Road Trip

Sheriff Roy Dominguez and I traveled to Bloomington last week to meet with two IU Press editors plus a marketing person and photo production coordinator. He picked me up in front of IUN’s library and we arrived at a motel his wife had booked us into around 10:30 p.m. after stops at Arby’s and Starbucks. After eating breakfast at a t diner that Roy frequented while a cadet in training, we arrived at the century-old publishing house building at Tenth and Morton. The editors were very enthusiastic about the book and assured us it would have a jacket, contain many pages of photos, and be out by early spring. Reviewing the 75 photos gave Roy a chance to tell some anecdotes, and he was impressive as always, coming off as sincere, friendly, and ready to promote the book actively. The meeting was a great success, with Roy impressed with the Press and vice versa.

I finished Ted Kennedy’s autobiography “True Compass” (more candid than I had expected) and checked out Hampton Sides’ “Hellhound on His Trail,” Monday’s History Book Club selection about the hunt for Martin Luther King’s killer, James Earl Ray. J Edgar Hoover and Jesse Jackson come off poorly. Ron Cohen stopped by and mentioned that Nancy is also reading “Hellhound on his Trail.” We talked about the multi-million dollar effort to spruce up the Marquette Park area and some of the controversy over the plans. One dispute: whether to have the road remain two lanes or to put in a walking and bicycle lane in place of one of them.

TRACES accepted my article on Carlton Hatcher (Richard’s father) for its Winter 2012 issue. My next task: to obtain photos of Michigan City, especially the waterfront area in the 1920s and 1930s.

I got a nice email from Paul O’Hara thanking me for helping him improve the quality of his book on Gary. An article of his appeared in the march 2011 issue of the Journal of Urban History entitled “’The Very Model of Modern Urban Decay’: Outsiders’ narratives of Industry and Urban Decline in Gary, Indiana.” It was my suggestion to use the phrase “Outsiders’ Narratives.”

At the Chicago Street Theater we and the Hagelbergs saw Neil Simon’s “Fools,” one of the playwright’s first efforts written in 1961 while going through a divorce. Having agreed to give his ex-wife the proceeds from his next play, he allegedly hoped it would be a flop. In fact, it lasted only 40 days on Broadway. It is set in a fictitious Ukrainian village where a curse has supposedly left everyone a stupid fool. It was mildly clever, but I rarely like nonmusical productions.

We are scheduled to see Les Miserables (Becca and James are in the cast) the last Sunday in July, necessitating a switch in when I work the Porter County Faair. My partner, Stela Pudar Hozo was willing to work on a Thursday afternoon instead, so the tradition continues.