"Annie"

Cressmoor being closed for the summer, Clark Metz and I met at Ray’s Lanes, whose proprietor Mark Milsap is one the area’s premier bowlers. Mark’s brother wagered a dollar that I’d lose to Clark. Nine pins down, I got six strikes in the third game to win series by 12 pins. Clark vowed to get revenge next time.

Tom Wade and I were planning to watch Dave play singles in the Post-Tribune tennis tournament, but rain delayed his match so the three of us got in three board games. Dave won them but lost his match 6-4, 6-4 to a top seed.

Saturday was opening night for “Annie” at the Star Plaza. Rebecca played the part of orphan Molly. The Radisson was offering rooms for $69, and we had five of them for the various relatives. From the opening line through numerous musical and dance numbers Becca was fantastic, a natural. Afterwards, the cast came to the lobby, signed autographs, posed for pictures, and received bouquets. Among Dave’s friends who came were Missy and Mary Ann Brush (sporting a new tattoo honoring deceased hubby Tim, “Big Voodoo Daddy”) and an E.C. Central grad who is going to Harvard. The play, based on the comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” takes place during the Great Depression, and characters include President Franklin Roosevelt and cabinet members Harold (Ickes) and Frances (Perkins). Annie doesn’t have a red Afro until near the end. Daddy Oliver Warbucks adopts her upon discovering with the help of the FBI that her parents are dead. Producer Charlie Blum, also the Star Plaza CEO, makes a cameo appearance as radio host Bert Healy. We saw Blum do a terrific job as Henry Higgins in “The Music Man.” A week ago he had a pool party and sleepover for the entire cast. Rebecca loves him. We were on the Gary Centennial Committee together and his advice was to plan things that have “sizzle.” He’s really good for Northwest Indiana.

All the kids loved the motel. Toni had to halt an ice-throwing fight near the vending machines. We were a party of 18 for the breakfast buffet (Lisa’s husband Fritz Teuschler, a Navy Commander who is the executive officer of the ROTC program at Notre Dame, was playing golf). The night before, Fritz stopped at a service station after taking his mother to Midway Airport, and someone asked if he was a gym teacher at Crown Point High School. He replied, “No, I’m from Indiana,” thinking he was in Illinois, but in fact he was in Indiana. The indoor pool had a cool waterfall. Second cousins Tori and Nickolas tousled in the pool and seemed enamored of each other. At that age (around ten) I had a crush on Judy Jenkins. Smiling broadly, Michelle’s daughter Sophia came to me with a beach ball and a big smile on her face and, as in French Lick, we tossed it around. Oliver joined in and twice took a tumble on the pool’s slick periphery. I told his dad to keep an eye out for swelling on his right arm, but Fritz said, “He’s a tough kid; he’ll be OK.” Grace got out of the water and gave him a hug, wetting the front of his clothes. Unflappable, he said, “She likes to do that.” On the way to see our condo Fritz had a Grateful Dead tape on and said he’d seen the band about ten times, mostly during college. Oliver thought the music was all right but preferred the Beatles. Fritz said he knows the words to most Beatles songs. Fritz and Lisa loved our poster called Ronald Reagan’s world that portrayed the Soviets as the bad guys and California as God’s country. The Northeast was the land of “welfare bums” while in the South lived “real Americans.”

I started “Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight over Lincoln’s Legacy.” Author David Stewart previously wrote “The Summer of 1787,” when the Founding Fathers defined “impeachable offense” in a deliberately vague way. Alissa noticed the book while we were at the hotel pool and wondered if any other President besides Clinton had been impeached. I told her that Nixon resigned over Watergate before the full House voted on articles of impeachment that had been approved in committee. I am enjoying the character studies and examples of the overheated rhetoric. Senator Charles Sumner hardly ever spoke extemporaneously and rehearsed speeches in front of a mirror. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens was born with a clubfoot and insisted that his mulatto housekeeper, Mrs. Lydia Hamilton Smith (rumored to be his mistress) be called Mrs. Smith. Before being sworn in as vice-president Johnson took three stiff gulps of whiskey and then launched into a totally inappropriate and incoherent speech. Secretary of State William Seward was almost stabbed to death the night Lincoln was shot. The Henry Kissinger of his time, he sucked up to Johnson, who, Carl Schurz wrote, “bites at all about him like a wounded and anger-crazed boar.” Stewart emphasizes the bribery and corruption in Washington during that time (members of the Whiskey Ring paid handsomely to ensure that revenue agents weren’t replaced). With widespread betting on the outcome, gamblers were handing out bribes. Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas, heralded by John F. Kennedy in “Profiles in Courage,” was a grafter beholden to a notorious Indian trader. The impeachment process, although flawed, allowed the country to avoid resorting to arms during the constitutional crisis.

Rabbits ate the spinach in Suzanna’s garden. We often saw bunnies at Maple Place, but they didn’t bother our herbs and sorrel. Deer wreaked havoc on our flowers and shrubbery, however. Suzanna sent a neat photo of her four daughters and a bluegrass music website. In the Seventies we went to bluegrass festivals with the Mike and Janet Bayer.

“The Onion” newspaper spoofed Al Gore splitting with wife Tipper, who had been a critic of heavy metal albums. There’s a photo of him in a Megadeth t-shirt reaping the benefits of a bachelor life style. Gore is quoted as saying, “For the first time in three decades I get to play the kind of music I like without someone nagging me about what a bad influence it is. And I get to crank it up as loud as I want. It sucked because we always had to listen to garbage like Carly Simon and Lyle Lovett all the time. That stuff is lame, man. If it doesn’t have big balls and bigger riffs, get it out of my stereo.”
Reporter Andy Grimm, who’s now with the Chicago Tribune, called in connection with an article he’s working on comparing corruption in Chicago and Northwest Indiana. I told him the absence of a healthy two-party system might have something to do with it as well as the need in the past for Democratic candidates to raise money running against the corporate-funded Republicans. I told him that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the stereotype of “corrupt Lake County politicians” since the two politicians I know the most about, Mayor Richard Hatcher and Sheriff Roy Dominguez were honest and civic-minded. In fact, the things the two Gary officials (Clerk Katie Hall and Township Trustee Dozier T. Allen) most recently convicted did were relatively small potatoes compared to more sophisticated gimmicks employed by others, such as funneling business to one’s old law firms. Our whole system of campaign funding invites corruption.