Front Porch

“Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square?
When they’re out having fun, will I still wanna have my share?”
“When I Grow Up,” Beach Boys

Friday evening I went to the Front Porch, a coffeehouse in Valpo that has a long history, to see Ron Cohen’s friend from England Will Kaufman put on a delightfully professional performance of Woody Guthrie songs and commentary. He has a new book out stressing Woody’s hatred of capitalism entitled “Woody Guthrie, American Radical.” The IUN contingent included Librarian Anne Koehler and Sociologist Tanice Foltz. Chad Cifford of the Crawpuppies now owns the Front Porch and gives guitar lessons there. He helped set up the sound system and asked whether son Dave is still with a band. Turns out he taught Blues Cruise prodigy Steve how to play the guitar when he was about ten years old.

I’ve discovered the TV series “Men of a Certain Age” On Demand with Ray Romano and watched several episodes during the weekend. One of Ray’s buddies (Terry) is an aging stud actor and the other an overweight African-American car salesman. None is without flaws – Ray is separate, for instance, and has a gambling problem. At the beginning of the show are clips of kids playing accompanied by the Beach Boys song “When I Grow Up To Be a Man” (one of my favorites).

James and Rebecca stayed overnight Thursday and Friday because Angie and Dave had to stay late after “Disney Under the Stars” to put the sound equipment away. James suggested I take my Pet Detective stories that I made up for our car rides to Kids College last summer and turn them into a book.

Saturday was Paul Kaczocha’s sixtieth birthday party. Food included chicken and pizza, as well as Cole slaw and salad. I gave Paul a copy of volume 41, which he appears in (I mentioned being at his place for a picnic a year ago). Other friends in attendance included Ed and Monica Johnston and Alice Bush with son Shane. Alice told some hilarious stories about Shane, who is in his last year of residency at a Chicago hospital.

Sunday after gaming (I was one for four, prevailing in Acquire) the Hagelbergs took us to the musical “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Valpo’s Memorial Opera House. The acting and music were spectacular, but it was terribly bloody. Two people behind me were letting out groans each time someone was murdered.

I received an invitation to speak at an affair in October marking the hundredth anniversary of the founding of a Carpatho-Rusyn Church. I delayed giving a reply, feeling inadequate for the job, but have been reading up on the Rusyns (from Slovakia and sometimes called Ruthenians) and will do it if they haven’t found someone else.

Got a nice long email from Paul Kern praising volume 41 and reminiscing about some of our old students with whom I’m still in touch. He mentioned that Sarah McColly once knitted him a wool muffler.

Suzanna sent me a photo of herself in an Amish style dress she sewed for herself standing in front of her garden. The tomatoes appear to still be green but the corn seems to be taller than she is. I emailed her that she looked really fetching. She hates any thing remotely like flirting.

Got several checks for volume 41, including one from Chicago’s Newberry Library, along with a couple returned packages from folks who have either died or moved away. My subscription list is dwindling.

English professor William Buckley sent me a poem entitled “Another Story as our Bridges Collapse” about the effect of de-industrialization on one of his neighbors. Had I had it before finishing volume 41, I would have included it. I’ve used his poems in both my Nineties issue and in “Ides of March 2003.” He also gave me a copy of his 2005 volume “Athena Comes to Gary.”

After running into Donn Gobbe at the P-T tennis tournament and offering to critique his PhD thesis on the history of the women’s tennis tour, I received a chapter covering the early 1970s. Interestingly, the tour was sponsored by Philip Morris, manufacturers of Virginia Slims cigarettes. Its motto: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Donn mentioned that the sponsorship was controversial since cancer sticks and women’s athletics don’t go together, but commercialism won out in the end.