Lash Out

“I can feel it on the back of my tongue
All of the words getting trapped in my lungs
Heavy like a stone, waiting for the river to run
I wanna lash out”

         Alice Merton, “Lash Out”

In 2017 German-born Canadian Alice Merton scored an international hit with “No Roots.” I like her more recent “Lash Out” even better.  I once had a short fuse.  Now I claim to be “mellow Jimbo,” and Toni just snickers, unerringly aware of my inner thoughts. Every once in a while, I need to give vent to the frustration and lash out, often with a loud “goddammit,” as when the computer is giving me trouble right before I want to leave school.  The first two lines of “No Roots” go:
                    I like digging holes and hiding things inside them
                    When I'll grow old I hope I won't forget to find them

When we were kids, Terry Jenkins and I buried a bottle containing private thoughts in his side yard, hoping someone would come upon it years later. Three years ago, we passed by the site on a tour of our old Fort Washington haunts.  I have no idea what we might have written.

 Maria McGrath at Dickinson College in carlyle, PA, alma mater of Pres. James Buchanan

I told Terry and Gayle Jenkins about meeting food historian Maria McGrath, a professor at Bucks County Community College and daughter of Upper Dublin classmate Susan Floyd, in Montreal at the Oral History Association conference, first at her session on “Queer Voices, Queer Lives,” then at a reception with Anne Balay and her Haverford student Phil Reid. Since then Maria and I have exchanged several emails.  For example, I wrote:

 I  thoroughly enjoyed your excellent paper on Bloodroot Restaurant and the opportunity to talk with you at the conference diversity reception.  What an unexpected and delightful experience, especially since you got to meet Anne Balay, whom I’m so proud to have been part of her scholarly growth.  Here are two books that I recommend if you haven’t read them:Howard Markel’s recently published “The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek” is absolutely fascinating (the brothers would turn over in their graves at Kelloggs now selling sugar-coated cereals).Harvey Greene’s “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, 1915-1945” has wonderful social history material, and the chapter on the food revolution of the 1920s was the basis for an entire lecture in my Twenties course.  By the way, one of my friends in school was Eddie Piszek, whose dad founded Mrs. Paul’s frozen foods.  He’s from Port Richmond, the same Polish neighborhood in Philly my wife Toni is from and started out peddling crab cakes. They lived in a mansion off Pennsylvania Avenue between Fort Washington and East Oreland, and the Piszek chauffeur took Eddie and me to U.D. basketball games before we could drive.

She replied:   

  I'm so pleased that you were able to attend my talk and that we could hang out later that evening. Anne is a fascinating person, I certainly hope someone hires her soon. As far as I can tell, she is a real scholarly "catch."  I've read other Harvey Greene books, but not the one on Everyday Life. I will have to look that one and your other recommendation up.  Make sure you let me know when you are in Philly area. We will have to have a multi-generational reunion. Best, Maria 

Don Cornelius; below, Barry White singing "I Can't Get Enough of You, Baby"

Like Anne, Maria would be a good scholarly catch, especially after the publication of her forthcoming book “Food for Dissent: Natural Food Politics and Cultures Since the 1960s.”  During our two-hour conversation in Montreal, she mentioned learning dance moves on “Soul Train” that she still uses.  I wrote back:

  Chicagoan Don Cornelius started “Soul Train” and TV doesn’t get any better than seeing Stevie Wonder singing "Superstition" or Barry White (“the world’s sexiest fat man”) perform with “Soul Train” dancers  in the background. I would love to see you again in Philadelphia.  Terry Jenkins and I talked about going to a Phillies game with your dad last summer, but the only time the Cubs came to Philadelphia was late August, a bad time for my son Dave to come since he was already in school and coaching tennis.  Terry and Gayle were excited when I told them about meeting you.  I claimed I was a little reticent, wanting to get to know you as a history colleague and not just a friend’s daughter, but when I think about our long chat, I guess the “real Jimbo” came out, as Terry would say.

I recall describing a visit to IU’s Kinsey sex institute, lashing out at IUN’s “old boys” who cheated Anne Balay of tenure, and describing a block party in Miller that terry and Gayle attended and Dave’s band Voodoo Chili played at where an over-exuberant dancer bumped against me and her teeth drew blood from my forehead.

On the radio I heard “A Million to One” by Jimmy Charles. The summer of 1962, when I met Toni, “A Million to One” was playing on my 1956 Buick car radio the night before I was to return to Bucknell for my junior year.  We got out of the car and danced to the lament, performed in Jimmy’s distinctive crying style, which begins:

A million to one
That's what our folks think about this love of ours
A million to one
They say that our love will fade like yesterday's flowers
They're betting everything that our love won't survive

At the time Toni was Catholic and I was Lutheran, and both our mothers were leery of the romance and skeptical that we’d stay in touch. Well, we did, often long distance, fell in love, and beat the odds. Two years earlier, I had said goodbye to my summer girlfriend, said goodbye, and never looked back.

 James Dye

At the bequest of IU’s Bicentennial Committee I interviewed former IU trustee James Dye, 87, a retired builder and large university donor. Since virtually the entire Instructional Media Center staff was at a conference downstate, the camera person was late arriving and we had to halt twice because of a low battery.  It was maddening, but I didn’t lash out at the culprits who didn’t check the battery and then went to the wrong room.  Dye didn’t complain and the interruptions were a blessing in disguise, as Steve took the opportunity to inform him about the Archives and I showed him the Rev. Robert Lowery library study area that the James and Betty Dye Foundation funded.  It also offers scholarships to many IUN students. Like Bernie Konrady Jr., founder of Konrady Plastics, Dye was an imaginative entrepreneur who built his first house virtually by himself at age 20.  

