Summit Wellness: Gratitude - "Brush With the Ordinary"

By Matt Anthony - Summit FM Digital Media Specialist

I had already plowed through a half-pack of cigarettes, and it wasn’t even noon yet. The workday traffic on Michigan Avenue was consistently heavy and loud, making downtown Chicago feel as though it was audibly inhaling and exhaling on its own.

I was left with my own devices, as it were. Donna was embedded in a nursing conference. So, I’d decided to entertain myself in the heart of ‘The City With The Big Shoulders,’ as any red-blooded Midwesterner would, at least before the bars open: by plowing through stacks of vinyl at a record store.

Before diving in, I stood outside of the entrance and sucked in a couple more drags off my Marlboro Light. Just then, a taxi pulled up, and out of it sprinted a short man in a long black trench coat, his dark mane blowing madly in the morning air of the Windy City, and into the record store he went.

Was that Richard Lewis?

I rudely flicked the butt into the street and peered inside the glass. The man in the black trench coat handed a store employee a sheet of paper, and the employee hurriedly made his way through the store with it.

That is Richard Lewis.

I walked in, immediately slammed in the nostrils with that glorious aroma of vintage decay that can only be experienced inside a record haunt. That store employee was literally running through the store, snatching up various album jackets and placing them under his arm. I moved closer to the man in the black coat, where I received indisputable confirmation.

I was a fan of Richard Lewis’s comedic patois because I probably felt similar bouts of anxiety and neuroses, and the very topic that comprised much of his routine seemed to be in abundant display that morning. He nervously bounced between fixing his gaze on the waiting taxi to checking on the status of the store employee’s search-skills to frantically glancing at his watch.

Sheepishly, I walked down the aisle next to where he stood, and then he suddenly turned around and made eye contact with me. I reached over the rows of vinyl and extended my hand. He clasped on.

“Hey, man, I really enjoy your stuff,” I mumbled.

“Appreciate it, man, thanks,” he replied. 

And then, as if on cue, the store employee appeared with a stack of 8 or 9 albums and a credit card.

“Hey, thanks a lot,” Richard Lewis murmured, tucking the vinyl under his arm, sprinting through the front door, and into the cab, where it raced off into the late morning air.

The brush with fame. Why do we remember it? Why does it make such an impact?

In this business of broadcasting, many of us have been in the presence of artists, bands, and sports-figures, and interacting with them is, in some ways, a perk of the position. Interviewing Tom Hamilton, of Aerosmith, before a show. Doing a ‘phoner’ with Gregg Allman.  Asking Meatloaf to record some liners. Or talking to John Riggins about his farm in Kansas. I’m grateful for all those experiences.

But why was it necessary for me to feel compelled to walk into Richard Lewis’s frantic, chaotic world to express my appreciation of his work? Was this a bad thing? It was the same inclination I felt when seeing Sheryl Crow in the produce section at a health-food store in Nashville. It’s almost as if some mystical, unexplainable force pushed me in the direction of ‘fame’ so that I might brush against it briefly.

But why?

One of the lessons of gratitude that I will take with me to the grave was the one given to me, indirectly, by the late, great Jim Chenot. We would sometimes meet for lunch every couple of months, and I marveled at the way he interacted with the hoi polloi. Whether it was a server, a hostess, or a guy selling hot dogs at his favorite Progressive Field stand, Jim spoke with them and listened to their responses, as if that person was Richard Lewis or Sheryl Crow or Gregg Allman.

It's a question I’ve asked myself repeatedly since Jim’s death: “Do I assign the same degree of importance with experiencing a ‘brush with the ordinary’ as I do the brush with fame?”

Yes, I’m grateful to have had those encounters, however short and brief they may have been. (and, by the way, Sheryl Crow was gracious, friendly, and seemingly a huge fan of endive!) But my goal is to better recognize the same electrical charge of energy that can be experienced everyday with the commonplace, everyday encounters, those that are uniquely designed to sustain us and truly give our lives meaning.