The whistling starts faintly, no particular tune but just the joyful sound that comes from strolling down an empty hallway. Then the whistling grew louder, the closer it got to my office door. 

The whistle only came to a stop as Cal Siegfried poked his head into my office at the end of the hallway in the Keystone.

“You know there’s a law that if it’s raining in Sweden, you have to use your headlights. How am I supposed to know when it’s raining in Sweden and need to use my headlights?”

And with that, Cal turned on his heels into the men’s restroom. 

While I love my office in the Keystone Business Center, its location is a bit quirky as it is located directly across from the third floor men’s restroom. This means I know the comings and goings of most of the men on the floor, but especially Cal as he announced his presence with a whistle as he walked. 

But the bathroom breaks also meant a new joke or a story when he stopped by.

In fact, this went on for years before it dawned on me that Cal was sharing gems with me and that I should be recording these bits of brilliance that he seemed to just pull out of thin air. 

So I asked if it was OK if I wrote down the tales he told me standing in the doorway. And since the reason for his visit was most likely because of a trip to the men’s room, the notebook was literally and not-so-creatively named, “Cal’s Bathroom Book.” 

The first entry is about an encounter Cal had in front of the Keystone - or so he said.

“I stopped on the sidewalk to ask two boys how their summer was going and they said they had been fishing. The first boy, about 5, said he caught a huge fish and held his hands about a foot apart to show his accomplishment. As if that wasn’t descriptive enough, the other boy added, ‘And it was fat,’ holding his arms in a circle, ‘even fatter than you,’ nodding at me. I couldn’t be offended because I was just in awe of their accurate storytelling skills.”

I don’t have as many stories and jokes as I wish I had - there are too many blank pages remaining that I wish Cal was here to help fill - but I’m thankful for those that I do have. 

“Did you hear about the Amish accident between Curtis and Maywood? It was a drive-by quilting.”

I marveled at his ability to recall a story from decades ago with such detail. Was all of it true? Who knows but Cal told it with such conviction that it didn’t matter. 

“I went to the pool the other day. And just like in the old days, I went pee in the deep end. That’s when the lifeguard told me I couldn’t just stand on the edge.”

Cal’s role in the community will be sorely missed. He could be counted on to help, from being an emcee to driving a bus - something we bonded over.

He was game for just about anything asked of him. The last favor I asked of him was to record the biographies for McCook’s Heritage Square walking tour for the McCook Community Foundation Fund. After I had updated the stories for Cal to narrate, he spent a three-day weekend in the recording booth, getting them to meet his standards. And while he stuck to the script most of the time, he still put his flair on a few of them. As we listen to the tour years from now, I am thankful for those little bits of “Cal” that remain.

“Darn lazy people. Wait…we can’t blame them. They didn’t do anything.”

Perhaps what I appreciated most about Cal was his ability to connect to others in almost any situation. His personalized birthday cards during our Keystone lunches were to be cherished. He served as emcee for a fake “wake” for Andy Long’s departure in early 2022, roasting not only Andy but everyone there. 

And just a few months ago as he was in the throes of his treatments, he still sat down in my office to talk about how the city’s new sports complex, how swim season would work and to share stories about his grandkids, which were always a priority.
Cal’s passing this past week will leave a tremendous hole in the community, but we’ll have the memories, the jokes and the stories to keep his memory alive. 

I don’t know if this is the most appropriate way to end this tribute to Cal but he wasn’t one to shy away from telling it like it is so here goes:

“This morning I asked my wife why she married me.

‘Because you’re funny,’ she said.

‘Oh, I thought it was because I am so good in bed.’

‘Like I said, because you’re so funny.’”