Manager for IU’s football and basketball teams in the early 1950s, Dye recalled a Sigma Chi fraternity party that lasted 48 hours after the Hoosiers beat Notre Dame and then Kansas for the 1953 NCAA championship. He joked that IU probably gave him an honorary degree for attending so many losing gridiron contests. His company built Mansards Apartments in Griffith where Toni and I played tennis and Dye competed with former Gary mayor George Chacharis and his driver John Diamond.  I kept silent when Dye, a fiscal conservative expressed admiration for Purdue president Mitch Daniels, who seems to care more about profits than academic freedom.  He praised IUN past IUN chancellors Dan Orescanin and Peggy Elliott and asked me about Chancellor Lowe. I lauded Lowe’s participation in community affairs, History Department functions, and IUN student functions.

 Lowe at Chancellor's forum Oct. 17, 2018; below, controlled burn in Miller; photos by Kyle Telechan 

An editor of IU’s Bicentennial magazine, “IU200,” is preparing an article about Red Scare victims, including Saul Maloff, an IUN English professor once active in an organization later deemed a communist front group.  I sent her Paul Kern and my history of IUN that includes an interview with then-director Jack Buehner, who received orders from Bloomington not to renew Maloff’s contract at a time when IU administrators basically controlled regional campuses.  Buehner told me:

  Under pressure from IU president Herman Wells and Trustee Ray Thomas, I asked Saul Maloff, a marvelous conversationalist, to tell me straight out the full story so that I’d know how to defend him. He refused to level with me.  I’m sure he had his reasons, but I was not prepared to go to bat for him on blind faith alone.  I deserved to know what I was defending.  It was a very upsetting experience.  Maloff’s wife had a nervous breakdown.  It was an infringement of academic freedom, but the only one that occurred under me.

During this time Herman Wells was taking heat for defending sex therapist Alfred Kinsey and bent on desegregating the campus, so he already had his hands full dealing with disgruntled trustees and legislators on those fronts and thus made defending accused communist sympathizers a lower priority.  

The Bicentennial magazine editor hoped I’d consider contributing an article. I’m thinking of updating one written 20 years ago entitled, “The Professor Wore a Cowboy Hat (and nothing else): Ethical Issues in handling Matters of Sex in Institutional Oral Histories: IU Northwest as a Case Study.”  It centered on four male professors accused of sexual indiscretions, two with coeds, who got off lightly, the others involving alleged gay activity were treated more severely and, in one case, with tragic consequences.  I wrote about the first two, which became cause celebresbut not the two others, which were hushed up and not public knowledge.  During the 1970s virtually all History colleagues of my generation got divorced and later married former students – albeit the women well into their 20s who almost always initiated the relationship.  Since then, with a much older faculty, I presume that less student-teacher sex takes place, but discrimination against LGBTQs remains troublesome. Gay faculty who didn’t remain in the until securing tenure were likely not retained, with Anne Balay’s case being the most glaring example.

Anne Balay in truckers parade over Mackinac Bridge

This from Jim Spicer:

  The year is 2020 and the United States has elected the first woman as well as the first Jewish president, Susan Goldstein. She calls up her mother a few weeks after Election Day and says: "So, Mom, I assume you'll be coming to my inauguration?"
"I don't think so. It's a ten hour drive, your father isn't as young as he used to be, and my arthritis is acting up again."
"Don't worry about it Mom, I'll send Air Force One to pick you up and take you home, and a limousine will pick you up at your door."
"I don't know, everybody will be so fancy-schmaltzy, what on earth would I wear?"
Susan replies, "I'll make sure you have a wonderful gown custom-made by the best designer in New York."
"Honey,"Mom complains,"you know I can't eat those rich foods you and your friends like to eat."
The President Elect says, "Don't worry Mom. The entire affair is going to be handled by the best caterer in New York; kosher all the way. Mom, I really want you to come."
So Mom reluctantly agrees and on January 20, 202 Susan Goldstein is being sworn in as President of the United States. In the front row sits the new President's mother, who leans over to a senator sitting next to her and says, "You see that woman over there with her hand on the Torah, becoming President of the United States?"The Senator whispers back, "Yes, I do."
Mom says proudly, "Her brother is a doctor."

In a position round to determine first place in my senior bowling league, the Electrical Engineers took two games and series from Just Friends, whose team includes two mid-Fifties Gary Horace Mann graduates. I had trouble picking up spares but rolled my average thanks to a two-bagger and a turkey (three strikes in a row).  In the only close game, opponent Dennis Cavanaugh struck out, Frank Shufran needed a mark for us to win.  He picked up a ten-pin (often difficult for him) for a spare and the game.  Miket Wardell had all sorts of trouble for 20 frames but rebounded with a 209.  During the first 2 games he exhibited facial and body expressions ranging from anger to bewilderment but unlike me in that situation, no profanities.  The week before, Dick Maloney, so blind teammates had to tell him which pins remained standing after his first shot, bowled well over average against the same team.

Nicked myself shaving this morning, right under my lip, something that rarely happens with anymore with modern blades. It bled like a sonuvabitch – serves me right for shaving first thing in the morning.