Today marks my return as a newspaper columnist — after a lengthy hiatus following stints with the Daily Times in Ottawa, Ill., and the Chicago Tribune — with my debut column for the newspaper I grew up reading as a kid, the Daily Journal in Kankakee.

I’d like to again thank everyone who’s been in touch this week since I broke the news that I was returning to the writing game. It’s much appreciated, and I look forward to you following along with me as we see wherever it is that the Wisch List takes us this time.

And, so, without any further ado, it’s on with the Wisch List, version 3.0 …

Happy Homecoming: Wisch List returns to print

The WISCH LIST

May 30, 2009

When I was 3 years old, there were few things – save, maybe, Santa Claus, Superman and sugar – that got my motor running more than the news that company was coming over to visit.

Because, immediately upon getting word from my parents that friends or relatives were headed our way, I’d hustle off to grab my box of Crayolas and pad of construction paper so I could get down to business.

Half an hour or so later, I’d proudly emerge from the salt mines with a mess of meticulously scribbled chicken scratch. And upon our visitors’ arrival, I’d hop up on the family room couch and proceed to regale them with the elaborate story that I’d just written.

Even though I didn’t yet know how to write.

Three decades later, I like to think that big imagination is still alive, but that I’ve also picked up a few new skills along the way.

Including, you know, literacy.

Since graduating from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1994 and the University of Illinois four years later, I’ve used those lessons learned to launch my own newspaper column, win a slew of writing awards, earn a reporting gig with the Chicago Tribune and even publish a book.

Somewhat ironically, though, in a lengthy writing career that even predates, well, writing, I’ve never before written for my hometown newspaper.

Until today.

For those of you who don’t know me, hey, I’m Dave. And for those of you who do, well, it’s great to be among friends. But what I’m really here for today is to introduce you to something else.

The Wisch List.

(It’s pleased to meet you, too.)

This marks the debut of my column in the pages of the Daily Journal, and I couldn’t be happier for it to have found a home here.

Seven summers ago when I was writing sports and features for the Daily Times – a sister paper of the Daily Journal located in Ottawa, Ill., that’s now called The Times – I launched the Wisch List as a self-dubbed column about “Life – and the people who live it.”

Since then, both the Wisch List and myself have been on quite a wild ride.

In November 2004, I published 75 of my columns in a book that I entitled, “Northern IlliNOISE: Tales of a Territory.” Less than year later, in July 2005, I took a news reporting job with the Chicago Tribune, and took the “Wisch List” with me.

There, I adapted the column into only the third-ever blog to appear at chicagotribune.com. And after two busy years of covering the city and the suburbs both online and in print, I left the Trib in July 2007, but not Chicago.

These days, I write full-time for a suburban advertising agency, live just blocks away from Wrigley Field and revel in all the wonderful things that the Windy City has to offer (as well as occasionally grumble about what it does not).

And it’s Chicago that the Wisch List is now all about.

Through this weekly column, I hope to bring Chicago closer to home for all of you, sharing stories about the interesting people I meet, the sights you should be seeing, the sports teams you care about, and the issues up here in the City of Big Shoulders, Taxes and Potholes that are relevant to you.

Beyond that, who knows what else we’ll get ourselves into through this column, but I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

As for you, all I ask is to feel free to get in touch with me anytime, whether it’s by e-mailing me at wischlist@daily-journal.com, finding me on Facebook, following me on Twitter (twitter.com/wischlist) or checking in with me through my blog at wischlist.com.

You can just say hello, or, even better, pass along a column idea or a Chicago-related topic that you’d like to see explored.

It was 4½  years ago that I opened my book with the following passage:

If nothing else, I am an Illinois boy.
Born (in tiny Clifton) and raised (in bigger Bourbonnais). Bred (on Chicago Cubs baseball) and fed (a steady diet of disappointment. Naturally).
Through thick (winter coats) and thin (wallets, as a college student). In sickness (again, Cubs fan) and in health (the Michael Jordan Era).
For richer or poorer. For better or worse. And so on, and so on …
‘Til death do us part.
(Which, hopefully, won’t be for quite some time.)

And those words still ring true today.

Although, I should add that in between my birth in Clifton and my youth in Bourbonnais, I spent the first 3½ years of my life living on Nelson Avenue in Kankakee. So, for me, this column truly is a return to my roots.

You could even say it’s like going home again, home again …

Jiggity jog.

I think my 3-year-old self would have liked that one.

On Monday, I posted an update on my Facebook page stating that I had some big news to share — but not quite yet, prompting a number of my friends to offer their amusing speculations.

(And, yes, call me a tease.)

Well, I’m ready to share. And, no, I’m not running for political office in Illinois (although I hear the perks are fantastic). I’m not pregnant (thanks, Kelly. Smart aleck). And I’m not Batman (dangit).

But starting this weekend, I am a newspaper columnist again.

Yes, thanks to the fine folks at The Daily Journal in Kankakee, who have recruited me to write a weekly column for my hometown area newspaper, the Wisch List is coming back to life — and not only in pixels, but also (gasp!) actual ink and wood pulp, a medium I still treasure.

