Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Wrecking Ball


“Gambling man rolls the dice
Working man pays the bill
It’s still fast and easy
Up on bankers hill.”
    “Bruce Springsteen, “Shackled and Drawn”


Rolling Stone ranked Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball” best CD of the year, edging out notable records by Frank Ocean, Jack White, Bob Dylan, and Fiona Apple.  Song of the year was “Hold On” by the Alabama Shakes.  Movie of the year was the quirky “The Master,” beating out “Zero Dark 30,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and my choice, “Lincoln.”  All four movies have historical significance. Most of the top sports stories are bummers: the Jerry Sandusky trial, football concussions and bounties, the Heat becoming NBA champs after Derrick Rose gets hurt, the NHL lockout, Notre Dame being number one (half joking). 

I missed the IUNW library holiday lunch, my stomach aching, perhaps from over-indulging the day before at the Arts and Sciences celebration.  I did rouse myself to go to the post office and food shop with Toni.  Fiddling with On Demand, I discovered Showtime programs were free; it must be a special deal to get folks hooked.

There is cautious optimism that the federal government will do something to ban assault rifles and magazine clips that contain multiple rounds of ammunition.  Even the powerful NRA seems a bit chastened, or, more likely, at least laying low for now.  The problem has been that there has been no comparable countervailing gun control lobby group.  The NRA went after Obama like he was a sworn enemy even though he did virtually nothing to earn their enmity.  Let’s hope he’s ready to man up to the challenge.  He’s put Vice President Biden in charge of the effort, announcing, “This is not some Washington commission.  This is a team that has a very specific task: to pull together real reports, right now” and have recommendations ready within a month.  Funeral services are underway in Newtown, Connecticut, and Jonathan Rix posted a photo of the young victims.  


Brenden Bayer, Colin Kern, and Beamer Pickert all posted jokes about the world supposedly ending on December 21.  Beamer, who’s half Polish, also sent out a recipe for three-mushroom pierogis featuring oyster, shitake, and portabella prepared in potatoes and onions.  Angie wanted my recipe for cherry cobbler and I had to look it up, it’s been so long since I made it.  You dump a large can of cherry pie filling and a small can of crushed pineapple into a pan, put white cake mix on top, spoon a quarter pound of melted butter over it, and bake for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Vickie Milenkovski, secretary of the Department of History, Philosophy, Political Science, and Religious Studies, helped me send off a document to TIAA-CREF.  It required my signature, so she scanned it before emailing it to the client relationship consultant.

Dave escorted a dozen East Chicago Central students to IUNW for a campus tour.  After giving me a heads up, he had the student guide bring them to the archives, and I gave them a ten-minute tour.  After Dave mentioned my Steel Shavings series, I pulled out the Portage issue that has a photo of Dave at age 12 when he was a blond, tow-headed batboy for Porter Acres softball team.

In his book on postwar consumer culture Andrew Hurley describes efforts after automatic pinsetters made bowling alleys potentially lucrative, to court suburbanites, including women and children. Willow Grove Lanes, located northwest of Philadelphia, near where I grew up, had a décor that resembled a theme park. Not everyone was pleased with the trend.  Hurley writes that in 1961, upon visiting Gil Hodges Lanes in Brooklyn, named for the beloved Dodger first baseman, grizzled reporter Bill Slocum “encountered none of the shady characters or illicit activities he had come to expect.  Searching for the customary back room where local bookmakers posted winning horses, Slocum stumbles upon a playroom where parents could deposit their children while they bowled.  As far as he could tell, there were no scratch sheets or pornographic material being passed from one person to another.  Even the alleys themselves had changed; mechanized equipment now set pins, returned balls, and kept score.”

I made what I hope is a final trip shopping trip along Route 30 to pick up a honey-baked ham for Christmas Eve and macadamia nuts for Toni.  Unlike years past, Albanese had no free samples out or gift packages of a few malted milk balls thrown in with one’s purchase.

