Acquiring Knowledge

“Books to the ceiling, books to the sky


My pile of books is nearly sky high 

How I love them, how I need them 

I will be 102 by the me I read them”

         Judy Ayers 

The Spring 2018 Ayers Realty Newsletter arrived electronically, which I ran off to add to our Archives collection.  In the “Home on the Range” column Judy Ayers wrote about her book club: “First comes food, wine and friendly conversation that progresses to a discussion of the book which is led by the member who suggested it. I am often not able to attend but still find it a great source of good books – some of which I might not read on my own without the endorsement of others.”  

In preparing my book club talk at Gino’s next Monday on “The Devil’s Ticket” by Gary Pomerantz, I’ll mention that the book is both about a wife fatally shooting her husband over a bridge hand and her subsequent murder trial as well as the popularization of contract bridge, thanks largely to the promotional efforts by Ely Culbertson. In a larger sense, it is a social history of America during the Roaring Twenties, whose trends pertain to the main characters’ lives.  Here are some of them:

·     Cities increased rapidly in population, and for the first time more Americans lived in urban areas than in rural ones. (Kansas City, MO, increased by 75,000 people in the 1920s to 400,000; Gary’s population doubled to 100,000)

·     The economy boomed and automobiles and other consumer products, including kitchen appliances became affordable to most families, allowing wives more free time.

·     Prosperity led to the rapid growth of a new middle class and a huge increase in the college population, where bridge became a craze.

·     Newspapers, movie theaters, and radio stations proliferated, and coverage of juicy court cases (Sacco-Vanzetti, Leopold-Loeb, Hall-Mills, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, and State of Missouri V. Myrtle Bennett) proved to be a boon for circulation

·     The 20s saw the rapid expansion of mass advertising for vanity products such as perfume and cosmetics.

·     It was an age of ballyhoo, with showmen staging spectacles such as championship matches in competitive sports and games.

·     It was a New Era in terms of manners and morals, and Victorian prudery was on the way out.

·     Many young women dressed like Flappers, smoked in public, enjoyed alcoholic beverages despite Prohibition being the law of the land, and danced the Charleston and the Grizzley Bear to hot jazzy music in short skirts and sometimes wearing no undergarments..

·     Given the rapid pace of social change, it was a time of nativism and resentment of secular values replacing old-fashioned religious norms, seen in the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and uneasiness about blacks, immigrants, Catholics, Jews, political radicals, and nonconformists.

 

Visiting the Calumet Regional Archives were: Photographer Chris Roberts-Gonzalez with a CD containing a high resolution jpeg for our Gary pictorial history of St. Timothy Church members who participated in a jazz vesper service written by pianist Billy Foster; Steve Spicer researching nineteenth-century area gun clubs located; a Gary native who during the postwar Red hysteria received a tattoo at Emerson School identifying his blood type; and Fred McColly with more journals detailing his career as, in his words, one of a vanishing breed of Region industrial workers.  In fact, Fred recently lost his longtime job at Gary Metal Manufacturing, located at 2700 East Fifth Avenue, which ceased operations, globalism’s latest rustbelt casualty.

 Gene Clifford reading to Lucy

In the Ronald D. Cohen room of the Archives, Samantha Gauer videotaped my interview with Gene Clifford, who discussed his career as a bricklayer as well as his various interests in bowling, birding, hunting, fishing, woodcraft, and flying planes.  Gene grew up in a rural area near Valparaiso. His dad worked the 4 to 12 shift at a plant similar to Gary Metal and mornings tended to the farm.  Young Gene’s chores including feeding, butchering, and dressing chickens.  He became a bricklayer’s helper upon graduating from high school and took apprenticeship classes at Gary Emerson.  During the late 1980s he worked on Marram Hall, IUN’s science building. Gene first started bowling as a substitute before being invited to join the team full-time.  The bartender allowed him to drink with the team if he promised not to get rowdy.  He and his wife traveled to national tournaments all over the country, and he recalled in detail a train trip to Reno. 

Showing off a photo of a wild turkey he’d recently shot, Gene said it took more than two hours to pluck, skin, quarter, and dress, so he predicted it would be his last catch.  He mentioned that Northwest Indiana’s turkey population is rapidly increasing due to fewer predators, such as coyote and foxes.  One farmer granted him permission to hunt on his property in exchange for a turkey leg.  It turned out to be tough and sinewy due to wild turkeys being more muscular than their domestic cousins. Gene claimed a good-sized turkey will yield six pounds of breast meat.  One time he agreed to treat co-workers to turkey salad sandwiches if they supplied the bread and condiments. 

Annie Anton, formerly both as Lake County auditor and clerk for two terms each, passed away at age 90.  In 1948 she became a Glen Park precinct committeewoman. When first husband Benedict Nuzzo died, Annie became manager of the family business, Nuzzo Brothers Grocery at 115 West Forty-First.  An Archives intern is currently organizing a collection of the Glen Park-Merrillville Business and Professional Women’s Organization.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Annie were a member.  Annie’s second husband Chris Anton died just ten months after elected Lake County sheriff.  Annie lost a precinct race to serve out his term to Rudy Bartolomei, who later left office in disgrace, convicted on corruption charges and then freed into ta witness protection program after squealing on others whose crimes were much less heinous than his.  In 1986 Annie was elected county auditor.  Lake County Democratic Chairman Jim Wieser told Post-Tribunereporter Meredith Colias-Pete that she was a fiercely loyal Democrat: “That was her life.”

