Kevin Bae: So I need some I need some new traditions everything I
all the traditions that I had oh shit for the last 30 plus years,
I think 35 years. See, I got married when I was when I was 19
and I started a family when I was 20. And so, you know, I, I
really couldn't remember. But back then even in my 20s what my
family traditions were. Now I'm not a religious person. So, you
know, there were no nothing, there were no traditions based
on religion. Now, that's not to say we didn't celebrate
Christmas and stuff like that, but it was just it was a secular
celebration
and Easter, we did celebrate Easter, but not really not.
Again, it was very secular. I remember coloring eggs. But I
don't remember much beyond that. Halloween with Halloween coming
up this year. You know, I don't remember dressing up in costume
either. And going out trick or treating. The only thing I know
that I did have a costume be only because of some pictures.
But the only pictures I have of me in a costume was in
kindergarten when I dressed up as underdog which was a favorite
character of mine. back then. I have the entire underdog cartoon
collection by the way. Just in case you were wondering. But I
couldn't remember. My family traditions even Thanksgiving or
Christmas morning. See I had pictures when I was a kid of
Christmas morning. But I don't actually remember them. I don't
remember getting up early in the morning and opening up gifts. I
don't know what we did for Christmas Eve. You know
Thanksgiving I know we had Thanksgiving dinner. But I don't
remember anything other than the cranberry sauce if they can. And
we got the gel kind not the not the one that's like the that
that you can actually see cranberries in. We got the one
that when you squish it out of the can that you know you slice
it up into in the circles. I loved it. But I don't I don't
remember I know we had Turkey. I know we had it. But I don't
remember it. So when I started my family maybe the background
maybe maybe all my stuff is blocked out is blacked out of my
memory. Say my parents got separated. They separated when I
was like four years old. And I think I think their formal
divorce happened when I was like 11 That's, that's I don't
remember exactly. But I think that's the timeline. So my
father was not in the house regularly, and we would go we
would spend the weekends with my father in various places and do
various things. You know, I think we also switched off
holidays sometimes I think we did Thanksgiving with one parent
and then Christmas with the other parent I don't I I really
don't remember it. But anyway, when I started my own family,
you know, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna start some traditions, get
some traditions going and make them solid. So we did that, you
know, we had a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner. You know,
my traditions were traditional, nothing crazy, nothing out of
the box is things that I wanted to cement in my children's
brains. And so they could have some good solid memories of what
they used to do, because I couldn't remember. So yeah, we
had Thanksgiving and where I cooked the meal, you know,
Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving meal as a traditional meal, with
turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, blah, blah,
blah. That's, you know, one of my favorite meals, I love the
combo of coma carbs. With a roasted turkey. And homemade
cranberry sauce I made, I switched off, I think after the
maybe two or three years of getting cranberry sauce out of
the cam like I did when I was a kid and started making it myself
because I figured out that they were so stupid easy that there's
no reason to get it out if I can, unless you're like in some
dire emergency. We had all excuse me, all the trimmings.
And, you know, I took me all day to cook the meal. And then later
on, you know, my son also liked to cook. So he would help me,
you know, with some of the dishes with some of the recipes.
And it became a tradition where we would cook the meal all day
long. And we would goof around and talk and bla bla bla while
we cook. While my daughter would complain that the food isn't
ready yet. And it was nice, it was just the four of us. We
didn't like, you know, we rarely went to anybody else's house.
And we rarely had people over it was really just the four of us.
