Elegy

      “When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance.” J.D. Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy”

On the phone with high school classmate Gaard Murphy Logan, I told her that next month’s book club selection is 32-year-old J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” and expressed the hope that it would not be totally depressing.  I think you’re in for a disappointment, she replied.  While some critics have cited the book to help explain Trump’s appeal to rural folk estranged from establishment politicians, its primary virtue, according to reviews I’ve read, seems to be its extreme candor about being from a subculture in disintegration – poor, white Americans.  Yale Law School graduate Vance wrote: “Whatever talent I have, I almost squandered until a handful of people (some in the marine corps) rescued me.  For those of us lucky enough to live the American dream, the demons of the life we left behind continues to chase us.”  Vance’s maternal grandparents (he called them Mamaw and Papaw) left Jackson, Kentucky, after she became pregnant at age 13 and moved to Middletown, Ohio, a steel town nicknamed Middletucky because it contained so many postwar Southern transplants, who retained their rough-and-ready values and lifestyle.  Because Vance’s mother was a dysfunctional drug addict throughout most of his childhood, Mamaw and Papaw became his de facto guardians, violent and foul-mouthed but loving and loyal.

 J.D. Vance

In a section titled “The Great Regression” David Goldfield’s “The Gifted Generation” described “Hillbilly Elegy” as “a bittersweet memoir of growing up in a gritty Rust belt town in southern Ohio [that] chronicles the resentment toward neighbors who engage in welfare fraud, petty crime, and drugs – afflictions that descended on a community bereft of jobs and institutions.”  Goldfield concludes that the primary cause of the work ethic decline among those disparaged as “white trash” was not moral failure but unhealthy corporate concentration, the weakening of organized labor, and governmental neglect.  Reflecting on the loss of confidence among young people since the 1960s, Goldfield wrote:

  If mobility, both economic and geographic, characterized the [postwar] gifted generation, then the current cohort may be the Go-Nowhere Generation.  The likelihood of twentysomethings moving to another state has dropped 40 percent since the 1980s, regardless of educational level.  Young people want to remain connected to their hometowns rather than experience other parts of the country or the world.  This reflects wariness about striking out on one’s own.  The gifted generation was bold, motivated by opportunity rather than constrained by fear.  The major difference between the time the gifted generation came of age and the present is that the federal government’s role as the great umpire, the leveler, has diminished.

J.D. Vance’s early memories include visiting a dying uncle in the hospital and noticing hair on his great-grandmother’s chin while on her lap.  And this: “I was four when I climbed on top of the dining room table of our small apartment, announced that I was the Incredible Hulk, and dove headfirst into the wall to prove that I was stronger than any building. (I wasn’t.)”

Gaard Logan and I talked about earliest childhood memories.  Mine are rather traumatic, including being left at a kids party with strangers when my family visited relatives in Pittsburgh, walking into a friend’s parents’ bedroom whose mother had nothing on over her girdle, and being treated by a doctor whose therapy included prayers and rubbing my forehead soothingly.  He may have been some type of spiritual healer. I’m not sure why my mother thought it necessary to take me to him; did I have some sort of nervous tick?  She also tortured me each morning with a tablespoon of cod liver oil.   Gaard spoke of taking walks with an older sister when two or three years old to a farmhouse in rural Maine where a woman treated them to cookies and ice cold, unpasteurized milk.  Her father was a salesman of perfumes, razors, and other sundries who left for Boston on Monday morning in the family’s only car and returned late Friday.  Gaard still has traces of a Maine accent, especially when speaking about childhood experiences. I told her about Dick Hagelberg’s dad moving the family to a farm in upstate New York after working for years for a railroad and how Dick hated it.  Gaard’s recollections, on the other hand, were much more pleasant.

I spoke with Gaard’s hubby Chuck about Tiger Wood’s second place finish over the weekend in the Valspar Championship, which drew the highest TV ratings in years despite it not being a major tournament.  Tiger sank a birdie on the seventeenth hole Sunday to pull within one stroke and, needing another birdie, came close to sinking a long putt that would have put him in a playoff against winner Paul Casey.  Good stuff.

I found a promising book about Hoosier humorist David Letterman subtitled “The Last Giant of Late Night” (1027).  A fan since childhood, author Jason Zinoman wrote:

  A talk-show host who didn’t always seem to enjoy talking to people, a reserved man who spoke to millions every night, one of the most trusted entertainers whose ironic style kept emphasizing his own insincerity, Letterman represented a version of New York cool that seemed more accessible than punk singers in ripped shirts or dapper Broadway sophisticates.

Last week I didn’t feel up to bowling and got Bob Fox to sub for me. His name was chosen for a chance to win the 500-dollar mega-pot, requiring two strikes in a row.  He buried the first but missed the headpin on his second ball.  Amazingly, another pin rebounded off the back and knocked it down.  He said that after $400 went for bills, he and wife Wanda ate at a nice restaurant, leaving just $30 in his pocket.  This week, bowling for our opponents, Bob rolled a 650 series.  Lo and behold, Bob’s name was called again, and he won another hundred dollars.  Gene Clifford showed me photos of he and former IU coach Bob Knight attending a fundraiser at Bloomington South High School.  After being firing, Knight has refused to return to IU and often bad-mouths his former employer.  I mentioned Knight’s having held IU scrimmages at Gary’s Genesis Center; Clifford replied that he had attended several.

