Howard the Blog.

The last time I saw Howard, I was doing booth duty at the one-day Association of Industrial Real Estate Brokers convention at a hotel near O’Hare, representing what was then my new magazine, Real Estate Chicago. It was September 2000; I hadn’t seen Howard in about 10 years.

For many years, Howard had been an advertising space salesman for the real estate publications of the Law Bulletin Publishing Co., which happened to be my first employer in Chicago, from 1987 to 1990. That’s how I met him. We got along well enough, though Howard — to be very generous with him — had an acid tongue, and something of the same acidity permeated his character.

But I will not speak ill of the dead (today, anyway). Howard died of cancer in the spring of 2001, about six months after I ran into him. Why he was at that show, I don’t know, since he was retired. But I think he still had a fondness for the commercial real estate circuit, and so there he was. I recognized him at once. His hair and beard were good deal grayer, and he was more lined in the face, but his paunch was about the same.

His first words to me in ten years were: “Hey! How’ya been, ya fat bastard?”

I think of Howard now because yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. One year on March 17, back when we were both at the Law Bulletin, he showed me a gimmick card he said he had carried around for years, “to show any Irishman who needed to see it.” (Howard was not known to be of Irish decent; and I am not.)

It was the size — and more importantly — the same orange color as a Chance card in Monopoly. Printed on one side was: “Happy St. Patrick’s Day, You Irish Bastard.” Just beneath that was another line: “Printed in England.” Howard thought this strangely hilarious, and I thought it was… well, hilariously strange.

I could tell other Howard stories, but that will suffice for today.

RIP, Kenneth Arnn: husband of my mother's sister Sue, father of my first cousin Ralph, grandfather of three. Except for my great-uncle Ralph Henderson (d. 1971), Ken is the only uncle I have any clear memories of. He died in December, and his ashes were interred at Ft. Sam Houston yesterday.