Road Trips

“Not all those who wander are lost,” J.R.R. Tolkien

Families once took Sunday road trips.  When I was a kid, we frequently went from the Philadelphia suburbs to Easton, where I was born and lived for eight years An expressway nowadays reduces the trip to 45 minutes, but during the 1950s it took at least twice that long.  The highlight was what Vic called a “racer dip” on a back road.  At a good speed it would give your stomach a floating sensation.  Every few years we’d travel to Pittsburgh, where Vic grew up, through the Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnels, to visit aunts and uncles.  Aunt Aurie and Uncle John had a black maid who cooked delicious pancakes.

My five best road trip movies: “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Rain Man,” “Dumb and Dumber,” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”  I left off “East Rider” and “Thelma and Louise” because of the endings.  My favorite road trip books are Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” and John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley.”   

 Gandofini (l) with Steve Van Zandt and Tony Sirico  

Dead at age 51 is “Sopranos” star James Gandofini.  His nuanced portrayal of Mafia boss Tony Soprano, on HBO for six seasons beginning in 1999, paved the way for such TV dramas as “Breaking Bad,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Mad Men.”  In fact, when Peggy called Don Draper a monster in a recent “Mad Men,” it elicited memories of Tony Soprano, who took care of business with similar ruthlessness.  Soprano cared more about his family than Draper, palpably relieved at the idea of sending daughter Sally, who refuses to be with him after having discovered him screwing a neighbor, off to boarding school.  On a visit Sally impresses the headmistress and two students she rooms with for a night.  On a road trip home Sally’s mom offers her a cigarette.

from top, 1922 construction in Dyer; Joliet St., Dyer; original marker, in Valparaiso 

It’s the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln Highway, designed to link New York City and San Francisco.  Federal funds were allocated to link up roads already in existence, such as 73rd Avenue in Merrillville, which had once been the Sauk Indian Trail.  In Porter County the route followed Joliet Road to Lincolnway in downtown Valparaiso and then Route 2 into LaPorte.  Several dozen motorists are beginning a transcontinental road trip, half from New York, half from California.  They’ll meet in Kearney, Nebraska.

Jon Meacham’s Thomas Jefferson biography arrived via interlibrary loan. African-American historian Annette Gordon-Reed, whose “The Hemingses of Monticello” established that America’s third president sired six children with the enslaved half-sister of his deceased wife, wrote: “Jon Meacham understands Thomas Jefferson.  With thorough and up-to-date research, elegant writing, deep insight, and an open mind, he brings Jefferson, the most talented politician of his generation - and one of the most talented in our nation's history - into full view.  This is an extraordinary work.”  A former Newsweek editor and regular on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Meacham describes the President-elect awakening at first light at Conrad and McMunn’s boardinghouse; he “swung his long legs out of bed and plunged his feet into a basin of cold water – a lifelong habit he believed good for his health.” 

It’s the hundredth anniversary of Lincoln Highway, originally designed to link New York City and San 

Lecturing on the Postwar Years in the Calumet Region, I successfully combined my “Age of Anxiety” and Vivian Carter material plus added information about football star George Taliaferro.   Steve McShane remarked that it was my best appearance yet.  Born in 1927, Taliaferro grew up a mile from IU Northwest in a somewhat integrated working class neighborhood on the 2600 block of Madison.  He attended all-black schools; until his junior year Roosevelt’s football team couldn’t compete against white schools.  After lettering in four sports and setting a pole vault record, Taliaferro attended IU on a football scholarship at a time when black athletes were unable to live on or near campus.  Thanks in large part to Taliaferro’s heroics, IU’s team went undefeated his freshman year; teammates included future NFL star Pete Pihos and baseball great Ted Kluszewski.  A halfback who caught passes and led the team in rushing yards, Taliaferro played both offense and defense and was the team’s punter.  The three-time All-American was the first black player drafted by an NFL team (the Bears), the first to play quarterback in the NFL while with the New Yorks Yanks in 1951, and enjoyed a six-year pro career.  After football Taliaferro earned a master’s degree in Social Work and became a special assistant to IU President John Ryan, charged with promoting Affirmative Action.  During his ten-year tenure he clashed with football coach Lee Corso and once almost came to blows with basketball coach Bob Knight.  He was no Booker Taliaferro Washington.

