Hammond Doings

“Lead me back to the place I'm from
Past the farms and debris
You can see it from the highlands
As you roam 'long the range”

         “Come to the City,” The War on Drugs

While doing research in the Archives for a Hammond book similar to Jerry Davich’s “Lost Gary,” Times reporter Joseph Pete, seeking anecdotes, asked me for memories of Gary’s neighbor city.  After noting that the late historian Lance Trusty was the leading expert, I suggested he consult historian Joseph C. Biggot’s essay in “The Encyclopedia of Chicago,” which traces Hammond’s origins to Ernest Hohman’s stagecoach stop during the 1850s and George H. Hammond’s post-Civil War slaughterhouse.  I told him of paying 20 dollars at the grand old Parthenon Theater (in 1974, seven years before it closed) to watch a closed-circuit direct feed from Kinshasa, Zaire, of challenger Muhammad Ali defeating undefeated heavyweight champ George Foreman with his so-called rope-a-dope strategy.  Beforehand, a rowdy audience cheered and jeered during a softcore porn movie and openly made bets on the fight.  Around then I attended a talk by Hammond native Jean Shepherd at Purdue Cal, who beforehand was presented with a dozen White Castle sliders. At the Hammond Civic Center Phil and Dave played indoor soccer games, coached by Bob Laramie.  

In 1979, while I was faculty adviser to IUN’s Northwest Phoenix, the editors ran excerpts of Economics professor Leslie Singer’s report commissioned by the city of Hammond about its declining downtown, recommending that steps be taken to counteract perceptions of the city as predominantly black.  Mike Nommensen produced a ribald cartoon purporting to show Singer telling an African American baby, “Get out of town.”  At the last minute, after threats from Singer’s SPEA dean John Hunger, the editors deleted the cartoon.

I showed Joseph Pete my Eighties Steel Shavings(volume 28, 2007) that contains Lance Trusty’s “End of an Era: The 1980’s in the Calumet.”  The population of Hammond, “seemingly the least changed city in the Calumet,” Trusty wrote, “dropped from 93,714 to 84,000”and lost “its downtown and most of its industrial base.”:

  State Street resembled a devastated European city of 1945. Some life remained on Hohman Avenue, even after Goldblatt’s, the very heart and soul of old Hammond, closed. The Hammond Timesescaped to Munster and became The Times of somewhere, and NIPSCO, after a major rebuilding, moved its engineering and planning divisions to a vacant insurance building in Merrillville.  Downtown’s chief tenants were the growing St. Margaret Hospital Complex, the First Baptist Church, NIPSCO’s corporate headquarters, banks, and one bustling retailer, the Army & Navy Store.  The old downtown had gone the way of the trolley car and the buggy whip.

In an editor’s note to volume 28 I wrote: 

  Celebrating its centennial in 1984, Hammond had its first Republican mayor in 30 years.  Thomas M. McDermott had handily defeated Edward Raskosky after ridiculing the incumbent’s “urban renewal” efforts to convert the former Goldblatt’s, in the challenger’s words, into “the world’s largest flea market.”  Post-Tribunepolitical reporter Jim Proctor labeled Hammond a “wrinkled old city with a dead downtown and a declining population.”

The Eighties Shavings, titled “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life,” includes personal accounts of the tragic 1982 Cline Avenue Bridge ramp extension accident that resulted in 13 deaths and 17 serious injuries.  Ryan Cramer wrote:

  My mother was in the backyard of our small house in north Hammond when she heard a loud boom, followed by sounds of fire trucks and police sirens.  Then she spotted helicopters in the air.  “I remember it like yesterday,”she declared a quarter-century later. From TV she learned that the Cline Avenue extension had collapsed like a row of dominoes.  She knew one of the victims.

IUN student Andrew Laurinec wrote “Snowing Soap Flakes”: 

  My family lived in the Robertsdale neighborhood of north Hammond nestled between a popcorn factory, Lever Brothers, and the Amoco refinery.  Depending on the wind direction, you’d either smell popcorn, soap or whatever kind of noxious gas the oil plant was burning off at the time.  Sometimes at night Lever brothers would release a cloud of smoke and God knows what else into the air.  It was not unusual to see people washing their cars early in the morning. After all, there was already soap on their car.

1984 Hammond Clark graduate Jane Shimala recalled memorable moments during her largely unsupervised teen years:

  My first year at Clark I met Mary Anne, whose barren home life was similar to mine. She babysat for three children, and I usually kept her company.  We had free reign of the house and sometimes cooked, watch movies, and talked on the phone. One day we took the parents’ beautiful white Cadillac for a joy ride.  Though just 14, I had practiced my driving skills with my father in a parking lot, so I took the wheel.  We cruised up and down 119^thStreet with the radio blasting “Like a Virgin” by Madonna.  With the kids in the back seat I managed to go down several one-way streets the wrong way. Several senior citizens yelled at me, but we didn’t run into any police.  At that age we thought we were invincible, and that day we were.

  Two years later, my parents went away for the weekend, leaving the house to me, my 17-year-old dropout brother, and his live-in girlfriend Karen.  Of course, we threw a big party. The month before, Jim had been in a terrible car accident and suffered a collapsed lung.  During the party Karen pushed him down the stairs, and next thing I knew paramedics were in the house.  We assured them Jim was fine and that they could be on their way. Looking to retaliate, I found Karen passed out on the front lawn.  Before she crashed, she managed to throw a brick through the windshield of Mary Anne’s boyfriend.

