Memories of Memories

“I speak of childhood, but, to tell the truth

There’s nothing much remaining from my youth.”

    Robert Hillyer, “Through the Drift of Years” (1952)

Best known for his criticism of the Library of Congress for awarding pro-fascist poet Ezra Pound the Billingen Prize in 1949 for “The Pisan Cantos,” Robert Hillyer warned in “Through the Drift of Years”: “Never go back: if landscapes don’t change/ Then the familiar will but seem more strange.”  When I’ve revisited Fort Washington, PA, things indeed look out of proportion, usually smaller than I remember.  Postwar subdivisions now have tall trees.  The neighboring town of Ambler seems to have lost much of its Italian flavor.  I searched in vain for LeeLee Minehart’s house, where I attended numerous parties and studied for high school exams.  Was I on the wrong street perhaps?  Driving there used to be second nature.  LeeLee’s mother was a blond, vivacious, fun-loving woman who seemed not to mind a house full of teenagers; her dad was a liberal Democrat who was treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and known to fall asleep at parties.

LeeLee recently sent me a first grade photo Skip Pollard had given her.  Living in Easton at the time, I have almost no recollection of first grade except of a boy seated near me who during reading recitation couldn’t get past the word “the.”  Other visions are in reality anecdotes, set pieces, memories of memories – being forced to take cod liver oil, first time watching TV, stuck at a kids’ party and not knowing anybody, a neighbor kid claiming my dad would lose his job if Dewey beat Truman, seeing a friend’s mother (her bedroom door was open) in bra, panties and girdle.

In Indianapolis for an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) conference, Dave wrote: “I’m getting old.  Last year at the convention I stayed out until 4; this year I only made it until 2:30.”  This weekend he’s competing in the Post-Trib tennis tournament.  North winds dropped Region temperatures into the 60s and produced whitecaps on Lake Michigan; in fact, there was a lakeshore advisory that the waters were dangerous due to rip currents.

above, photo by Jim Spicer; below, Fred McColly

Fred McColly wrote Mitch Daniels: “As a Hoosier who voted against you at every opportunity I have to say your tenure as president of Purdue will darken Indiana education nearly as much as your governorship.  It may be understandable that you find Howard Zinn objectionable but Zinn was simply popularizing deeper lines of evidence about the venality of the framers of the Constitution.  Perhaps you should dig a bit deeper and pay attention to works like Charles Beard's 1918 seminal work. ‘An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States’ or, perhaps the work of Forrest MacDonald, and William Maclay's journal of the first congress (which he termed ‘a nest of vipers’).  It might even be better to proscribe the use of ‘The Federalist Papers’ since that's where all the difficulties Zinn wrote about began.”  Daniels sent him a reply virtually identical to a column of his that appeared in the NWI Times, claiming he wasn’t trying to censor anyone and citing quotes from historians Arthur M. Schlesinger and Oscar Handlin labeling Zinn a deranged polemicist - as if Schlesinger’s New Deal volumes aren’t polemics against any and all of FDR’s political enemies.  I emailed Fred: “If Zinn was inaccurate, let Daniels cite ONE example rather than merely quote from dead consensus historians.”

Anne Balay’s Gender Studies assignment included articles by Willa Cather (“Paul’s Case,” appearing in a 1905 issue of McClure’s) and Emma Goldman (“Marriage and Love” from the Anarchist Archives). Goldman argued that marriage was an economic arrangement that made women parasites; she denounced how men kept women woefully ignorant in matters of sex and was arrested for distributing birth control information.  Her view of free love was that it was only possible among equals and “in our present pygmy state love is a stranger to most people.  It’s delicate fiber cannot endure the stress and strain of the daily grind.” Anne named daughter Emma after the outspoken feminist.

Willa Cather’s specialty appears to be portraits of loneliness.  The protagonist of “Paul’s Case” hated school and his home life so much he stole money, moved into a fashionable New York City hotel, hung out at Carnegie Hall, and eventually killed himself by darting in front of a train.  Throughout the short story there are code words indicating that Paul was gay.  He dressed like a dandy (“an opal pin in his neatly knotted black four-in-hand, and a red carnation in his buttonhole”), liked the theater and idolized a child actor.  Had he been rich, he may have found kindred spirits, say, at private boarding school or among an aesthete social set that tolerated eccentricity.  Comparing Paul’s pathetic mindset with wilted flowers, Cather wrote: “It was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run.”  Strong-willed, unlike the fictitious Paul, Cather preferred being called Willie or William and dressed like a man in college, never married and her most intimate companions were all women, including Isabelle McClung, the daughter of magazine publisher S.S. McClure.  She lived with Edith Lewis the last 40 years of her life.

