Take Me Back

“Take me back

To the hills of Indiana

Take me back

To when I was a kid.”

   Lonnie Mack, “Hills of Indiana”

Due to encroaching glaciers having leveled everything in their path, we don’t have hills in northern Indiana save for sand dunes, but south of Indy lies beautiful hill country.  Neighbor Dave Elliott burned me a CD of Lonnie Mack’s 1971 album “Hills of Indiana.”  Six months older than I, the Hoosier blues legend from Spencer County near the Ohio border recorded “Memphis” in 1963, an instrumental that expanded the role of the electric guitar in rock music.  I saw him at a “House Rockin’ Blues” night at the Holiday Star, the only white guy on a bill that included Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Lonnie Mack, Albert King, and B.B. King.  The show lasted until 3 a.m.

My “Roaring Twenties in the Region” talk went very well, although I shortened the readings somewhat as we approached the 60-minute mark. Isabelle Vargo recalled playing Post Office and Spin the Bottle as a teenager.  Bethel Mattingly remembered gypsy girls tumbling about on her front lawn in long dresses but no underwear. Several guys talked about skinny-dipping at the Lake George clay banks. 

In “Hobart Memories” is this passage by Franklin Rhoades, whose widow was in the audience, that reminded me of a stunt Sammy Corey pulled with Terry Jenkins, Paul Curry, and me holding our breath: “Another sport on the frozen Lake George was a very crazy thing we did, but we were in a reckless age.  We drove a car on the lake, filling it with anyone wanting to ride.  Then after tying a large rope behind the car, a bunch of nuts would hang onto it while the car gathered speed and started pulling the skaters behind it.  The driver would make sudden stops and sharp turns, causing a whiplash effect on the skaters trying to loosen their hold so they would go flying.  One time my brother Bob was run over by the Model T Ford.  He wasn’t hurt because he was between the wheels.  A car at that time only weighed about 750 pounds, so weight-wise the ice could sustain it.”

Carl Krausse told Bee Stafford about the time in 1920 when the limousine of opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink got stuck during a snow storm in front of Stommel’s store on Third Street. Several merchants helped dig the vehicle out while the diva was cursing at the chauffeur in German, assuming they wouldn’t understand.  After they finished freeing the limo, much to her surprise they called out in perfect German: “It was a pleasure to serve you, Madame.”

Among the 40 or so attendees were archives volunteer Dave Mergl, Doris and John Ban (Education Professor emeritus), Kay who bowls with Dave and Angie, and Beverly Wright, who recently donated a splendid collection of Calumet Community Congress records to the archives.  Her late husband Jim was a leader in the early-70s Saul Alinsky-style activist group. Kristina Kuzma, who parleyed an internship last year into a full-time job at Reiner Senior Center, helped play my short videos, brought me a hefty bowl of fresh fruit, and invited me back.  I might give my Vivian Carter talk and play Vee-Jay ditties in the spring.

At Hobart Dairy Queen I consumed a chili cheese dog and vanilla shake.  On Sunday mornings Dave, Tom Wade, Bruce Sawochka, and I often stopped there after three sets of tennis nearby at Fred Rose Park.  Imagining how playing such songs as “Hey Little Girl” would go over with Hobart seniors, I thought of Dee Clark’s description of a coed in a high school sweater, black silk stockings, and “that crazy skin-tight skirt” and recalled Mary Bub, who (as we crudely put it in the Fifties) had the finest ass at Upper Dublin.  Two years younger than I, at a party my senior year she asked for a ride home and we smooched in her driveway.  She had just broken up with a long-time boyfriend, but I was content (or too shy) to go beyond “necking.”   I visited her a few days later, but nothing more came of it.  When yearbooks came out near the end of the school year, she asked me to sign hers and I realized what an opportunity I’d missed.  Mary Bub, where are you now, I wonder.

Classmates LeeLee Minehart Devenney and Bob Wolf liked my pro-Obama Facebook comments.  LeeLee’s father, when Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, claimed to be one of just two Republicans in Fort Washington, the other being the pastor of his Reformed Church.

