Trapped

“I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck”

         Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”

The dozen Thai boys trapped in a cave for two weeks with their assistant Wild Boars soccer coach are finally safe, rescued by a team of divers just ahead of monsoon rains that would have doomed the effort.  The New York Timesreported:

    It took an amalgam of muscle and brainpower from around the world: 10,000 people participated, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and representatives from 100 government agencies. It took plastic cocoons, floating stretchers and a rope line that hoisted the players and coach over outcroppings. The boys had been stranded on a rocky perch more than a mile underground. Extracting them required long stretches underwater, in bone-chilling temperatures, and keeping them submerged for around 40 minutes at a time. The boys were even given anti-anxiety medication to avert panic attacks. “The most important piece of the rescue was good luck,” saidMaj. Gen. Chalongchai Chaiyakham, the deputy commander of the Third Army region, which helped the operation. “So many things could have gone wrong, but somehow we managed to get the boys out.”  

The ordeal in Thailand reminded me of the bizarre saga of Floyd Collins, trapped 55 feet underground in 1925 while exploring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The ensuing 18-day rescue effort took on a carnival atmosphere, attracting hordes of reporters and live radio coverage.   Vendors were hawking souvenirs and selling food to thousands of onlookers.  The episode ended in failure when the passage above Collins collapsed.  In Appalachian History Dave Tabler revealed that the explorer’s body became a tourist attraction:

    [It] was put in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave where cavers from around the world paid their respects to Collins for many years. Then in the most dramatic and grotesque twist to the story, his body was stolen—and later found in a nearby field missing a leg. After this incident his body was placed in a chained casket.

    Eventually, the National Park Service absorbed Crystal Cave and closed it to the public. In 1989, Collins was properly buried in Mammoth Cave Baptist Church Cemetery on Flint Ridge. Today Floyd Collins’ final resting place has an extraordinary array of tokens on it — coins, sunflower seeds, stones, and other objects left by cave explorers and others for whom Floyd Collins was, and is, a legendary symbol.

In 2008 a Southern alternative metal band from Edmonton, Kentucky, Black Stone Cherry, recorded “The Ghost of Floyd Collins" with these lyrics:

Down in Mammoth Cave, is where his body laid
Walls came in life could not be saved
No man made machine could see the things he's seen
Mr. Collins, you did not die in vain

Strangers moved in, brought the circus to town
You know, there's people makin' money off a man underground
Somebody said they weren't doin' him right
That's why old Floyd's comin' back tonight

Stopping by the Archives was IU South Bend Folklore professor Anita Kay Westhues, who spoke at the IOHA conference in Jyvaskyla on “Beliefs and Practices Related to Community Water Sources: The Specialness of Springs.” She is interested in a  Gary artesian well located north of Ridge Road near Chase Street.  A few months ago, she accompanied Samuel A. Love on a Steel City Academy student field trip that included the site. I introduced Kay to John Trafny, who had heard of the Chase Street water source, which bubbles up from an aquifer. In January 2016 Post-Tribreporter Michelle Quinn wrote about efforts by Lake County Sheriff’s Department trusties to rid the area of garbage and debris dumped by the road, which has been closed for the past decade.  Quinn interviewed Miller resident Marion Patton, who claimed to have been drinking the water for at least a half-century.  He said: “The old men in the neighborhood told me about it, and I think it helped me.  It’s got a sweet taste to me.  Now, when you first get it, it may have a bit of a foul odor to it, but once it settles for a day, it’s my favorite.”

 

Chase St. Well cleanup; Post-Trib photos by Jim Karczewski

Little Calumet River Basin Commissioner David Castellanos, who helped arrange the cleanup, told Quinn: “I didn't even know it was out there.  It’s not part of the river basin, but a lot of people get water from there, and talked about the minerals from the water as being medicinal or that they couldn't afford to get bottled water. I've seen men out there fill up the back of their pickup truck with gallon jugs of water from there, and one time, I saw an older couple out there getting water. The man carried it up the road back to the car while the woman waited in the car.”

A section on Westhues’ website called “Chase St. Flowing Well, Gary” contains 

 over a dozen comments by longtime residents of Small Farms and other nearby communities. Jerry Baldwin recalled people lined up in the 1950s to obtain the water.  Silas G. Sconiers said, “It was the only source of fresh water we had living in unincorporated Lake County on the outskirts of Gary.” Sconiers no longer drinks from the spring because, in his opinion, dumping at Lake Sandy Jo, a 50-acre landfill, poisoned the water table and it now smells like rotten eggs.  Sharma Crenshaw recalled the liquid tasting great and being ice cold 40 years ago. Sharma added: “We never drank the tap water at home.  My grandmother made the trip every couple days with sterilized milk jugs or other containers.”  Nancy Cohen, who grew up in Gary’s Edison district, recalled often seeing people getting water from that source.