During most of the nineteenth century, before psychiatrists muddied the waters with since repudiated theories, attitudes toward same-sex intimate relations were more relaxed than later.  British sexologist Havelock Ellis, for instance, did not regard homosexuality as immoral or a disease and preferred terms such as sexual inversion or autoeroticism.  It was considered normal for young girls to have crushes on sorority sisters at women’s colleges, and oral sex between males was seem more as a form of masturbation than as a perversion, especially in male-only locales such as on a cattle drive or a whaling ship.  

During the 1890s, Anne pointed out, Oscar Wilde, author of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Importance of Being Earnest,” was convicted on the charge of gross indecency (sodomy) with other men and sentenced to two years of hard labor.  His health never fully recovered and he died at age 46.  The Irish novelist commonly wore a green carnation in his buttonhole, something Willa Cather was subtly referencing in “Paul’s Case.”

Steve White is putting together a Gary exhibit for the Indiana Track and Field Fall of Fame in tribute to Gary schools winning 40 state titles within a 62-year period.  Next January Horace Mann’s Anthony Williams will be among the 2014 inductees.  Williams won five IHSAA medals in track and was 1988 state champ in cross country before continuing his sterling career at Kansas State.  In my Gary book Steve spotted a photo of Olympic champ Lee Calhoun being honored on September 19, 1960, and I sent him that jpeg of Calhoun and his family with Mayor George Chacharis and athletes representing the various Gary schools.  Steve McShane found the Post-Trib negatives taken that day, so we sent White a couple more of the parade beforehand.

with Gary H.S. coaches Jack Gilroy (l) and Ross Netherton(r) are Fred Williams, Paul Hake, George MacLennan, Richard Much, Alexander Davidson, Ray Symes, Eugene Knotts, Lyle Townsley, Alonzo Bennett, Pat McCormack, & John Wicks

When Steve White learned about my 1984 Shavings Sports issue, he wanted a copy.  A photo of the 1912 Gary High School track team that originally came from an Emerson yearbook is especially compelling.  The two coaches, Jack Gilroy and Ross Netherton, are both legends and easily identifiable, but it took some research on my part to find the names of the ten athletes.  White also hoped I could track down a Post-Tribune article about Froebel great Amos Abrams, a four-time low hurdles state champ and three-time high-hurdles winner.  On February 20, 1992, three days after Abrams died at age 78, the paper noted that he had worked for 37 years at U.S. Steel and until the last few years of his life, when the effects of Parkinson’s disease took its toll, exercised at Horace Mann’s outdoor track.

Computer technician Larry Hayden was seated near me at the Little Redhawk Café, and I started talking to him, not realizing he had a phone in his ear and was talking to his wife.  “Let’s have lunch sometime,” he said to me and kept talking to his wife the entire time I was there.  That’s togetherness.

University of Maryland historian Ira Berlin thanked me for “Calumet Connections” and called it a worthy addition to the Merrill seminar room library.  He mentioned that this year’s Alumni Lecture speaker was David A. Corbin, who worked with Sam Merrill (my beloved adviser) and talked about his biography of the late Senator Robert Byrd, entitled “The Last Great Senator: Robert C. Byrd’s Encounters with Eleven U.S. Presidents.”

I helped Toni with a NY Times crossword puzzle by knowing it was Muddy Waters who recorded “Hoochie Coochie Man.”  Willie Dixon wrote it and Leonard Chess produced the record in 1954.  The second verse starts out:

         “I got a black cat bone

         I got a mojo too

         I got a Johnny Conkeroo

         I’m gonna mess with you.”

Johnny Conkeroo is a reference to African folk hero John the Conqueror, a trickster with hoodoo magical power.  It is also the name of a root considered a good luck charm that gamblers might carry in their mojo bag and use to cast sexual spells on desirable women.