By James Banakis

August 26^th, 2026

As a lifelong Chicagoland resident, I have a challenging, love/hate relationship with our neighboring states. Let’s face it, they’re like in-laws. In the best of scenarios, they bring something a bit different and welcome to family gatherings. When they exhibit strange or boorish behavior, they can easily be dismissed as not really blood relatives. Deep down you feel that your side of the family is smarter, more courageous, and more sophisticated. Then you look around and realize that our dysfunctional Illinois family includes Brandon Johnson, J.B. Pritzker, and Rod Blagojevich and you recognize and concede that every family tree produces nuts.

Like many of you, the Midwest is the part of the country where I feel most at home. I recently sold my summer home in New Buffalo Michigan, and I already miss those memories and friends that only a lake house can provide.

It is Wisconsin though that has been a siren and has lured me back throughout my life. As far back as I remember summers were enjoyed at family and friends’ homes in the Lake Geneva region. Memories of kids and grandkids growing before my eyes on video tape and 8mm. movies.

I first learned the fundamentals of baseball watching the 1957 championship Milwaukee Braves with my Great Uncle Bill. I cherish the high school and college memories of girls, water sports, and underage beer consumption on perfect summer days.

I recall summer evenings parking at the Yerkes Observatory, the best make-out spot where the heavens would romantically come alive with harvest moons and stars we never saw back home. Recently there were the golf outings, and the annual retired guys boat rides and cookouts at the Langas home on Lake Geneva.

My brother Mark hosted a family party last week at his home in Hawthorn Woods. His brother-in-law Michael Gartenberg, a cherished in-law, shows up with a case of Spotted Cow beer. A cheer erupted because we tend to view some things from neighboring states as contraband, rare, better, almost forbidden. Beer, cheese, peaches, berries, quaint supper clubs, sausages most notably, bratwurst are all etched in my culinary memory.

Consider this though, maybe there is something in the delicious Great Lake water we all consume that is beginning to produce an outbreak of socialists and communists. They’re popping up all over the Great Lake region. The worst epidemic occurring in Michigan and Minnesota.

In the 1981 comedy Stripes, Bill Murray’s character John Winger says: “C’mon, it’s Czechoslovakia. We zip in, we pick ’em up, we zip right out again. We’re not going to Moscow. It’s Czechoslovakia. It’s like going into Wisconsin.” Only someone from Chicago appreciates this zip in and out description, only now politically Wisconsin has begun to really resemble Cold War Czechoslovakia.

I’m writing this after the Wisconsin primaries. First on the agenda this morning was to see who won the democratic governor’s race. David Crowley billed as a moderate, but really a typical wacko leftist barely edged out Francesca Hong, a communist, by less than 1% of the vote. Hong was disavowed by Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other SDA comrades as being too honest and forthright in her beliefs and not doing a better job of hiding her bizzarro emails and tweets.

The most outrageous being her hatred of Thanksgiving, the most beloved All-American holiday. A holiday first recognized by George Washington as a National Day of Prayer and made a national holiday by Lincoln. She would ban the holiday because she thinks there are a few indigenous, nomadic people out there sulking and wringing their hands instead of watching the Packers. She lamely tried to walk this back late in the campaign, but she was ahead by 20 points with 2 weeks left, so she soft sold her evolution.

It’s my belief that Wisconsinites lead the nation in Tryptophan consumption, the amino acid linked to turkey, mashed potato, and brandy old fashion consumption, all inducing serotonin and calming sleep. All this blasphemy and she still almost won. I’m relieved Wisconsin dodged a bright red bullet, but I’m also a little sad we don’t have the dour Ms. Hong to entertain me.

As a restaurateur I became intrigued to learn she had once owned a restaurant, not surprisingly a failed one. She proudly detailed operating a failed restaurant as her expertise in running a multi-billion-dollar state economy. It turned out Thanksgiving was not the only holiday she hated. She despised Valentines Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day, and naturally, Father’s Day. She indignantly lamented that her employees had to work while customers celebrated.

Doesn’t she sound welcoming and warm? She especially hated Valentines because all those celebrants were only concerned about themselves and not thinking of her and her employees. Ms. Hong, as I always relate to my employees paraphrasing Don Coleone, “This is the business we have chosen for ourselves.”  She also forgot restaurant servers love to work holidays because tips are generous. My employees like the Bob Cratchit brood in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, have always celebrated afterwards. God bless us everyone.

Recently someone on “X” said she was an oddity among humankind, a dumb Asian. In another recent comment on her campaign, she mentioned she was learning about “whiteness” from her son who looks Asian just like her. There is evidently not a father around to help Francesca understand this incomprehensible genealogy. I’ll also miss her embarrassing attempt at a few awkward dance moves at a recent rally. She’s so clueless, sad, angry, and uptight. Yes, Francesca I for one will miss you. I would have eagerly enjoyed writing at least 1 or 2 more columns if you had stuck around until November.

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Jimmy Banakis is a life-long restaurateur.  He was an honorary batboy for the White Sox in 1964. He attended Oak Park River Forest High School, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and Chicago-Kent Law School.  He claims the kitchen is the room he’s most comfortable in anywhere in the world. He published an extremely limited-edition family cookbook. He’s a father and grandfather, and lives in Downers Grove Il.