The Saturday Evening Club met at the Pines Village Retirement Community in Valparaiso.  The wife of speaker Jim Wise works there, and at least one club member lives there.  Beforehand, members asked Wise whether the site was a recruiting ploy.   The food (prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad) was excellent and the spirits plentiful.  Wise’s talk, titled “Sympathy with the Angels” (a take-off on the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy with the Devil”), dealt mostly about the history of physics and whether science and religion were compatible.  He started with quotes by Jim Morrison of the Doors, philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell, and, most germane, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”  Once an atheist, Wise is now a Roman Catholic who visits hospices with his comfort dog Kalberer. 

 Jim Wise and Kalberer

While much of Jim Wise’s talk was over my head, everyone was expected to comment aloud about it for about ten minutes.  I concentrated on the Fitzgerald quote, stating that while I consider myself to be an agnostic, sometimes after a close call with danger, such as barely avoiding an auto accident, I whisper thanks to whatever guardian angel (St. James?) might be watching over me.  Someone thought that sounded like Blaise Pascal’s Wager, the idea that if God does not exist, nothing is lost by believing.  Others labeled it superstition.  I brought up Jacob Riis’ maxim that optimism is the only practical working philosophy and how that gave him a sense of purpose in working to improve the environment.  Afterwards, Jim Mitchell, a former lawyer and now an ordained minister, said he appreciated my sentiments.

 John Shearer: "My Loop shirt still fits."

Steve Dahl

WLUP (The Loop) has become a Christian station, part of the Educational Media Foundation K-Love brand. Jerry Davich wrote:

In my younger years, “The Loop” wasn’t just a radio station. It was a black t-shirt movement. A brash call to action. A rebellious snarl in a world of wrinkled smiles. The station, WLUP FM 97.9, was the unruly, disobedient teenager of Chicago radio stations back in the day. The on-air personalities who called it home through the decades – Steve Dahl, Jonathan Brandmeier, Mancow Muller, to name a few – did a great job of amplifying this image of anti-establishment at any cost. Disco Demolition Night at Comisky Park on July 12, 1979, was a call to arms for my generation of impressionable rock-n-rollers. The ballpark held 50,000 fans, but thousands more stormed the field to take part in it. I always regretted I wasn’t one of them.

Then Davich added, egregiously, in my opinion: “I rarely listened to the station in recent years. Whenever I stumbled onto The Loop in my car, it felt like bumping into an old high school classmate who never grew up.”  Like me, Davich’s channel of choice is WXRT, several of whose on-air personalities, including Johnny Mars and Frank E. Lee, earned their stripes at The Loop. While I treasure the variety of music on XRT, I see no reason to disparage folks who enjoy rockin’ out on the car radio.  For that I still have WLS.  I loved Steve Dahl and would still listen to him.  Mancow, on the other hand, was obnoxious.  Brenden Bayer posted: “Just got in the car to hear WLUP’s new format.  This is bullshit.”  You know it, baby.

 Wirt principal Marcus Muhammad with Jerry Davich

In another Post-Tribune column Jerry Davich wrote about the demise of his 75-year-old high school alma mater, named after Gary’s world famous progressive school superintendent, William A. Wirt:

I went for my final tour of Wirt High School in Miller today before it closes for good after this school year.  I had nostalgic feelings while getting lost in the halls, finding my old locker, hiding from teachers, and staring out at the old track where I still own the school record for the longest time to run a mile. Ah, good times.  It was as if the school is on its death bed and I dropped by to say one last goodbye before its faint pulse stops beating. Ah, sad times.

Alan Yngve being interviewed at the Calumet Regional Archives; photo by Samantha Gauer;

Archives display in IUN's library/conference center lobby; photo by Christina Gomez

At Chesterton Y, Dee Van Bebber and I finished with a 53.17 percent (slightly above average) despite not playing our best bridge.  On the final hand, I held 18 high card points, including Ace, King, Queen, Jack of Spades, and opened one No Trump.  Sally Will doubled, Dee passed, and Rich bid two Clubs.  I went 2 Spades, mainly to alert Dee what to lead on defense.  Sally raised to 3 Clubs, Dee bid 3 Spades and all passed.  When she lay down her hand, she had no high card points but 5 little Spades and 2 doubletons.  I made the bid for high board by throwing off a loser on a good Diamond.  I gave copies of my new Steel Shavings to Alan Yngve, Dottie Hart, and Helen Booth.  Noticing Richard Hatcher’s photo on the cover, Helen said that on several occasions she spoke to students in his Valparaiso Law School class, and in 1992 he supported her over George Van Til to be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in New York where Bill Clinton was nominated to run for President.

In the 2005 issue of the Prairie Writers Guild literary magazine From the Edge of the Prairie is “Life’s Flight” by William Dallner, written shortly before he died in 2007:

Awakening-

The testing of wing,

The first bold leap

Soaring to heights.

Achievements above all, recognition of many,

Resentment of few.

The weakening pace,

Descending shortness of breath,

Falling,

Revival, fresh air.

The landing with dignity, the telling and re-telling from memory,

To the end.

On this, the hundredth anniversary of World War I, I came upon this elegy by Hoosier Dale T. Sheets, who died 7 years ago at age 91, describing a visit to Verdun:

The clover of Verdun is a blanket of green

over the iron turrets and the concrete bunkers,

except for an open mouth of a cave where men

sought shelter from the whining shells, and found

poison gas instead.  The field’s so near to Paris

that taxis shuttled soldiers to and from the front,

where a million soldiers died.

. . .

I fall face downward in the sweet clover

And press my body through time and space

Into the cold and bloody trenches of Verdun.

Out there somewhere, forlornly sounds

My cabbie on his horn, impatient to be gone.