“Monday
and Thursday nights the department stores along Broadway were open until
nine. Sears smelled like peanuts if you
went in the back door off Massachusetts.
Near the door at Gordon’s was the cosmetics section, so you’d smell the
perfume when you walked in. It made you
feel good.” Tom Higgins on downtown Gary in the
1940s
Tom Higgins in 2007 with Red Rider BB gun signed by Jean Shepherd
Tom Higgins, indefatigable Gary native, newsman and
TV host, good friend, and IUN’s former Alumni Relations director, passed away
after a three-year battle with cancer. I
was often his guest on WYIN’s “The Tom Higgins Show” and one he co-hosted with
Wally McCormack on a Portage cable station.
What a memorable pair of characters.
Higgins frequently visited the Archives and donated books he wrote about
his alma mater Horace Mann and rival Froebel. NWI Times reporter Sarah Reese
interviewed Tom’s wife Betty Higgins and daughters Stacy and Tracy, and they
all mentioned the jokes and stories he told and his love of Gary. Tony Rose, who worked with Higgins for 13
years, summed him up perfectly, calling Tom “a model broadcaster, a model
citizen, and a model human being.” Tony
Roberts, also a co-worker at WWCA radio station, told Reese:
Tom was one
of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. He had a wry sense of humor,
very quick-witted. He was the perfect guy for the mornings. I had to fill in
for him a couple of times, and I was worried because he was so good and so
talented. He set a high standard. He was very even-tempered. Tom never got too high,
and he never got too low. He enjoyed life.
Nicole Anslover requested that I reprise a talk I gave in 2012 to her class,
making use of oral histories, on the postwar “Age of Anxiety” in the Calumet Region. I told her to pencil me in. Students
will read excerpts from interviews with IUN Performing Arts professor Garrett
Cope, Post-Tribune reporter Carrol Vertrees, and “The Hig-man.” All died within the past year. On a memoir Higgins
recalled old haunts:
You could live your whole life
on the block. Everything was there for
you. There were two ice cream places at
Fifth and Jackson: Mrs. Hanley’s on the southeast corner and the Igloo on the
northeast corner. We went to the Tivoli
Tap at Fifth and Polk or the Flamingo on Fifth between Washington and Adams for
pizza. Pharmacies were plentiful. At Fifth and Polk was Honoff’s, and a block
down at Tyler was Hanna’s. On the alley between
them was a grocery store. There were a
lot of bars, of course.
In warm weather Horace Mann guys
hung out at Randolph Street beach. You’d
walk down to a snack shop at Shelby.
We’d have beach parties and bonfires.
On the route home was Ted’s Drive-In, located where 12 and 20 came
together, right before the Aetna light. It was the main route between Chicago
and Michigan. Ted’s featured a
rum-flavored cake and the best food.
Waitresses dressed like drum majorettes and came to your car. If you gave them money for the jukebox, some
would dance. Ted’s did a huge business,
especially on weekends. One girl supposedly
made $400 in tips one July 4. Ted’s
stayed open until late fall. After we
could drive, it was standard procedure to meet up at Ted’s after the movies.
Joe Sullivan had a hot stick
shift Dodge. One night he outran the
police with me in the car. He dropped us
off at Markman’s Drug Store at Fifth and Lincoln and took off. Al Terry, George Evdokiou, and I once went to
the stock races at Blue Island. Al was
so enthused afterwards he drove all the way back to Gary in second gear. He liked the way it caused the engine to
growl and made for fast getaways. H.B.
Steward had the use of a yellow Buick convertible with double spotlights. We were really envious.
Higgins kept a sailboat, Amkatt,
at the Hammond marina ever since it opened 24 years ago. “This year (in April) he was strong enough
to drive it into the pier and dock it,” Betty Higgins recalled. In “Lake Michigan Tales” Steel Shavings, volume
28, is Tom’s true saga of going overboard during a storm on Father’s Day, 1996.
Hanging onto a kid’s size life jacket and fearful of hypothermia, he spotted
Ollie Atterbury and Keith Carey on board an approaching Boston Whaler. Higgins wrote:
Keith threw me a line, then he and
Ollie brought me to the gunwale of the boat.
“Hop in,” said Ollie. “I
can’t,” I apologized. “My pants
keep slipping down.” With that,
Ollie left his driver’s station, came to the port side, slipped his hands under
my shoulder, and in one smooth motion lifted me on board, still carrying the
life jacket.
The lightning and roiling thunder were getting more frequent, and
the rain was just starting.
“Follow me into
the harbor,” Ollie called to the sailboat. “They can’t,” I said. “They don’t know anything about running
that boat. I’ve got to get back on.”
With that, Ollie ran his boat about 30 yards to alongside Amkatt and gave
me a boost while (son-in-law) Mike (Maretich) pulled me up through the
lifelines. Then, as the Whaler turned to
head in, the rains, accompanied by more lightning, came in cloudburst
fashion. In fact, back at the wheel,
that rain felt warm compared to the Lake.
