Salt of the Earth

“Spare a thought for the rag taggy people, let’s drink to the salt of the earth,” Rolling Stones

I heard Cracker’s “Teen Angst” on WXRT’s Saturday morning show about the year 1992, whetting my appetite for Sunday’s concert.  Hearing a recap of the Presidential election, pitting incumbent George Bush, representative of “The Greatest Generation,” against a Baby Boomer from Hope, Arkansas, it’s a wonder Bill Clinton pulled off the win -  given Gennifer Flowers and other “bimbo eruptions” and charges that he was a draft dodger and pot smoker (“I didn’t inhale,” he claimed lamely).  His slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” helped, as did his debate performances against a tired-looking president and the eccentric Ross Perot. Now the Republicans are trying to use the Benghazi tragedy to besmirch Hillary’s reputation since they regard her as the 2016 frontrunner.

English professor Pat Buckler, one of several women denied tenure, had a party for Anne Balay.  A few years ago I heard Pat deliver an excellent paper on female private eye V.I. Warshawski and the depiction of women in detective novels, but evidently her tenured colleagues thought her field of specialization unworthy of scholarly examination.   Mike Olszanski, who found Balay’s manuscript “Steel Closets” to be truly trailblazing, drove me to Pat’s house on winding Old Suman Road in Valpo.   Warren Buckler, a retired Louisville Journal-Courier newspaperman, informed me that Isaac Suman had been a Civil War officer and was severely wounded during the Battle of Shiloh.  After the war he started a large livestock farm north of Valparaiso, near where the Bucklers live.  He became Valparaiso’s postmaster and later mayor.  Warren grew up in Maryland, and his father, a progressive Democrat, served on the Baltimore City Council during the racially turbulent 1960s.

On hand were Fred and Michael Chary, whose trivia team Anne and I had joined last winter at Temple Israel.  Several guests recommended that Anne institute a sex discrimination suit against Indiana University.  She was disinclined, at the moment at least, because she is appealing through the regular university process and, among other things, such legal battles are nearly impossible to win.  Don’t be so sure, Michael, an assistant prosecutor, told her, and cited a number of cases to demonstrate his point.  With public support for gay rights growing exponentially in the past couple years, the guests agreed that Anne’s detractors are on the wrong side of history. 

An IU Law School graduate, Michael Chary was familiar with John Applegate, who had been its dean while he matriculated. I had been dubious upon first learning that President McRobbie had created Applegate’s position to oversee Regional Campus affairs.  Forty years earlier, President John Ryan disbanded the Regional Campus bureaucracy and gave IU Northwest and other former “Extensions” their independence, at least in theory.  Bloomington still held the purse strings, retained veto power over tenure and promotion decisions, and wielded ultimate authority over chancellors.  Chancellor Lowe’s predecessor, Bruce Bergland, was especially beholden to Bloomington, to IUN’s ultimate detriment.  Therefore, when Applegate addressed IUN’s Faculty Organization and explained that his role was to be an advocate and facilitator so that relations with the mother campus could run more smoothly and efficiently, I welcomed the initiative, especially after learning of his stellar academic credentials, which suggested that he would be very much his own man rather than an administration lackey. 

 Anne and Leah Balay on Mothers Day

Anne’s daughter Leah told Tanice Foltz and me about several Smith College History courses where students divide into groups and act out various roles.  She had one on the American Revolution where some students were Tories, others Patriots, and another group was simply the mob.  Other topics included England during the reign of Henry VIII, the French Revolution, and the Salem Witchcraft Trials.  Sounds interesting.  Tanice mentioned doing interactive stuff in her Women in Crime course.  Someone brought up Jodi Arias, recently found guilty of murdering her ex-boyfriend.  I promised to send Tanice my Postwar Shavings that includes excerpts from Kathryn Hyndman’s diary.  A communist who demonstrated against the Korean War, she was held in Crown Point jail for a year while the government tried to deport her to Yugoslavia.

