Glory Days

"Glory days, well, they'll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye"

         Bruce Springsteen, "Glory Days"

One verse of “Glory Days,” on Springsteen’s 1984 album “Born in the U.S.A.,” refers to an unemployed autoworker:

My old man worked twenty years on the line
And they let him go
Now everywhere he goes out looking for work
They just tell him that he's too old
I was nine years old and he was working at the
Metuchen Ford plant assembly line
Now he just sits on a stool down at the Legion hall
But I can tell what's on his mind

At the fourth annual Steel Pen Writers Conference at Fair Oaks Farm in Winamac, I met the remarkable Melissa Fraterrigo, whose new novel, Glory Days, has received rave reviews.  Booklist wrote: If Willa Cather and Cormac McCarthy had a love child, she would be a writer such as Fraterrigo.” “Glory Days,” Bonnie Jo Campbell concluded, “strikes with the unexpected force of a summer tornado.” At the edge of a rural Nebraska town is a carnival named Glory Days, where characters, to quote Campbell, “struggle to make sense of lives marked by loss, violence, and despair.”

A panelist in the opening general session, titled “That’s Not What My Grandma Said: Preserving Regional Studies,” I drove down Route 65 the day before, checked out Fair Oaks Farm (a huge complex, including a birthing barn, crowded despite the cold and dreary weather), checked in at Comfort Suites in Rensselaer, and drove to St. Joseph’s College, which recently closed after 128 years. A chain-link fence kept me from driving through the abandoned campus, but I spotted the historic Chapel Tower in the distance.

Back at Comfort Suites, I struggled with my room key until learning that one does not slide the plastic card but merely places it near the lock.  I caught the end of Footloose (1984), with the John Lithgow character, Reverend Shaw Moore, more sympathetic than I’d remembered.  His daughter Ariel (Lori Singer) was a true hellion, rebelling against the repressed pastor. After she tells him she’s not a virgin, he slaps her and immediately regret sit; from that moment, he was a changed man.  A complimentary USA Today contained a photo of pitcher “Old Hoss” Radbourn, a 59-game winner with the Providence Grays in 1884, flashing the “fuck you” middle finger in an opening day ceremonial team picture at New York’s Polo Grounds.

Up at 5:30 to ready the body for the 9 a.m. session, I arrived at registration to be greeted by poet and IUN alumnus Betty Villareal, who said, “You look snazzy” (I was wearing white dress shirt, tie, vest, and slacks) and then, to those next to her, “Jim bowls with my husband.”  At the book display, Roland Camp, the husband of my session moderator Kathryn Page Camp and a retired social studies teacher, said, “I taught with your son at East Chicago Central.” In Newton Ballroom, the main conference venue, joining my table was Melissa Fraterrigo, who described activities at her Lafayette Writers’ Studio and handed me a lollipop attached to a miniature likeness of the “Glory Days” cover with blurbs on the back. I decided to attend her workshop.

above, Heather Augustyn; below, Kathryn Page Camp

On my panel were charismatic storyteller Sharon Kirk Clifton and Purdue Northwest professor Heather Augustyn, who has written books on Ska music and done extensive research in Kingston, Jamaica.  When she asked if anyone had heard of The Specials, I pointed to a page in my latest Steel Shavings, which I had given to each panelist, where I mentioned lyrics from the British band’s “Monkey Man.”  She compared conducting research to confronting a mythical, many-headed hydra, in that once you solve one mystery, others pop up. Sharon Clifton exclaimed, “I call that chasing bunnies” – meaning, I assumed, they multiply.   Clifton’s compared collecting stories to weaving a tapestry, one that is never fully completed, I added, remembering that IUN historian Bill Neil had used that analogy. I was pleased with my performance, with one exception.  After discussing memorable interviews with steelworker Paulino Monterrubio and Baptist firebrand L.K. Jackson (“The Old Prophet”) to make the point about the need to be open to the unexpected, I brought up Anna Rigovsky, wife of a union leader who told stories about struggling to survive the Great Depression.  I meant to explain learning about her activities with the Slovak Club and how when her grandchild, hearing Anna’s mother speaking Slovak, asked, “Why is Baba speaking Spanish?” Instead, I left that out; hopefully, nobody noticed.

above, Melissa Fraterrigo; below, George and Betty Villarreal

Melissa Fraterrigo’s workshop, “Connecting to the Unconnected: Exploring the Novel-in-Stories,” took place around a large conference table.  I got one of the last seats, thanks to Betty Villareal.  Melissa constantly paced around the table, quipping that she’s usually more active but that she’d only had three cups of coffee.  She reminded me of peripatetic IU professor Bill Reese speaking at an American Studies conference in Dubrovnik some 30 year ago.   Melissa passed out three odd photos of a man seemingly shredding a mask that had been his face and asked participants to put them in an order and be prepared to explain why.  I imagined someone whose humdrum life was transformed after reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” 

