Gravers

“Dream as if you’ll live forever,
Live as if you’ll die today.”
James Dean

Tuesday: Had lunch with Paul Finkelman, at IU Northwest to deliver a lecture comparing the nefarious Arizona immigration law to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Chris Young having ordered me a roast beef sandwich box lunch, I joined other History Department members as well as Chuck Gallmeier and Jack Bloom from Sociology and Social Work professor Frank Caucci. Bloom got into a heated discussion with our guest over Middle East foreign policy. Afterwards, Finkelman wanted a tour of Gary, so with Chris Young driving I showed him Roosevelt School, Michael Jackson’s home (we saw floral bouquets and a monument dedicated a few months ago), the field where Froebel School once stood, the ruins of Pennsylvania train station, Memorial Auditorium, and City Methodist Church, and attractive new public housing sites located not far from abandoned buildings overgrown with weeds. Noticing the boarded up storefronts in the once thriving Midtown area, Finkelman said Gary’s devastation reminded him of East St. Louis, Illinois. Passing by the old jazz district, I recalled a student who played drums in a band inviting me to a club near Seventeenth and Broadway. One Saturday night in 1971 Toni and I took her sister Sue and husband Charley, a Philadelphia cop to it. We were frisked at the door and the only white people in the place, but everyone was friendly. Around eleven the bandleader introduced the Duke and the Duchess, adding that he meant no offense to “our blue-eyed soul brothers and sister (meaning us).” The couple stripped down to skimpy loin cloths and did some dirty dancing that would have put Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey to shame. For years Sue and Charley teased us about the Duke and the Duchess.

Paul Finkelman needed a space to prepare notes for his talk, so I took him to the Archives. Sheriff Roy Dominguez, there to be interviewed about his honoring of women police officers, gave him a miniature badge. I gave him my Gary book as well as Earl Jones’s “Central District Tour” booklet. Sheriff Dominguez is traveling to his hometown in south Texas and hopes to interview relatives, including the uncle who brought Roy’s family to Northwest Indiana in a truck. His account of the trip might make a good epilogue or else add to the early chapters.

At four I caught Chuck Gallmeier’s Glen Park Conversation talk about “Gravers” who gather at the sites of such iconic figures as James Dean, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Natalie Wood (who drowned in 1981), and Michael Jackson. On the anniversary of Rudolph Valentino’s death in 1926 at age 31 mourners still show his silent film “Son of the Sheik” (which has a controversial scene where he ravishes a vamp) on the side of his crypt. In the small town of Fairmount, Indiana, Dean lived with his aunt and uncle after his mother died of cancer when he was nine. “Deaners” tend to be uncomfortable talking about his bisexuality, Gallmeier related. He talked of examining poems, letters, drawings, and other items left at his gravesite although he does not open envelopes marked CONFIDENTIAL or FOR JAMES DEAN’S EYES ONLY. Since the family throws away stuff every couple weeks, Chuck said he doesn’t consider himself to be a grave robber. This weekend the James Dean Festival in Fairmount will feature a car show, lookalike contest, memorial service, dance contest, and viewings of his three films, “Rebel Without a Cause,” “East of Eden,” and “Giant.”

Hosting the Glen Park Conversation, Garrett Cope was his usual charming self, asking Ron Cohen and me what we were working on and introducing Chancellor William Lowe and a former student who picketed to get the university to honor Martin Luther King Day after it became a national holiday. He was with a group outside the library when it began pouring. Everyone else went inside, but he remained with his placard. Several people tried to get him to go inside, including Chancellor Peggy Elliott, who placed a call to Bloomington and then promised the young men that instead of holding classes a year from then, IU Northwest would honor King’s legacy. Within a year all eight IU campuses followed IUN’s lead, thanks to that young man’s grit.

Chuck’s excellent presentation ended just in time for me to catch Chris Young’s introduction of Paul Finkelman, who traced the history of immigration law. He contrasted what Arizona wants to do with state personal liberty laws passed during the 1850s to protect northern blacks against being kidnapped. He argued persuasively that an open immigration policy would allow the government to track newcomers and ridiculed Arizona Senator John McCain for flip-flopping on the issue in order to fend off a rightwing primary challenge. Both his grandparents were technically illegal aliens, Finkelman said, because one entered through Canada fearing his poor eyesight would cause officials at Ellis Island to reject him and the other lied about his age and entered therefore under false pretenses. He was passionate in claiming that the Taliban want to expunge our freedoms, which threaten their sexist, anti-intellectual, fanatic way of life. During Q and A an old Trotskyite professor made a long rambling anti-Bush diatribe. Finkelman finally interrupted to say that he could respond in one word, yes, then after a pause added, “Or maybe, better yet, Duh!” He went on to say that just because George W. Bush was an idiot didn’t mean that he was always wrong and even a clock that had stopped recorded the correct time two times a day. He was great. Ron Cohen knew him and had roomed with him at a history conference. Heather Hollister and the History Club provided refreshments for the surprisingly large crowd.

Chris Young emailed: “Thanks for the great tour of Gary. I really enjoyed it. I've been meaning to ask you for one since I arrived in NW Indiana. I loved the way you talked about Gary.”

Indiana Magazine of History had a very positive review of my “Retirement Journal,” calling it a fitting culmination to my social history of the Calumet Region series. In the same issue appeared a glowing review of Steve and Gary Wilk’s book “Steel Giants,” which contains historic photos of Inland and U.S. Steel. Put in my review requests for Magill’s Literary Annual, including a biography of Justice William J. Brennan and one called “Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America. My top choice was “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quannah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Tribe in American History.” Don’t know much about any of the three subjects.

Fell asleep shortly after David Hasselhoff was voted off “Dancing with the Stars.” A guy from the reality “Jersey Shore” who calls himself The Situation barely survived.

Wednesday: We turned over the keys to our old house to Ranger Anthony Sutphen, who praised Toni for what a splendid job she did readying the house for the government to take it over. A caring person, he is going to help an elderly lady two blocks down move a 1,300-pound rock that originally came from her childhood farm. Sent to Iraq with his Air Force National Guard unit during the Gulf War, Sutphen believes his health problems stem from exposure to depleted uranium while on combat missions. Last stuff to go were our mailbox and toaster oven (to Goodwill) and concrete blocks from our screened-in porch (to Angie’s).

Got Clark to bowl for me since I’m still feeling the effects of my shoulder injury. I stayed to watch and have a couple Leinies on draft. A few years ago while serving as consultants to an industrial heritage museum, Steve McShane and I toured the Leinenkugal Beer facilities in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Clark bowled a 529, and the Engineers won five of seven points, losing the third game when lefty Al Burns rolled a 269. Delia’s Uncle George was also on the DL, having broken three vertebrae (among other things) during a 12-foot fall from a ladder onto concrete. He's fortunate to be alive.