Workers from Four Seasons removed three large ugly Viburnums and replaced them with three Hydrangeas in an area north of our condo.  Toni is pleased and can now finish planting annuals.

Jonathyne Briggs reacted to the Heat winning their second straight NBA championship by posting the Flaming Lips song “Evil Will Prevail.”

The road in front of IUN’s library was freshly tarred.   Yellow tape on either end blocked cars from entering, but had I not noticed them I might have really been sorry.   Electricity had been out for an hour, and I held my breadth turning my computer back on.  John Hmurovic, who produced the four-hour documentary on Gary based in large part on my book, has volunteered to organize architectural drawings Steve Collins donated several years ago.  I suggested to Steve that he put in for money to a Flat File cabinet to properly store them if he can’t get one transferred from the map department.  Also in the Archives, Maurice Yancy and three Artis brothers were pouring through old Post-Tribunes, checking Sports pages.  Orsten Artis, born in 1943, was the third leading scorer on the 1966 Texas Western Miners, the first NCAA champions to field an all-black starting lineup.  Orsten went on to become a Gary policeman. 

  

Archives volunteer Martha Latko found a negative of blind reporter Allen Naive, a Kentucky native who worked for the Post-Trib for over 40 years, starting in 1919.  Asked whether he had trouble doing his job, he responded, “Limitations, pal, but not troubles.  I get along fine in my present job.  It’s no trick to dial phone numbers.  I take my notes on a braille slate.  And it’s easy to type out stories.”  Naive first visited Gary to see his sister, who married U.S. Steel engineer Thomas Cutler.  He joked that he visited Gary on four occasions but returned just three times.  A staunch pro-union Democrat, he was a charter member of the Gary Newspaper Guild.  A big Kentucky basketball fan, he attended Wildcats games whenever they played in Chicago.  In 1959 to celebrate his 40-year tenure at the Post-Trib, Mayor George Chacharis took him to lunch, joined by U.S. Steel Superintendent Thomas W. Hunter.

A Spitfire Pub regular, Naive lived at the Gary YMCA and used neither a cane nor a seeing eye dog.  He walked to work until the Post-Tribune moved from 451 Broadway to 1065 Broadway.  Carrol Vertrees recalled: “Sometimes guys would play games with his paper, in fun, of course, and he handled it well.  He was, as you might guess, an unusual man; he had true grit. He played draw poker, using specially marked cards.  He was good, and it was fun to hear him say, in his deep authoritative voice say ‘I'll see you’ when he called somebody's bet, but with him it just sounded natural.”

Allen Naive in 1959

I found “Before Sunrise” on HBO.  It was fun to see Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as college-age youngsters meeting on a train and spending a romantic night together in Vienna. They come across a man who offers to write a poem about them with a word of their choice in it.  They chose milkshake and the man composed one called “Delusion Angel” that starts out:

                  “Daydream delusion

                  Limosine Eyelash

                  Oh, baby with your pretty face

                  Drop a tear in my wineglass

                  Look at those big eyes

                  See what you mean to me

                  Sweet cakes and milkshakes.”

                 

The final chapter of John Dos Passos’s “The Shackles of Power” deals with Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”  While generally optimistic about the U.S., he bemoaned the existence of slavery and mistreatment of Native Americans, whom he predicted would become extinct.  Discussing Indian removal to the West, he wrote: “It is impossible to conceive the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations. They are undertaken by a people already exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the newcomers betake themselves are inhabited by other tribes, which receive them with jealous hostility. Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on all sides.”

Becca attended Paige’s birthday party and played Werewolf, the game that had been so popular at Wades Game Weekend, only in the kids’ version the Seer (who gets to open his eyes and ask the identity of one or two players) was called the Peeper.