Champs

“Huh! That’s nothing.  So do I – American, baseball, and poker!”  George F. Babbitt, responding to praise of a neighbor who spoke three languages, in Sinclair Lewis’ “Babbitt”

In “Babbitt” novelist Sinclair Lewis described how in 1921 residents in cities such as Zenith, Ohio, could track the progress of hometown baseball games on huge newspaper bulletin boards.  One afternoon, Lewis wrote, Babbitt “stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd and as the boy on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete strangers, ‘Pretty Nice!” Good work!”  Babbitt also enjoyed silent films at the Chateau, a palatial 3,000-seat theater featuring a 50-piece orchestra.  Babbitt’s favorites were cowboy and cops-and-robbers shoot-em-ups and movies with fat comedians AND bare-legged bathing girls.

In “The Diagnostician and the National Pastime: Baseball as Metaphor in Sinclair Lewis’ ‘Babbitt,” Joe Webb viewed the novelist as an urban  anthropologist who documented why America’s most popular sport was so popular with sedentary businessmen.  Webb wrote: “Baseball ballparks became a symbolic link to the nation’s pastoral past in the midst of the modern, urban, technological city, but the game was symbolic of conquest.”  Babbitt’s Zenith Athletic Club exemplified the ailment of the tired businessman – inactivity: “It is not athletic and not exactly a club, but it is Zenith in its perfection; it is a place for men to gather and talk about the manly, sporting exploits of others.” Babbitt considered baseball one of the society’s pillars, like the Republican Party.  A fellow club member branded Babe Ruth a “noble man” due to his on-field exploits, never mind his less than reputable lifestyle. Speaking to the Zenith Real Estate Board, Babbitt read these lines from shallow pet/ad man Chum Frink:

          All the fellows standing round 

          a-talkin’ always, I’ll be bound

 About baseball players of renown

 That nice guys talk in my home town

The Boston Red Sox are World Series champs for the fourth time in 14 years since breaking the so-called curse of Babe Ruth having been traded to the Yankees a century ago.  I paid little interest in the playoffs after the Cubs were eliminated but did watch parts of Friday’s 18-inning marathon that lasted almost 8 hours, until 3 a.m., the lone Dodger victory. I hardly knew any players on either team except for ex-White Sox Chris Sale, who struck out the side to clinch the final game, and L.A. pitchers Clay Kershaw, Rich Hill (a former Cub), and  Walker Buehler (whose name announcers delighted in mimicking the nerdy economics teacher, played by Ben Stein, in “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off”).  

 Rich Hill in 2006

After game 5 Trump criticized manager Dave Roberts for going to his bullpen prematurely, tweeting: “It is amazing how a manager takes out a pitcher who is loose & dominating through almost 7 innings, Rich Hill of Dodgers, and brings in nervous reliever(s) who get shellacked. 4 run lead gone. Managers do it all the time, big mistake!” Referring to the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, Hill responded: “There was a mass shooting yesterday.  The focus, in my opinion, of the president is to be on the country, and not on moves that are made in a World Series game.”

 participant in White House vigil for Pittsburgh synagogue victims; below, Bob and Niki Lane

An anti-Semitic gunman armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle mowed down a dozen Tree of Life worshippers in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Squirrel Hill. This just days after a Trump supporter mailed packages containing bombs to a dozen Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the offices of CNN.  Neither caused our heartless President to cancel campaign appearances.  Instead, he faulted the synagogue for not having armed guards and continues to rant against all critics.   One tweet stated, “The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country.” Mayor Bill Peduto called the senseless atrocity the “darkest day of Pittsburgh’s history.”  Nephew Bob Lane, whose brother Dave works just two blocks from Tree of Life synagogue, wrote:

This is not the first time I’ve been affected by gun violence but this is the first time it happened in my childhood neighborhood. To know this happened just two blocks from my childhood home in a place where I had countless dances and celebrations sickens me. I was a paper boy on that corner, grew up there, walked by there a thousand times. Even in our darkest hour, I remember that love is a basic human instinct that will prevail.