Playing as “Mad Men’s” credits rolled was “Baby Jane (Mo-Mo Jane)” by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels about a young man who “used to walk the straight and narrow [and] never fly around” until coming into contact with hard drugs, nicknamed Mary Jane.  Earlier in her crummy apartment Peggy hears loud music playing upstairs from Puerto Rican Ray Barretto’s 1968 album “Acid.”  For viewers who enjoy Pete Campbell suffering, the latest episode was truly special.  He runs into his father-in-law at a brothel, and the old man pulls his account from the advertising firm. At dinner with a bimbo married to a boorish client, Megan’s French Canadian mother referred to her as the apple in a pig’s mouth.

Sunday we drove to Grand Rapids.  Nine of us had a Mothers Day dinner at the Holiday Inn Downtown.  I ordered the 20-ounce steak and shared it with Tori, who just got a salad and appetizer of chicken wings.  Alissa gave Toni David Kaiser’s “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival.”  It sounds intriguing.

Phil’s entire family plus Alissa’s boyfriend Josh went to the Cracker concert, held at the Intersection.  Not wanting to stand the entire time, we arrived early enough to obtain two four-seat tables.  Also on hand with daughter Britney were Lorraine and John Shearer, who had caught the show on Friday at the Cubby Bear in Chicago with Marianne and Missy Brush.  I had a couple Founders drafts, last year’s recipient of best micro-brewed beer in the country and a primary reason Grand Rapids won last year’s Beer Capital designation.

Opening band was Camper Van Beethoven, fronted by Cracker’s lead singer David Lowery and featuring a fiddle player.  One song included the line, “Take the pinheads bowling,” and seemed an attempt to bridge the gulf between southern and northern rockers.  Cracker opened with “Low” and played a kick-ass set.  Lead guitarist Johnny Hickman wowed the crowd with amazing solos and an infectious smile.  Phil, Josh, Alissa, and I stood in front of him the entire set, and cajoled Tori, Miranda, Anthony, and Delia into joining us for several numbers.  Tori thought the bass player a dead ringer for Severus Snape from Harry Potter and couldn’t believe some of the hippie-looking dancers in the crowd.  Their encore was a rousing extended version of “Everybody Gets One For Free (‘Cept For Me).”  I sang along to “Euro-Trash Girl,” which contains the lines, “Sold my plasma in Amsterdam spent it all in one night” and “Got a tattoo in Berlin and a case of the crabs.”  Lorraine gave me a band-aid, a standing joke from when at a Voodoo Chili concert an over-exuberant dancer bumped into my forehead with her teeth, leaving me bloody.  My favorite verse: “Called my mom from a pay phone, I said, ‘I’m down to my last.’  She said, ‘I sent you to college now go call your dad.’”  Halfway through the set a guy started yelling for the band to play “Sunrise (in the Land of Milk and Honey).”  I knew from experience that Dave Lowery hates people doing that.  After the show the guy was singing “Sunrise” in the bathroom.

Monday on the way to the pool and hot tub I perused the hotel borrowing library and grabbed Ralph Hauenstein’s “Intelligence Was My Line: Inside Eisenhower’s Other Command (ETOUSA).”  A native Hoosier born in Fort Wayne in 1912, he lived most of his life in Grand Rapids.  After college he joined the army and became commander of an all-black CCC camp near Walkerville, Michigan.  When the local movie theater turned away men under his command, he negotiated a deal where they’d be allowed in the balcony.  He accompanied some of them to Idlewild, a famed resort that attracted leading African-American entertainers of that day.  Prior to the war he was city editor of the Grand Rapids Herald, whose predecessors in that position included Navy Secretary Frank Knox and Senator Arthur Vandenberg.  With the army European Theater of Operations, Intelligence Service chief Hauenstein was in Iceland and then England where he boarded at Cavendish House owned and operated by a colorful octogenarian, Duchess Rosa Lewis, who had once been the mistress of Edward VII.  In Paris after its liberation, Hauenstein witnessed women with shaved heads who’s collaborated with the Germans and used his authority to close the houses of prostitution, much to the chagrin of many G.I.s.  After the war he became a successful businessman and philanthropist, donating money, for instance, which created the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at grand Valley State University.

