Best. Present. Ever!

My coolest Christmas present was from my wife, and it was a box of rocks. Okay, really a box of broken bricks. Seriously.

In the 1970s, my Dad owned his own Barber Shop (Bob's Barber Shop) - right on Dixie Highway in Steger, IL. It was a stand-alone building with a cutout corner where the door was. The corner had a support pillar that was painted red/white barber stripes. It had at least 5 barber chairs (maybe more) and plenty of chairs in a giant open waiting room. Multiple barbers would work at the same time on certain days. Being that it was in a large single room, it was just like the old-fashioned shops, where people would walk in - no appt - and sit and talk to each other while waiting for their turn in a chair. It was, like the olden days, the center of the community, it had a CB radio (it was the 70s) and a police scanner - if it was happening in town - you knew about it at the Barber Shop. It also had a radio and wall mounted TV (before wall-mounted flatscreens existed). It still had one of those old cash registers where you had to push the buttons all the way down and it went "cha-ching" with each sale. It had a large picture window right onto Historic Dixie Highway, which was adorned with a Christmas tree and extensively decorated window during December. It had a bottle Pepsi machine and was really the place to come hang out. The gas station attendant/owner at the Steger Standard would often just stop by on his break to chat with whoever happened to be there that day. The owner of the shoe store across the street would do the same on occasion (the shoe store owner was also the Fire Chief). The Mayor would also stop by randomly several times a week and just chat. It really was something out of an old movie - it was the center of town - both geographically and socially.

Sadly, and quite suddenly, a large corporate super-gas-station bought the property, fenced it off, and tore it down. Removing one of the final historic pieces of Steger (all that remains now is a completely decimated train depot and the old Steger Standard, now a used car lot, in terms of history). At any rate - my wife was thoughtful enough to run over there and grab some pieces of brick for me and my sister!

Best. Present. Ever!