“We find that after years of struggle that
we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” John Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley:
In Search of America” (1962)
Steinbeck and Charley
I first read
“Travels with Charley” while in college and again when teaching a course of the
1960s. Steinbeck embarked on a 10,000-mile
journey that took him from Long Island to the Pacific Northwest, down through
California, and –what I remember most -
to New Orleans, where he witnessed racist protests by white mothers at a
newly integrated school. Toni and I took
a memorable cross-country trip in January 1965 from Philadelphia to Los Angeles
(and from there to start married life in Honolulu). Driving through the Deep South in a VW Beetle
with Pennsylvania license plates not long after Freedom Summer, we could sense
how Southern whites regarded us with suspicion.
Danna Conley wrote
me this nice note:
What a
pleasant surprise when I received your latest volume of Steel Shavings in the mail.
Pat would be pleased with your thoughtful tribute to him. He enjoyed auditing your classes and being
able to share memories and experiences from having lived during periods of
history discussed in your history classes. Recently my grandmother mentioned
seeing someone dressed as a flower child who looked as if she had come from the
1960s. She commented that she had
learned about the Hippie Era in history class.
Time flies. It’s hard to believe
we’ve grown old enough to be included in history books.
Taylor Pytel wrote
about his parents, John and Kelly (above), who met in 1992 at a singles dance in
Schererville. Four years later, John was
working for Home Depot, whose corporate headquarters were in Atlanta, Georgia,
the site of the 1996 Olympics. John
recalled:
That year
Home Depot had Olympic Spirit awards for employees of the month. I got that
award once, which made me eligible a free, three-day round trip for two to the
1996 Olympics. Of all the names thrown in the hat, mine happened to be picked.
How lucky was that? I thought I had no
chance whatsoever and hadn’t even thought about it. They put Kelly and me up in
a hotel and we were able to see five events.
A bus took us there and back. We saw the swimming, girl’s gymnastics,
basketball, women’s beach volleyball (the first time it was an Olympic event), and equestrian
events. There was free breakfast every morning and
dinner and from 3 p.m. until midnight, plus an open bar, so it ended up being a
great trip. The evening after we flew home, the bombing at Centennial Olympic
Park occurred. Just 24 hours before, we were
in almost the exact spot where it exploded killing a woman and injuring over
100 others.
Connie Sekula tubing
Sekula family
Hayley Sekula’s parents,
Connie and Michael, got married in April of 1990, in a Catholic church in
Hammond. Both of them loved to travel and went to Cancun, Mexico for their
honeymoon. They spent many weekends in western Michigan, skiing and tubing.
They went with friends on a skiing trip to Colorado. Connie recalled: “It snowed the entire time, but we made the best of it. On our way back
home, we got stuck in an avalanche coming out of the mountains.” Both Connie and Michael loved watching
football. Michael had a friend, John Jurkovic, who was born in Germany of
Croatian descent, grew up in Calumet City, and played defensive tackle for the
Green Bay Packers. Jurkovic would give them tickets from time to time to see
him play in Wisconsin, where Connie was born, and elsewhere. Jurkovic played three years for the
Jacksonville Jaguars and retired at the end of the decade after a year in
Cleveland. He now hosts a Chicago sports talk radio show on AM 1000. Hayley
wrote:
Connie’s dream was to have two girls and that wish came true
for her during the 1990’s. Connie got her kids involved in soccer when they
were at the ages of three and six and was constantly carting them around from
practice to practice. She loved being able to watch them play the sports they
loved, whether that was soccer, basketball, gymnastics, or softball. She said, “Family life was all I ever dreamed of and
it became true for me even though I was a working mother.” She was an accountant for Columbia Paper in
Chicago.
Rebecca and Madison
Madison Carnagey
wrote about her mother, Rebecca Poore, a 1992 Lake Central graduate. That summer Rebecca and five friends went to
Mackinac, Michigan. They met people from all around the world and found work at
different hotels and shops on the island. They had so much fun, they went there
the following two summers. To her
surprise, Rebecca became pregnant on her little adventure down on the island. Although Rebecca did not plan on having a
baby at such a young age, she made the best of it and still was able to attend
college away from home. While Rebecca was in the hospital after Madison was
born on April 19, 1995, she watched coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing that
happened on that same exact day. Madison
wrote:
Rebecca
brought me with her to Indiana University in Bloomington. Her friends took care
of me when she went to classes, plus there was a co-op daycare used by students
and faculty. While at IU Rebecca she met her future husband, Craig
Carnagey. During her junior year at IU
she traveled with friends to Germany, Netherlands, Brussels, and Amsterdam
while I stayed with my Grandma. In
Amsterdam were cafés where patrons could buy marijuana. Menus showcased various weed selections and
rolling papers.
