Holly Happy Days

“Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
If only in my dreams.”
Bing Crosby

The folk duo Indigo Girls (Amy Ray and Emily Saliers) put out a holiday album entitled “Holly Happy Days” (a take-off maybe of the phrase “Happy Holidays”). One track is called “It Really Is a Wonderful Life” and the wistful (because so many soldiers were overseas) 1943 Bing Crosby hit “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” In the Editors Note to “Age of Anxiety” I mention that Terry Jenkins and I sang a duet for a Fort Washington Elementary School Christmas pageant, and the original program included “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Because of sensitivities towards families with members fighting in Korea, the director made an eleventh-hour change to “Frosty the Snowman.” The Indigo Girls are openly lesbian although not a couple. In “Rock and Roll Heaven’s Gate” that Amy wrote are these lyrics: “No one wants to hear the truth coming from three political queers plucking the punk rock groove.” The song appears on a commemorative album from the 2007 True Colors Tour put together by Cyndi Lauper for the benefit of groups that support the GLBT community. Pink has also recorded it.

Missy Brush and James are now Facebook friends. On News Feed Missy wrote: “Some ignorant lady in my class just really pissed me off. She said gay people have a higher chance of getting AIDS than "normal people." Wtf is that shit about?” I replied, “The lady shouldn’t have used the word “normal,” but active gay males do need to be aware of AIDS risks and take precautions.”

Daughter-in-law Delia left a Facebook message that her dad (Gun) had a cardiac defibrillator inserted and afterwards was joking with the nurses. When Sonny got one, they purposely stopped his heart to test if it worked. Suzanna mentioned that she was having heart problems, too. I’m a little worried that she hasn’t answered my last email.

Vietnam vet Jay Keck sent my “Jingle Bells, Mortar Shells” blog to all his comrades. In an email titled “Wish You Were Here” LeeLee Devenney mentioned that she enjoyed our card and family photo and that she and Susan McGrath were having lunch today at Suzi Hummel Slacks’ house and might take along the “Missing Tiara” story. I think they have already seen it. I replied: “As I write this, you are probably on your way to Suzi’s. Indeed I wish I were with you. Are the husbands invited? I had a nice conversation with Susan Mcgrath the other evening. We have a lot in common politically, and her daughter is a historian. Glad you liked the Christmas card photo. Some years I do a newsletter, and 2010 was certainly an eventful year – with our move to a condo and the reunion – but we wanted to get the cards out early since some people didn’t have our new address. Cheers, Jimmy”

Nephew Joe Robinson wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas and called me his wing-man. I got him a subscription to Rolling Stone. I asked who he’d want with us if we went to French Lick next year. His dad and Tom Dietz, he replied. He’ll think about whether to include any women or children.

In “Boardwalk Empire” Stephen DeRosa plays vaudevillian Eddie Cantor, a song-and-dance man who once played Gary’s Palace Theater. His famous songs include “Makin’ Whoopee,” “If You Knew Susie,” and “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cidar.” I recall him hosting the Colgate Comedy Hour during the 1950s. It was on Sundays at the same time as Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town.” My favorite hosts were Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. When I was a kid, Jerry Lewis could literally have me rolling in the aisle.

I talked at length on the phone with Mayor Hatcher about the public radio interview and daughter Ragen running for mayor. When I told him that the quote Mike Puente used went counter to the main drift of the interview, he replied that he knew more than anyone how the press can manipulate statements to fit their own purposes. He asked me to provide Ragen with reading matter to familiarize her with Gary’s history and in particular his 20-year administration. I plan to send her “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

I’d love to know more about James W. Lester, who was secretary of the Lake County Old Settlers and Historical Society. He put together “Papers by Various Hand” and like me was proud to be an oral historian. In “Pioneer Stories of the Calumet,” published in the Indiana Magazine of History he wrote of being interested in the home life of Northwest Indiana pioneers. He interviewed 90 year-old Eleanor Phillips in 1922. In 1836 her family built a log cabin between present Merrillville and Crown Point. She recalled: “There were a few scattered settlers. We used to get together and have husking bees. The old settlers would cut their corn and set it up, then call on their neighbors to help husk it. The would serve cider and a cup of tea, and sometimes Johnnie-cake pancakes.” Johnnycake is cornmeal flatbread, a Native American food and early American staple. Southerners call it hoecake. Sometimes Phil and I call our pancakes hoecakes, saying, “Nobody don’t like hoecakes.” It’s one of our inside jokes.