Gaard Logan loved the photo in our Christmas card and the caption about Jimbo’s suit making a rare appearance.  Concerning how white-haired I looked, I replied that not long ago my mother sent a driver to pick me up at the airport, describing me as having brown hair.  He and I shared a laugh over that, but in her eyes I was still that brown-haired son of hers.  I tried to get Gaard to send a photo of her and Chuck.  She was a gorgeous redhead in high school.

A strange email came my way that I’m not certain was intended for my eyes.  A charter school official wrote to a colleague about whether to invite me back to talk to teachers at Roosevelt.  A third party told him that if I did “a deep dive” and focused on the history and importance of Roosevelt HS, that would be great but “that the larger overview he gave at Induction wouldn’t be deep enough for staff members.”  WTF.  I guess my previous dive was too shallow.  I actually centered my induction talk on Roosevelt’s historical legacy.  This does give me an idea, however, for a future article on “The ‘Velt.” 

Roosevelt’s origins were the result of a black population boom during the 1920s and the 1927 white protest over sending African American high school students to Emerson.  Blacks got a first-class unit (K through12), but it marked the first instance where a northern city instituted segregationist policies.  Roosevelt’s first principal was a Garveyite who believed black students would be better off in a school without white teachers and administrators who looked down on them.  His successor, H. Theo Tatum, demanded high standards from his faculty both inside and outside of the classroom; he forbade them to patronize jazz joints and eateries such as Mae’s Louisiana Chicken where they might come in contact with unsavory elements.  Over the years Roosevelt produced many distinguished alumni, including doctors and lawyers, athletes such as George Taliaferro and Lee Calhoun, actors William Marshall and Avery Brooks, plus Vivian Carter and the Spaniels.

Since Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson took office, scores of abandoned building have been subject to the wrecking ball, but there are an estimated 3,000 more that need to come down.  The mayor has about a million dollars in Community Development Block Grants but estimates that forty times that amount is needed to complete the task.  She has made abandoned homes near the university a priority.


Bart Letica sent me photos and an account of his being part of a Bomber Maintenance Squadron in India and the Pacific Theater during WW II.  Our association goes back a quarter century to when I published (Shavings, volume 18) an interview with him along with his brother John’s account of growing up in Indiana Harbor during the Depression.  The Army Air Corps took him to Miami Beach, New Bedford (Mass.), Chicago, Salina (Kansas), Casablanca (Morocco), Oran (Algeria), Karaghpor (India), Kwang Poo (China), Melbourne (Australia), and Tinian (Mariana Islands).  He wrote: “On September 19, 1945, the ground personnel were given the opportunity to sign up to see Tokyo from the air.  This was the place and the day of the signing of the Peace Treaty.  On that day I was aboard a B29 flying over the USS Missouri while listening on the radio to this historical event that was taking place right down there below us – an experience that I will remember as long as I live.” 

Shortly thereafter Bart was relieved to get a letter from brother John that he had survived the war unhurt.  On October 16 he boarded an LST to Saipan.  He was on his way home.  After stops in Los Angeles and Helper, Utah, he arrived at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and received his discharge on November 30, 1956, at eleven a.m.  He concluded, “As I relived those days and talked about them as years went by, it seemed like I was on an all-expense-paid pleasure trip around the world, and if not for being at war, it would have been.”

Monday, December 17, 2012

Mood Swings


“Bother me tomorrow,
Today I’ll buy no sorrows.”
    “Looking Out My back Door,” Creedence Clearwater Revival

I finally watched the Coen brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” in its entirety on Encore.  John Goodman is awesome as Vietnam veteran Walter Sobchak, as hyper as The Dude (Jeff Bridges) is laid back.   Steve Buscemi, John Turtorro, and Philip Seymoue Hoffman are three of my favorites, and I loved every scene they were in.  The funniest parts took place at a bowling alley and when Buscemi as Donny convinces Walter and the Dude to pick up In-and-Out burgers.  The music is great, including Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me,” Elvis Costello’s “My Mood Swings,” and two Credence Clearwater Revival songs, “Run Through the Jungle” and “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.”  Funniest line is when The Dude tries to get a taxi driver to change the radio dial when “Peaceful Easy Feeling” comes on, saying “I had a rough night, and I hate the Eagles, man.”