And Christmas,
Christmas, we had a tradition where on Christmas Eve, because
my mother moved out to Salt Lake City, so she did not live in the
Chicago area. And my father, though, still remained in the
Chicago suburbs where you know, like 10 minutes from where I
live. So our Christmas Eve tradition would be that we would
go to my father's house. And they would have sort of a very
hybrid Korean American Christmas thing. It was a hybrid because
all the older women would all be in one room, talking to each
other, preparing some food. All the men would be in their own
separate room, chatting it up. And then after dinner, they'd be
playing cards. And all the younger generation. Me My older
brother, we were the oldest out of everybody, because we're from
my father first marriage. And the the younger children started
out with my younger brother, which is 12 years younger than
me. And everybody else, all of his cousins from my stepmothers
family, all of them underneath. They were all younger. So you
know, usually a year or two down the line there was let me see
123 I don't know four or five, four or five cousins. And some
some side. Family members knows cousins of cousins, and then
some of their family friends blah, blah, blah. So it was very
cool. Everybody was Korean. Except for me and my older
brother. And my wife and my kids. We were the, my wife is
Filipino. And my kids of course are mixed breed. Like me, I'm
half Korean only. So we would go to my father's house on
Christmas Eve, and they'd have their little tradition of food.
And so but it was kind of fun, especially when my kids were
really small. You know, they got to enjoy running around with
other people. There were no kids their age because again, I was
the first one to have children and but they were a novelty for
everybody because they were the youngest kids in the room. And
then, you know, Christmas morning you know, we would open
up presence and when they were really small, you know, I didn't
there are only a few presents under the tree. And you know,
everything was already wrapped, obviously, but we put a few
presents into the tree that were from me and my wife. And then
you know, so they would see that. There are no you know,
they would see that they're from us and we would tell them that.
And then Christmas Eve after my kids went to sleep, we would
bring out the other gifts that were hidden, you know, in the
house. And I would stuffed their stockings were a little tiny
thing. So that way, you know put up the whole Santa Claus facade,
which was a lot of fun. Yeah, so when they got up in the morning
and they see the tree is just filled underneath with presence
and their stockings were stuffed With a bunch of little, little
tiny things that they could open, and it was a fun thing.
You know, keep up the facade like Santa Claus really did come
overnight while you were sleeping. And my son was the one
that was Mr. Super excited all the time to get up. He would get
up at like 5am. And you'd hear him rustling about you know, and
waking up my daughter. And she was the kind that was more
patient telling them just to relax and wait. We do we get up
because I get up at 6am I've been getting up at 6am forever.
So you know, we would do that it was. And that was a lot of fun.
So we spent the morning opening up gifts. And then I spent the
afternoon putting things together like, you know, most
dads do on Christmas morning, or Christmas Day. And, you know,
that was a nice, solid tradition. And I'm pretty sure
my kids remembered all Easter, on the other hand was not that
was still not much of a tradition. But you know, because
I didn't I never cared much for Easter for some reason. Because
it's all about bunnies and hard boiled eggs and Easter egg
hunts. I don't know, I just I was never ended. I just never
cared. But my wife would make up Easter baskets for them. And
then they remember that that was I guess sort of fun for them. We
did color eggs. that not a lot though. But I guess because I'm
just not into it. Oh, it's Christmas, I forgot we had a
tradition of decorating the tree obviously after after
Thanksgiving, the day after my son and I would go out and get a
tree. And I grew up with an artificial tree, a plastic one
that you would put together. And, you know, it was fine.
I even I took it with me from my house when I moved out. And I
used that for a couple of years. But then, after a while I was
like you know what I'd like to get a real tree. You know, that
was like starting my own thing too. I never had a real tree
didn't know what to do with it, didn't know how to care for it.
