“If there is
a special Hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation of their
own works.” John Dos Passos
I’m almost done laying out Steel
Shavings, volume 43, but I need Ryan Shelton’s help adding columns to the Index
in order to confine the manuscript to 304 pages (the longest yet). On the inside of the back cover, under the
headline “Season’s Greetings 2013” will appear eight photos that came with
Christmas cards, featuring friends who once lived in Northwest Indiana, including
Kentuckian Kathy O’Rourke Voorhees and Californian Don Price. I’ll read it once more for typos and factual
errors and try not to make more revisions than necessary.
Make and Janet Bayer spent the night. Due to cancer, Mike lost his voice box but
can still talk with a device in his throat.
Looking over the NWI Times
obits at breakfast, Janet found one that asserted that two families loved the
deceased. Was the guy a bigamist, we
wondered? Mike made a reference to
prison escape artist Willie “The Actor” Sutton, and I asked if he knew what
book police found in Sutton’s apartment after his apprehension. Answer: “USA” John Dos Passos.
Willie Sutton with cops
Arriving at IUN later than usual, I pulled into the 33rd Avenue lot
and almost collided with a vehicle driven by a young coed who drove through a
stop sign while speaking on her cell phone.
Close call! Anne Balay told me
that Emma and Roy Dominguez’s wife Betty are accompanying the two of them
downstate on the day before the EEOC hearing.
I told Anne that she and Emma will love Betty, an effervescent and
loving soul who used to work in a juvenile court judge’s office.
My review of Jacqueline Foertsch’s “Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and
the Atom Bomb in Postwar America” appeared in Choice. The title refers to
the world’s end and Biblical Second Coming.
A while back, an editor chastised me for including the 190-word review
in my blog prior to its appearance in Choice. Most of my review deals with the depiction of
African Americans in survivalist novels and films. The author refutes the myth that African
Americans were unconcerned about the threat of nuclear catastrophe. For
Langston Hughes, "Reckoning Day" became a source of macabre humor;
characters in his Chicago Defender
"Simple" columns worry about eating radioactive tuna, joke about Jim
Crow bomb shelters, and fantasize about fallout killing only whites.
Dave Serynek, Paul Van Wormer, and I raised our glasses to dear,
departed Timm Coughlin at Village Tavern in Porter. A biker and Porter Acres teammate, Paulie had
amazing speed for his size and in high school was both a high hurdler and shot
putter. When he slid into a base, the
fielders generally backed away, he was that intimidating. Once he hosted a barn burning and afterwards
felt both relief and disappointment that a fight never broke out. In the Bahamas, a hotel hostess met with a
dozen of us and after a short spiel asked if there were any questions. Paulie promptly asked for more pitchers of
the mixed drink she had served us. She
complied. Dave’s silver hair was very
long despite wife Barb’s protestations.
They are normally in Florida this time of year but Barb’s mother is
ailing. Dave vowed he’d get a haircut as
soon as they are back in Florida. He’d
been cleaning out his dad’s place and found numerous issues of Life, including one from 1965 and a 1976
special bicentennial issue. The bar was
full and so smoky that I stripped upon arriving home, and did laundry and took
a bath.
I’ve selected a dozen jpegs of photos for my upcoming Gary Chamber
of Commerce talk on the year 1955, including shots of Vivian Carter, the
Spaniels, and Mayor George Chacharis honoring Olympic gold medal winner Lee
Calhoun. Someone from Instructional Media Center will go with me to make sure
they get flashed on the screen at the proper time. After receiving an announcement about the
event, Rick Hug emailed that regretably he’d be out of town.
Samuel A. Love reports that he “learned tonight that my
pops saw Pete Seeger perform in 1964 at Purdue.
Can I get anymore jealous? Here's the man that saw Muddy Waters (in
Gary), shook hands with Howlin Wolf, saw the Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray
Vaughn... wait, he took me to those last two gigs.” Sam’s mother posted that
she “was actually touched by Alice Cooper
and met Ted Nugent ( ok, well maybe I shouldn't share that one). My friend's
brother ran the lighting at "Dex Card's Wild Goose" at the Scherwood
Club in Schererville and a lot of later famous acts appeared there before they
were famous so I got to meet them.”
Steve Spicer posted a 1940s photo of himself
with big brother Jim wearing cowboy outfits.
Back then boys were programmed to play with toy guns and imagine
shooting bad guys – or Indians.
On a site called Imgism Alan Brightside cited
ways young “millennials” are changing the sexual landscape: they are likely to
regard masturbation, kinky sex, and watching pornography as normal behavior,
and in increasing numbers they support gay marriage, same-sex experimentation, and
coupling with more than two people.
Bob Mucci informed me that somebody donated a
rare 1977 volume of Steel Shavings, volume 3, on the 1930s to the Anthropology
book sale. He offered to trade it for
numerous books I have for him. Corey Hagelberg
dropped by my office to say he wouldn’t be a lunch and is taking students to
the Gregg Hertzlieb exhibit at Savannah Gallery.
Cousin Sue Stone is organizing a July “Lane
Reunion” in Lancaster, PA, that will include a visit to Wheatland, James
Buchanan’s estate. I told her to count
me in.