It was over.
Affable though he surely was, Higgins didn’t suffer
fools. As Alumni Director, he refused to
kowtow to an incoming chancellor who had no idea how revered he was or to an
incompetent Channel 56 general manager.
In many ways he was a role model – to my son Phil who started his career
at WYIN, and to me for the dogged way he researched local history. Throughout his seventies he never slowed
down, much less retired. Rest in peace,
my friend. Because if you, I’m looking
forward to at least seven more productive years.
A new NWI Times local history website contains
a photo of Cedar Lake’s Monon train depot as well as a tank rolling off
Hammond’s Pullman-Standard plant assembly line.
Columnist Larry Clark’s wrote that he found his great-grandparents, the
Schroeders, listed in the 1860 Chicago census as Scrieder, in the 1870 census
as Shroder, in subsequent Porter County lists as Schrader and Schraeder, and,
starting in 1920, as Schroeder. Clark
noted:
The most
interesting aspect when going through lists of names is picking out first names
that are not used any longer. There was a man in LaPorte County in 1840 named
Orange Lemon. In 1850 in Porter County
there was Tennessee Baum, Theophilus Cain, Philemon Button, Philander and
Eliphalet Curtis, Amasa Eastwood, Sophronia Dillingham, Azariah Freeman,
Horatio Gates, Gershom Hollister, Simeon Jessup, Nehamiah Merrill, Ovid Oaks,
Asaph Page, Ambrose Perry and wife Euphrasia, Merryman Price and Narcissa Zane.
These are just a few of the people who had names that haven't met the test of
time but are out there for adventurous future parents.
I fell in with Chris Young’s family on the way to
IUN’s Redhawk Café on its debut under new management. The place was quite crowded, unlike most days,
but the Mexican food court was not yet open.
Chris recommended Monterrey Taco on West Ridge. His sons Robert and Anthony are in Samuel A.
Love’s summer Film class, and waved when I dropped in to loan Sam “A Talent for
Detail: The Photographs of Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston” by Maryland grad
school buddies Pete Daniel and Ray Smock.
For years I passed a paperback copy around in my classes. When Ray gave me a hardback that he found
when we both were at Powell’s famous Portland, Oregon, bookstore, he inscribed
it to the only person he knew that had worn one out. Among Johnston’s famous photos of celebrities
are ones of humorist Mark Twain, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and urban
reformer Jacob A. Riis. Like
progressives of her generation, she was interested in social injustices, such
as the plight of women workers.
Samuel A. Love in Glen Park; photo by Ashanti West
Because Sam was discussing Danish immigrant Jacob
Riis, I hung around. He is patient and
imaginative in keeping kids’ attention yet covered important information. I had not realized that Riis’s assistants had
to set off a chemically induced blast in order to create adequate lighting to
document slum conditions in dark alleys and windowless tenements. Sam re-introduced me (I’d been to class once
before) as Dr. Jimbo, mentioned my book about Riis, and solicited my opinion
about Riis’s legacy. He’d told the class
that Riis had influenced other photo-journalists, including Camilo Vergara,
whose title “How the Other Half Worships” is a take-off on Riis’s classic 1890
study of New York City housing conditions, “How the Other Half Lives.” I added that on lecture tours Riis showed
glass slides with a stereopticon and reminded audiences that slums existed in
virtually all cities (even, I added, early Gary, which Riis once visited).
Michael Bayer shared Wilson E. Allen’s photo
quoting Bernie Sanders as well as this statement from the Vermont Senator, appearing in The Nation:
I’ve known Hillary Clinton for many years. Let me confess:
I like Hillary. I disagree with Hillary Clinton on many issues. My job is to
differentiate myself from her on the issues—not by personal attacks. I’ve never
run a negative ad in my life. Why not? First of all, in Vermont, they don’t
work—and, frankly, I think increasingly around this country they don’t work. I
really do believe that people want a candidate to come up with solutions to
America’s problems rather than just attacking his or her opponent.
On the lighter side, Steve Pickert passed on this sick joke:
Phone
rings, woman answers.
The
pervert, with heavy breathing, says, “I bet you have a tight ass with no hair?”
Woman replies, “Yes
I do; he's watching golf - who shall I say is calling?”
For 24 hours we lost the use of our phones due to a
Comcast glitch. During the same period, due
to similar problems, the New York Stock Exchange ground to a halt and all
United Airlines flights were grounded.
So far, the government claims there is no evidence of foul play.
Neighbor Gina, walking two dogs, asked if Maggie
was still with us. Dave’s family returned
from Florida, so their dog is back home. Angie is off to Texas for a wedding so James
and Becca spent the night after we had dinner at Applebee’s.
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