In describing fiction’s unifying elements, such as background, tone, plot, and central characters, Melissa recited a paragraph from Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, one of my favorite books.  Appearing rather late in the novel, this was the first scene the author wrote, Melissa claimed, and provided clues into both the Crosby, Maine, setting and Olive’s sensitive, ruthlessly honest character:

  Three hours ago, while the sun was shining full tilt through the trees and across the back lawn, the local podiartist, a middle-aged man named Christopher Kitteridge, was married to a woman from out of town named Suzanne.  This is the first marriage for both of them, and the wedding has been a smallish, pleasant affair, with a flute player and baskets of yellow sweetheart roses placed inside and outside the house.  So far, the polite cheerfulness of the guests seems to show no sign of running down, and Olive Kitteridge, standing by the picnic table, is thinking it’s really high time everyone left.

Melissa also read a snippet from Cathy Day’s The Circus in Winter (2005), like Olive Kitteridge a series of linked stories.  It’s about circus folk wintering in a small Hoosier town.  Cathy Day grew up in Peru, Indiana, winter quarters for Ringling Brothers, Hagenback-Wallace, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.  Peru is presently home of the International Circus Hall of Fame.  The author described a poker game taking place in a circus cookhouse.  Participants included an elephant keeper and, wrote Day, “High-Flying Jennie Dixianna in a flourish of feather boa”:

    The wind outside howled across the plains and whistled through the walls.  In the corners of the room, snow gathered like dust. The players drank cheap whiskey from tin cups and sat at a round wooden table laced so close to a potbelly stove that it seemed like another player.

        

Unable to write for a year after someone dear to her succumbed to cancer, Melissa overcame her writer’s block by composing fragment similar to the previous examples.  Melissa asked everyone to imagine a setting for a story.  Perhaps because of a recent deadly accident, where the only witness was the surviving driver, who naturally claimed not to be at fault, I thought of former girlfriend Carol Shuman’s younger brother, who’d been killed bicycling home from school.  I was in college and don’t recall whether I offered condolences.  In sixth grade, Carol’s puppy love for me could morph into jealousy.  One day, with my mother subbing for Mr. Miller, she stabbed me in the hand with a pencil.  I can’t remember why; perhaps I was flirting with Judy Jenkins, who had supplanted her as my girlfriend.  There’s still a trace of lead in my palm.  Carol’s mother was a school cafeteria server and paid me to wash her car in the summer.  I’d strip to the waist and hope Carol, now dating older boys, was watching from her bedroom upstairs. At a high school reunion, I chatted with her briefly, but she left before we talked at length. Was she bored?  Angry, for some reason?  When I’d told her companion that she had been my first girlfriend, she replied, “I thought it was Judy Jenkins.” I learned Carol became very religious, engaged in some type of missionary work, causing me to wonder if the calling was the result of her brother’s tragic demise. In our senior yearbook, she wrote: “Never forget how I used to like you at Fort School and how I used to chase you around.”  I haven’t.

Carol

At lunch, I told Heather Augustyn that my granddaughter Alissa loved to dance to a Grand Rapids ska band.  “Mustard Plug,” she replied, knowing exactly the group I was referring to. Janine Harrison, poet laureate of Highland, asked if I knew Corey Hagelberg and Samuel A. Love.  Do I ever!  That earned Heather a copy of Steel Shavings.  Altogether, I gave six away, to my panel, Melissa Fraterrigo, Highland elementary teacher Robin Sizemore, and Coal Science Inc. president Hardarshan Singh Valia.  I had mentioned folklorist Richard Dorson’s Land of the Millrats in my presentation, and Sizemore, a steelworker’s daughter, inquired about my research on that subject. Hardarshan Singh Valia, who hired in at Inland Steel in 1979, gave me a poem composed for Indiana’s Bicentennial entitled “Volcanoes of Northwest Indiana.”  Here’s an excerpt:

From spoon that fetches you food
To needle that stitches your wound
All came from my womb
Bloodied, exhausted
Mother of Volcanoes
Yes, I am the Blast Furnace of Northwest Indiana.

 . . .

Yes, I do explode
Yes, I do spew ash
Yes, I do emit noxious fumes
Shed enough tears repenting over mistakes
Took many corrective actions to improve.