Prior to bridge, eight of us dined at Wagner’s, known for having the best ribs in Northwest Indiana.  In 1988, David Wagner purchased a boarded up tavern off the beaten track in Porter and opened the restaurant, which now does a booming business.  Mike and Janet Bayer introduced us to Wagner’s shortly before they moved to Vermont; Alice Bush and Ken Applehans took us there while we were living with them after the 2000 home invasion, where I had my first beer in over a month.  Saturday, for 20 bucks, I ordered a meal with two entries, a half-rack of ribs and steak shish kabob (the latter became Sunday dinner).  Toni and I had the best round of the night, making three game bids in four hands, and she won the 4-dollar first prize.  Eating delicious chocolate cake afterwards, Dick Hagelberg, knowing it came from Jewel, repeated his standard quip that Toni must have spent most of the day baking it.

The reigning Superbowl champion Philadelphia Eagles evened their record at 4-4 with an exciting victory over the Jaguars in England.  The game aired at 8:30 a.m. Chicago time.   Hours earlier, four Jacksonville players were detained by police after refusing to pay a $64,000 bar tab at London Reign nightclub. It’s hard to imagine how they could have incurred such a large bill short of treating the entire house to free drinks or having exotic dancers pleasure them.  Perhaps management was simply stiffing four naïve African-American jocks in a strange environment.  All told, it was a good NFL day, with the Skins, Bears, and Eagles all triumphant. The only sour note  was my Fantasy team, again garnering the second most points but losing to Pittsburgh Dave when Todd Gurley, after a 25-yard run, took a knee rather than cross the goal line, knowing time would expire, giving the Rams the victory, while a TD might conceivably have allowed Green Bay to tie the score in the final minute. What he did crushed many bigtime NFL high-rollers, the Rams being 71/2-point favorites.

Anne Weiss, photos by Jerry Davich

Post-Trib columnist Jerry Davich profiled high school history teacher Anne Weiss, 73, whose Andrean career spans 50 years. Several former students claimed she was their best teacher ever.  Joking about her bossy personality, Weiss remarked: “Some boys find it difficult to deal with a loud woman. Some girls, too.”  Lamenting that there were only two remaining blackboards at Andrean, Weiss joked: “Take me away before you take my beloved blackboard.”  While chair of IUN’s History Department, I observed Anne in the classroom to assess whether the course was worthy of AP (Advanced Placement) status, earning students college credit.  She was very knowledgeable, interacted well with students, but forced them to think, reason, and participate.

 "Merciless" Mary McGee

Brad Miller from Indiana Landmarks requested information on North Gleason Park clubhouse, a 1941 WPA project.  It served a nine-hole golf course that frequently flooded in the spring and was inferior to the whites-only 18-hole course across the Little Calumet River in South Gleason Park. The site became Police Athletic League training quarters for local boxers, and Miller found walls lined with fight posters.  One touted Gary’s own “Merciless” Mary McGee, who began competing professionally in 2005.  Presently unused and suffering from considerable roof damage, the building once contained a restaurant and was, Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy recalled, the site of dances  In “Gary: A Pictorial History” is a photo (below) of visiting celebrity Joe Louis, the heavyweight champ, at a 1948 Par-Makers golf tournament.  

Louis-Schmeling, 1938; two minutes later the German was on the canvas

The most popular black celebrity of his time, Joe Louis Barrow was born in 1914 in east-central Alabama, the seventh child of sharecroppers Monroe and Lillie Barrow.  The family moved to Detroit at age 12 where Joe, a shy kid with a stammer, first observed streetcars, electric lights, and indoor toilets.  One story, probably apocryphal, claims he went by his middle name to avoid his mother discovering that he was using money for violin lessons to learn boxing.  His pugilistic career took off during the Depression under the tutelage of John Roxborough, Detroit’s black rackets   boss.  To drum up fan interest, urban newspapers, including both the Chicago Tribuneand the Chicago Defender, billed the “Brown Bomber” as wholesome and nonthreatening, in contrast tothe previous generation's controversial black champion Jack Johnson.  Under strict orders from handlers to, unlike Johnson, avoid white women, Louis wed comely Marva Trotter in 1935.  Throughout his career, however, he reveled in Gary’s nightclub scene, visiting such Midtown establishments as Mona’s Lounge, Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen, the Wonder Room, and the Playboy Club, whose owners treated him like royalty.