I had a mediocre night at bridge. Typical was a hand where partner Dee opened a Diamond and Dottie Hart overcalled a Spade.  Holding Ace, King, Queen, spot of Spades, four Clubs to the Queen, three small Diamonds, and Jack spot of Hearts, I bid one No-Trump (in retrospect, I probably should have doubled).  After Dee rebid Diamonds, I jumped to 3 No-Trump, figuring we had adequate points for game but might not have enough for 5 Diamonds.  I expected Dottie’s partner to lead a Spade, only he was void in that suit. What he had were 6 Hearts, while Dee only had a singleton in that suit and we lost the first six tricks.  Two couples who ended in 5 Diamonds also got set but only down one, not two like me for -100. Cracker, my favorite band, is kicking off a Thursday evening concert series in Valpo. I told bridge opponent Terry Brendel about it, but he didn’t seem to have heard of their big hits “Low” and “Teen Angst.”

photos of Roger Miramontes by Kris Steele

Kris Steele interviewed Rodrigo (Roger) Miramontes, a 2008 Hammond Clark graduate, and spent a few hours watching him bowl. Beforehand, she discovered that bowling in one form or another has been around for thousands of years.  In America rules began to be codified about a hundred years ago, such as that balls should weigh no more than 16 pounds.  Kris wrote:

    Roger married his high school sweetheart and they have three children. Roger works at Midwestern Steel in Hammond as a fabricator and bowls in two leagues at Olympia Lanes in North Hammond.  He often takes his children with him to teach them how to bowl. He started bowling at age eight, thanks to his uncles. His team name is Four Loco’s, and he carries an average of 190.  Roger bowled his best game last year, a 276. Roger uses a few different balls, but his favorite is a 14-pounder called the Hammer. He bowls with a right-handed hook that moves down the lane very quickly. 

Croatia defeated England, 2-1, and will face France in the World Cup final.  Down a goal at halftime, the underdog Croatians went ahead during extra time when Mario Mandzukic scored the game winner. AP reporter Donald Blum wrote: “Football will not be coming home to England, and there will be no title to match the 1966 triumph at Wembley Stadium. Harry Kane & Co. will deal with the same disappointment that felled Shearer and Platt, Gazza and Wazza, Beckham and Gerrard.”  Great Britain’s best player a half-century ago, George Best, who played for Manchester United for 11 years beginning in 1963, competed for Northern Ireland in international competition rather than England.  Thirty years later, David Beckham had an equally acclaimed 11-year career with Manchester United but an undistinguished World Cup career.  In a New Yorker article entitled “Goal-Oriented,” Leo Robson wrote that during the Middle Ages English monarchs had sought unsuccessfully to ban games because they often led to violence between villages.  

In Richard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” Lou Lynch ruminates on writing his autobiography, despite having lived an outwardly undistinguished life: “I’ve written far more than I expected to, having underestimated the tug of the past, the intoxication of memory, the attraction of explaining myself to, well, myself.”

 photo by Chris Daly

Johnny Hickman; photo by Lorraine Shearer

Cracker fans Lorraine, Jinbo, Marianne, Missy

Performing at Valpo’s Central Park amphitheater, Cracker was in great form and played an awesome 90-minute set, beginning with “King of Bakersfield.”  Performing with David Lowery and Johnny Hickman were a keyboardist and fiddle player in addition to a drummer and bass guitarist. I ran into Cracker fans Lorraine Shearer and Marianne and Missy Brush right away and positioned my chair next to where they’d deposited their cooler.  For “Low,” “Teen Angst,” and “Euro-Trash Girl”  I joined them at the front of the stage.  Guitar player Johnny Hickman was beyond charismatic and often looked our way and winked.  Marianne was wearing an ETG t-shirt, standing for “Euro-Trash Girl,” and Missy was dancing uninhibitedly during virtually every number.  After the show band members found time to say hey before heading off to a gig at the Hard Rock Café in Pittsburgh.

Marianne: "Our new friend Brian, Cracker bass player"

Dave Serynek sat next to me and another former student, Chris Daly, said hello and remembered Ron Cohen.  When I told Chris I’d seen Cracker about ten times (including at Hobart Jaycee Fest, Valpo’s Popcorn Festival, and  two Cracker Campouts in California), he replied, “You were always into music.”  After I asked him how he spelled his last name, I remembered that he’d written an article published in my “Latinos in the Calumet Region” Shavings (volume 13, 1987).  Titled “Learn from Grandma,” it contained this information:

  Rose, a waitress at John’s Pizzeria in Griffith, was born in the Region.  Her father was born near Mexico City and her mother is from El Paso.  Rose is married and has three children.  “I plan on teaching them Spanish and on bringing them up in a strong family background,”she said.  “What else they pick up, they’ll have to learn from grandma.”

Chris took a selfie of us and sent it to Jeff Walsdorf, asking, “Recognize this dude?  He went walking behind me at the Cracker concert and I caught him out of the corner of my eye.  Went and chased him down.  He told me he’d just been with Dr. Cohen [finalizing plans for a third edition of ‘Gary: A Pictorial History’].”Walsdorf replied: “I was just thinking about Dr. Cohen the other day.”

Our neighbor, semi-retired Roman Catholic priest Father George, has been saying Sunday mass at  Holy Angels Cathedral, whose origins date to 1906, the year of Gary’s birth. The first parishioners were mainly Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European, while the present congregation is primary African American and Puerto Rican.  The present Gothic Revival house of worship was built during the late 1940s.  George told me he’s been reading up the city’s church history in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”