“The purpose of
art is, in many cases, to make you feel uncomfortable.” Michael Moore
Before embarking on a trip to California, Ron Cohen gave Steve McShane
reading material for me, including Michael Moore’s “Here Comes Trouble: Stories
from My Life.” Moore recalled bullies
bothering a gay guy in his Flint, Michigan, neighborhood who later committed
suicide. During the 1967 Detroit riot
some folks feared black people would drive 60 miles and terrorize Flint. Going to a Tigers game, the Moore family got
stranded in a black section of town after their car over-heated. They locked the doors when a black guy
approached, but he just wanted to help, and indeed did. In 1966 Flint’s city commissioners selected a
black mayor, Floyd J. McCree, but technically Richard Hatcher of Gary and Carl
Stokes of Cleveland were America’s first black elected mayors.
In a Sports Illustrated column
41 year-old Gary native Latroy Hawkins suggested ways to involve more African
American kids in “America’s Pastime.” Starting
his twentieth season, the relief pitcher wrote, “I’m the only black guy on the [Colorado] Rockies this year.” In 1991 when the Twins drafted him in the
seventh round, Hawkins received $27,500, with which he purchased a 1984 Mustang.
In the 1971 Little League World Series Gary slugger Lloyd McClendon,
currently manager of the Seattle Mariners, hit five homeruns in his only
official at bats; in every other plate appearance he drew intentional
walks. McClendon also pitched in the
championship game, striking out 12 in eight innings before forced to give way
to a kid who gave up nine runs in the ninth. Beforehand Taiwan’s manager claimed he
wouldn’t walk McClendon because he’d lose face back home but changed his mind
after “Legendary Lloyd” hit a three-run home run in the first inning. Forty-two
years later McClendon recalled: “We got
[to Williamsport], and I can remember this vividly – we got new uniforms, new
gloves, new spikes. We were in hog
heaven. We’d never had new equipment
before. ‘New’ was not in the
vocabulary. My glove was a
hand-me-down. I was the youngest of ten
boys, and that glove saw lots of action before it got to me.”
At Libby Frank’s suggestion Heather Shafter is reading Steve Nelson’s
“The Volunteers,” about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil
War. Persecuted during the Red Scare for
his radical activities, Nelson quit the CP (like Gary political prisoner
Kathyrn Hyndman) after Nikita Khrushchev’s revelations about Joseph Stalin’s
atrocities. In 1963 at age 60 Nelson
became National Commander of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. I emailed Heather: “Steve Nelson
led a very interesting life, and I'm sure ‘The Volunteers’ is quite
enlightening. Oral historian Studs Terkel, one of my heroes, has
interviewed quite a few Lincoln
Brigade volunteers. During the
Red Scare our government had a phrase for them – ‘Premature Anti-Fascists.’
PAFs for short. Can you imagine?”
My review of Robert M. Lombardo’s “Organized Crime in Chicago,”
appearing in Indiana Magazine of History,
begins: “One
would be hard-pressed to come across a volume containing more colorful
nicknames than this monograph about Windy City mob figures, of which Paul ‘The
Waiter’ Ricca, Frank ‘The Enforcer’ Nitti, Tony ‘Big Tuna’ Accardo, Sam ‘Momo’
Giancana, Fiore ‘Fifi’ Buccieri, Murray ‘The Camel’ Humphreys, Jake ‘Greasy
Thumb’ Guzik, and William ‘Willie Potatoes’ Daddano are but a few.” After we moved to Gary in 1070, I loved John
“Bulldog” Drummond’s CBS reports about Chicago’s “Outfit.” Drummond went into semi-retirement in 1995
but covered mob trials as recently as last year. At a 2009 book-signing for “It Ain’t Pretty,
but It’s Real” Drummond told Daily Herald
reporter Christy Gutowski that he never feared for his life, saying: “It would have been counterproductive to
kill or assault a news reporter because it would have put too much heat on the
mob. We sort of had diplomatic
immunity.”
Becca Lane, middle
Home alone while James was at a bowling tournament in Fort Wayne and Becca
in a dance competition in Schaumburg, Illinois, I caught the latest installment
of “The Americans” OnDemand and watched Florida, my NCAA pick, dispatch Dayton,
now called the Flyers; they were the Friars when niece Charlene went there.
Saturday’s dance at Gardner Center, featuring the Crawpuppies, attracted
a large, appreciative crowd. Base
guitarist Angelo Cicco teaches history at Purdue Cal and is an academic adviser
in the Nursing school. Like me, he
considers himself a social and cultural historian, and for a course designed
for Nursing students emphasized past medical developments. Anne Balay took time off from grading and
danced with me to several Beatles songs and “What I Like About You.” Back when Crawpuppies frontman Chad Clifford
was my student, his band Digital Hair opened for the Romantics at Valpo U. Their soundman turned up the volume for
Digital Hair’s final number, his way of complimenting them. Other notable dancers were Joyce and Sue from
Lake Street Gallery, Karren and Pat Lee, and, in a league of her own, Tanice
Foltz.