Hammond native Melissa described herself as a “rock and roll girl” and told IUN student David Vanette:

  In 1981 I was all of 14 when I first got stoned.  Every now and again I’d go to school, but, really, I just stopped by when my mom dropped me off. I got a good view of the hallway leading to the back exit, and that was about it.  I got kicked out of Clark and sent to Hammond High, high being the key word. Not that I was getting high all the time, but a large majority.  It was fun, and there wasn’t really anything else to do in Hammond.  So I starting out small time smoking weed.  That’s about as far as it got.  Tripped on acid once in a while, but that was rare. I just enjoyed the Roller Dome skating rink and hanging out with friends.

Roller Dome in heyday and in last incarnation

Built in 1952, the Roller Dome on 730 Gostlin Street featured a live organist playing various types of music on a Wurlitzer, depending on the audience.  It closed in 2008 and reopened for a few years as an indoor soccer facility.1984 Hammond Clark graduate Jane 

 Ray Emory, 97, at Pearl Harbor ceremony

Despite the numerous commemorations resulting from World War II navy vet George H. W. Bush’s death, Pearl Harbor Day passed almost unnoticed, as public memory fades. Heather Nauert, former FOX commentator selected by Trump to be U.N. Ambassador, claimed our alliance with Germany dated back to D-Day.  The 1941 Japanese attack motivated Bush to become a navy pilot right out of high school.  Just 20 survivors attended the ceremony on Oahu near where five battleships sank and where over two thousand sailors lost their lives. 

At Chesterton library I checked out two early CDs by The War on Drugs, who lived in the Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood when recording them. I returned Anne Tyler’s “Vinegar Girl,” praised by” People for its irresistible humanity and unerring “ear and eye for familial give-and-take.” Francine Prose wrote: “Anne Tyler’s novels are invitations to spend time in the houses of the Baltimore neighborhood that she built – house by house, block by block – over her long and bright career.”

Ray Smock’s latest, titled, “If I Was a President and the Congress Called My Name” begins:

    It was 1973 in the middle of the Watergate Scandal that Paul Simon’s song “Loves Me Like a Rock” made it to number 2 on the pop charts. It captured the disillusionment and the angst of those years, when we discovered that our president was a crook. The third verse of the song hit me like a rock on the head at the time. It seemed so perfect. Now, 45 years later, Simon’s song still resonates.

If I was a president
And the Congress called my name
I said now who do, who do you think you're fooling?
Who do you think you're fooling?
I got the presidential seal
I got the presidential podium
And my momma she loves me
She loves me
She gets down on her knees and hugs me
She loves me like a rock
She'd love me like the rock of ages.

We all knew that Richard Nixon was hiding behind the presidential seal. He and his lawyers kept using the concept of “executive privilege,” to avoid complying with the investigations of special prosecutors and the House Judiciary Committee and the Supreme Court, that eventually brought him down. When I heard the song in those days, I always pictured Nixon hiding behind the presidential podium, peaking out to see if anyone was after him. Only a mother’s love could save him or forgive him.

  President Donald J. Trump is about to have several powerful entities call his name. Starting in January, Congress, in the guise of several major House committees, could call his name, and Trump, no doubt, will hold up the Presidential Seal and hope it has the power of Kryptonite to weaken the resolve of Congress to take him on. But will the Presidential Seal and the Presidential Podium be enough to stop the investigations of Special Counsel Robert Mueller? Or will Trump be able to ward off prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and other places, where investigations and lawsuits are pending?

  Each day, it seems, we learn new sordid details. A month after Trump’s inauguration, the Saudi government paid for 500 rooms at the Trump Hotel in DC for a program to bring U.S. servicemen and women to DC. Once in the luxury hotel the guest were sent to Capitol Hill to lobby against a bill the Saudis opposed. The Trump Hotel, owned by the president, netted $270,000 for this program. No one has charged the president with violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, where accepting anything of value from a foreign government is forbidden. But add this to the list of high crimes and misdemeanors that could become Articles of Impeachment in 2019.

At the condo Becca and two friends made lemon mousse for a Chesterton French class assignment with Angie’s assistance.  Members of the choral group Sandpipers, they frequently broke out in song.  I was nearby and occasionally intermingled with them. I’d love to interview them about their lives, seemingly so different from Hammond teens in the 1980s. 

 Bears defense celebrates, USA Today photo

Weekend sports highlights include IU’s one-point roundball win over Louisville and Chicago’s upset of the L.A. Rams, 15-6, thanks to brilliant play by a Vic Fangio-coached defense and despite a poor day for QB Mitch Trubisky.  After eight dismal seasons missing the playoffs the Bears are finally earning their reputation as “Monsters of the Midway.”  Sunday we attended the Memorial Opera House matinee of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” then dined at Pesto’s.  Leftovers from my “rather large”(to quote from the menu, which didn’t do it justice) serving of lasagna should be good for several meals.  Saying hello from a nearby table was bridge buddy Barbara Stroud, who introduced me to two grandchildren attending VU.

 Tom Rea and Chuck Tomes

Duplicate bridge player Chuck Tomes, a former Math teacher whom I first met when he umpired Porter Acres softball games, has scored over 70 percent with several partners. Barb Walczak’s Newsletter congratulated Tom Rea and Tomes on a 72.69% at Charlie Halberstadt’s Wednesday Valpo game at Banta Senior Center.  Tomes recalled: “We plussed 18 of 27 boards, avoided major mistakes, got a lot of breaks, and had a lot of laughs.  Our Mexican two-Diamond opener got us a great contract for a top board.”  Note: a Mexican (Romex Bidding System) two-Diamond opener generally indicates a strong, game-forcing hand, either balanced, with long Diamonds or with three strong suits and either a void or a singleton.