We took Miranda to Appleby’s, an eatery we introduced her to when she was seven and hooked on junk food.  Then we attended Anthony’s ninth grade baseball game.  In the stands was a girl wearing a sweatshirt with “Lights Out Lane” on the back.   I introduced myself to Laura, who not surprisingly was Anthony’s girlfriend.  Tori joined us after her soccer practice and Phil fresh from work, wearing my old leather jacket.  Anthony’s team fell behind, went ahead by three, and escaped a bases-loaded-nobody-out jam before putting the game away with a six-run rally.  Fortunately the temp was warmer than predicted and our part of the stands was in the sun.

above, Becca as Annie, James in hat as Bert Healy; below, Diggity CD cover

Back home, I rehashed the Cracker concerts with Marianne, who told me she and Missy talked with Cracker’s Johnny Hickman at the bar after the gig and posed with him for pictures.  Missy texted afterwards, “Johnny Hickman just told me that he is honored that I sing his songs in my band.  I can literally die happy now.”  Marianne mentioned an upcoming outdoor concert in Valpo featuring jam band Diggity.  One of their songs is Crippled Like a Pantywaste.”  Disappointed by how poorly the banged-up Bulls were playing, I switched to the Cubs, put it on mute, and listened to Gordon Lightfoot.

In the Post-Trib’s obit section I learned about the death at age 85 of dear friend Garrett Cope.  Though he suffered much discrimination during his life, he remained good-humored and optimistic until the very end.  I was gratified to see IUN’s flags at half-staff.  Garrett remained part of the university for almost 50 years. He was the salt of the earth, a Biblical phrase from the Sermon on the Mount and the title of a cut from the 1968 Rolling Stone album “Beggars.”  The Office of Marketing and Communications announcement quoted Steve McShane, who said that Garrett had a down-home friendliness, a fantastic sense of humor, and a heart of gold.  I couldn’t have said it better.

At IUN 80 emails awaited, including a note from Paul Kern, pleased to read in Steel Shavings about former students Sam Barnett and Pat Wisniewski and sad to hear of Bob Selund’s death.  He wrote: “In your discussion of Vic Bubas and the ACC, you might have mentioned that Everett Case, the NC State coach, was also from Indiana, having coached the Frankfort Hot Dogs to several state titles in the 20s and 30s.  My father and I heard Bones McKinney, the Wake Forest coach from that era, speak at a Lions Club meeting in Boonville.  He was quite a character and had his audience rolling in the aisles.”  He added: “I fear that your dreams of someone else carrying on Steel Shavings will be disappointed.  No one else has your combination of enthusiasm, imagination, hustle, and editorial skills to produce one Steel Shavings, much less keep it going through forty-two issues.  Your Hoosier Historian Award was well deserved.  I see that you even put on a suit to receive it.”  Wish Paul lived closer to me.  He kept a diary during the years between marriages but destroyed it.

Summer session is underway.  Evidently Chris Young was told to open up one of his sections to allow more students to enroll and then had his other section pulled because it had two fewer than the 15-student minimum.  I’d have protested if it happened to me, but the administration is playing hardball in an effort to force summer salary cuts in the furure.

Dave Malham sent along a short story he composed for a writing group about Mickey Mouse’s wake.  With typical self-deprecation he said, “I finished the story.  Pause . . . pause . . . not a laugh, not a smile, just puzzled faces.  I had to tell them the story was over.”  Actually it is quite hilarious and starts out: “The mourners entered the funeral home and saw Minnie standing, some would say posing, next to her husband’s casket. She was dressed in a form fitting, black cashmere Dana Buchman dress with a scoop neckline complimented with a diamond pendant and matching drop earrings. The talk later was that she confused her husband’s wake with a photo shoot.  There was other talk. About an unhappy marriage, rumors about Minnie and Goofy, reported sightings of her and Pluto at Tahoe. There were also the verifiably true stories of her repeated complaints that Mickey was getting too serious, too introspective. Minnie always enjoyed the limelight and parties, but that was never enough for Mickey and it was no secret that he felt stifled with Disney. He wanted to do theater, he wanted to do Othello, he wanted to do Lennie in the Off-Broadway production, Of Mice and Men, but Walt Disney’s tight contractual arrangement kept him prisoner.”  David should keep a journal or blog; maybe volume 42 will inspire him.

Thanking me for a Shavings issue that included her article about her grandmother, Veronica Eskew wrote: “Continue to do what you do, for your passion for history impacts the lives of many.”