“Thoroughly Modern Millie” had some great numbers, and the acting was super, but the story was certainly dated, with a goofy Asian lady, Mrs. Meers, as the villainess and the main character hoping to marry a rich man.  The play was set in 1920s New York City, and Millie called herself a New Woman who had left the boredom of rural life in Kansas behind, but she didn’t seem very liberated beyond embracing the Flapper lifestyle.  “Thoroughly Modern Millie” was first a 1967 film starring Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing, and the play opened on Broadway ten years ago.  At the end Millie thinks she is abandoning her ambition to marry for love, only her boyfriend Jimmy turns out to be a multi-millionaire, so she can have it both ways. In the Meet the Cast section of the program was mention that the actor who played Jimmy, Andy Polomchak, “works at Vanis hair salon and spa in Valparaiso where he lives with his boyfriend Mike (Gloriso, who played the part of Ching Ho)."  Nice.  Colleen Peluso (in purple) shined as Millie while Amy Lowery (red dress) sparkled as Miss Dorothy.
It being our annual outing with the Hagelbergs and Tom Eaton and Pat Cronin, afterwards we had dinner at Sage Restaurant.  We were the only ones there at first, and the manager joked that he had cleared the place out for us, but then several other groups arrived.  We like the place so much, we hope it’s doing OK financially.  Some of their specials are just 25 dollars for a salad, an entrée, and dessert.  I had an eight-ounce steak, mashed potatoes and broccoli.

President Obama spoke at a prayer vigil in Newtown, Connecticut.  He was incredibly moving.  After quoting Jesus having said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them – for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven,” he read off the names of the kids who died at the Sandy Hook school shooting: Charlotte.  Daniel.  Olivia.  Josephine.  Ana.  Dylan.  Madeleine.  Catherine.  Chase.  Jesse.  James.  Grace.  Emilie.  Jack.  Noah.  Caroline.  Jessica.  Benjamin.  Avielle.  Allison.”  Tears flowed freely.

Thanks to a 200-yard rushing day from Adrian Peterson and my wide receivers Andre Johnson and Michael Crabtree each earning more than 20 points I doubled Phil’s score (138-68) and reached the LANE Fantasy League finals against Dave.

I took packages to the post office, arriving around 8:45, but it didn’t open until 9.  It turned out to be a smart move because I was first in line and by 9 there were a dozen people behind me.

Eric Sandweiss asked me to serve a three-year term on the Indiana Magazine of History editorial advisory board.  There’s an annual meeting in February during the Indiana Association of Historians meeting; otherwise my duties will consist mainly of reviewing articles and suggesting new books to review.  I emailed back, “Sign me up.  I’d be honored to serve.”

The Arts and Sciences holiday party featured fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and Cole slaw – three favorites of mine.  After Zoran Kilibarda appeared to be laughing at the amount of gravy on my plate, I said I was having “a little meal with my gravy” rather than a little gravy with my meal.  At the table Jack Bloom was pontificating to Mary Ann Fischer about Indiana historically being a Southern dagger pointed at the heart of the North.  When he started describing details of a 1930 lynching of two men charged with murdering a white man and raping his girlfriend that took place in the city of Marion, I went to get a fruit plate and sat down at another table next to History prof David Parnell.  I asked how his first semester at IUN went; the survey classes went well but several upper division students taking his History of Rome course failed to turn in written assignments even though they came to class and participated in discussion.  Dean Hoyert sang a clever song about a student complaining about her English grade, and Poulard and Bloom sang a Christmas carol duet in French after Jack made clear he was not a Christian.

Talk about mood swings: a Facebook message about a good person dying too young left me in tears, and then Tori posted a Muppet video of singing chickens belting out “Joy to the World.”  At the Newtown vigil the first responders got an emotional standing ovation and President Obama described scenes of teachers acting heroically and children helping one another, including one telling a grown-up, “I know karate.  So it’s okay.  I’ll lead the way out.”