But I was like, let's get a real tree. So I started that too. So
every year since then, if I if I'm home for for Christmas, you
know we get a real tree and we go out the day after
Thanksgiving and go get that we didn't cut one down, we would
just go to a tree lot and stuff but still it was cool. And we
would spend the next day after we get that tree you know the
whole family would be decorating it we had specific ornaments we
even got every year to we would get a different ornament for the
kid or to represent some new thing that happened in the kids
lives. So I've got a whole box of these things for the
Christmas tree so I talked about Easter, Halloween, my wife, you
know, we go out trick or treating every year and that was
a lot of fun. You know, I was not too into Halloween anyway,
but we would do it. You know, Mike, my wife would make
different costumes for the kids handmade. Not all the time but
most of the time and we would go around our neighborhood you know
and go trick or treating and then that kind of fell off to
the side. For some reason kids stopped trick or treating. I
don't know if it was after 911 or what but I just remembered it
just not that many people were out there but you know as your
kids get older they you know 1112 13 years old they still
dress up I guess for school and stuff but it wasn't so much the
little kid thing that you know that it should be
but the the other traditions I guess, you know I was born in
Chicago in the city in the Logan Square neighborhood. And I grew
up at a time you know in the air I was born in 66 So really
coming of age was the mid 70s through the mid 80s. And back
then Chicago was still very much Chicago. It isn't what it is
today. There was literally a hot dog joint almost on every corner
on every block. You know our block we had a hot dog was not a
hotdog stand but it's a hot dog restaurant. Let's put it that
way they had booths and everything. They were called
Nico's and that is now defunct at the corner of Elston Western
in diversity on Chicago's north side
it's now some other restaurant I don't know. But you know the
food food was a tradition. Growing up You know, because
there's a hotdog stand in every corner you grew up eating
Chicago style hot dog, a Maxwell Street Style polish. They would
even have heroes, you know, the Greek heroes that everybody eats
and a pita. And tamales, corn, corn tamales. And you could get
that virtually at almost any hotdog stand in the city. Some
just specialize in burgers and hotdogs and stuff. But it was
kind of like a, I don't know a thing that most of the places I
went to head at least I'm on my my side of town. And then, you
know, for pizza, that traditional pizza in Chicago is
a tavern style thin crust pizza that is cut in squares. And you
could get that also anywhere, any any tavern corner tavern.
You know, our favorite one was father and son pizza. And I
don't think that exists anymore. But they had a location near our
house. And we would order that for delivery a lot of times. And
of course, there's deep dish, deep dish pizza, which people
like to make fun of and the rest of the country but and I don't
know what people do nowadays what you know, because Chicago's
not the same as it was and I think it's become sort of a
novelty, where it's like, okay, you got to do this, you got to
eat this, but we did. And you know, we didn't go to any chain.
pizza places, especially at the time Luma Laddies. Right now is
the big the big shot in the city, at least to me it is. But
there were all there are all kinds of independent little
places and we went to a little restaurant up on Elston Avenue
northwest of my house. And I can't remember the cross street
anymore, but it was called Casa Luna. And it was just like a
little Italian restaurant. And you'd go in there and they had
some fantastic deep dish pizza that we would order that
delivery to let's before obviously, any of these delivery
services they had so the actual restaurant would hire a delivery
driver to to deliver to you
and we did that for you know forever. And even you know after
I got married and moved out to the suburbs, you know, we kept
up the the pizza traditions, the hot dog traditions. It used to
be a hot dog joint called flew keys, which was a small chain,
which is now also defunct. They had a location up in Northbrook
that we would go to all the time
but I raised two kids this way in these Chicago type traditions
and our own family, personal family traditions that we
created ourselves. And my kids grew up, went to college, you
know, and because I got married so early, I became an empty
nester around the age of let me think here I'm 40. To 41. Can't
remember when my son 41 I don't know I can't remember his
freshman year at college. But when he went to college for
freshman year, my wife and I officially became empty nesters.
So I've been an empty nester for over a decade. And I didn't have
any problem transitioning to that. That wasn't a big deal.
You know, the kids still came home for a call for for holidays
from college. You know, and then when my daughter finished, she
went off to New York City. When my son finished college, he, you
know, moved, moved around a little bit and ended up in
Boston where he went to school. And so, you know, the trips home
for them were a little bit less frequent. They'd still come
though, and we would have you know, try to recreate the
traditional Christmas or the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
And obviously, it wasn't the same as when they were little
but it was okay. You know, it was kind of like it's almost
like comfort food. But we fast forward from there. And two
years ago, and 2019 22 years 2019 almost two and a half
years. I decided to quit my job with my family and I didn't
really plan on retiring per se. But I think that's what ended up
happening, you know, I saved up some money, pardon my paper. And
it just, you know, became time for me to quit, that's for sure.