In 1938, when Louis knocked out German Max Schmeling in just 124 seconds to avenge his only previous loss before 70,000 fans in Yankee Stadium and millions more radio listeners, celebrations erupted in African-American neighborhoods across the nation.  In Gary a tragic confrontation erupted when Black celebrants ventured into segregated Glen Park and found themselves engulfed by an angry mob, resulting in the accidental death of a white woman and the murder conviction of civil rights leader Joseph Pitts.  I wrote about Pitts and palpably unfair trial in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.” Here’s David Margolick’s account in “Beyond Glory”:

  Two Gary residents a white woman named Florence Nehring and Joseph Pitts, a black barber, had listened to the fight – she at her home, he at his barbershop.  Each then went out to reconnoiter.  Whites near one commercial strip began pelting the car carrying Pitts and two of his friends with tomatoes and eggs.  Pitts got frightened, opened the door, and brandished a revolver, which went off accidentally.  After ricocheting off a wall, the bullet hit Nehring in the abdomen.  Hundreds of angry whites swarmed around Pitts’s car; cries of “Lynch the nigger!” filled the air.  A policeman pulled him to safety, but whites turned the car over with the other men still inside; one rioter tried puncturing the gas tank with an ice pick and setting the car on fire.  Fearing he’d be lynched – the crowd had swollen to more than two thousand people - authorities took Pitts to a remote jail. 

In 1951, the Par-Makers joined the United Golf Association, a black organization (at the time the PGA restricted its membership to whites only), and sponsored a tournament that Joe Louis agreed to participate in.  Due to the Champ’s promised appearance, parks department administrators were shamed into agreeing to make South Gleason’s course available. That year, a dozen Par-Makers members signed up to play in the annual Post-Tribunecity tournament.  Publisher H.B. Snyder, President of Gary’s Urban League Board, made sure they weren’t turned away.  Even so, the match play flights were rigged against the black entrants.  By the quarterfinals Nolan “Jelly” Jones was the only remaining black golfer.  His semi-final opponent was the tournament favorite.  On one hole Jones witnessed his opponent hit a ball under a tree only to have a spectator kick it back onto the fairway.  Jones won the match anyway.  The following week, black fans parked adjacent to the course to watch Jones compete for the championship.  When he clinched the victory on the sixteenth hole, the tournament director left rather than to acknowledge the new champion.  A week later, according to Par-Makers president Thomas Moxley, a “puny” little trophy arrived at North Gleason clubhouse for Jones, who continued to play the South Gleason course.  As club champ, officials didn’t dare turn him away.  Most Par-Makers, on the other hand, continued to use North Gleason. In 1991, Moxley explained why: “You knew that you were not welcome.”  In 1952 Louis participated in a PGA event, the San Diego Open, as an amateur, paving the way for black professionals to follow in his footsteps.

The Champ’s final years were not happy ones.  Following his retirement and an unsuccessful comeback that ended with a humiliating loss to Rocky Marciano, the IRS continued to hound him for back taxes, He had a short career as a professional wrestler and became a fixture at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, greeting tourists. Many a Gary resident posed for a shot of them with Louis.  Plagued by dependence on drugs and a paranoid fear of plots to kill him, he died of heart failure in 1981.  At President Ronald Reagan’s insistence he was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors; Max Schmeling, who had befriended old rival, served as a pallbearer.  Responding to frequent eulogies that Louis was a credit to his race, New York Postcolumnist Jimmy Cannon wrote: “Yes, Joe Louis was a credit to his race – the human race.”

On a lighter note, this from Jim Spicer:

   Last week a passenger in a taxi heading for Midway airport leaned over to ask the driver a question and gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb, and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window. For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the shaking driver said, “Are you OK? I’m sorry but you scared the daylights out of me.”
    The badly shaken passenger apologized to the driver and said, “I didn’t realize that a mere tap on the shoulder would startle someone so badly.”

    The driver replied, “No, no, I’m the one who is sorry, it’s entirely my fault. Today is my very first day driving a cab. For the past 25 years I’ve been driving a hearse.”

Got my overgrown toenails clipped at L.A. Nails.  A year ago, the cost was seven dollars, and I’d tip the person three.  Last time, the price went to $10, and I left a two-dollar tip. This time the manager wanted $20.  I didn’t leave any tip.  Petty? Perhaps. As I entered our condo, the pungent aroma of Polish golumpkis greeted me.  Toni was watching acid-tongued “Judge Judy,” the best of the many imitators benefitting from the popularity of Judge Joseph Wapner’s “The People’s Court,”  that ran for 12 seasons beginning in 1981.  “Wapner”was a famous Dustin Huffman line in “Rain Man” (1988).  Wapner had been a municipal court judge in Los Angeles, and Judge Judy Sheindlin, 76, whose show debuted in 1996, once was a family court magistrate in Manhattan.  