For my friends around Kankakee, the column will launch in the newspaper on Saturday and run each weekend. For my friends in other areas, the Daily Journal recently made its Web site subscription-only — feel free to subscribe! — but I’ll make sure you can keep up with my columns through this blog.

And, of course, I’ll post reminders via Facebook and Twitter, as well.

It’s been almost four years since July 5, 2005, when I last wrote my the Wisch List as a print column for The Daily Times in Ottawa, Ill., where between 2001 and 2005 I won 18 national, regional and state editorial awards, including six first places. And it’s been almost two years since I last wrote the newspaper blog version of the Wisch List for chicagotribune.com.

But I’m excited to say that my self-dubbed column about “Life — and the people who live it” is back. And this incarnation is Chicago-centric, as I’ll be sharing stories about the city’s people, places, things and issues as I intend to bring Chicago closer to home for my readers.

Even if you already live in the city.

The column for the Daily Journal is a weekly side endeavor, not a full-time gig. I already have a great job (writing for the advertising and innovation agency Maddock Douglas in Elmhurst), but now I have a great side job, too.

And it only took the patience of Job to find them both.

So, anyways, make sure to check back in this Saturday to read my debut column with the Journal. Until then, have a great rest of the week. And, if you ever have any column ideas for me, always feel free to pass them way. I’d love to hear them.

It’s Memorial Day (have a happy one, by the way), so I figured there’s no better time than now to share my newspaper column from five years ago when I was at The Daily Times in Ottawa, Ill., and visited the one place in north central Illinois …

Where it’s Memorial Day all summer long

The WISCH LIST

 June 1, 2004

There were burgers. There were hot dogs. There were lawn chairs, blankets and a whole mess of giggling kids running over and around them.

And just before the festivities really got underway this past weekend in Earlville, they turned on a recording of the national anthem and staged a red-white-and-blue tribute to our nation’s military.

Memorial Day picnic, right?

Nah, double-feature.

But don’t say people weren’t remembering during this Memorial Day Weekend at the Route 34 Drive-In Theater.

Heck, that’s all they do there.

“My dad was a union projectionist,” Ron Magnoni, Jr., Route 34 Drive-In’s owner since 1994, said last Friday evening while tearing tickets and handing them through minivan windows outside his theater’s entrance. “I’ve been doing this kind of stuff since I was a kid.”

Lucky stiff.

In the era of DVDs, flat-screen TVs and multiplex theaters not a whole lot of people catch their movies in the great outdoors anymore. But for the past five decades in the grassy field banked by a railroad track and a rural highway just west of Earlville, they’ve been doing exactly that.

“This is the 50th year here,” Magnoni, a native of Oglesby, said about the dandy dinosaur that is Route 34 Drive-In, which is selling commemorative pins and magnets this summer in honor of its milestone anniversary. “The theater opened on June 11, 1954.”

According to the original newspaper ad hanging on wall inside the concession stand — where they still sell Green River fountain drinks and have a working jukebox — the double-feature on that long-ago evening included “Pride of the Bluegrass” (starring Lloyd Bridges) and “Paris Playboys,” plus a bonus short of Walt Disney’s “Three Little Pigs.”

This past Friday, it was “Scooby Doo 2″ and “Starsky & Hutch” flickering on the big screen. But, no matter the movie, the drive-in’s appeal has remained the same.

“I’ve been coming here probably 23, 24 years,” Ottawan Becky Johnson said while she and her husband, Stanley, sat on the open tailgate of their pick-up truck, waiting for the sun to go down. “The kids have grown up and ditched us … But when it’s a nice night, we just throw the bed in the back of the truck, kick back and enjoy the fresh air.”

Not to mention the price.

“Six bucks, two movies …” Becky said. “Can’t beat it.”

In the late 1950s, during the height of the Drive-In boom, Illinois had more than 120 outdoor theaters scattered throughout the state. Today in the 21st century, that number has plummeted by 90 percent, and only 12 drive-ins remain.

But one of them still stands just 20 miles northwest of Ottawa.

Or 50 miles east of Princeton — if you’re coming from that way.

“We heard about the theater through word of mouth,” said Jennifer Williams of Princeton, who made the Friday night drive over with her husband, their 5-year-old son, Jacob, and his buddy Matthew. “We came just a few weeks ago, and it’s a blast.

“Jacob even turned down ‘Shrek 2′ to come see Scooby Doo outside.”

“Yep,” said Jacob, who was missing his two front teeth but not the chance to see a show on a 50-foot screen. “I like the part where we sit in the back of the truck.”

He wasn’t the only one.

“All your problems go away for a couple hours when you’re here,” a drive-in buff named Joe said last Friday. “And there’s nothing like seeing the picture on the great big screen.

“It’s better than sitting in a shoebox theater.”

(This column — along with many more, by the way — appears in my book, “Northern IlliNOISE: Tales of a Territory,” which you can read more about here.)

If you’re a huge Star Wars fan, but never felt the same excitement about Star Trek until the new movie came out this summer … well, this could perhaps explain your change of heart.