So I made that decision. And we quit. You know, my wife and I
both worked for my family. And the two of us just said, time,
it's, it's time, you know, I work for my family non stop for
over 30 years. And it was basically a 24 hour job
with a lot, a lot of responsibility, more, more than
I wanted to take on at 53 or 53 was 53 time, maybe it was 52 and
I quit the house 52 house 52. And when I quit, I, it's tough
for me to remember because 20 is 2019. But I was born in November
and 66. So 52
You know, so then I just started doing what I felt like doing
little things, you know, similar to what I'm doing now, except
now I started podcasting because I feel like it and it was going
along, okay, you know, my wife and I were doing some traveling,
you know, starting in 2016 I decided to go with her, you
know, she likes to go to Europe, she likes to go to Italy and
France. So I'm like, okay, you know, I really never cared much
to travel or travel to Europe even but I'm like, if she wants
to go and she wants me to go whether what you know, what do I
care, it's no skin off my nose, I can enjoy just fine, you know.
So we started doing that, you know, once a year
and then you know, in the house that we lived in, in suburbs of
Chicago, it started become really expensive. You know, and
again, I stopped working so I don't have the normal income
coming in. You know, I just have income from money that I've
saved and invested to, to live off of. And some, you know,
little money that I make on the side doing little odd things. So
I like to say I'm semi retired. So I'm like, You know what,
there's nothing tying us here anymore. There's no reason to
stay in Chicago, you know, the property taxes are very high.
The cost of living is high. You know, what am I getting for it
anymore? You know, I'm not getting anything for it. There's
no longer an advantage because my kids are gone. And my
daughter has has children. So I have grandchildren but you know,
they're not anywhere near us. They're moving about. So I'm not
living there, my kids and that living there, my grandkids and I
don't work for the family anymore. So there's not really
anything tying me down to Chicago other than me being from
Chicago. And, you know, being having deep roots there to where
I grew up to where I've lived my whole life. So I started looking
for alternatives, where can we go and I started looking for
places to live. And in July of are in June, actually June of
2020, during the pandemic because that kind of pushed me
over the edge. You know, looking at our finances, and I'm looking
at what's happening with Illinois in general politically.
It was not good and the lockdowns that were happening
and I was not happy the people in Illinois and around Chicago
are just becoming insufferable with this COVID lockdown and
masking and mask shaming and pushing shit on everybody. And I
was not happy. Yeah. I'm very much a just live and let live
kind of person. You could do whatever the hell you want. You
know, just leave me alone. But people weren't leaving me alone.
And the government especially was not going to leave me alone
with these lockdowns. I couldn't even go into a store. Because
I'm not a masking person because I believe they're full of shit
with that shit. You know, when they first when they first
started the masking in Illinois, and I couldn't get in the
grocery store without a mask on, I stopped going, why? You know,
we didn't live that far from those kinds of borders about a
40 minute drive. I drove up the fucking Wisconsin, I went to the
grocery stores there. I didn't care I went to Costco up there.
Because at the time Costco wasn't it wasn't instituting a
massive mandate up in Wisconsin. So I'm like, This is This is
fucked. If we started talking about moving, so that way, we
could save some money and then we could do some traveling. And
like, well, if if we're thinking about making this move, we're
gonna do this move. Now is the time. You know, before things
get too crazy with the lockdowns and all this kind of bologna.
And things get more expensive. You know, I don't, I couldn't,
you know, you it's impossible to read the future. But I just had
a feeling it was time to get out. So we started researching
places. And we ended up actually researching places in the
Atlanta, Georgia area, because they have a major airport. I was
originally looking in North Carolina, but then air airlines
started pulling back a lot of their flights from smaller
airports. So I'm like, Oh, I don't want to go there. Because
then if, if for some reason we need to catch a flight to go
someplace. Atlanta would be better because you know, it's
Delta's headquarters. And we'll be able to fly just about any
anywhere in the world. fairly easily if we need to. So we
started looking there. And we found a house found house in. In
late June. We closed on a house in late July. And we started
moving and I I moved here about a year and a month ago now. So
I've been here in Georgia.
