Keep on Truckin'

Trucker: “Are you a man?”

Dana Rose Gropp: “I used to be.”

         above, Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer; below, Dana Rose Gropp

Jerry Davich wrote a front-page Post-Trib column praising Anne Balay’s forthcoming book“Semi Queer: Inside the Lives of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers.”  Anne put him in contact with Dana Rose Gropp, a transgender woman and co-founder of Rainbow Wisdom Circle who came out three years ago. Anne told Davich that trucking can provide opportunities for safety, a welcomed isolation, and a chance for those discriminated against in their communities to be themselves, even though the work is fraught with regulations, constant surveillance, danger, and exploitation.  “Though it’s dirty, underpaid, and at times demeaning,”Balay wrote,“there's some magic in trucking – such as time alone to think and the feeling of being useful – that fits queer and trans people really well.” 

Underground comic artist Robert Crumb’s “Keep on Truckin’” drawing of men strutting confidently became a famous pop culture hippie image, found, usually without Crumb’s consent, on t-shirts, posters, and eventually mudflaps of truckers themselves, much to the discomfort of the creator, who called it “the curse of my life.”  In “The R. Crumb Handbook” (2005) he wrote: “I didn't want to turn into a greeting card artist for the counter-culture!  When I started to let out all of my perverse sex fantasies, it was the only way out of being ‘America's Best Loved Hippy Cartoonist.’”  

 above, Becca and parents in Wisconsin; below, Liam, James, Andrew, Kaiden

Grandson James and friends Andrew and Liam stayed overnight at the condo as David and Angie took Becca to a music camp in Wisconsin.  Andrew’s dad, John English, dropped the three of them off after they spent a few hours at Porter County Fair.  Liam had won a hermit crab that was in a tiny container.  PETA has decried using hermit crabs as prizes and has successfully put pressure on fairs in Michigan to cease the practice but apparently has failed to achieve similar results in Indiana. In nature the crabs live in colonies, shun human contact, and can live up to 40 years; in captivity they are doomed to a short, horrific life. I made sure Liam didn’t leave the crab behind, but he did forget his 21 Pilots hoodie and leftover food from Culver’s, which James ate for dinner.

After cooking pancakes and kielbasa, I took the teens bowling at Inman’s.  Because they are in a Saturday league, they were entitled to two free games.  The guy behind the counter ignored this information and, calculating four of us at two dollars a game, said, “That’ll be 16 dollars.”  When I questioned this, he asked to see their league cards.  James found his in his wallet and while Andrew was looking for his, the guy said, “OK, four dollars.”  I told Andrew he could stop his search, that the fellow trusted us.  Afterwards, while we had lunch at Culver’s, the three of them filled me in on the premise of The Incrediblesand the special powers of each family member.  

Despite playing solid golf, Tiger Woods finished two strokes behind the British Open winner, Italian Francesco Molinari, who ended the weekend without a single bogie on the final 36 holes.  Tiger, on the other hand, took a double bogie due to a foolish attempt to rebound from a poor shot instead of playing it safe. I commiserated about Tiger by phone with the Logans in California and asked Gaard what she’s currently reading. She highly recommended “Educated” by Tara Westover, a coming-of-age memoir by an indomitable young woman home-schooled in the foothills of Buck’s Peak, Idaho by Mormon survivalists who forbade television, radio, telephones or doctor’s visits.  Atlanticreviewer Ann Hulbert wrote: “Baffled, inspired, tenaciously patient with her ignorance, she taught herself enough to take the ACT and enter Brigham Young University at 17.  She went on to Cambridge University for a doctorate in history.”

 Tara Westover

I am close to finishing Ricard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” and trying hard not to rush through the final 60 pages.  Sarah and Bobby are teen soulmates but end up marrying others, in Sarah’s case, Bobby’s best friend Lou Lynch.  The novel reminds me of Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth” (1905), whose two main characters, Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden, are attracted to each other but, bound by the social conventions of their time and class, do not act on their mutual attraction.  Many years later, expressing a hint of regret in a letter to Bobby, Sarah wrote: “Don’t even the best and most fortunate of lives hint of other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too?  Isn’t this why we can’t help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven’t been?”

IU Kokomo emeritus professor Jack Tharp is working on a history of IU’s branch campuses and, having perused Paul Kern and my history of IU Northwest, “Educating the Calumet Region” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2004) requested clarification about the relationship between IU’s Calumet Center in East Chicago and Gary Extension.  In particular, he wondered about the years between 1932 and 1948 when Gary College was in existence. I replied with the caveat that it had been 15 years since we had researched the topic and that Kern wrote most of the text while I concentrated on oral histories.  I suggested he consult Ronald D. Cohen’s “Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1960” (1990), which states that IU extension classes in Gary started in 1921 and that a full, two-year program commenced in September 1923. When Gary College was launched in 1932, with night-school director Albert Fertsch heading the program, it shared space with the IU extension program; extension classes were still being taught in 1935, probably as dual credit with Gary College, and perhaps until IU established the Calumet Center in 1939.  Thus, I wouldn’t say IU and Gary College were competitors but rather served each other’s purposes since some Gary College students eventually went to Bloomington. Cohen wrote that in 1948 “the drain on school resources and personnel prompted Gary’s school board to invite Indiana University to return to the city. Gary College merged with the university the following June, and in late 1950 it finally dissolved.”  As to when the Calumet and Gary centers merged into a single entity, I told Tharp I didn’t know the exact date but that when I arrived in 1970, a few classes were still being taught in East Chicago but were apparently being phased out, with IU Northwest and Purdue Calumet both expanding in Gary and Hammond.

Toni arrived home from the Shakespeare Festival in Canada bushed after the ten-hour road trip.  I had just consumed a turkey and mashed potatoes meal and sliced cucumbers she’d left me and went off to a condo owners meeting. President Sandy Carlson moved things along nicely. I was home within the hour and finished “Bridge of Sighs.”  Lou finally revealed the probable cause of his only high school friend David’s suicide:

  David and I took turns walking each other home.  One Friday after the dance, we went to David’s house, and there in the dark driveway he shocked me by kissing me full on the lips, then hurrying inside.  The next day, after a movie he walked me home and did it again, this time in broad daylight, right in front of my house.  I remember thinking my father was across the street watching, and so I shoved David away and told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore.  I can still see the look on his face.

Lou then has this epiphany:

  David was just a boy.  He was frightened to be in a strange new place and terribly grateful I’d befriended him. He felt about me like I’d once felt about Bobby.  “Adoration” is probably not too strong a word to describe that heady mingling of intense affection and dependence.  Back when we were friends, I’d wantedto kiss Bobby.  I had. I’d known it wasn’t permitted, but what, I thought, was so wrong about it?

"Bridge of Sighs" author Richard Russo