IRV KUPCINET

As a kid, I'd get up at 3 in the morning during school vacations to help my father on his bakery-truck route. He didn't get a vacation from that schedule.

'At Random' ran on Saturday nights for as long as the conversation was still lively. Sometimes, I'd finish way after midnight, then hop a plane for whatever city I was working a football game that Sunday.

I've reported murders, scandals, marriages, premieres and national political conventions. I've been amused, intrigued, outraged, enthralled and exasperated by Chicago. And I've come to love this American giant, viewing it as the most misunderstood, most underrated city in the world. There is none other quite like my City of Big Shoulders.

Air pollution is turning Mother Nature prematurely gray.

I've never wanted to do anything but be a newspaperman ever since I was 13.

What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.

By the time I got to Northwestern University in 1930, I was a football bum more interested in being an All-Star player and signing on with a pro team than going after a newspaper job.

My freshman year at Harrison High School, I saw a journalism class where students were putting out a weekly newspaper. It touched a responsive chord in me.

Chicago, with its big newspapers and major broadcasting stations, couldn't have been a better city to start a journalism career.

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.

By the time I got to Northwestern University in 1930, I was a football bum more interested in being an All-Star player and signing on with a pro team than going after a newspaper job.

I've never wanted to do anything but be a newspaperman ever since I was 13.

As a kid, I'd get up at 3 in the morning during school vacations to help my father on his bakery-truck route. He didn't get a vacation from that schedule.

My father, a bakery-truck driver, was the epitome of the work ethic that probably kept me knocking out columns six days a week for a rough total of 12,600 over 50 years.

Chicago, with its big newspapers and major broadcasting stations, couldn't have been a better city to start a journalism career.

What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?

I wish all high schools could offer students the outside activities that were available at the old Harrison High on Chicago's West Side in the late '20s. They enabled me to become part of a school newspaper, drama group, football team and student government.

'At Random' ran on Saturday nights for as long as the conversation was still lively. Sometimes, I'd finish way after midnight, then hop a plane for whatever city I was working a football game that Sunday.

My freshman year at Harrison High School, I saw a journalism class where students were putting out a weekly newspaper. It touched a responsive chord in me.

A girl is grown up when she stops counting on her fingers and starts counting on her legs.

I've reported murders, scandals, marriages, premieres and national political conventions. I've been amused, intrigued, outraged, enthralled and exasperated by Chicago. And I've come to love this American giant, viewing it as the most misunderstood, most underrated city in the world. There is none other quite like my City of Big Shoulders.

Air pollution is turning Mother Nature prematurely gray.