Anne’s realtor Gene Ayers stopped by our table to ask how she’s doing in
view of her unjustly being denied tenure, and George McGuan tried to teach her
the Hustle. George Rogge said he’ll wear
a “Big Suit” like David Byrne is famous for at an upcoming Gardner Center event
on the Talking Heads. I mentioned to John
Attinasi that IUN’s UTEP program, which he helped start, might be in
jeopardy. Michael Chirich recalled
hiring Dave’s band Voodoo Chili to play at Lake Street Fest; afterwards members
declined an invitation to unwind at a black-owned Gentlemen’s Club. Jim Spicer was trying to follow the
Wisconsin-Arizona “Elite Eight” contest; the Badgers had a one-point lead with
2.3 seconds to go when the game was delayed for a good five minutes while,
unbeknownst to Steve, referees were deciding whose ball it was. When Arizona failed to get off a desperation
shot, Jim shouted “Badgers win!” and revealed
that he was wearing a Wisconsin t-shirt.
Two years ago feminists got a 1922 statue entitled Triumph of Civic
Virtue removed from Queens Borough Hall because it showed a male figure
towering over two cowering female forms representing vice and corruption. According to Chicago Tribune correspondent Barbara Goldberg, groups want an 1892
statue of medical pioneer James Marion Sims removed from Central Park because
the “father of modern gynecology” experimented on female slaves. A likeness of
Penn State’s football coach Joe Paterno got removed during the Jerry Sandusky
scandal, but efforts to remove one of racist governor “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman
from South Carolina Statehouse grounds have stalled. In 2006 shameless California legislators
voted to replace the statue of abolitionist minister Thomas Starr King
representing the state in the U.S. Capitol with one of Ronald Reagan. King’s
statue (below) ended up in the Civil War Memorial grove of Sacramento’s Capitol Park.
At Kish Funeral Home in Munster, paying my respects to Lloyd Rowe’s wife
Jan and his family, I ran into professors Margaret Skurka and Jean Poulard and
many IUN retirees, including Mark Reshkin, Peter Kesheimer, Paul Blohm, Sid
Feldman, and Jim Boland. The latter, once
a top-notch baseball prospect, recalled the faculty-student softball games that
Hal Rhea organized. Son Bruce Rowe works
for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and lives minutes away from us in
Chesterton. I told Lloyd’s relatives
from Maine that he was the best administrator IUN ever had (and I wasn’t
exaggerating).
I arrived at IUN’s Grant Street Theater in time for “The Miser,” a
comedy based on the seventeenth-century Moliere play and was lucky there were a
couple empty seats. In the lobby was
director Mark Baer holding his young kid.
In the program he thanked Jonathyne Briggs for musical suggestions. Mario Dongu, playing Harpagon (the Miser),
was unbelievably versatile and riveting in terms of his emotional range. The young Theater majors were quite good, and
a woman I’d guess was around 60, Kloe Brady, almost stole the show as Mistress
Jacques. The dialogue in this adoption
by Timothy Moody consisted entirely of rhyming couplets. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the
show. My dear departed friend Garrett
Cope, who was colorblind when casting plays, would have been delighted to see
an interracial duo playing young lovers.
I was home in time for Kentucky’s dramatic win over Michigan, as Aaron
Harrison, one of the Wildcats’ five freshmen starters, drained a 24-foot shot
with 2.6 seconds left.
Perusing the footnotes to James Madison’s excellent forthcoming textbook
“Hoosiers: A new History of Indiana,” I discovered references not only to my
Gary books but citations for Indiana
Magazine of History articles by Arturo Rosales and Daniel T. Simon
(“Mexican Immigrant Experience in the Urban Midwest: East Chicago, Indiana,
1919-1945”) and Eva Mendieta (“Celebrating Mexican Culture and Lending a Hand:
Indiana Harbors’s Sociedad Mutualista
Benito Juarez, 1924-1957”).
Monday morning IUN’s library held a fire drill, but because the
temperature was in the 50s (finally) nobody seemed to mind. I got home in time to watch the Cubs lose
their opening day game with Pittsburgh. There was a close pickoff play at first that
the Pirate manager appealed and got overturned.
I hadn’t been aware that new rules permitted challenges. In an interleague contest the Phillies
defeated the Rangers 14-10. Les
Grobstein on The Score noted the resemblance to a football score.