There were 6 full bridge tables at Chesterton Y due to a sanctioned bridge tournament. We played pre-arranged hands simultaneously used at other Unit 154 sites.  Charlie Halberstadt and I held our own against some of the best Region pairs.  Director Alan Yngve and Joel Charpentier won, with the Carsons and the Tomes tying for second.  I invited Chuck Tomes to IUN’s Homecoming basketball games, and he noted with sadness the death of IUN assistant women’s coach Ken Markfull, 64, five-time Post-Tribunehigh school coach of the year during a 30-year career at Hobart and Andrean, with both Sectional and regional championships on his resumé.  Terry Bauer, reading a Wendell Wilkie biography, couldn’t get over Republicans nominating a longtime Democrat as their 1940 presidential candidate.  Henry Luce of Timemagazine had a big hand in that, I noted.

My best hand  came against stellar opponents Barb Walczak and Trudi McKamey. Holding 17 points and 5 Hearts, I opened a Heart.  When Charlie bid 2 Hearts, indicating a weak hand with 6-8 points but at least 3 Hearts, I jumped to game.  With a 4-I trump split against me and only one clear entry to the board, I was not able to finesse the Heart King twice, which Barb held, along with another trump. With four cards left, three of them trump, including the Ace, I deliberately trumped a good trick on the board and led what Barb assumed was a good Diamond.  When she trumped, I played a higher Heart and then led out my Ace, making the contract for a high board, as nobody else bid and made game.  As we were leaving, Trudi said to me, “I’ll remember that 4-Heart bid.” Like me, she probably broods over hands she scored poorly on rather than the good ones. My biggest regret: against Judy Selund and Don Giedemann, with 4 Hearts out, including the Queen, I had to choose between a finesse and leading  my King and hoping the Queen dropped.  I finessed, and Don took the trick with a bare Queen.

life masters Anna Urick, Charlotte Abernathy, and Trudi McKamey; photo by Barbara Walczak

Ida Sain at her home; Huffington Post photo by Doug McSchooler

An article on Gary’s “hyper-vacancy” crisis (25,000 lots, 6,500 abandoned buildings) appeared in today’s Huffington Post by David Uberti, who interviewed me a couple weeks ago.  Glen Park resident Ida Sain, 75, told him that her parents moved to Gary around 1940 and her father quickly found work at U.S. Steel.  At the time African Americans were restricted to the Midtown area, and most suburban communities were off limits.  “When I was a kid,”Ida recalled, “they didn’t even want to serve you out there.”Uberti wrote:

    Following in her father’s footsteps, Sain landed a job driving trucks at the mill before eventually settling into office work. As a single mother in 1972, she bought her three-bedroom home in the mostly white Glen Park area, where she still lives today. It was an ideal neighborhood to raise her daughter, Marviyann Brown, but the signs of economic collapse had already begun.

    It started as a trickle of upper- and middle-class whites leaving. They took advantage of federally backed home mortgages to buy newer, larger houses in the suburbs connected to downtown by a burgeoning highway system. Many black families were denied such federal aid and were explicitly not welcomed in the suburbs by real estate firms and community groups. After Gary came under black political leadership in the late 1960s, this out-migration exploded into full-on white flight, with major stores and businesses also moving outside city limits.

    To Brown, it was clear that certain kids in the neighborhood were moving away while others weren’t ― or, to be more precise, couldn’t. Brown’s family stayed while her best friend, Julie, a white girl who lived nearby, left with her family. “I always wondered what happened to her,”Brown said.

I had talked with Huffington Postwriter Uberti about the devastating effects to Gary of middle-class black flight to previously all-white suburbs in the past40 years, but he chose not to bring that up.

Credibility

“Your words carry a lot of weight

They create the atmosphere

You are the prophet of your life

Your future can depend on what you say.”

         Poet Hollis Donald

President Herbert Hoover (above) lost his credibility after repeatedly saying during the Great Depression that prosperity was “just around the corner.”In 1960 the nation was shocked upon discovering that Dwight D. Eisenhower lied about the real mission of the U-2 American spy plane shot down over Soviet territory.  Lyndon Baines Johnson’s propensity to tell falsehoods created a “credibility gap” that proved disastrous during the Vietnam War. Nixon’s Watergate lies about cost him the presidency. Ronald Reagan avoided calumny when the Iran-Contra scandal broke by pleading memory loss that sympathizers countenanced as early signs of senility. George Bush’s bogus statements about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction have stained America’s Middle East policy to this day.  Trump began his foray into politics by making the false claim that Barack Obama was not an American citizen.  If Hitler invented the “Big Lie,” Trump tells so many whoppers in a single day that he long ago used up any ounce of credibility.  