I received an email from an interpretive ranger with the National Lakeshore who came upon my 2013 South Shore Journalarticle “The Dune Faun: Diana of the Dunes’ Male Counterpart” (about a naked beachcomber Webb Waldron wrote about in the 1920s) and inquired:

I'm especially interested in LGBT history associated with the Dunes. I haven't found much but some mentions of the Beverly Shores being an LGBT-friendly hot-spot for NW Indiana in the 80s and 90s. In your article you mention that gays and bisexuals passed around Waldron's manuscript, and also that there were "male club" versions of the Dune Dancers that were open to those who embraced a gay or bisexual lifestyle. I was wondering what your sources were for these particular bits, and if you could share anything more about them.  I'd love to be able to use some of this material when interpreting with the public; it'd be great to be able to tell this 100 year old story of inclusion at the Dunes.

I informed him of my Archives sources, in particular the Eddie Newell Papers, and invited him to come investigate himself.

I heard from grade school friend Carol Schuman, who recalled a couple experiences I’d completely forgotten: 

   I remember the day in fourth grade when Mrs. Williams was subbing for Mrs. Orr and the bottom fell out of your desk.  She made you pile your books on the desk, then she made you lean over and she picked up the pile of books and dropped them on the back of your head and neck.  Looking back, I do not know why she did not injure you badly.  I felt so bad for you that day and I think that was the beginning of my 4th grade crush.  It never went beyond that year.   If you remember, in sixth grade, 4 of us went out on our first date to the Ambler movie theater.  You and Judy Jenkins, Bill MacAfee and me.  It was a fun night.

Bill MacAfee disappeared not long after graduation and has not been heard from since.  Whoever the sadistic Mrs. Williams was, she has been erased from my memory.  On the other hand, I loved Mrs. Orr, who’d give me lists to arrange in order, such as cities by population, that were not simply math problems but with informative content. One day, she said the class could go to recess after someone correctly told her what large body of water bordered Switzerland.  It took quite a while before we wised up and realized that the answer was none.

Toni and I spentCinco de Mayowith our bridge group at El Salto Restaurant in Chesterton just blocks from our condo before we played host for the evening, briefly turning on the TV to watch the Kentucky Derby won by Justify.  Meanwhile, it was prom night for grandson James.  Next day, we attended the Noel Coward  comedic farce “Blythe Spirit” (1941) at Memorial Opera House, well-acted but not my cup of tea.  Wealthy novelist Charles Condomine (Scot McDonald) asks a medium, Madame Arcadi (Holly Schroeder, who dominated every scene she was in) to conduct a séance. His motive was to collect material for a book, but then the ghost of first wife Elvira appears. Most jokes involve second wife Ruth thinking he’s talking to her when he is arguing with Elvira, who plots to kill Charles in a car accident but Ruth dies instead and then returns as a ghost as well. In 1964 the musical adoption “High Spirits” enjoyed a year-long Broadway run.  That ending had Charles reunited in death with Elvira and Ruth, while in “Blythe Spirits” he wishes to be free from both.  A couple years ago, we saw Coward’s play, “Private Lives” (1930), at Memorial Opera House , which I thought far superior to “Blythe Spirit.”

Porn star and Trump litigant Stormy Daniels appeared on Saturday Night Live in a clever skit, and the President’s newest mouthpiece Rudy Giuliani was all over the Sunday morning news shows, making a fool of himself.  One critic compared him to a pitcher who has lost his fastball, but he may be crazy like a fox, deliberately employing a strategy of obfuscation. Frankly, I’m tired of the entire sideshow, which distracts from much worse administration actions.  If Trump and Stormy had consensual sex and she received $130,000 to keep her mouth shut, that hardly qualifies as an impeachable offense. Recalling Bill Clinton’s popularity when he faced impeachment, Republicans plan to rally their base in November by claiming that the Democrats will impeach Trump if they gain control of the House of Representatives.  Nonsense.  Let’s hope Democrats  put that issue to rest.

Carrie and Debbie

 

Watching the HBO documentary “Bright Lights” (2016) about the mother-daughter relationship between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, who died within a week of one another, I learned that two of my favorite actresses, Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep, played them in “Postcards from the Edge (1990), which Carrie Fisher wrote.  Streep may take Fisher’s place as Princess Leia in future Star Warsflicks.  “Bright Lights” shows Fisher signing photos and posing for pictures at a Star Wars convention, a practice participants call a lap dance. Like the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” whom she played in the 1964 musical, Debbie was a trooper, performed her nightclub act well into her 80s, the highlight being her singing “Tammy.”

A false fire alarm interrupted work at my Archives cage, evidently a defect in the system.  We were outside a good half hour, but it was beautiful weather and good company, with Steve McShane and Chancellor Lowe nearby. Because safety director Kathryn Manteuffel was not on campus, we had to wait for the Gary Fire Department to give the all clear.  I feared for the worst, but we were back inside within minutes.  It reminded me of a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode where Larry is trying on pants at a store when the alarm goes off and he ends up wearing them the rest of the day with comic consequences.