Hardarshan Singh Valia; below, kachera 

Hardarshan Singh Valia wrote these inspiring words about Region Sikhs for the IU Press anthology “Undeniably Indiana: Hoosiers Tell the Story of Their Wacky and Wonderful State” (2016):  

  When I first arrived here, to my knowledge, there were five Sikh families in the close vicinity of Highland, Griffith, Munster, and Valparaiso.  Today a beautiful Sikh Gurdwara (temple) is located in Crown Point where about 300 Sikh families worship, and at the end of the service is a free lunch.  This is a practice started by the founder of Sikhism around 500 years ago so as to bring equality to all regardless of caste, religion or social status. A Sikh is easily identified because he wears a turban (pagri) and adopts five articles of faith (5Ks) namely, kesh (long uncut hair), kanga (comb), kada (bracelet), kachera (shorts), and kirpan (sword).  These bring him dignity, courage, and spirituality.

  Indiana made it easy for Sikhs to assemble in its melting pot.  The community thrives and benefitted from its riches.  Now it asks Hoosiers that when you see a Sikh, greet him, visit his Gurdwara, enjoy the langar (free lunch), and allow him to express his thanks and gratitude.

above, Inauguration; below, Hatcher with Jackson 5; from Calumet Regional Archives

Back home, Toni had chili on the stove, and Dave arranged gaming.  Tom Wade agreed so long as the IU game was on TV (alas, the Hoosiers lost another close one, to Maryland). I won the latest version of Evan Davis’ train game by using a strategy previously employed by T. Wade, currently infatuated with purchasing hub cities rather than railroad companies.

Sunday’s Post-Tribune looked back on Richard Hatcher’s historic 1967 mayoralty election victory.  Correspondent Craig Lyons utilized quotes from a half-dozen admirers, me included.  Ron Cohen was pleasantly surprised at the absence of detractors.  Representative Charlie Brown called Hatcher a “history maker” who “did the impossible.”  George Van Til, with Hatcher in 2008 when Barack Obama appeared in Gary for a rally, got the candidate’s attention by yelling out, “Here’s Mayor Hatcher.”  Obama approached Hatcher, embraced him, and, according to Van Til, expressed thanks for letting him stand on his shoulders.

Lyons quoted me about the limits to a Gary mayor’s power, especially pertaining to the economy.  The only misquote I noted was that I’d mentioned that a policy boss had tried to bribe Hatcher into dropping out of the 1967 Democratic primary, but Lyons wrote political boss. I wish he had included my assertion that Gary’s fate would have been far worse without Mayor Hatcher.  Most certainly blacks would have rioted had the Lake County Democratic machine stolen the election. Again, in 1968, in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, when so many American cities erupted in flames, Hatcher, accompanied by IHSAA state champion Roosevelt basketball players, went from neighborhood to neighborhood, counseling against violence.  As Mayor Hatcher’s press secretary Ray Wild put it, “Maybe the wonder is not that Gary experienced the difficulties it experienced but that it survived at all, that it didn’t just go to hell in a hand basket.  There’s a good argument to be made that a less creative, less farsighted administration might have cost this city everything.”

Dawn Darceneaux in 2017 (right) with Joslyn Kelly, McKenya Dilworth, Errol Hefner

The Hatcher article contained quotes from Dawn Darceneaux, whom I interviewed years ago when she was a U.S. Steel administrative assistant. The Mayor persuaded her mother, who worked for Model Cities, to complete a high school degree, Dawn told Lyons, even though she was a grandmother. A cheerleader at Froebel in 1960, Dawn told me about the aftermath of a basketball game in Michigan City::

  On the way home my boyfriend, Caesar Antonio Morales, who was Puerto Rican, stopped at a restaurant and sent some of us in to order hamburgers to carry out. They wouldn’t serve us so he went in and got it.  We went in with him and acted like it was a big joke.  We didn’t get hurt, but in situations like that there’s always a chance that they might mess with your food. Michigan City beach and zoo were places we could go, while in Gary blacks were not welcome in Miller beach.  We had our prom at Marquette Pavilion, but afterwards we had to get out.  No beach parties for us.

During Dawn’s senior year she got pregnant and told me:

  It was a big issue.  A lot of people were sending notes to the principal when they noticed my tummy poking out, as if I should be ashamed and go hide in a closet. The school nurse, Mrs. Steinhard, a wonderful Jewish woman, would just take the notes and throw them in the garbage.  Eventually, pressure was brought to bear that if I wasn’t ejected from school, some of the teachers would get in trouble.  Six months pregnant, I didn’t go to school the last couple weeks. I didn’t get to go across the stage, but the principal did give me my diploma because all my credits were in.