At IU Northwest’s fall convocation historian Eric Foner lectured on the topic Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.  From ages 7 to 21 our sixteenth President lived in Spencer County, Indiana, just across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky.  He later described himself as “a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy.”  A Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is located about five miles from Santa Claus, Indiana, Bears QB Jay Cutler’s hometown. In September 1859 Lincoln spoke at Masonic Hall in Indianapolis. In the audience was Hugh McCulloch, who wrote: “Careless of his attire, ungraceful in his movements, I thought as he came forward to address the audience that his was the most ungainly figure I had ever seen upon a platform. Could this be Abraham Lincoln whose speeches I had read with so much interest and admiration — this plain, dull-looking man one of the most gifted speakers of his time? The question was speedily answered by the speech. The subject was slavery — its character, its incompatibility with Republican institutions, its demoralizing influences upon society, its aggressiveness, its rights as limited by the Constitution; all of which were discussed with such clearness, simplicity, earnestness, and force as to carry me with him to the conclusion that the country could not long continue part slave and part free — that freedom must prevail throughout the length and breadth of the land, or that the great Republic, instead of being the home of the free and the hope of the oppressed, would become a by-word and a reproach among the nations.”

Most famous for his seminal “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,” Eric Foner is the nephew of the Marxist labor historian Philip S. Foner and the son of history professor Jack Foner, blacklisted during the Red Scare for championing radical visionaries such as Eugene V. Debs and W.E.B. DuBois.  Reviewing Eric Foner’s “The Story of American Freedom,” Theodore Draper concluded: “If the story is told largely from the perspective of blacks and women, especially the former, it is not going to be a pretty tale.” 

Before the lecture Chris Young arranged for a small group of us to meet with Foner in the Robin Hass Birky Women ‘s Studies Room.  Despite having just come from Young’s seminar on Lincoln, he was alert and affable.  Ron Cohen asked whether he’d ever seen his FBI file on him, and he replied that it was embarrassingly small.  When he was a kid, he went to a progressive summer camp, and on visiting day agents wrote down the license plate numbers of parents who showed up. George McGovern’s name came up since he, like Foner, had recently written about Lincoln.

In his address Foner compared Lincoln to President Obama in the sense that their political rise was a result of oratorical prowess – Abe’s eloquent debates with Stephen Douglas and Barack’s keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.  Lincoln’s views toward ending slavery evolved; where he once favored compensation and colonization, there is no mention of either in the Emancipation Proclamation.  To get the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed took great political skills. Foner deftly answered questions about Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass, diplomatic problems with Great Britain, and comparisons with Russia ending serfdom in 1861.  The entire History department was on hand, and during the reception I told Chancellor Lowe that it was a good day to be a historian.  Both he and Foner had spent time in Dublin, Ireland, researching reports informants filed about supposed Irish-American terrorist groups.  Both concluded that since their livelihood depended on producing a continuous flow of “evidence,” the dispatches were unreliable.

above, Eric Foner; below, Nicholas Kimmel

Prior to game two of the World Series in San Francisco one-armed veteran Nicholas Kimmel in full uniform made his way with great effort to the mound and threw out the first pitch, a perfect strike, as pitcher Barry Zito and Hall of Famer Willie Mays looked on, in awe of such a courageous hero.  In a 2-0 Giants victory the key play was when Prince Fielder tried to score from first on a double with no outs and was thrown out on a perfect relay.

With the presidential race so close, the key will be getting out the vote.  Democrats appear to have thwarted most attempts to disenfranchise poor people and Latinos, but these groups traditionally don’t vote with such frequency as more affluent whites.  To whip up crowds Obama has employed the word “Romnesia” as shorthand for his opponent’s flip-flopping on positions, now that he is pretending to be a moderate.

Indiana Historical Society offered to pay for hotel accommodations at the Mariott the night I receive the Dorothy Riker Award.  Key Fetters asked me to fact-check a press release; it was fine but I suggested mentioning “Valor” and adding that I was co-director of the Calumet Regional Archives.

In Fantasy Football I am playing nephew Dave’s team Jack Bauer’s Bruisers (he was a big “24 Hours” fan).  Colin Kern recently wrote: “I wonder if I can get my phone to say, "The following takes place between 2pm and 3pm. Events occur in real time" every hour (adjusting the times, of course) in Jack Bauer's voice.”  I forwarded the message to Pittsburgh Dave, and he replied that he actually has something similar on his phone.

Played two board games at Jef Halberstadt’s, finishing third in Seven Wonders and first in Revolution by capturing the apothecary on the final move, enabling me to poison an opponent and gain control of the Market.  Robin picked up pizza at Cappo’s, formerly Bronko’s when owned by former student Nick Tarailo, who went to Merrillville H.S. and IU with Jef and T. Wade.  Home in time to catch Diamond Rings, whose lead singer John O is a gay Billy Idol lookalike, on Letterman.