commitment to preserve, protect and defend...I don't know, something about the family (young, vibrant, morally committed and eminently photogenic, of course), the great outdoors (particularly our wonderful national parks) and our wonderful, beloved American pets. To which end they had a siamesed pair of adoption shelter-run puppy-petting pens with adorable, up-for-adoption puppies for your enjoyment, entertainment and beguilement. See "awwww-inspiring" pic below:

These are three of litter of oh-so-adorable Boxer/Chihuahua pups that you couldn't help but fall in love with. Now some might say that this is going for the low-hanging fruit (I mean, who doesn't love puppies?), but Subaru has walked the walk as well as talking the talk, what with big donations to both our national parks (good for them!) and various charities. Including local charities in the communities where their dealers (pardon me, make that "retailers" in Subaru speak) have their showrooms and ply their trade.

Tom Doll, a trained accountant who left that gig, joined Subaru and rose through the ranks to become CEO in this part of the world, gave a really interesting, insightful and even inspirational talk at the Auto Show's Chicago Economic Club luncheon. He was honest about where Subaru had come from ("Our original Subaru 360 wasn't a very good car"), their David-and-Goliath(s) battle to survive in North America, and some very accountant-like assessments of the challenges Subaru--and the auto industry as a whole--face now and will be facing in the future. Sure, he understands the imperative and implications of the current move and mandate regarding Electrification. But he's concerned (or maybe "curious" might be a better word?) as to whether the market, the manufacturers and the infrastructure will be able to absorb, assimilate and accommodate the goals of this new, non-market-driven, "handed down from Mt. Sinai" industrial direction. My choice of words, BTW, not his.

In any case, he did an impressive job. I remember working on a few clapped-out examples of the old, flat-4, "sounds like a VeeDub" 70s Subarus when we had our shop not long after Carol and I were married. I remember the long, straight stalk of a floor shifter that sprouted up from the floormats like something out of a school bus. They weren't especially good looking, made a lot of noise and didn't have much in the way of performance as I recall. But they were kind of rugged, and seemed to respond well to being beaten unmercifully by people with thin wallets and no mechanical sympathy whatsoever. How exactly this morphed and evolved into the "family-and-environment friendly/one-with-the-earth-and-cosmos" Subaru of today represents a marketing-cum-mission statement message to all those other manufacturers. Yeah, it's a good car. Ticks all the boxes. And still rugged and even practical. But the way they've made themselves perceived--and, again, by walking the walk as well as talking the talk--has a lot of other car-brand folks, who spend their time talking about "features," "fuel mileage" and "identity," muttering into their morning oatmeal: "Geez, why didn't we think of that first..."

Other things of note on the show floor:

Did I read that right? A tree frog-green Lamborghini for over $2,000,000? And why would anyone want a a ridiculously expensive, high-luxury off-roader from Bentley or Rolls or Maserati or whomever? Just throw your muddy boots and all your gear, dead grouse or soon-to-be-smelly brook trout in back and let's take off for a Prosecco and a manicure...

Alfa had their pretty new "Tonale" small SUV hybrid on display with absolutely zero hoopla (I accidentally misread it as "Tamale," which did not endear me to the Stellantis representatives...and what the hell is a "Stellantis" anyway. Reminds me of when Mazda, whose cars and company I like very much, had their "Sky Active" motors and drivelines.

Hey, it doesn't have to MEAN anything, so long as it rolls mellifluously off the tongue...

BTW, Alfa is sitting an a LOT of un-bought sedans and SUVs right now, and I've got to say that I really love the damn things. They look beautiful, drive superbly and offer a combination of style, exclusivity and fun that are unique to the brand. Then again, I'm a longstanding Alfa nut (my great Alfa friend and onetime zone rep Craig Morningstar always called it "Alfa Queer") not to mention that "depreciation" and "resale value" are terms usually whispered under one's breath at an Alfa dealership. Then again, as I've advised many times, the best time to shop is when they're desperate to move units, and the best day of all to shop for a car is the last business day of February. Right at the end of the work day when everybody in the showroom is getting ready to switch off the lights, pack up and go home. Or maybe out for a few stiff drinks if it's been an even worse-than-usual February. And even better if there's a storm raging outside, ten inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is hovering near zero. See, it's the end of the shortest sales month of the year--even in a leap year--and you can rest assured that things have been pretty quiet all month, as the excitement, sparkle and sheen have long-since faded from all those sleek and exciting new models that debuted in the fall. And wouldn't the beleaguered salesman (and his boss, the even-more-beleaguered sales manager) like to put one more unit on the board before the doors are locked for the last time and another forgettable February fades into history?

One other thing from the Auto Show. Used to be that manufacturers brought all sorts of "dream cars" and "concept cars" to the auto show floor. "Halo" cars that were supposed to make you think or believe that the beige 4-door family sedan you really needed to buy shared the same, freewheeling spirit and technological DNA (and maybe even a similar driving experience?) as that showcar up on its elevated, rotating platform that had fins and a canopy like a damn Sabre jet and no place to carry all the baseball bats and mitts, the little leaguers that went with them or the family groceries.

But I loved those dream cars. Mostly for the way they made me feel.

In fact, I remember an incredibly indelible personal experience from the 1954 Chicago Auto Show. I would have been exactly 9 years old, and my family went to see the show (at the old Amphitheatre location before McCormick Place even existed), and I became fixated/mesmerized/captivated by the emerald-green, bubble-top Pontiac Bonneville Special 2-seater show car on display. So much so that I decided I needed to go back for a second look. And it was there, standing in front of its low, carnivorous mouth topped with fluted chrome racing stripes that disappeared into dark, ominous hood scoops, that I realized my mom and dad and brother were nowhere around.

How could this happen?

But it HAD!

I was surrounded by knees, thighs and trousers I didn't know (your view is somewhat different at 9-and-a-few-months years old) and I could feel the fear and dread welling up inside of me. Sure, I was in trouble. That went without saying. But I was also L-O-S-T in a swirling and ominous crowd of strangers. I could feel my face starting to glow hot red like Hal the computer's eye-lens in Stanley Kubrick's majestic but generally unfathomable 2001, A SPACE ODYSSEY.

I decided to seek out a policeman. Or an usher. ANYBODY in an effing uniform.

I found a likely pant's leg with a stripe down the side and tugged at it. The cop (or whatever he was) understood my problem in a heartbeat:

"You lose your parents, sonny?"

"Yes," I admitted. And promptly burst into tears.

Well, the cop took me to a room that they have for lost boys and unlucky pickpockets, and soon enough they got word out on the PA (they'd given me an ice cream and I was down to just sniffling now) and what seemed like hours later, my mom and dad and brother finally appeared. I knew they'd be angry, but they also looked relieved (they couldn't hide it), and after the requisite hugging and haranguing were over and we were on our way back to our car, my dad finally asked: "What the hell happened to you??!!"

"I wanted another look at that 2-seater Pontiac with the bubble top."

I thought he was going to yell at me. But he didn't. He just looked down, squeezed my hand and said. "I kinda liked that one, too..."

BTW, Pontiac made two of them, one bronze and one green, so they could debut on the same 1954 weekend at two different auto shows, one in New York and one in California. Here's the one I didn't see in Chicago: