Woo Woo. I was treated this morning at Avanti, the Southport coffee shop I frequent, to a long, episodic and disjointed conversation with a Northside legend, Cubs superfan Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers. It's fall temperatures now, and Ronnie showed up today (he comes in to the shop every so often, though I've never talked with him before) with a blue warmup jacket over the full Cubs uniform ("Woo Woo" stitched across the back) that he always, always wears.

I sat in the window up front, reading the Times' Monday sports section, which made a ready topic—though I doubt that lack of a topic would have been any hindrance to Woo Woo, who of course is known in these parts and who knows that he's known, and treats it (charmingly) as a universal entree. He took it in stride when I confessed I couldn't share his support of the Astros in the NLCS, being a lifelong Cardinals fan: he seemed annoyed, though, when I told him I didn't have any plan to get back home for one of the upcoming games. "Call yourself a baseball fan?" Woo Woo puts aside a little money every month so he can get himself a Cubs World Series ticket, should the miraculous opportunity ever present itself; failing which, he uses it to get to spring training. He was fervid about getting to the park in the postseason: "Even if it's five hundred dollars, that's something you'll have the rest of your life! Imagine if you saw 'em win a World Series game! You'd be right there, you'd feel like you were one of the boys!" [All exclamation marks, by the way, believe me, are Woo Woo's.] I tried to respond with a reminiscence about being in the Cardinals dugout back in my boyhood, and shaking Lou Brock's hand, but Ronnie's attention wanders when he's not the one talking.

Woo Woo had come in with a pudgy, middle-aged white guy, a Southsider and Sox fan, who kept to his own table and interjected occasionally, Woo Woo more or less ignoring him when he did. They apparently had some sort of business relationship, though I couldn't make out what (just as I didn't catch the Sox fan's name). It seemed unpromising; the man had a perpetually befuddled look about him, an air of never having quite caught up to life. He rattled on about business concepts that had been stolen from him. He wanted to merchandise Woo Woo—gather a thousand aspirants in every major league market, one of whom would be chosen to be his own team's "Woo Woo" for a year, "like Miss America." Somehow this would have the collateral effect of stemming sports riots in cities that won championships, something he seemed very concerned about. He'd set himself up a company name and a tax ID, but admitted he wasn't sure he had the contacts to pull the scheme off.

Woo Woo wanted to know what I did; he doesn't know anything about Web software, but my being freelance struck a chord. You've got to keep plugging away, was Woo Woo's advice. "Like me, tomorrow I'm going down to Wrigley's," he said. [The gum company, not the stadium.] "You just tell 'em you want to see the president, and see if there's anything you can do for 'em." They may not pay you as much as they would somebody else, but it doesn't matter, Ronnie insisted: you can't let pride get in your way. (Something he seemed to think I particularly needed to hear, and he said it with emphasis, more than once.) He doesn't have an agent, he told me (I asked); Woo Woo gets his promotional work on his own stick.

Making it freelance is like making women—the thought had occurred to Woo Woo before, I'm sure, and it led him to take some concern for my single status. A woman I recognize but don't know, another Avanti morning regular, was reading the Trib by herself a couple of tables behind us. "Lady." She wasn't having any of it. "Lady." Woo Woo wouldn't take feigned inattention for an answer, and he started quizzing her about her romantic life, it seemed with the (horrific, oblivious) intention of fixing us up. He wondered why her boyfriend wasn't with her, why they weren't married if they'd been together as long as she'd said, bulling forward as she gathered her things and made a quick, no doubt premature exit of the place.

Ronnie and his odd mate left not long after. On his way out, he mentioned that he'd be turning sixty-four in a couple of weeks, on Halloween. Happy birthday in advance, Ronnie.

posted by michael  8:33:08 PM  
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