My Own Pattern

“Over the line, can't define what I'm after
I always turn the car around
Give me a break, let me make my own pattern”

         “Shattered (turn the car around),” O.A.R.

Before taking off to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for a weekend celebrating granddaughter Alissa’s graduating from Grand Valley State (GVSU) with a master’s degree (M. Ed) in adult and higher education, I picked up a 12-inch Philly steak at Subway for $7.49, taking advantage of the senior discount.  Counting out 49 cents in change, I said to the cashier, “You must hate it when old people do this.”  “We can use the change,” she replied tactfully.  With construction finally completed on the Tri-State, the trip took just over two hours.  Alissa and Josh had Miller Highlife in the fridge and cooked up two kinds of pasta from Trader Joe’s.  

Since the graduation ceremony started at 10 the following morning, I retired around 10:30 (9:30 back home). Beforehand, due to their road being a snow route, I had to turn the car around and park on the other side of the street, then repeat the procedure the following evening.  Josh said that violators sometimes get ticketed but evidently not towed, even though the avowed purpose of the ordinance is to facilitate snow plows.

Even though it was a mid-year graduation, Van Andel Arena was filled nearly to capacity.  The ceremony took almost 3 and a half hours, with each graduate able to walk across the stage. The retiring provost, referencing the GVSU nickname, told the graduates, “Anchors up, Lakers, it’s time to sail.” President Thomas Haas (T. Haas), ever the good sport, posed with students taking selfies as they received diplomas from him.  A dozen of us regrouped at City Built Brewery, which featured Puerto Rican fare, including delicious beef tacos and fried rice balls, as well as a plantain and shrimp dish Delia ordered.  Josh’s company had designed City Built’s website, so we were treated like royalty. Back at the house, we pigged out on two cakes Beth had bought, one with lemon slices on the top and the other, chocolate, covered with strawberries.  I was surprised the leafy stems had not been removed, but Toni said that was to hold them.  Also, they supposedly kept the fruit fresher. Playing music from Spotify, Josh mentioned that at work he often listens to Spanish songs because he can’t understand the words and therefore isn’t distracted.  

This spring, Alissa will be making a presentation at a scholarly conference in Miami on diversity strategies for university overseas programs.  I told her about a section in my 2017 Steel Shavings entitled “Campus Diversity” where I quoted from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas (“considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission”) and Sonia Sotomayor’s autobiography “My Beloved World”:  

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.

Josh had brought home bagels from Panera, and I found one with brown sugar for breakfast topped off with a bite-size piece of lemon cake with my coffee.  It had snowed the evening before, and there was no sign of my ice scraper.  Fortunately, Alissa had a spare that she gave me. The day before, white-out conditions prevailed on the stretch of I-94 where northwest Indiana met southeastern Michigan, but on Sunday the sun was out and the highway clear of snow.

Jayne Bartlett as Ralphie with cap and glasses and with Parker family cast members

Two hours after we arrived home, Dick Hagelberg took us to the Memorial Opera House presentation of “A Christmas Story: A Musical.” JJ Boylan, so superb as Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables,” assumed the role narrator Jean Shepherd.  Leann Wright, who’d worked in IUN’s alumni office before taking a similar job at VU, was Ralphie’s mother. I didn’t realize until intermission that the character brilliantly playing Ralphie was a girl, Jayne Bartlett.  Douglas DeLaughter as The Old Man was properly dour until the final scene at the Chinese restaurant after the Bumpus hounds devoured the Christmas turkey, when the mood got warm and fuzzy.  I’m certain acerbic Jean Shepherd, who categorized his satiric brand of humor as anti-nostalgic, would have been horrified.  I had hated the Chinese stereotypes in the movie version, and the musical was even worse. In Shepherd’s original story in “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters” it’s an Easter ham.  The Old Man’s rage at his hillbilly neighbors did not abate; he waged war against them until the day they suddenly vanished. Here is Shepherd’s account of the Old Man’s reaction to the hound attack after being closer to tears than Ralphie had ever seen him:

  Finally, he spoke in a low, rasping voice: “All right! OK!  Get your coats.  We’re going to the Chinese joint.  We’re going to have chop suey.”

  Ordinarily, this would have been a gala of the highest order, going to the chop suey joint.  Today, it had all the gaiety of a funeral procession.  The meal was eaten completely in silence.

In other words, no clichés about love and family.  And no making fun of the Chinese staff.

We topped off the pleasurable theater experience with dinner at Parea’s across from the theater.  Both Connie and Brian Barnes and the Hagelbergs ordered Saganaki, which the Greek owner set aflame at our table.  The beef tips, mashed potatoes, and green beans were go good, neither Toni nor I needed a doggie bag- -a rarity.  I was home in time to catch the exciting final minutes of the Eagles victory over the Rams, tempered by a season-ending injury to QB Carson Wentz.  Football is brutal, with players just a hit away from suffering career-threatening injuries.

 At Marquette Park Pavilion, Charlie Brown, Jimbo, George and Sam Van Til, John Petalas; 

photo by Karen Petalas

The Gary Civic Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas concert was moved to Marquette Park Pavilion (site of Dave and Angie’s wedding) because a pipe burst at the Genesis Center. A rumor has spread that the roof had collapsed, which Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson set to rest in her opening remarks, calling the new location an upgrade.  George Van Til had invited me to join his table, and I talked with Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez and deputy police chief Ed Jenkins until they were called away because two Winfield robbery suspects had just been apprehended.  When Naomi Millender was at the microphone, I mentioned to George’s cousin Sam Van Til that she lived in the house where Valparaiso mayor Jon Costas grew up. Sam had known the mayor’s father, owner of WILCO Foods in Miller, since both were in the grocery business. Several years ago, he hired IUN Business professor Charley Hobson to address Strack and Van Til employees about issues of sexual harassment. It was a treat sitting with county auditor John Petalas, a former student, and meeting his wife Karen; we reminisced about John’s days as editor of the Northwest Phoenix when I was its adviser.  State Representative Charlie Brown was to my right, and throughout the evening political dignitaries stopped by to say hello to him, Van Til, and Petalas.

 Michael Carson in 2015 rehearsing with Gary Symphony Orchestra

Having attended many Gary symphony concerts, George declared that the orchestra never sounded better.  Dick Hagelberg, who joined our table after the concert at Van Til’s invitation, attributed the full orchestra sound in part to there being three French horn players rather than the normal one or two.  Conducted by Wirt-Emerson music teacher Michael Carson, the program interspersed Christmas carols with selections from Handel’s Messiah. Particularly impressive was “The Trumpet Shall Sound” with solos by baritone Arthur Griffin and his father Robert Griffin on trumpet.  The final number was “Hallelujah Chorus,” with George Van Til and many others singing three-part harmony.

 Dolly Millender in 2014

Gary Historical and Cultural Society founder Dolly Millender started the orchestra in the mid-1970s when the original symphony moved to Merrillville and changed the Gary to Northwest Indiana.  It began, according to its website, as a musical ensemble, performing at teas, church events, dinners, “and usually for free (smiles)”:

As our reputation and number of musicians grew, we decided that it was time to perform a major concert.  So, under the baton of the late Bessye Tatum, we premiered our first major concert in Gary in 1982. The site was the new Genesis Convention Center, which was developed during the administration of Mayor Richard G. Hatcher. Mayor Hatcher also found resources that enabled us to purchase orchestra equipment and a symphonic repertoire.