In the course of a single campaign rant, Trump claimed that Mideast terrorists had infiltrated that ranks of Honduran refugees seeking asylum in America, promised a pie-in-the-sky middle-class tax cut, warned that Republicans, not Democrats, would protect those with pre-existing medical conditions from losing health insurance, and claimed the impending arms deal with Saudi Arabia will create a half-million new jobs.  Now, in the wake of pipe bombs having been mailed to Obama, Clinton, CNN and other critics, he blames the “fake” news media for spreading division and hate.  Historian Robert Dallek pointed out the perils of such demagoguery, especially should the President need to unite the country in a time of crisis: “Once the public loses confidence in a president's leadership, once they don't trust him anymore, once his credibility is sharply diminished, how does he get it back?”  

Dean Bottorff's daughter Ann calls this photo "Breaking Dad"

Dean Bottorff responded:

   The world needs a new word for this. May I suggest “fire-hosing,”the act of spreading so many lies so fast that each individual lie, like a drop of water, is lost in the deluge. At this, Trump, like the NAZI propagandists of the 1930s, and a host of others since, is a master. The effectiveness of “fire-hosing”is well documented. I was in Germany 20 years after the end of WWII and there were still those there who continued to believe in Hitler and the Nazi cause. The US Army did a study in 1948 in which it was discovered that fully 30 percent of the German population still had various degrees of high regard for Hitler and the Nazis even as their country lay in ruins, a huge percentage of their youth had been killed, and the horrors of the Holocaust had been exposed. What this portends for Trump supporters is frightening. Thank you, Jim, we need your historical perspective on this. 

Commenting on Trump’s recent “60 Minutes” appearance, Ray Smock wrote:

  I almost fell out of my chair when the president expressed his view on global warming that he was suspicious of the political agenda of scientists predicting dire consequences. But the part that almost threw me to the floor was Trump's admission that, sure, the world's climate was changing but that it would change back! I never heard anyone say this before. When will it change back? How many thousands of years do we need to wait for the climate to improve? Trump was worried that any attempt to save the Earth's temperature from rising would cost people jobs and money. How about loss of humans as a species? No need to worry about jobs when humans are extinct.

Joe Van Dyk, Gary’s Director of Planning and Redevelopment, sought my input on producing a historical overview for the city’s upcoming comprehensive plan.  I referred him to the “Gary: A Political History”  chapter introductions and suggested that he could divide the essay into chapters covering 1906-1929 (rapid growth during an age on industrialization), 1929-1945 (when Gary was dependent on the federal government for survival during the Great Depression and for the boom of the World War II years), 1945-1970 (when white movement to the suburbs accelerated), 1970-2000 (years of depopulation and state and federal neglect during an age of deindustrialization), and twenty-first century strategies for revitalizing Gary’s downtown, lakefront, University Park area, and other neighborhoods. Van Dyk first visited the Archives while working on a Master’s thesis at UIC.  He’s been involved in plans to convert the City Methodist Church ruins to an urban garden.

Surveyor Loren Stackhouse arrived at the Archives while Steve McShane was at a meeting and inquired whether we had maps of an area adjacent to Gary within the present boundaries of Lake Station and New Chicago. It is the site of an unpaved extension of Indiana Ave. The property is adjacent to where Marianne Brush lives and evidently belongs to River Forest High School. I doubt we have the relevant maps but promised to ask Steve about the matter and suggested he visit the Lake County Surveyor’s office. If George Van Til were still in charge, I’m certain he could help.

State Representative Mara Candelaria Reardon was featured in two front-page Post-Trib stories, appearing at IUN at a “Woman and Power” seminar with Gary mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and one of four women to have accused Indiana Attorney-General Curtis Hill of touching her inappropriately.  A Munster H.S., IUN, and John Marshall Law School grad of Puerto Rican ancestry born in East Chicago, Reardon is married and the mother of two.  Reardon’s father is  Isabelino “Cande” Candelaria, Indiana’s first Puerto Rican city council member, her mother, Victoria Soto Candelaria, was the first Latina president of the Indiana Federation of Teachers.

 cast of "The Signal"

Henry Farag called, still intent on staging “The Signal: A Doo Wop Musical” at IUN’s new auditorium.  He wrote Chancellor Lowe a proposal about the matter and is meeting with a theater representative.  The university was cautious about booking such shows during its first year but approved performances of “The Wiz” during Black History Month.  Henry has a very deserving proposal, and suggested he talk with James Wallace, IUN’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs, who helped fund “The Wiz” appearances last february. Henry and many Farag family members are IU grads. “The Signal” has won acclaim from critics and audiences in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.  I predict one day it will play on Broadway.

