CBS Chicago Vault: Bob Wallace races at the old Maywood Park and dances to traditional tamburitza music
On this day 42 years ago, Chicago was getting ready for the inauguration of Mayor Harold Washington in two days.
On this day 41 years ago, the headlines included a deadly and horrific tornado outbreak that plowed through Wisconsin.
In Chicago local headlines that day, as our file tapes show, the city announced that southbound traffic on Lake Shore Drive would be detoured through Streeterville amid reconstruction to eliminate a redesign of the treacherous Z-patterned curve at the north end of downtown, and Playboy Magazine came to the Orrington Hotel in Evanston to audition students from Northwestern University — something with which some in the university community were not pleased.
And on both of those days, the late Bob Wallace had some interesting assignments for Channel 2 News.
On April 27, 1983, Wallace was preparing to take part in the media race at Maywood Park, the long-gone harness racing track that stood for many years in west suburban Melrose Park. It was not the first time Wallace had participated in the race, but it had recently been expanded from a one-off event to four races and a final, and the local media participants had to train with a professional first.
Wallace took viewers along as he trained in the jogging cart with veteran horse driver Jim Curran.
A year later to the day on April 27, 1984, Wallace headed to the Southeast Side to join some young people from the Croatian Fraternal Union practiced tamburitza music. Balkan tamburitza music is played on acoustic stringed instruments and can serve as accompaniment to a folk dance called a kolo.
Wallace himself took part in a kolo at the tamburitza practice — with microphone in hand the whole time. The young women in dance circle with him.
Tamburitza concerts can be heard regularly around the Chicago aera. For one such event, the Sloboda Junior Tamburitzans will and the Croatian Junior Tamburitzans will be performing at 5 p.m. Saturday, May 10, at the Slovenian Catholic Center in Lemont.
