Thrill of the grill

Last week’s Thrill of the Grill, organized by Linda Sharma and held in the outside courtyard adjacent to IUN’s library, featured tacos and veggie kabobs plus music by My Brothers salsa band. Millerite Karren Lee accepted my invitation to tour the Archives beforehand – she has been in numerous activist groups and is the niece of civil rights advocate George Neagu, whose collection we’d like to expand and update. I showed her the chapter in “Peopling Indiana” about Romanians written by Mary Leuca, a friend of hers, and how to access the Archives online. Outside we ran into Mike Olszanski, my co-editor for “Steelworkers Fight Back,” who works for Labor Studies and whom she had not seen since the days of the Bailly Alliance. I also introduced her to Anne Balay, who had just finished a Fall semester syllabus for a class on American novels, 1865-1914. She’s using two of my favorites, Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth” and Theodore Dreiser’s “Sister Carrie.” A neighbor of Karren’s and my old softball teammate, Omar Farag, booked the salsa band, and it was fun chatting with him. Barbara Cope also showed up at my suggestion for a copy of volume 41. Both she, husband Garrett (who calls me Jim-Bob) and Garrett, Jr., are listed in the index.

High school classmate Alice Ottinger Corman thanked me for volume 41. At the reunion she recalled that my parents (Midge and Vic) had put up Japanese lanterns for a party she’d attended, something I’d forgotten. Her dad had been Fort Washington’s chief of police. I mentioned that he had once interrupted me parking in a long driveway leading to the Van Sant farm. He once picked her up at school and then set off in chase of a speeder. Mortified, she ducked below the window. In volume 41 I wrote that after I fast-danced with her to “Bristol Stomp,” Jimmy Coombs (the coolest guy in our class) gave us the thumbs up. In her email Alice wrote: “I agree, our dance was a fun time, and we sure entertained Jimmy Coombs.”

Kevin Nevers of the “Chesterton Tribune” interviewed me for 90 minutes about volume 41 at the request of editor David Canright, who once was a summer student of mine. Kevin noted that we listened to the same music stations and seemed surprised that I wrote about my bowling league, the Electrical Engineers. We really hit it off – I just hope I wasn’t too indiscreet about my “radiclib” politics (as a-hole former Vice-President Spiro Agnew put it shortly before leaving office in disgrace). We chatted at the Red Cup deli in downtown Chesterton. I brought home a Reuben sandwich for Toni, who liked it only wished it contained more slices of corn beef.

Last Saturday Becca and James were part of a production at the Star Plaza Theater that highlighted excerpts of recent area plays performed at Merrillville’s Reinhart Theater, the Towle Theater in Hammond, and the Star Plaza. They were in several “Les Miserables” numbers, and Becca had several solo lines in a reprise of a song from “Annie.” We also got to see several songs from “Hair Spray,” one of Toni’s favorites. Afterwards Jacki Snow came up to me. She was a favorite student of mine who had been part of my Cedar Lake Group during the mid-Nineties. She has a 15 year-old daughter who was in the cast of “Hair Spray.” Angie, Toni, and the kids rushed off for what was to have been the final performance of “Disney under the Stars,” but it was postponed until Sunday due to a rainstorm.

Sunday I went two of five gaming, edging Tom pout in St. Pete and Dave in Shark. Had no interest in the PGA tournament since Tiger failed to make the cut, so channel-switched between Cubs and Sox, who both won. Managed to stay up for the new “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode, entitled “The Hero.” After accidentally tripping an obnoxious man on a flight to New York while coming out of the bathroom, he really does something to impress a woman he is interested in, hitting a mugger with a hard loaf of bread on the subway. The plot line revolves around Larry’s shoelaces being needlessly long.