Weeding

Suzanna, who resides in western Pennsylvania, has returned from Houston, where she met a new granddaughter, and reports: “I have been really busy catching up with myself since returning. So much to do. The garden was overrun with weeds but fortunately the grass was not too bad. The tomatoes are just starting to turn red and with twenty tomato plants I will have a tomato processing plant when they all are ready. Last year I made some yummy salsa and spaghetti sauce and stewed tomatoes and lots and lots of salad and gave alot away and also made chili and other tomato-based things. I will also have bunches of other veggies but mostly pumpkins. I plan to put up a sign "Grant Street Pumpkin Patch" "Papa Pumpkins $2.00; Mama Pumpkins 1.00 and Baby Pumpkins 50 cents." Should be fun.”

I wrote back that 20 tomato plants was quite a crop and that Toni and I love fried green tomatoes, as well as salsa and the other things she will be canning. Here in Northwest Indiana tomatoes don’t turn red until later in the year. A couple friends give us tomatoes from their gardens and we keep reiterating that we like green ones, too. After we moved to Northwest Indiana, we’d go south on Broadway until we came to a pumpkin farm where a mall was eventually built. Then there was a pumpkin patch in Portage on Airport Road and Central where my dentist, Dr. John Sikora now has his office. The last pumpkins I bought were from Town and Country supermarket, and “Babies” cost way more than 50 cents.

Yard work can be fun if you don’t have too much of it. I thought we wouldn’t have to do anything at our new condo, but Toni and I have weeded and pruned bushes. At our old place the back yard was so small that I’d keep the grass under control with a weed whacker – good exercise. We had poison ivy that kept threatening to invade our property. The National Lakeshore rangers told us officially that since poison ivy was indigenous to the area, we should let it alone, but I squirted stuff on patches near us. We also had thistles that stuck to your pants legs and shoe laces and hurt like hell. In “Rabbit at Rest” John Updike concludes that weeds have their own personalities and styles and don’t know that they are weeds. He writes: “Chickweed is a good weed, soft on the hands unlike thistles and burdock, and pulls easily; it knows when the jig is up and comes willingly, where wild cucumber keeps breaking off at one of its many joints, and grass and red sorrel and poison ivy spread underground, like creeping diseases that cannot be cured.”

My 2,000-word review of the stock car racing book “He Crashed Me So I Crashed Him Back” is in its fifth revision. Since I like to push the button to see what I can get past Magill’s censors (if there are any), I quote driver Curtis Turner’s comparison of drag racing to masturbation (“It’s a little bit of fun, but it ain’t much to look at”). Jimmy Carter invited NASCAR’s leading lights to the White House in 1978, but old Ronnie Reagan was more their type of guy with his sunny optimism and cowboy persona. Seeking re-election in 1984 against Walter Mondale, Reagan flew aboard Air Force One to Daytona Beach on July Fourth and was on hand when Richard Petty won his two hundredth and final race. "Dutch" was a decent ceremonial president but stuck us with policies that were a millionaire's dream and set the country back a generation. With jingoism in vogue the lavish pre-race productions of Charlotte Motor Speedway impresario Humpy Wheeler (he inherited the nickname from his father, also a Camel smoker) knew no boundaries. In 1984 he staged a bogus reenactment of Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, which, according to Mark Bechtel “featured thatched huts being strafed by planes and palm trees splintered by simulated gunfire.” Ugh!!!

The Archives was a busy place, with several researchers interested in Gary, Steve going through treasures we recently got from old county records, and a fellow named Ron Trigg was organizing a new collection on Porter, Indiana, based in part on photos he has taken and publications in which they have appeared. These include booklets commemorating Porter’s 150th anniversary celebration in 2008. The Bailly Homestead in Porter goes back even further, to 1822. 1858 was the year the Augsburg Lutheran Church was founded by Swedes who emigrated to the area. The Swedes settling in Gary’s Miller district were confirmed at the Augsburg church until they started Bethel Church in 1874. In addition to wonderful photos of woodlands, dunes, and the flowers and wildlife that can be found near the lakeshore, Trigg took numerous shots of nineteenth-century homes that have been restored. In the section of one booklet on Porter businesses there’s a photo of Leroy’s Hot Stuff, a bar and restaurant where Dave’s old band Voodoo Chili played numerous times.

After assuming the position of Court One representative and giving out our email address, I received a half-dozen emails within three hours. That’s OK though. I’m getting familiar with my neighbors and problems they might have.

Rebecca’s play “Annie,” opens Saturday, and we are expecting not only the Michiganders but the families of nieces Michele and Lisa, each with two young kids. The Star Plaza is offering a special hotel discount, so we are all staying there overnight. Should be fun.

In the news: a grizzly killed a camper at Yellowstone Park. The hunt is on to blow the offending animal away. Also army private Bradley Manning has passed on thousands of documents about our fiasco in Afghanistan to a website called Wikileaks. The rumor is he will be court-martialed.

Thanks to James showing me how to use Comcast’s “On Demand,” I watched my first two episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm:” with “Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David. In one he is repelled when he sees his shrink on the beach in a thong bathing suit. To help a charity raising money for research into Groat’s Syndrome (a made-up disease), Larry agrees to have lunch with a fan who paid $4,000 for the honor, then gets into an argument with the guy, who doesn’t want him to start eating until his own meal arrives. Larry wonders whether the disease was named after Pirates’ shortstop Dick Groat, who played next to second baseman Bill Mazeroski on Pittsburgh’s 1960 championship team and closed out his career with the Phillies seven years later. In the other episode Edward Asner (old “Lou Grant”) appears as a lecherous old man.