Lester interviewed Henrietta Gibson whose mother-in-law Anna kept a “stage house” (Gibson Tavern, Gary’s first permanent building, located near the future site of Froebel School). Henrietta’s husband was Tolleston station agent for the Pennsylvania and Michigan Central railroads. One winter day in 1865 she had cooked potatoes for dinner and put the parings in a pail that she set on a bench behind the house. “Pretty soon,” she recalled, “we heard some bumping and knocking against the side of the house and I went outside to see what the matter was. A deer had been attracted to the salt in the potatoes and put his head in the bucket to get at them. His horns had got fast against the bale and he couldn’t get out. He shook his head, then started to run with the pail still sticking. He jumped the high board fence and the pail came off. He ran for the woods, but my husband started after him with a gun and soon brought the deer back.”

Alfred Anderson moved to Miller in 1855 at age nine, traveling with his family on a wagon pulled by oxen. Six years later he spotted a black bear while picking wild grapes for wine. As Anderson recalled, he and Andrew Wall “were in the hills about a mile and a half west of Miller and had climbed a big jack pine. We heard a noise down in the hollow and then we saw him coming right towards the tree we were in. We got down in a hurry and hiked for the beach. I don’t know how far he followed us.” A more common sight were wolf packs, potentially dangerous but scared off by gunshot.

Feasted on fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, Cole slaw, grapes, carrots,and scallions at the Arts and Sciences Holiday lunch. Dean Mark Hoyert’s witty greeting mentioned programs offered at other colleges that we might think about adapting, such a Celebrity Studies (Madonna, Oprah, David Beckham), Parapsychology, Surfing, and the Philosophy of Star Trek. Wearing a more subdued tie than his normal Christmas one (perhaps son Matt still has it), he claimed that people had warned him not to sing like in past years. Some people clapped, but most of us were disappointed. I sat next to Vice Chancellor David Malik, who is about to step down as director of FACET. Tanice Foltz reported that her cookie exchange party went well despite Sunday’s blizzard. Neil Goodman has to move out of the Fine Arts Department’s old digs in condemned Tamarack Hall before going on sabbatical. Only one person made a crack about my being retired. Not only had I been invited, there were other “friends of Arts and Sciences” in attendance. No other historians attended despite my recommendation that they attend more university social functions.

Sports Illustrated put “The Fighter” co-stars Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale on the cover, and the movie lived up to the rave review. Set in Lowell, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the industrial revolution in America, by the 1980s the city had fallen on hard times. Wahlberg plays “Irish” Mickey Ward and Bale gives an Oscar-worthy performance as his crackhead older brother. Based on a true story, it explores the tension within Mickey’s dysfunctional family, which includes seven sisters with such nicknames as “Pork,” “Tar,” Red Dog,” and “Beaver.” They treat Mickey’s girlfriend (played by lovely Amy Adams) as an interloper and a skank, leading to a great catfight scene (pardon the chauvinism).

By email vote the condo board approved work to begin on the gutter above the porch. I took the estimate to the treasurer, who had an old-fashioned sled on her porch with the inscription “Rosebud.” I recognized that “Rosebud” was the last word uttered by main character in “Citizen Kane” but didn’t know the meaning – that it had been what he called his boyhood sled. Director Orson Welles modeled the main character somewhat after newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. According to Gore Vidal, Hearst called his mistress Marion Davies “Rosebud” in a ribald reference to her clitoris. I doubt the condo treasurer had that meaning in mind. Like in the movie it probably symbolized the carefree days of our youth.