And it's not bad, it's nice. Our house is nice. We've got a you
know, bigger house with a bigger lab for less money, lower taxes.
All those things are good cost of living here is much better
than it is up and up in the Chicago area. The people have
all been very nice. It's been it's been fantastic. But what I
find is that because I'm so entrenched in the Chicago area,
is that I need some new traditions. I don't have any
here. I feel like I'm just living here, which I guess is
fine, too. But do I need new traditions? I don't know. It
just feels like you know, you need something to cement
yourself to the place that you live in. But I'm not exactly
sure what to do yet. And I thought our tradition would be
you know, that we would travel you know, once maybe twice a
year, you know, during certain seasons during certain times of
the year. But that that's that's kind of out the window at least
for now. We're trying to plan something for 2022 But I don't
know if that's going to happen with all these vaccine mandates
and travel restrictions, it's you know, it's become a bit of a
hassle to even try to plan it. You know, and and I don't want
to go outside the US and then have some surge of cases
someplace and then suddenly, I'm locked down somewhere and I
can't get back. So those things are uncertain. And so we have
our reservations made, and I'm just gonna leave them sit there
for now. We won't cancel just yet. Yeah, I'm hoping some
miracle happens. And people come to their senses and they get rid
of all this crap and we can go back to some sort of normal,
it'll never go back to normal normal what we used to live at,
much like things never got back to normal after 911 but I'm
hoping something happens where I don't have to worry about
getting locked down in some foreign country. And I thought
that was going to be our tradition. But I don't know now.
So we're just kind of going along you know, I don't have any
food traditions here. Now I can get a Chicago style pizza
there's a pizza chain here that is the same pizza chain that's
up in Chicago and they make an identical tavern style pizza
which is great.
There is no deep dish here to speak of and hotdogs are not a
thing here. I mean, they have hotdog stands here but they're
not the same. So food was tradition. I'm still trying to
figure that stuff out. But family tradition. I think that
stuff's all out the window. I don't know if that's ever going
to happen again, I think everything is just going to be
like comfort food, where you're just going to go back to it
every once in a while, you know, when you go visit your kids, or
they come visit you is this a transition for people getting
older, I'll be 55 this year. 55, I've got two grandchildren, but
they're all you know, everybody's all over the place.
And it's just me, me and my wife. We don't have any family
down here. My wife has a friend that from her school in the
Philippines. And she's made a bunch of friends here, but I'm
not. I'm not an outgoing person. I'm introverted. I have one
colleague here former business colleague that lives here and
I've seen him a couple of times over the last year when fishing
once but mostly I'm kind of a hermit and a loner. You know,
I'll go hiking with my dog. I put around the house, I do
gardening, I cook I do all these all these other little things.
And I'm, you know, I blog about shit that pisses me off, and
I'll podcast like this, ah, you know, I changed up the podcast
to from covering the news of the day, which, you know, mean, it's
already out there, and I don't, I don't really care what's out
there to more like this style, where you know, I get some idea
or bug in my brain that I feel I need to just get out. And I'll
just do that.
But, you know, everything seems just a little hollow without
traditions. And maybe it's just something I got to get used to,
because I've only been out when you live your entire life in one
area, you get to know it so well and you get so comfortable. So
then when you move someplace new, it's like almost like
starting all over again. With everything you know, and I'm
getting used to it the people here are great. People are nice.
haven't had any any problems there
but I don't know I just wonder if you know this is just the
thing about getting older you feel a little empty for the
things that you used to do
who knows who knows what's going to happen? I don't know. This
just came to me today. I'm like, You know what, we just don't
have any any tradition is a stick anymore. So we got to make
something new but I don't want it to be forced either. It's got
to be something that just kind of happens organically and it's
not gonna revolve around holidays because you know, those
have specific meaning meanings and feelings associated with it.
Because it's what you do with your kids. So I don't know.
We'll see what happens. That's all I got.