In the 1964 “Class Notes” section of the Bucknell alumni magazine, scribe Beth Wehrle Smith wrote about a Phi Psi reunion at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware attended by my old roommate Rich Baker, Ron Baroody, Dan Harris, and Carl Rogge.  She described them as “in their 70s, most a bit paunchy, hair challenged, and somewhat senile.”  While I can’t speak for the others, “Bakes” is neither paunchy nor senile. We talk frequently, and, in fact, I phoned to tease him about Wehrle’s blurb. He mentioned that one Rehoboth Beach attendee was a former pledge blackballed from becoming a brother but continues to consider himself a Psi Phi.  Fraternities were an elitist vestige from the past with few redeeming virtues aside from its parties.  I convinced a mutual college friend, John Sandburg, to pledge Sigma Phi Epsilon his sophomore year, but a few fraternity brothers made him do such humiliating tasks that he quit in disgust.

 Frederick Douglass and, below, John Brown

November’s book club selection, Keith Anderson’s biography of John Brown, received good reviews. When teaching in Saudi Arabia, I had the class read two essays on the fiery abolitionist, one proclaiming him to be a freedom fighter, the other claiming he was a deranged fanatic.  Most students were down on Brown for countenancing violence. I didn’t disagree with them.  During my final class, a student claimed that if it hadn’t been for Watergate, Nixon would have gone down as a great president. I replied, thinking of the millions who died needlessly in Vietnam during his watch, that, compared to John Brown, Nixon was a mass murderer.  That caused quite a ruckus.  In “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom,” historian David W. Blight, whom I heard speak at an Indiana Association of Historians conference, concludes that the former slave and outspoken abolitionist admired Brown’s courage but was repelled by his incapability to think through his actions.  Therefore, he opposed the suicidal Harper’s Ferry raid, realizing that it was doomed to failure and meant death to anyone, slave or free man, who participated.

South Shore Arts director John Cain offered me two free tickets to his twenty-fifth annual Holiday reading, purportedly his last, performing his favorite story, Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory.”  I recently completed an essay for a catalogue for a gallery exhibit about “Gary Haunts.”  I am working on a “Dance Party: 1960” talk for next season’s Art in Focus series at the Munster center. A similar one last year was a success, and this time I plan to take local high school dancers (perhaps from Munster) to provide additional entertainment and persuade audience members to get out of their seats.  Two particularly soulful ballads from 1960, my senior year in high school, are “A Thousand Stars” by Kathy Young and the Innocents and “Angel Baby” (“oh, pretty baby, won’t you hold me in your arms?”)by Rosie and the Originals (when you are near me my heart skips a beat”).  They don’t write love songs like that anymore.  Kathy Young was just 15 in 1960 when she ended “A Thousand Stars” with the words, “I’m yours.”I saw her perform at the Star Plaza in Merrillville a half-century later as part of Henry Farag’s “Ultimate Doo Wop Show.”  Born in 1946 of Mexican ancestry, Rosalie “Rosie” Mendez Hamlin, who died last year, was even younger than Kathy Young and also appeared in “Oldies” shows well into the twenty-first century.`

With the payola scandal, Elvis getting drafted, Jerry Lee Lewis being blacklisted for marrying his 23-year-old cousin, Little Richard becoming a preacher, Dick Clark promoting teen idols whose hits were a lame parody of rock and roll, and Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper, some were predicting the death of rock and roll. Instead, rhythm and blues veterans such as Lloyd Price and Hand Ballard stepped to the fore  and new artists filled the void, such as Vee-Jay Records Dee Clark and Gene Chandler. And one of Hank Ballard’s songs, “The Twist,” recorded by Chubby Checker, would inspire a dance craze that inspired a new generation of teenagers.

The Electrical Engineers remained in first place in Mel Guth’s Seniors League by taking two games and series from Hot Shots.  Our anchor, Frank Shufran rolled a 206 in the only close game after Joe Piunti, Melvin Nelson, and I all marked. One woman asked if I were married, perhaps hoping to set me up with a girlfriend. For the second week in a row I forgot my change purse (for paying dimes for made splits and doubles and quarters for every tenth strike).  Last week I plumb forgot it; this time I had it minutes before leaving for the university and must have put it down when I grabbed my keys.  Now, if I do it again next week, I’ll start worrying.

