What's a Simple Man To Do?

“I know I said I’d never cross the border
I know I promised to return to you
But I lost my job in the maquiladora
What’s a simple man to do?”
Steve Earle

Put on Steve Earle’s Jerusalem CD, the one containing “John Walker’s Blues,” and really dug song number six, also about someone in jail, an immigrant to got arrested in San Diego doing something to earn needed money. Looked up maquiladora and first got definitions for make-up artist but then discovered that it is a factory in Mexico where workers make products for the American market. Also put on a Jayhawks CD. The Minneapolis band is together again and will be performing their 1992 album “Hollywood Town Hall” in its entirety at Chicago’s Vic Theater (where I saw Graham Parker years ago).

Jonathyne Briggs was at the lunch table with Anne Balay and Chuck Gallmeier, also a big Steve Earle fan. Jonathyne’s delivering a paper in London during semester break and received a Summer Faculty Fellowship. He hopes to take his daughter Ragen to Paris next summer when he goes there to do research on the Seventies French punk music scene. He usually rents a flat from someone who is usually elsewhere. I’ll look into staying there, too, if I take my granddaughters to Prague and Paris like I’ve talked about. He wants his Historiography students to use the Archives next semester. I suggested an assignment using the Post-Tribunes, and maybe he can have them keep journals and make use of journals in the Archives, such as the diaries of Stanley Stanish and Katherine Hyndman.

Spoke to Steve McShane’s class about Gary’s First Hundred Years and had them read from Age of Anxiety like when I appeared before the Ogden Dunes Historical Society. Steve read this charming excerpt from Sthe Stanish’s diary: “My army buddy Stanley Sprecher visited with his wife, who was really into sterilizing all their glasses and dishes.” It was an age when diseases such as polio and scarlet fever made some people paranoid. And later: “We bought a movie camera and projector and took pictures at Grandpa and Grandma Rybicki’s golden anniversary celebration in Hessville. I got one of Ronnie’s temper tantrums on film.” When I was a kid, my dad took 16 milimeter silent movies that lasted about four minutes.

Reading Katherine Hyndman’s reaction upon hearing of Willa Mae’s death almost left me in tears. The prostitute and dope addict had befriended Katherine when she was in a Crown Point jail cellblock after passing out antiwar literature during the Korean War. Katherine wrote: “Willa Mae’s family had been evicted for nonpayment of rent. They had no place to go. Their father disappeared, and her mother and two younger children found relatives to live with until they got relief. It was then that she turned to prostitution. Taking dope made it easier for her to live the life thrust upon her. Willa Mae was one of the nicest persons I met in jail. She was intelligent, had human sympathy for people, was generous and hardworking, and was class-conscious in the way she spoke and rich and poor. We both wept when she left for Indianapolis. Dear Willa Mae, I wish you could somehow know that I will never forget you. Rest in peace, dear child, you knew so little of it in life.”

Student questions are a highlight of my class visits. Asked my favorite Gary research topic, I mentioned the 1967 election where Richard Hatcher triumphed over the corrupt Democratic machine. In fact, I treasure the many hours I spent interviewing the former mayor. Doing oral histories is a little like participating in a scavenger hunt. The most fun is when you discover something unexpected. Paulino Monterrubio patiently answered my inquiries about times he’d been discriminated against what he really wanted to talk about were his accomplishments. He showed me prized possessions – citizenship papers, a union card, a World War II warden’s hardhat. He made me realize that the way to write about immigrants is not as passive victims but as active agents developing strategies to survive and adapt to new surroundings.

I talked to the students about interviewing the Reverend L.K. Jackson – “The Old Prophet,” as he called himself. I knew that he had participated in efforts to desegregate Gary’s Marquette Park and had invited Paul Robeson to sing in his church after the school board refused to allow him to perform at Roosevelt School. That was only the tip of the iceberg so far as his civil rights activities were concerned. During the 1940s he threatened to organize a bus boycott if the transit company didn’t hire black drivers. Similar threats against downtown department stores resulted in black clerks being hired. He persuaded the Post-Trib to hire a black reporter and the Gary National Bank to employ black tellers. I interviewed him at his home and recall that he had an entire closet full of hats. He was convinced the ob burned down his church – St. paul Baptist – because he was an outspoken critic of the vice and gambling establishments that the city government tolerated. What a character.

Beloved Cubs broadcaster Ron Santo died at age 70 of complications from bladder cancer. A former player on the 1969 team that blew a mid-August nine and a half lead over the “Miracle Mets,” he struggled with the effects of juvenile diabetes and had both his legs amputated but still continued as the team’s color commentator on WGN. He never had anything good to say about New York, and there’s a famous photo of a black cat at Shea Stadium walking past him while he is in the batting circle during a crucial September game. He bled Cubbie Blue, as the saying went, and was famous for yelling when Cubs players did something right and groaning when things went bad. My favorite was when leftfielder Brant Brown dropped a ball against Milwaukee in 1998, turning a 5-3 lead into a sudden loss. Ronnie kept repeating “Oh, Noooooooo!!!!” as if his heart was breaking. Tied with the Mets with three games to go in the Wild Card race, the Cubs did manage to make the playoffs, so Brown does not have the notoriety of Steve Bartman, the fan who prevented Moises Alou from catching a foul ball in game six of the 2003 playoffs against Florida. Ten years later when Carlos Zambrano no-hit the Astros in a game played in Milwaukee because of Hurricane Ike, Ron was beside himself, shouting “Yesssssss!!!!!” and using some of his favorite expressions, like “Unbelievable” and “Oh, man.” On the SCORE Cubs President Tom Ricketts said that “Ronnie will forever be the heart and soul of Cubs fans.”

