Afterglow

“When a great life sets, it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.” Austin O’Malley

Urban dictionary.com defines afterglow as the feeling of fulfillment after an orgasm or as the effects of a psychoactive drug are fading.  “Afterglow” is also the title of an X-rated Off Broadway play about a gay love triangle.  Literature professor Austin O’Malley (1858-1932) an authority on Dante Alighieri and doctor of ophthalmology, wrote a book of aphorisms that included these gems: “Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food” and “Those who believe it is all right to tell little white lies soon grow color blind.”  O’Malley taught at Notre Dame until 1902, at which time his new bride 20 years his junior poisoned him with arsenic and tried to elope with a student. O’Malley survived and devoted the rest of his professional life to medical and philosophical research.

Toni and I attended Rees Funeral Home in Hobart for Angie’s grandfather Tom “Poppy” Kalberer’s wake. Younger brother Joe recalled that Tom would carry him on his back to baseball games and how, after a stray dog delivered a litter of puppies under their house, Tom arranged for them to keep one. A funeral home memory card contained these lines from Helen Lowrie Marshall’s “Afterglow”: “I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.  I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when day is done.”  Tim “Big Voodoo Daddy” Brush’s service took place in the same room, as did our longtime auto mechanic Frank Renner. I recall seeing student Kathy Vorhees for the first time in 30 years at a service for her mother, the widow of Post-Tribune managing editor Terry O”Rourke.  I had to check with her sister to make certain it was Kathy. 

Hobart Community Band’s winter concert, in addition to Holiday carols, featured a moving version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Rossano Galante’s “Red Rock Mountain.” Bandleader Susan Williams, who introduced all numbers, said that Red Rock Mountain is in Pennsylvania, part of the Allegheny Plateau. For the final number before intermission, “Foiled Again (the Villain’s Galop)”, band members donned fake mustaches to emulate silent film villains.  Afterwards, I congratulated trumpeter Pat Heckler, trombonist Rick Busse, and French horn first chair Dick Hagelberg, who received an award for outstanding service. He quipped that when he first joined the band formerly known as Rusty Pipes, veterans called him young man. Eve Bottando, whose father plays trumpet, noticed the “City of the Century” centennial pin on my vest and said she knew the person (Simmie Williams) who designed the logo on the cover of “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

 Conductor Susan Williams with husband Gordon

On sale after the show was a book of inspirational messages selected by conductor Susan Williams.  After each rehearsal, she’d read one to the band members by such luminaries as Thomas A. Edison, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dr. Seuss.  After sampling the array of desserts, including Pat Heckler’s peanut butter and chocolate acorns, we headed home just as a pink afterglow filled the western sky at dusk.  Before we arrived at the condo, a full moon was rising in the east.  

 "Super Moon" by Ray Smock

Kid Blink

Having studied the muckrakers in History class, James knew about Jacob A. Riis’ efforts on behalf of the poor.  At Culver’s after bowling I told him about writing “Jacob A. Riis and the American City,” first as a PhD dissertation and then as a book.  His class had seen the musical “Newsies” (1992), based on a true event, the 1899 newsboy strike that resulted from publishing moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raising distribution costs. Led by Louis Ballatt, nicknamed Kid Blink (he was blind in one eye), the exploited carriers, defying corporate goons and adult strikebreakers, refused for two weeks to sell copies of the World or Journal until most of their demands were satisfied. 

Steve McShane asked for suggestions about a class assignment for second semester.  It will have been 15 years since students kept journals for an Ides of March Steel Shavings (volume 36), so I suggested something similar in the form of email exchanges with me.  Students’ initial entry would be biographical, covering family history, high school alma mater, job situation, marital status, hobbies, favorite restaurants, and the like. I’d then pose follow-up questions and ask for highlights of their week, leading up to mid-March, when they’d keep a detailed daily log.  I had wanted the Fall students to carry on a similar email exchange with duplicate bridge interviewees, but most didn’t.  This time I’ll keep closer tabs on them.

Megan Reeves (above) and Amber Wasz in 2016

On two consecutive days, students interviewed me.  I told Megan Reeves about my dad teaching me all kinds of card games, from varieties of solitaire and two-handed cribbage and gin rummy, to poker, pinochle, hearts, and, in high school with Midge and my brother, rubber bridge.  Very competitive, Vic made us earn a win.  If Midge lost concentration and, say, trumped his Ace, he’d strain not to lose his temper and his face would redden.  Megan said her grandmother taught her rummy, is due to retire in a few days, and would enjoy finding a group of card players.  With Amber Wasz, I emphasized why, as a social historian, I considered a Unit 154 Contract Bridge Archives collection important.  We have a complete run of Barbara Walczak’s Newsletters going back more than a decade as well as interviews I’ve done of her, Joe Chin and Lou Nimnicht, and, now, student oral histories.

I told Amber that I also want to start an Archives bowling collection, starting with records former Electrical Engineers teammate Bill Batalis kept over a 50-year period and augmented by oral histories.  Bridge opponent Jim Carson still bowls Wednesday evenings at Cressmoor where, he said, guys have rolled 300 games several weeks in a row. When he heard I was in a mixed league, he hoped to interest wife Marcia in joining.  The last time she bowled, her ball had been left in a car that got stolen.  Next day, they heard on the news that an object tossed from an overpass had gone through a trucker’s windshield.  When their car turned up, the bowling ball was missing.

At the dentist, while Dr. Annie Babb cleaned my teeth, I heard “Arc of a Diver” by Steve Winwood and Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.”  While in Portage, I got a haircut from Anna at Quick Cut.  When young stylists are in charge of the radio, it’s usually Top 40 fare; in their absence, the music was more subdued “soft rock.”

I’m on a Fountains of Wayne kick (not for the first time) and have been playing their 2011 CD “Sky Full of Holes” on heavy rotation along with Phoenix, Social Distortion, Japandroids, and The Cars “Move Like This” (2011), the group’s first studio album since 1987.  Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne was a big fan of the Cars and in the provocative “Stacy’s Mom” video, a kid with shades resembles Ric Ocasek.  It doesn’t get much better than coming home from bridge and dancing to “Someone’s Gonna Break My Heart (one cold gray morning)” by Fountains of Wayne. 

We don't promise and we tell no lies
Learn to paddle when the waters rise

Jillian Van Volkenburgh inquired about the possibility of my giving an Art in Focus talk in January; scheduled speaker Shay Schmoul from the Jewish Federation of Northwest Indiana, scheduled to do a presentation on Israeli music, has moved away from the area.  I declined but hoped to be in the Fall 2018 lineup with a dance party featuring music from 1958.