Family Matters

“Be kind.  Do no  harm.  Take care of your family.  Don’t start wars.”  Kurt Vonnegut

Volume 47 of Steel Shavingsended with the above Vonnegut quote.  Now almost two years into the disastrous Trump administration, we need the Hoosier sage’s words of wisdom more than ever.  Trump wouldn’t know the first thing about kindness, means nothing but harm, has no respect for families save for those with Trump blood, and, like any bully, will wage war on any entity weaker than him.  Latest outrage: abrogating the nuclear arms limitation treaty and threatening to use military force against Honduran refugees.

“Family Matters” enjoyed an 8-year run on CBS beginning in 1989.  A “Perfect Strangers” spin-off, it centered around a gruff but lovable cop with an eccentric family and nerdy neighbor.  Most critics compared the sitcom unfavorably to “The Cosby Show,” but reruns are still a BET staple, while anything associated with predator Cosby is toxic.  I can’t recall ever watching “Family Matters.”  The kid on “Webster” adopted by Alex Karras’ character was my favorite African-American waif.

We celebrated Angie’s birthday at Craft House in Chesterton, our first time there.  The place was lively on a Friday evening at 6:30; in fact, at a nearby table, a woman shrieked with laughter every few minutes, annoying at first but palatable after two 16-ounce Yuegling lagers evidently brewed elsewhere.  Having a mini-brewery on-site seems like a can’t-miss endeavor. We shared several appetizers; I ordered a delicious bistro steak and salad.  At the condo for cake, we got in two Uno games won by Angie and James.

Mike and Jimbo; below, Toni, Mike, Max, Janet, Brenden

 

Saturday we drove south on I-65 (a death trap once winter begins) to Carmel for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner with the Bayers. For years this was an annual tradition, which we’ve tried to continue after Mike, Janet, and Shannon moved back to the Indianapolis area, close to daughter Kirsten and husband Ed Petras. With our burgeoning families, scheduling it around Thanksgiving got too complicated.  Toni contributed mussels and other appetizers. Phil took a case of Rolling Rock. Turkey and ham were on hand with all the trimmings, including turnips made to Michael’s liking and glazed cranberry slices – Janet and my preference over cranberry sauce. I saved room for slices of both Beth’s pies, lemon merengue and apple cranberry.

Keeping up a holiday tradition, we played charades. The five Bayer grandkids (two of Brenden’s, two of Kirsten’s, and Shannon’s 3-year-old Max) really got into it after some initial shyness. The lively conversation reminded me of evenings at the Bayers’ Miller house.  Years later, Mike Olszanski said he had thought of me as rather quiet, meeting me on those occasions.  I thought the same thing about him.  Truth was, it was hard to get a word in edgewise with so many competitors.  Phil gave rookie soccer coach Ed tips on drills; I reminisced with Michael about poker games with old lefties Fred Gabourey, Al Samter, Scotty Woods, and AFT union leader Charles Smith.  We talked about the 3-hour memorial service for USWA district director Eddie Sadlowski and how Mike Olszanski and I quoted Mike extensively in “Steelworkers Fight Back,” aSteel Shavingsissue about the 1977 USWA election.  One union leader kept asking, “Who is that guy Michael Bayer?”  Only an invaluable source on what went wrong during Eddie’s campaign for the USWA presidency.  Mike and Janet had spent several weeks in Ireland with his brother Joe Davidow and wife Janna, whom David and I had stayed with in Helsinki.  Janet got out the same album Joe had given me, “Different Moments,” featuring Joe playing his compositions on piano and saxophonist Seppo “Parioni” Paakkunainen.  The album artwork was by Maxwell Gordon, Mike’s uncle, who moved to Mexico in 1961 in the wake of a bitter divorce and for whom Shannon’s kid is evidently named.

