Riding in the Car Car

“Click clack, open the door, girls

Click clack, open the door boys

Front door, back door, Clickety clack.

Take you riding in my car.”

    “Riding in My Car,” Woody Guthrie

Ron Cohen’s chapter on the folk music scene in 1953-1954 mentions an album Odetta recorded with banjo player Larry Mohr from performances at the Tin Angel in San Francisco.  Mohr was a Jewish kid from Detroit who learned to play the instrument from studying Pete Seeger’s banjo instruction booklet.  Most of the selections were African-American standards, such as “Rock Island Line” and “I’ve Been Buked and I’ve been Scorned,” but they also did Woodie Guthrie”s nonpolitical “Car Car” song.  What a wild ride it would have been to hang with the Wood-man back in the day – a Bob Dylan wet dream, for sure.  Three years ago Audi released a Dutch commercial featuring “Riding in My Car” to promote their SUVs.

I was supposed to pick up Cheryl Hagelberg on the way to the Star Plaza, where Dick would be performing in the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus for their holiday show, but we cancelled at the last minute due to Toni’s bad cough.  We both got colds nine days ago; fortunately mine has about run its course.

Katie Turk sent me a PDF of a paper that will be published in the Law and History Review entitled “Militancy is in Our Openness: Gay Employment Rights Activism in California and the Question of Sexual Orientation in Sex Equality Law.”  It mainly has to do with protests in San Francisco during the 1970s but takes the story up to the present.  Turk writes: “The Supreme Court has interpreted Title VII to protect masculine women, but the rights of effeminate men remain unclear.  Many gay employees experience explicit or implicit pressure to closet or downplay their sexual identities.  A 2008 survey revealed that while ninety percent of sexual minorities were out to friends and family, only twenty-five percent were out to all of their coworkers.”  I passed the article on to Anne Balay.  I also discovered that Katie wrote the cover story for the September 2010 issue of the Journal of American History, entitled “Out of the Revolution, into the Mainstream: Employment Activism in the NOW Sears Campaign and the growing Pains of Liberal Feminism.”

Sculptor Neil Goodman, a big fan of Steel Shavings over the years, congratulated me on my Hoosier Historian Award, writing: “You have stayed true to your values and ideals throughout your career.  This is a wonderful recognition for a social historian that has created a unique and valuable body of work.”  Nice.  Kay Fetters sent a photo of Indiana Historical Society Trustee Bill Bartelt presenting me with the Riker award.  Like with Roy Dominguez and Edward Escabar on the jackets of “Valor” and “Forging a Community,” I always seem to be paired with tall guys in these photos.

Joseph Gomeztagle, whom I met at the History Book Club, sent an article Donna George wrote about him that includes a passport photo of him at age nine with his mother and siblings when they first left Mexico City in 1959 for America.  A Vietnam War vet, he became a naturalized citizen in 1977 and is presently a judge for the national “We the People” competition.  He told Donna George that mediocrity is the result of apathy, cynicism, and complicity and that civic education is necessary to combat it.  In 2002 Gomeztagle participated in a walk from Gary to Indianapolis to protest the state’s property tax laws.  Coincidentally some high school “We the People” participants were visiting the campus today.

I had lunch with two faculty up for tenure and promotion.  One is sailing through the process, while two Neanderthals have created obstacles for the other.  Ironically, they are carping about her service and teaching even though she has received awards in both categories.  It’s really a case of academic freedom.

I went to order a book through interlibrary loan and discovered I couldn’t simply fill out the old form but instead had to go on line and first sign up for the service.  After grumbling and grousing to various librarians, Scott Hudnall patiently walked me through the steps.  I also got a young man from IT Support Center to fix the audio on my computer, which hasn’t worked properly since they replaced the hard drive.  While he was testing it, he put on a clip from the DVD “Roy Orbison and Friend: A Black and White Night.”  Life is good.

I went to see “Playing for Keeps,” about a former soccer star trying to reconnect with his ex-wife and son.  The most interesting about it were the three soccer moms, played by actresses Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Judy Greer, who tried to seduce him.  In two of the three cases they succeeded, but in the end he wins back wife Stacie (Jessica Biel).  Before and after the show I tried to glimpse scenes in “Life of Pi” where the Indian boy is at sea with a tiger but first I was too late and then too early.