The Old Man

“The old man had his high point every Wednesday at George’s Bowling Alley, where he once bowled a historic game in which he got three consecutive strikes.” Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

Jean Shepherd

The old man of Jean Shepherd’s best sellers was a cranky but somewhat endearing middle-aged curmudgeon, while his real father felt trapped in a drudge existence and deserted the family when Shep’s younger brother turned 18. From such experiences came the bard’s sardonic humor, what he labeled not nostalgia but anti-nostalgia.  In 1995, thanks largely to IUN archivist Steve McShane’s efforts, Shepherd received an IU honorary degree at age 74.  At a banquet beforehand, Shep had unsuspecting invitees rolling in the aisles as he described returning to the Region from Korea and taking an aptitude test at IU’s East Chicago extension center. Prior to his enrolling for classes, administrators revealed that the tests indicated that he should go into dentistry.  With a twinkle in his eye, Shep concluded his 20-minute bit by saying, “I walked out of that building and never looked back.”  What a tribute to a Region university, making it the butt of a brilliant comedy bit.  It was his way of acknowledging how honored he was to be receiving an honorary doctorate.  Four years later, Shep was dead, estranged from all blood relatives, unable to excise ghosts from the past or forgive old hurts.

In “A Fistful of Fig Newtons,” a unique blend of fiction and memoir, Jean Shepherd writes from the point of view of an urban sophisticate born in Northwest Indiana.  From a high-rise apartment, Shepherd wrote, he ripped the cover off New York magazine and “with smooth, adept, practiced skill quickly folded the cover into a paper airplane, an art not used in many years, perfected grade after grade at the Warren G. Harding School.”  He described the Midwestern public university he attended on the G.I. Bill as the result of a “charitable outpouring of public monies which has led to the psychic downfall of multitudes of erstwhile worthy garage mechanics and plumbers helpers.” Shepherd wrote of returning to Hammond and passing by his old high school:

       It was all there, even the weedy athletic field with its paint-peeling goal posts where I had once played the role of an intrepid defensive lineman and I had irrevocably shattered the ligaments of my left knee, which now began to throb sympathetically as we passed the old battlefield. Ghostly voices of my teachers of that golden time moaned in my subconscious: Miss Bryfogel, her high, thin bleat intoning facts about Bull Run and Appomattox, Miss McCullough’s birdlike chip squeaking something about gerunds or whatever they were, old red-faced Huffine, our coach, barking, “I don’t want to kick no asses but . . .”

        The long winters I had spent in this red brick mausoleum, its echoing halls, clanging lockers, its aromatic gym and cafeteria, scented forever with the aroma of salmon loaf and canned peas.  The roar of thousands of students surging up and down the stairways.

In my 1990s Steel Shavings, “Shards and Midden Heaps” (volume 31, 2001) I eulogize Jean Shepherd and reflect on in my 50s celebrating a twentieth-fifth wedding anniversary with my first grandchild (Alissa) and seeing sons Phil and Dave graduate from IU, commence productive careers as TV producer/director and teacher, and marry (in Dave’s case during the Blizzard of ’98).  I bragged about softball and bowling feats and winning tennis trophies in father-son and Senior tournaments. I still had a full had of hair, but it was turned grey.  Twenty years ago, a vicious home invader kept calling me an old man.  Now at age 78 I feel my age in my right knee, rotator cup, left ankle and need for frequent bathroom trips and nine hours of sleep.  Homebound during the pandemic, my main exercise comes from getting the mail and picking dandelions from the front garden in 10-minute intervals, stopping when the knee starts aching.

In this time of social distancing, when millions of young people are missing out on commencement ceremonies, Jean Shepherd wrote this account of graduating from Warren G. Harding School in Hammond:

      The despised glee club sang the Warren G. Harding fight song, accompanied by Miss Bundy, her crinkly straw-colored hair bobbing up and down, her huge bottom enveloping the piano stool. Then an undertaker and Chevrolet dealer delivered a mind-numbing oration on how his generation was passing the torch of civilization from its faltering hands into our youthful energetic and idealistic hands.

       But I got my diploma.  Clasping the sacred scroll there on the stage I felt myself growing wise and dignified, a person of substance, well equipped to carry torches, best foes, to identify the parts of speech, including gerunds, to draw from memory the sinister confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates.  And that Bolivia exports tin.

      At last we were free.  Warren G. Harding and its warm embrace, its easy ways, stood forever behind us.  On the way home the old man, his clean shirt cracklng with starch, said: “Whaddaya say we celebrate by pickin’ up some ice cream at the Igloo.  Ecstatic, I sat in the back seat of the Olds with my kid brother, clutching the precious document on which my name had been misspelled, in Old English lettering.

Casey King passed his IU Northwest senior review with flying colors, exhibiting drawing having to do with a long abandoned Miller drive-in, the Frank-N-Stein.  I’m pretty certain I’d convinced him to attend his commencement ceremony that won’t happen due to the pandemic.

The coronavirus outbreak is wreaking havoc at Westville prison, as well as Porter County jail and other area correctional facilities.  The Chesterton Tribune published the transcript of a phone call from a Westville inmate provided by Indiana Prison Advocates.  It stated:

      The inmates here, including myself, man, are very sick.  A lot of people have tried to get medical attention but are refused.  Things are getting worse, there was a riot.  If my 56-year-old roommate doesn’t get medical attention, then he’s probably not going to live.  Staff are coming in sick and inmates have been asked to keep an eye on these guys the minute they quit breathing to let somebody know. I don’t know how to describe the misery that has taken place here.  People are moaning in pain and some are hoping to die to relieve the suffering.  Commissary’s been taken away.  Governor Holcomb claims there’s a strike team here at Westville, but I haven’t seen anyone offering to help anyone do anything.