Seattle Joe's Visit

"Your flag decal won’t get you

Into heaven any more

We’re already overcrowded

From your dirty little war.”

    John Prine

On July 18 nephew Joe Robinson, whose liberal, anti-war political sensibilities mirror my own, arrived from Seattle for a weeklong visit.  A limo picked him up at Midway Airport and brought him to our condo.  Toni made spaghetti and kept him company while I attended a tumultuous condo owners meeting.  The chief area of contention concerned whether to spend $2,000 on shrubbery near where the Chesterton utilities department put in a cement driveway on their easement to accommodate a new piece of equipment.

We spent three nights at the downtown Grand Rapids (MI) Holiday Inn.  Joe’s niece Michele and her family stayed in the adjacent room. Joe really enjoyed the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, especially the replica of the oval office.  I enjoyed the stuff about First Lady Betty Ford being a pro-choice feminist.  Friday we went on a fun dune ride with a dozen relatives, including Miranda, (with me in photo below)

and took the Saugatuck Chain Ferry across the Kalamazoo River (Tori and Nicholas took turns operating the wheel), after which a sports bar accommodated the 14 of us.  Saugatuck was a favorite place for my mother-in-law Blanche to visit, and we drove by a classy bed and breakfast where Midge and my stepfather Howard stayed for a week.  Afterwards Howard noted that it was somewhat pricey, not realizing that Midge had already prepaid half the cost.  They could afford the luxury.  Friday evening Phil’s family came to the hotel pool; some of us walked around downtown, coming across a jazz concert at the art museum.  Saturday we went to the nearby Van Andel Museum, named from Amway co-founder Jay Van Andel.  Among its many attractions was an arcade with “ancient” pinball machines and even a Pac man booth.  Four of us went on a merry-go-round ride on a carousel built in 1928.

Phil and Alissa went out of their way to be with us despite busy work schedules.  Joe loved rooting with Phil for the Detroit Tigers against the White Sox, and watching a tape of the  “Blues Brothers” appearances by John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, and especially Cab Calloway.  Alissa and Josh biked to the hotel for breakfast with us before heading off to go tubing.

Back at the condo Sunday, Joe and I listened to albums and CDs.  He found a Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs live album of a 1962 Carnegie Hall concert, and I put on a CD of top hits of 50 years ago that included Don and Juan’s “What’s Your Name?”  On Monday at Best Buy we purchased three CDs for him and Accept’s “Stalingrad” for me.  During the six-month battle for Stalingrad, beginning in August of 1942, approximately two million Germans and Russians died and it was a major factor in Hitler’s ultimate downfall.  The title song begins, “Out along the Volga, minds set to kill, men standing ground wit iron will.”

Thanks to On Demand, Joe and I watched “The Three Stooges” for $5.99 and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” for free.  John C. Reilly as Dewey was amazing spoofing the Johnny Cash movie “Walk the Line.” 

Neighbor Dave learned about Joe’s musical tastes and burned five John Prine CDs for him.  The three of us gave a listen to Prine’s first album while drinking brew-skis (Dave brought over PBRs for Joe to sample). Born in 1946, John Prine served in the army in Germany during the Vietnam War and after working as a mailman became, along with Steve Goodman, a mainstay in the Chicago Folk Revival of the early 70s.  Dave also introduced us to guitarist Danny Gatton, whose unique style was a blend of rockabilly, country, blues, and jazz.

A limo driver picked Joe up at eleven, and I made it to IUN in time for Thrill of the Grill featuring tacos and lively music by Hijos de Rythmo.  In my absence Ron Cohen had dropped off a copy of his Woody Guthrie biography, subtitled “Writing America’s Songs.”  Nephew Joe had several Woody CDs waiting for him at the local branch of the Seattle Public Library.  Ron starts each chapter with a Guthrie quote, including his claim that “every folk song I know tells how to fix something in this world to make it better.”

Awaiting me were requests to talk to Nicole Anslover’s class about the postwar in the Calumet Region and to the Dunelands Historical Society about Vivian Carter (the president had run across my Traces article about her founding Vee-Jay records.  Two scholars want to speak with me about their research interests (labor history and industrial archaeology).

Ray Smock sent his foreword to Michael Austin’s “That’s Not What They Meant: Reclaiming the Founding Fathers from America’s Right Wing.”  Politicians of all stripes have taken the founders’ words out of context over the years.  The biggest culprits recently have been FOX lackies Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

In the news: a gunman in Aurora, Colorado, killed a dozen people and wounded 50 more at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” and Penn State officials ordered the statue of Coach Joe Paterno taken down after the NCAA punished the university for turning a blind eye to children abused by assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.  A federal law banning assault weapons expired in 2004, and neither political party seems anxious to take on the almighty NRA.  A former student posted this conservative tripe: “If you think a theatre filled with unarmed people against a lone gunman is scary, imagine a disarmed populace against a tyrannical government.”  I responded: “Bullshit.  As Obama said, assault rifles belong in the hands of military troops, not in crazy people’s hands.”

I started reading “Wild Child: Girlhoods in the Counterculture.”  In the foreword Moon Unit Zappa writes that “at my house clothes were an extension of the imagination, used to name who or what you were for the hour or so you had them on, a dinosaur or a witch or a superhero.  Clothes were costumes for putting on shows.”