"Wounded Angel" by Maxwell Gordon

After a night at Mike and Janet’s in nearby Fishers, we were back in Carmel for  breakfast. Kirsten had prepared a delicious egg dish.  Other contributions included quiche and Polish pastries purchased by Beth.  I saved room for the last remaining piece of Beth’s apple/cranberry pie.  Ed was off to a Colts game, which reminded me of past holiday touch football games.  I told Alissa about meeting Brother Blue’s widow, Ruth Hill, at the OHA conference in Montreal.  When she was just a kid, she was with them on a tour of a Native American museum; she doesn’t remember but does recall Halloweening that same afternoon as a tourist with a camera around her neck in downtown Santa Fe and scooting down a mesa on an Indian reservation faster than we could keep up with her – stories we’ve repeated many times to keep the memory alive. After playing the perfect hostess for 24 hours, Kirsten appeared to have a sore shoulder, so I gave her a five-minute rub, which she thanked me for. She’s like family, having lived with us part of her senior year after her parents moved to Vermont. There were parting hugs all around and vows to come back even earlier next year while the heated salt water pool was still open.

John Riggins Super Bowl ramble

Home for most of the Redskins victory over the hated Dallas Cowboys.  Announcers compared Skins running back Adrian Peterson, 33, to John Riggins, MVP at that ripe old age, and showed a clip of his memorable 43-yard TD run in Superbowl XVII. In the fourth quarter, Washington went up by 10 on a sack/fumble/TD and then barely held on, 20-17, when a false start penalty moved a Dallas last-ditch field goal try back 5 yards to Washington’s 38-yard-line.  At the last moment the ball veered to the left and bounced harmlessly off the goalpost. I called Dave afterwards to make sure he watched.  We both were once diehard Redskin fans, but the advent of Fantasy football has reduced his team loyalty.  One time, much to my shock, when he rooted for a Skins opponent on his Fantasy team to score a TD.

 Nathan Hare and Marvin X, 2017

In the Jeopardy category African-American History a question asked which university instituted, under Nathan Hare, the first Black Studies program.  Answer: San Francisco State in 1968.  IU Northwest launched its program shortly thereafter and offered courses before SFSU did. I knew Sweatt v. Painter, the Texas Law School “separate but equal” case but guessed Sojourner Truth instead of Harriet Tubman as the former slave who helped fugitives escape from her native Maryland.  

On the cover of “IU200: The Bicentennial Magazine” was a bison, IU’s mascot during the late 1960s, and inside Steve McShane’s article about various IUN mascots, including Indians, Blast, and Redhawks. University Archivist Stephen Towne wrote about IU during the Civil War.  In December 1860, when South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, someone placed a secession flag atop the University Building, prompting outraged residents to remove it, drag it through the streets, and burn it at the Court House Square. Two literary societies held boisterous debates on the merits of the war until President Cyrus Nutt insisted that topics be approved in advance.  Towne wrote: “Members of the literary societies raged in protest.  The Board of Trustees suspended students until they submitted.”

 James Dye, honorary degree ceremony, 2009

I called the office of former IU Trustee James Dye to apologize for the various snafus during his visit for our interview.  His son Jim answered and recognized my voice since his sister had taped the interview.  Claiming his dad had enjoyed himself immensely, he strongly suggested I call him at home. Eleven years my senior, Dye still has a keen mind and a quick wit.  We talked for a good half hour; he told me about a buffalo farm he ran during the 1990s. It was hurt by the failure of Ted Turner’s restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill, specializing in bison, to take off.  Unlike cattle, Dye said, only a relatively small portion of a buffalo can be harvested for food, and hides are not profitable.  From what I could gather, the land Dye acquired for his farm turned out to be a good investment.  Dye told me he doesn’t feel his age until he looks in the mirror.  I told him about a 1957 dance party and talk I hosted for South Shore Arts and someone commenting that I seemed to go back in time mentally as the program went on.

Purdue Northwest grad student Jeff Swisher sought advice on his thesis topic, the 1959 Steel Strike and Its Effect on the City of Gary.”  He had read “Gary’s First Hundred years,” so I pulled out some Shavingsmagazines and Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  He is hoping to show that the lengthy labor dispute had a profound effect on the city’s subsequent economic decline, whereas most studies trace that phenomenon to white flight. He has consulted census figures, school enrollment statistics, and plant labor force size. I suggested a few other sources and that he focus the narrative on the work stoppage itself and weigh the multitude of factors behind deindustrialization in a concluding chapter. A Hammond Gavit H.S. history teacher, Swisher is studying under Professor Saul Lerner, who is several years my senior.

Jimbo Jammers had the second most points in Fantasy football, but I lost to Phil, now with a record of 1-6, whose Denver defense earned him an unprecedented 34 points.  On Monday Night Football, I needed 20 points from my wide receiver Julio Jones.  He gained 110 yards but failed to score any TDs.