Retirement Journal

Got a call from Val at Home Mountain Press that volume 40 of Steel Shavings magazine was being delivered today. It arrived at the IU Northwest mailroom before noon, and the 660 copies were in my office at the Calumet Regional Archives (Martha’s Cage) within a half hour. Featuring “Out to Pasture but Still Kickin’: A Retirement Journal, 2007-2008,” it looks great with a cover photo of me singing on campus on the day of my retirement party with son Dave, students Bruce Sawochka and Jonathan Rix, and guitar player Tim “Voodoo Daddy” Brush. Rushed copies to archivist Steve McShane, Ryan Shelton, who was a godsend helping me lay it out and good friend Chuck Gallmeier, who is featured prominently in it.

Dropped off 16 copies of volume 40 at the IU Northwest Bookstore and in return took copies of Henry Farag’s “The Signal” (Shavings, volume 32) that they had on hand from when I used it in my survey History class. Henry grew up in the Tolleston neighborhood of Gary and was in a doo wop group called Stormy Weather. He puts on Oldies concerts featuring the likes of Little Anthony, Dion, the Spaniels, and many others. His upcoming “Ultimate Doo Wop” show will star the Flamingoes and the Skyliners. His autobiography is fantastic and almost out of print, so I was happy to find the extra issues. Somebody should make a movie using “The Signal” as the foundation for a script.

My journal combines what I was doing both in my social and scholarly life, with university, local, national, and international doings. Since I love sports, books, movies, and music, those things get covered as well. In the Editor’s Note I wrote: “Why a retirement journal? The easy answer is that I had lots of time on my hands and was vain enough to believe it might have enduring merit for future area scholars. So, therefore, in the spirit, misguided or not, of serving Clio, the muse of historians and with intended malice toward none, I apologize to anyone who doubts its worth or whose feelings I may have unintentionally hurt. Candor, I have discovered from past experience, is a double-edged sword.”

I continued: “My thoughts on aging and “being out to pasture,” in horse parlance, may find resonance with slightly younger baby boomers (I was born in 1942) as they, too, consider the benefits and drawbacks of retirement, perhaps postponed due to Bush’s disastrous economic policies (I make no effort to mask my left-leaning political views – don’t look for objectivity here). Having made pretty decent use of journals (including my own) in past issues covering 2000 and March of 2003 and having long appreciated the value of contemporary history, I also had a hunch that 2008 would be a momentous year (alas, not for the Cubs in the centennial anniversary of their last World Series title but a thrill for this lifelong Phillies fan). How special that my Maryland adviser’s widow, Marion Merrill, a “bleeding heart” liberal in the most noble sense of the phrase, could live to see an African American elected President."

The journal is consistent, I believe, with the overriding purpose of the Steel Shavings series, to record everyday life – what Hoosier humorist Jean Shepherd called “shards and midden heaps” on the scrap pile of the past. Broadly defined, this includes all aspects of personal interaction, everything from sports and sex, fads and fashions, food and film, books read and ball games watched, the memorable and the mundane, the comic and the tragic (as with another pivotal period some 40 years before, there was plenty of both).

The original purpose behind Steel Shavings was to make available the fruits of area history research to students, families, community residents, and scholars (present and future) interested in Northwest Indiana’s rich cultural heritage. The very name (Ronald Cohen’s idea) underscored the enormous local impact of area mills historically. Heavy industry jobs had originally lured most settlers to Northwest Indiana. While the region is still a major American steel producer, the diminution of that influence due to automation has been quite dramatic since the magazine’s debut in 1975. Shavings has undergone numerous transformations but has consistently emphasized the social history of the family, that most fragile but resilient of institutions.