Apple of My Eye

“Land on the Dunes

Land on the Dunes

Land on the Dunes

Land on the Dunes.”

    “Overnight Jet,” Alda Reserve

Land on the Indiana dunes has been used for housing and heavy industry but also for recreational and preservationist purposes.  When the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore forced us (and other leaseholders) from our home atop a sand dune in the vanishing community of Edgewater, a ranger estimated that the house would be demolished in the spring of 2011.  It is still standing 18 months later.  I have no desire to visit until the property is reduced to nature.  The park came into being during the 1960s due to a compromise between environmentalists and advocates of industrial development, namely steel mills.  Fortunately our condo is just down the road from Dunes State Park and close to Waverly Beach.

Services at Ogden Dunes Community Church celebrated the life (and mourning the passing) of Bob Selund, who I’d always sit with when the Merrillville History Book Club met.  My friend was a biology teacher in Highland before becoming a lawyer.  He and wife Judy were once in our bridge group, along with the Hagelbergs, Passos, and Copes.  He’d greet folks with a big smile and booming voice, and a large crowd was on hand to pay respects, including Judge Ken Anderson and Lake County surveyor George Van Til.  The service was two Christian for my taste, but I enjoyed a hymn entitled “As the Deer (pants for water)” that called Jesus a “real joy-giver” and “apple of my eye” (a phrase found, to my surprise, in the Bible).  A member of the Save the Dunes Council, Bob loved camping, and Toni and I once visited the Selunds and the Passos at their campsite at Dunes State Park.

Toni and I visited the Grand Valley State campus in Allendale, MI, to see granddaughters Miranda (a freshman) and Alissa (the apple of our eye, just hired to work with the overseas studies program). Though located in an isolated area, GVSU was quite impressive and accommodates over 20,000 students.  Miranda, very grown up and collegiate, took us to Uccello’s Ristorante in nearby Wayland, which had delicious meat loaf and Cole slaw among its buffet offerings. In the afternoon we attended Tori’s cross-country meet, the first such event I ever witnessed.  We situated ourselves in an area where we could see the runners pass by on three different occasions and then walked over to the finish line.    Below,Victoria Abigail Lane                                     

Tori, her school’s top runner, finished thirteenth out of about 80.  Near the end, when a girl passed her, she broke into a sprint and beat her to the finish line.  After we checked into Hampton Inn, I swam laps and used the whirlpool before eight of us, including Anthony (fresh from soccer practice) went to Chili’s.

At the ArtPrize Festival in Grand Rapids were 1,517 entries vying for prize money totaling $360,000.  Many were outside, and the largest concentration was in or near The B.O.B. (Big Old Building).  Quite a few artists were on hand to explain their work and make a pitch for people’s vote. Weston Rayfield titled his shadow-box “100 Years” and had vintage newspaper front page stories about Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight and the killing of bank robber John Dillinger’s in Chicago and illustrations dating from the end of the Civil War to the arrival of the Beatles and including mention of.  The piece “Earth Undone” showed a world map with depictions of ecological disasters such as Chernobyl and destruction of Brazilian rain forests.  A three-dimensional art object consisted of Scrabble tiles spelling out arts and entertainment icons such as Upton Sinclair to Joe Cocker. My favorite, “Friends,” by Nigerian-American Nnamdi Okonkwo, was a sculpture of three full-bodied African women on a bench.

 Before the Smithereens concert Saturday at Memorial Opera House in Valpo, Dave, Angie, Corey Hagelberg and I met at Buffalo Wild Wings a block away on Lincolnway.  Not a wing man, I enjoyed a burger.  We speculated whether the band would go acoustic, but they blasted for two hours, mixing in early Beatles classics with Smithereens hits such as “A Girl Like You,” “Only a Memory,” “Blood and Roses,” and “Blues Before and After.”  Bass player Severo Joracion, formerly with the Bangles, joined original band members lead guitarist Jim Babjak, drummer Dennis Diken, and frontman Pat DiNizio.  A few geezers left early holding their ears, but the crowd, mostly Fortysomethings, really got into it.  Folks were dancing in the aisles, and many jumped at DiNizio’s invitation to come down front for the lengthy finale.  Sitting in front of us were Jerry Davich and Karen Walker, who reiterated their intention for me to be a guest on their Friday Lakeshore radio show.

Sunday after winning two of three board games at Dave’s, our court hosted the condo picnic, postponed due to inclement weather the previous day.  It was a small but sociable group; almost everyone from our court attended, including Marva, Ken and Christine, new neighbors Nicole and Mike, Sue and Dave, and octogenarian Joan Gucciardo, who when the conversation turned to tattoos exclaimed, “I have one.” During the Red Scare school officials ordered kids to be branded with their blood type.  They stopped the practice when an embarrassing large number did not match the type of either parent.  Joan spent many hours at the Country Lounge, nicknamed Hunky Hollow.  Sue once needed to talk to her husband, whom she knew was there, and dialed information.  When she asked the African-American telephone operator the number for Hunky Hollow, or perhaps Honky Hollow, she replied, “Are you shittin’ me?”

I’ll start next month’s talk on record company entrepreneur Vivian Carter by noting that throughout the twentieth century there has been a white market for black musicians, especially among young people, starting with ragtime, jazz, and blues and continuing with swing bands and crooners such as Cab Calloway, Nast King Cole, Lena Horn, and the Ink Spots. Little wonder baby boomers in the 1950s sought out music that reflected their hopes, fears, and dreams.  Then I’ll play 1956 hits, “The Magic Touch” by the Platters and “My Blue Heaven” by Fats Domino.  The former was a ballad similar to Ink Spots hits, while the latter added a rock and roll beat to an 1920s standard.  After telling how Henry Farag got hooked on doo wop music after hearing the Vee-Jay recording “Oh What a Nite” by The Dells (a group from Harvey, Illinois, led by Johnny Funches) on Vivian Carter’s radio show, I’ll solicit memories of people’s first rock and roll awakenings.

Ron Cohen attended a weekend Woody Guthrie tribute in Brooklyn that featured performances by Pete Seeger and Steve Earle.  Back for a Monday evening book signing at the Savannah Gallery, he introduced Fred Chary as the person who hired him and me as someone who started the same day he did in the fall of 1970.  Student Rhonda “Red” Woodville performed four numbers, demonstrating her dexterity on acoustic guitar, two Woody classics (“Nora Lee” and “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You”) and two of her own compositions.  Nora Lee was both Woody’s mother’s name and the name of his daughter, the apple of his eye and curator of his personal papers.

My Fantasy team had a good week and would have defeated The Powerhouse in a rout had Anthony not had the Bears’ defense and had Aaron Rogers not scored a paltry 9 points.  Even so, I triumphed 90 to 78 and am the only undefeated team.  Luck has been with me.