One of Madison’s
fist memories is a fourth birthday party at a park in Bloomington with all her friends
from Sunshine Day Care on a warm April day.
Madison’s future step dad and Rebecca’s friend Annese surprised Madison
on her special day by dressing as Winnie The Poo and Tigger, Madison’s favorite
characters.
photo by Dawn Vanzo of Carol Smith, Katy Woodward and Tom Eaton
Sign
of spring: Dawn Vanzo, Tom Eaton, Carol Smith and Katy Woodward were
participating in a Miller Garden Club cleanup that took place near the South Shore
tracks and the site of the Sunday Farmers Market. Last year, I was a Farmers Market
regular because of the open mike music and a vendor’s delicious tacos.
This
from Jim Spicer:
The father of three bright sons called
them in one day and said, "Put
$1,000 into my coffin when I die."
And as it happened the sons grew to
maturity: one became a doctor, another a lawyer, and the third a financial
planner; each very successful financially. When their father’s time had come
and they saw their father for the last time in the coffin, they remembered his
wish.
First, it was the doctor who put 10 $100
bills onto the chest of the deceased. Then, came the financial planner,
who also put $1,000 there. Finally, it was the heartbroken lawyer's turn. He
dipped into his pocket, took out his checkbook, wrote a check for $3,000, put
it into his father's coffin, and took the $2,000 cash.
He later went on to become a member of
Congress.
John
Hmurovic purchased “Father Lach’s Slovak Boys Band: 1937 European Tour” for the Calumet Regional Archives. It consists mainly of journals kept during
the trip by band director Adam Lesinsky and his wife May and put together by
their daughter Tanya Lesinsky Carey. Throughout, they complain about business
agent Dr. Liverman, who was anything but punctual and frequently screwed up
their travel plans, starting on day one when their ship arrived in France and
the entourage traveled from Le Havre to Paris.
Adam Lesinsky wrote:
We
started for Paris and drove until 3 A.M.
Dr. Liverman could not find the Purple Palace Hotel and spent an hour
driving through the streets trying to find it.
We all became quite disgusted. A
taxi driver finally led us to 29 Rue Des Cordeliers, where the Purple Palace
was located. An old man took all the
passport and sent us up many flights of stairs.
The place looked like a regular 10-cent flop house. It was 4:30 S.M. The boys decided to sleep on the buses,
rather than take a chance in this dump. The toilets were unsanitary andhad no
stools – just a hole in the floor.
After
all that, Dr. Liverman confided that he had been unable to book them a concert
in Paris.
In
his “Crooked Politics” book Jerry Davich wrote: “Many of the old-world Europeans, including my ancestors, who
immigrated to this region during the early part of the last century, felt that
anything was negotiable in life. This
included my own grandfather, George Davich, a Gary official whose infamous
reputation of accepting bribes, kickbacks, and dirty money tarnished our
family’s name.” According to Gary
city directories, Glen Park resident George Davich worked in the early 1950s as
a crane operator. By the end of the
decade he was a supervisor with the Gary Street Department.
In
“Obstruction of Justice by Twet” Ray Smock wrote”
President Trump just tweeted his opinion
of General Flynn's offer to testify if he gets immunity. "Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt
(excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!"
Please tell me what in hell the President
of the United States is doing injecting himself into on-going investigations,
advising a former employee on what legal action he should take, and at the same
time declaring the Russian probes by House and Senate committees and by the FBI
to be witch hunts conducted by the media and by Democrats. Is this not
obstruction of justice?
Wouldn't Trump's own lawyers tell him to
keep his trap shut while he is being investigated? Or does Trump live in an
alternate universe where none of these investigations have any relationship to
his actions in the past and his ongoing meddling in the investigations. The
recent incredibly inept president with evidence coming from sources within the
White House may completely derail the House investigation. Is this not
obstruction? Are we witnessing Obstruction of Justice by Presidential Tweets?
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