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Don't miss America's Outdoor Show in Rosemont

You'll notice in the outdoors notes section this week I wrote about the appearance of angling television personality Al Lindner at America's Outdoor Show this week in Rosemont.

Lindner is just one bright spot in the mix of speakers, including Babe Winkelman, Spence Petros, Kevin Van Dam and James Lindner, plus a gaggle of other top seminar speakers and angling and hunting educators.

The show started Wednesday, and like I said in the notes section, there is a tremendous amount of buzz generated about it in the metro area. And for good reason.

Chicago-area outdoors people have figuratively been short-changed in the last several years by a management and ownership team that left thousands yearning for the kinds of shows we experienced in the heyday of Chicago fishing extravaganzas.

Prior to a year or so ago, the Rosemont Show was more like a P.T. Barnum event featuring hucksters and flea market-like vendors who sold items ranging from aluminum welding materials to a variety of super glues.

I go back to the days when one of the biggest outdoor sport shows in the country was a yearly bash at the old Ampitheater adjacent to the Chicago Stockyards. Kids were mesmerized by the circus acts and massive numbers of exhibits. We gasped when the Sheriff of Cochise (television's John Bromfield) rode his horse in to the center ring with his six guns blazing away.

But that's history, or at least part of history since Chicago kids grew up and had their own offspring. The big show went by the boards because we became too sophisticated for the old television cornball stuff.

And then we became parched from the lack of a great, entertaining outdoors show. Sure, we had it for decades at Rosemont, with pictures of angling's famous faces hanging from the ceiling in Tackle Hall.

And that too died, so to speak, when the public started looking elsewhere for fishing entertainment.

Yes, it's true, we don't have Jim Thomas Outdoors to wow us with his fishing exploits and old films of him sweating himself silly in the jungles of Costa Rica.

Now we have ringmaster Jim Sugarrman itching to resurrect that “old feeling” again with a lineup of speakers and attractions that's worth lots more than you'll pay for a ticket to get in this week.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I was confronted by a representative of one of the major rod and reel manufacturers a couple of months ago after I wrote a column chastising his company for not wanting to be at the show this week. I said his company showed disrespect to its customers, the ones who made that company No. 1 in this market by laying down their cash at local tackle stores before going home with new reels and rods.

This guy's e-mail assailed me for being a mouthpiece for the show, but truth be told, I am not on the show's payroll.

Bob Shirley tried to pull off a good show at the Arlington Park. He came close to accomplishing the mission, but no cigar. Sugarman's efforts are likely to succeed because he enlisted the aid of some good angling pros who offered a million bucks worth of advice and believed as I do that you, me, and thousands of others want it the way it was 30 years ago.

We want the sizzle and the steak all on one plate, with or without those old black and white Jim Thomas films.

Check's the show's website for times and admission costs at americasoutdoorshow.com

&bul; Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@att.net, and catch his radio show 6-7 a.m. Sundays on WSBC 1240-AM.

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