Northwest Indiana Historian James B Lane: Halloween

Missy and Marianne Brush

“He made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees”

“The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” XTC

When he was in high school 30 years ago, Robert Blaszkiewicz turned me on to the British post-punk band XTC, which rarely toured because frontman Andy Partridge often experienced uncontrollable stage fright. On Halloween WXRT played “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” even though its connection to All Saints Day is tenuous. Here’s my favorite verse:

Peter Pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright

But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who'll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?

Growing up in Fort Washington, PA, I’d go Halloweening, and neighbors would beseech us to come inside so they could guess who you were. Last night, Toni and I gave out candy to plenty of Halloweeners in nice costumes, but nary a one was wearing a mask. That made sense in terms of comfort and safety, plus we could recognize kids we knew. James, however, dressed as Papyrus, a major character in the role-playing video game Undertale.

James as Papyrus

When my family moved to a new suburban subdivision outside Detroit in the mid-Fifties, the houses were close together and homeowners just distributed treats without fanfare, allowing us to really cash in. One year, I went trick or treating with Phil and Dave in Miller as an outlaw and received more candy than they did; maybe I seemed threatening. On isolated Maple Place, within the National Lakeshore, we got virtually no Halloween traffic except friends who made a special trip. When Alissa lived with us, we’d drive her to neighborhoods in Hobart and Miller. One year it was pouring, and she really cleaned up since few kids were out and folks felt sorry for her.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated cartoon: 1876 Republican candidates Henry Wilson, James G. Blaine,

Roscoe Conkling, Oliver Morton, Elihu Washburn

The current issue of Indiana Magazine of History contained A. James Fuller’s “‘A Bloody Shirt and a Pair of Ripe Ruby Lips’: Reconstruction, Sex Scandals, and Oliver P. Morton’s Bid for the Presidency in 1876.” A wartime governor and Radical Republican Senator, Morton once described the Democratic Party as “a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason.” The Hoosier Stalwart was a top-tier candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1876 despite health concerns and morality issues. Ruthless and vindictive, he was a notorious womanizer. While governor, Morton allegedly demanded carnal favors from a woman who sought a pardon for her brother and seduced wives of military officers he sent to the battlefield. When he suffered a stroke, wags claimed that the cause was a sexually transmitted disease. Branded a lecherous scoundrel, the Chicago Times, a Democratic organ, ran a story headlined, “Hellish Liaisons and Attempted Seductions by Indiana’s Favorite Stud Horse.” On the first ballot at the Republican National Convention, nonetheless, Morton finished second behind Senator James G. Blaine, but Ohioan Rutherford B. Hayes emerged as the nominee on the seventh ballot. Hayes would go on to lose the 1876 election to Samuel Tilden only to have a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats concoct a backroom deal that elevated “His Fraudulency” to the White House.

New Yorker illustration by Nick Little

On the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s protest against the Roman Catholic Church that sparked the Protestant Reformation, Joan Acocella’s New Yorker article “The Hammer: How Martin Luther Changed the World” asserts that the story of his hammering the 95 Theses to the doors of Wittenberg’s Castle Church never occurred. What Luther did was send his broadside to the local archbishop. Most theses dealt with the odious sale of indulgences, but the most important theologically were sola fide (by faith alone as the basis for salvation) and sola scriptura (truth as revealed by the Bible alone).

At Chesterton library, I checked out a Specials CD and Finn Murphy’s “The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road.” I’m hoping that the author deals with gay, lesbian, and transgender truckers and adds to what I learned from proofreading Anne Balay’s forthcoming book. Known by the handle U-Turn, Murphy drove an 18-wheeler nicknamed Cassidy, carrying belongings all over America. The memoir seems candid, witty and, of course, written from a male perspective. In the Introduction, I learned that freight-haulers generally look down on operators of moving vans as bedbuggers driving roach coaches and that Murphy doesn’t buy into what he called the trucker myth:

I don’t wear a cowboy hat, Tony Lama snakeskin boots, or a belt buckle doing free advertising for Peterbilt or Harley-Davidson. My moving uniform s a black cotton jumpsuit. I’m not from the South and don’t talk as if I were. Most telling, and the other guys can sense this somehow, I do not for a moment think I’m a symbol of some bygone ideal of Wild West American freedom or any other half-mythic, half-menacing nugget of folk nonsense.

In her Sixties class, Nicole Anslover showed excerpts from Martin Luther King’s “Mountaintop” speech and Robert F. Kennedy’s remarks to supporters in Indianapolis announcing Dr. King’s death. I was moved to tears and wondered how many students felt a similar emotion. When I studied at Bucknell under historian William H. Harbaugh in 1963, an equivalent passage of time would have been the bygone World War I era. Still, Harbaugh made the crackdown on dissenters then seem relevant. I told the class about driving through Washington, DC, ghettos neighborhoods within sight of the White House that had been burned to the ground during the riots following King’s assassination and how Gary’s Mayor Hatcher hurried back from a meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson to “keep a lid” on his city.

Aaron Davis (above), having embarked from Fort Wayne on a months-long trip to California, posted: “This is what an exhausted and wet bicycle tourist looks like. I'm sexy and I know it.” He added:

Rode 113 miles over the last two days, with over a mile of climbing, through the cold and rain of the Kentucky autumn. Suffice to say I'm pleased with my willingness to push myself while on the bike. On the other hand, I still have plenty of room for growth when it comes to shunning comfort after my rides are finished. Spending too much money on motels. What can I say? I like showers and beds and electricity. Crazy, right? Anyway, I could wax philosophical about how I should feel regarding how I do feel, but I need to go to bed. Riding to mammoth cave national park tomorrow, where I'll camp one or two nights. Then probably to Nashville. Oh, I reached the 500-mile mark today, on day 15 of my tour. Not too shabby.

Lane Family Album