Mount Baldy; photo by Jim Spicer
“I’m living by Lake
Michigan’s quiet shores and iron quays,
near the broken glass of
its waves
. . . these waters, so
indifferent to youth
and cold to the green
wishes of fathers.”
William Buckley, “In the Difference of Waves”
In “To the Northwest Acreage” IUN emeritus professor of
English Bill Buckley, who hates it when I just use a snippet from one of his
poems, wrote this about Lake Michigan, which can be tranquil on some days and
treacherous on others, or both in a matter of minutes. [note: the word purl means knit or embroider, while
sloughing can mean shedding dead tissue or skin or cleansing]:
Puritan Lake, deadly-free,
you sit so calm in the
bowl of Earth,
and purl your practical wave on granite quarries –
a tough and hard level-plane for ship and death,
and soughing play for
pale-face kids . . .
Mount Baldy; Post-Tribune photo by Kyle Telechan
It’s been four years since six-year-old Nathan Woessner was nearly
killed on Mount Baldy, swallowed into an 11-foot hole caused by rotting oak
trees buried under the sand. The beach
area has reopened, but the dune itself is off-limits to visitors except for
supervised hikes led by park rangers. During the 1970s we’d take relatives to Mount
Baldy when they visited from the Philadelphia area. We’d climb the steep dune rather than take the
steps because of the poison ivy, which park officials are reluctant to
eradicate because it’s considered an indigenous rather than invasive plant.
In the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which commences a
new season in September, Larry David frequently complained about discrimination
against bald people. In one episode, for
instance, a waitress is super friendly with Jeff while ignoring Larry, and Jeff
thinks Larry is being paranoid believing that the snub is due to his lack of
hair. When a doctor, unsettled by a word
he heard Larry utter, mistakenly shaves off Jeff’s hair, however, suddenly
people treat him like a pariah, including that same waitress. The shaved head look has become increasingly
popular, especially among black men, since Michael Jordon adopted it. My father had a full head of hair but died at
age 50; my brother has the beginning of a bald spot but (knock on wood) not me.
An exhibit of Diane Arbus photographs recently opened at New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA).
Arbus was known for portraitures of marginalized New Yorkers:
transgendered, dwarfs, nudists, drag queens, circus performers, the disabled, and
everyday people considered by some freakish. Two of her most famous photos are
“Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park” (1962) and “A Young Man in
Curlers at Home on West 20th Street” (1966). Suffering bouts of severe depression
throughout her life, Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at age 48, leaving a note
that said simply, “Last Supper.” She’s
been called the Sylvia Plath of photographers.
Lew Wallace seniors, 1952; York on bottom row, second from left, next to Dan Wracker and Dan Zale
Richard York called from Texas requesting a copy of my
“Fifties” Steel Shavings (volume 23,
1994), “Relationships between the Sexes in the Calumet Region during the Teen
Years of the 1950s.” I refer to it as my
R-rated issue because it has such sections as Passion Pit, Touching the Bases,
Conquests, First Time, and Shotgun Wedding. I employ quotes about girls getting
a bad reputation from John Updike’s “Rabbit Run,” Alice Kates Shulman’s “The
War in the Back Seat,” and this from “Peyton Place” by Grace Metalious:
She could not lie still under his hands.
“Anything,” she said.
“Anything. Anything.”
“I love this fire in you.
I love it when you have to move.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Here? And here? And here?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. Yes.”
Richard York, a 1952 Gary Lew Wallace grad, is planning on
attending his sixty-fifth reunion next month.
His sixtieth lasted from four to eight p.m. with no dancing; this year’s
celebration is merely a luncheon.
Sigh. A Quill
and Blade yearbook notes that York went by the name Dick in 1952 and was
class co-valedictorian as well in ROTC, on the track team, and a member of the
National Honor Society. For good measure,
I also sent York volume 46 with Fifties celebrity Vivian Carter, whose WWCA
evening radio show he remembered, on the cover.
Dee Van Bebber and I each picked up a master point for
finishing third both on Tuesday evening (four tables: .40) and Wednesday at
Valparaiso’s Banta Center (six tables: .60).
A new couple, John and Karen Fieldhouse, finished fourth in Chesterton
and first in Valpo. My most frustrating hand was when I overcalled
west’s 1 no-trump by bidding two Clubs, despite holding just ten points,
including the King, Queen, Jack, ten, spot of Clubs plus an outside Ace.
Everybody passed, and Dee’s dummy contained just had 7 points and three little
Clubs. It looked like the best I could
do was pull 7 tricks and go down one, but with a squeeze play, I made a ten of
Diamond good for a plus-90 points. Lo
and behold, it was a low board because two other north-south couples had scores
of plus-100 for setting their opponents.
Gary, IN in March 1913; Broadway looking north at 5th Avenue
Bridge opponent Sharon Massey recognized my name as her son
Tim’s former teacher and said that she grew up in Gary’s Brunswick neighborhood. Sharon recalled that an article by Tim Massey
entitled “Free Food and Drinks” appeared in my 1986 Steel Shavings (volume 12) on “Life in the Calumet Region during
the Formative Years, 1900-1920.” Massey
wrote about political rallies in frontier Gary:
In 1908, Joseph A. Boyle
moved to Gary from Pittsburgh with his wife Henrietta and 1-year-old son
Joseph, Jr. Their first home was above a livery stable. In 1910 Joseph quit his
job at Carnegie Steel and started Boyle’s Baggage Express, a transfer and storage
business primarily involved with hauling freight from trains.
A close friend of Mayor
Tom Knotts, Boyle was an active political worker whose chief responsibility was
organizing Democratic rallies. Many were
held in Parker’s Pool Room and in saloons whose proprietors were paid to
provide free food and drinks for those lured to the rallies.
Tori Lane
My May 19, 2017, blog, entitled “Alpha Wolf,” has received a
record (for me) 351 hits. It deals with
a Wyoming High School “Alpha Wolf” character and leadership award granddaughter
Tori received. Tori is spending the
summer waitressing at the beach resort of South Haven, Michigan. The blog also contains photos of bridge Newsletter editor Barb Walczak and a gathering
of Upper Dublin classmates at Giuseppe’s in Ambler, PA, to greet Wayne Wylie,
who’d recently been hospitalized.
Wayne and Fran Wylie
Neighbor Gina brought over cucumbers from her garden and also
gave us two jars of pickles. She introduced
me to her son Tom, a Purdue Northwest grad who majored in History and spoke
highly of professors Michael Connolly and Kenny Kincaid. He has been reading books on the Vietnam War,
so I gave him my Steel Shavings
(volume 39, 2008) on “Vietnam Veterans from the Calumet Region.”
O.J. Simpson was granted parole, beginning in October after
serving nine years for attempting to recover sports trophies, his penance for
past crimes involving the deaths of ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron
Goldman. At age 70 he appeared contrite,
claimed that anger management classes and finding religion had made him a new
man, and pledged to be a model citizen. Kudos
to the Nevada prison system for apparently rehabilitating him. Richard
Perez-Pena of the New York Times
wrote; “No celebrity so big had been tried for a crime so severe, and
a generation later, he stands as someone who unwittingly helped shape the
modern news media and popular ideas about the law, police, race relations and
Los Angeles, the city he once called home.”
On the Titus Andronicus CD “Lamentable Tragedy” is a song
called “Come On, Siobhán,” about an Irish Catholic girl who has suffered
hurt. Here’s one verse:
I crossed an ocean for
A pair of eyes in which I could be
more
Than fodder for the factory floor
Come on, come on, Siobhán
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