With encouragement from elementary school girlfriend Judy Jenkins (hope she doesn’t have second thoughts) worked on the next chapter for the tiara mystery, having to do with planning a U.D. Class of 1960 rendezvous at Wendy’s plantation. Here’s my first paragraph, which I sent to LeeLee to see if it’s too over the top: “Judy promised Jimmy that she’d think about going to Wendy’s bash. At the one reunion she attended 20 years before, she had felt out of place – like she didn’t remember anybody - but since then had been in touch with several old friends, including LeeLee and Wendy, and from their descriptions of the fiftieth reunion regretted not having gone. Jimmy remained close friends with her brother and emailed or called her from time to time. Their parents - Midge, Vic, Gussie, and Ted - had been best friends, and the families had vacationed together in the Poconos several summers in the early 1950s. Midge and Gussie would thoroughly scour the cabin when they arrived and then again the day before they left. The bugs were thick in August at the Poconos, and bats consumed thousands each day or it would have been unbearable. One evening Jimmy and Judy were out in a rowboat on Lake Mineola at dusk when a bat seemed headed right for them. Judy ducked, and her head went into Jimmy’s lap. He leaned over and hugged her with his body against her back for a few seconds to protect her.
“Wow,” he said.
“How exciting,” she replied.
“Want to go in?”
“No, that was fun.”
Bats bombarded the boat a dozen more times before Judy’s dad called from the shore for them to come in for the night.
One rainy day they were playing cards and both had on shorts. Judy’s legs were a deep tan, and Jimmy found it hard not to stare. The summer Judy turned 13 she visited relatives and came back bragging that she knew how to French kiss. She offered an explanation but not, to Jimmy’s regret, a demonstration. They never dated in high school – she had plenty of admirers, and Jimmy was too timid to ask her out. But they loved to fast-dance together at sock hops after basketball games to anything by Chuck Berry or Fats Domino’s “My Blue Heaven.” One New Year’s Eve during a party at Ricky’s house, at the stroke of midnight Judy gave LeeLee’s brother a long kiss and then turned and looked Jimmy in the eye. He hugged her, pecked her cheek, and hated himself afterwards for being such a wuss.”

An Asian man – probably Chinese – is often on campus with a toddler. They are so cute, and the man, most likely the grandparent, lets the kid walk wherever he wants. At noon he followed me into Tamarack Hall. He loves the rocks that the geology department put down near Marram Hall. I said something to the gentleman but he didn’t appear to speak English. His son or daughter probably is a medical student; many live in nearby apartments. After lunch the man was by himself, having given the child to one of the parents in all likelihood. SPEA professor George Assibey-Mensah reminded me about the Holiday Party or I’d have missed it. Chris Young talked about visiting his dad in Sarasota over the holidays – just him and his brothers. Chris has three kids and is a great dad but probably can use the break from parenting.

Was virtually alone in the Portage theater watching Cher and Christina Aguilera in “Burlesque,” a glitzy but less than exciting flick that didn’t even get an R rating. Stanley Tucci was very good as Cher’s gay buddy, but I have never been a big fan of Aguilera’s caterwauling, or Cher either, who looks like an aging transvestite.

Saw “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Memorial Opera House in Valpo, built in 1893 by a chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (there’s a ancient framed picture in the lobby of local members) to honor Civil War vets and renovated during the 1990s. Grandkids James and Rebecca played the main characters kids and had a few lines and sang some of the songs. At the last minute the director asked Angie to fill in for someone whose main job had been to move scenery on stage in full view of the audience. In addition to participating in many, many set changes, Angie and two others also did a dance number with mops. They were all great.

Fred McColly stopped in to my office for a chat and later wrote this comment on the above blog: “I found my Carpatho-Russian granny's citizenship papers at my mom's not that long ago. She arrived in 1912 and became a citizen in 1943: three decades of wavering. Her sister had returned to Europe a few years after their arrival leaving her virtually without family until my mom and her siblings came along. Lonely, always with her husband's family, she never quite fit in and always talked about "going home". The folks from "the old country" that I knew all seemed a bit unsettled and insecure. Not their kids though. The first generation became American to the extent that they abandoned their parents’ culture and traditions. Sad. I only know because granny lived with us until I was a teenager and I caught bits and pieces of the culture by chance (I must have been the only fourth grader at George Earle elementary school that got a small glass of beer with a bologna sandwich at lunchtime..."peeva...good for you, drink!") and the only thing left that my kids know about is the traditional pyrohy (pierogi) on good Friday and Christmas eve. She adapted as far as she could...any success had to wait for her children's generation.” Fred probably has 200 credit hours by now but still needs a Math course to graduate. I told him (half joking) that I’d go to his graduation in full regalia and try to be on stage to hand him his diploma personally.