“Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control people’s minds.” Thurgood Marshall
William E. Scott, "Maker of Goblins"; "Night Turtle Fishing in Haiti"
Examining past Traces magazines in search of articles on Northwest Indiana, I came across Arthur S. Meyers’ “Democracy in the Making: Max Bretten and Hammond’s Beth-El Open Forum” in the Winter 1996 issue. Founded in 1924, the Beth-El Open Forum hosted such distinguished speakers as civil rights advocates W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson. That sameTraces issue contained Indianapolis museum curator Harriet G. Warkel’s “A Shared Heritage: The Art of William E. Scott, John W. Hardrick, and Hale A. Woodruff.” The three African Americans flourished during the New Negro movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Scott was a renown muralist, Hardrick primarily a portraitist, and Woodriff an Early American Modernist influenced by Cezanne and Picasso, but all three were wary of labels and interested in capturing the dignity of black working class subjects.
John W. Hardrick, "Little Brown Girl"; "Xenia Goodloe"
I took the 2016 Corolla in for a 35,000-mile check-up and was surprised that it did not require an oil change, an operation that at one time was performed every 3,000 miles. Now it’s either after 12 months or 10,000 miles. I was in and out in 30 minutes, as the main task was tire rotation. The charge was $19.95 for .4 hours labor.
above, Veronica Napoli; below, The Unwonted, Eric Roldan fifth from left
“Windy Indy,” curated by Ish Muhammad, opened at Gardner Center in Miller. On hand were John Cain,executive director of South Shore Arts, who first hosted the exhibit at the Munster Center. John introduced me to Valparaiso University geography professor Michael Longan, who is in charge of VU’s Urban Studies minor. I told him grandson James would be visiting VU’s campus the next day and I’d be speaking in Sociologist Mary Kate Blake’s class in April. Having written an historical essay for the exhibit booklet and attended the “Windy Indy” show in Munster, I was familiar with the works on display but delighted to meet several artists, including members of the Unwonted Collective Eric Roldan and Veronica Napoli, an IUN grad. I told Bobby Farag that recent Archives visitor Peter Mandich Jr. (son of a former Gary mayor) would soon be publishing a book on golf courses. Mandich once worked for Farag when he managed a golf course.
I was able to catch most of the IUN men’s basketball game, an exciting one-point win over Silver Lake College. Two transfer students from Illinois Central College sparked the comeback victory, Chris Dixon-Williams with 16 points and Chris Bolden, whose three-point shot from the corner put the Redhawks ahead late in the game. To my surprise someone named Eric Roldan was on the Redhawks bench, an assistant to Coach Javier Heridia. He resembled the Unwonted Collective artist enough for me to bring up the Gardner Center exhibit only to get a puzzled look in return. After the game Mary Lee thanked me for having given her “Gary: A Pictorial History.” I asked Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Alexis Montevirgen, who at halftime had scooped out the popcorn I’d paid a dollar for, whether that was part of his job description. Earlier, I’d used the same line when assistant athletic director Anna Villanueva was mopping up someone’s spilled drink with towels.
above, Coach Roldan; below, artist Roldan
I read quite a few novels after graduating from high school in 1960 and subsequent summers while home from Bucknell. Prior to that, the only books I can recall reading on my own were “Catcher in the Rye” and “Peyton Place.” Best sellers in 1959 that I eventually read included “Exodus” by Leon Uris, “Hawaii “by James Michener, “Naked Lunch” by William Burroughs, and “Advise and Consent” a political novel by Allen Drury. The latter centered on Senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell, who allegedly once had a connection to the Communist Party (a character named Leffingwell appears in the best-selling novel of 1906, “Coniston” by American Winston Churchill). In addition, to discovering John Steinbeck, I enjoyed 1960 novels “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and John Updike’s “Rabbit Run.” The following year, J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” was the rage on college campuses.
My first exposure to Calumet Region humorist Jean Shepherd was when Ray Smock gave me “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash” in 1970 upon learning I’d be teaching in Gary. In “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters” is Shepherd’s description of the air Hammond residents breathed: “The molten egg smells of the Grasselli Chemical Works mingled with the swamp-gas exhalations of the Sinclair refining plant and the smoldering, metallic miasmas of the blast furnace dust.” In my Fifties Steel Shavings(volume 23, 1994) I included this excerpt from “The Star-Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski”:
A prime universal belief among my peers was that the girls in the next town, East Chicago, were fantastic and that the most fantastic of all were Polish girls. Sometimes when Flick got his old man’s car, we’d go to East Chicago to ride around with the windows open just lookingat Polish girls walking around the streets. We’d holler out at them and ride around and around the block, jabbing each other in the ribs, swigging Nehi orange, gulping down White Castle hamburgers and blasting the horn. We never actually talked to a girl, of course, or really got near one, we just hollered, gunned the motor and stared.
In high school I often went cruisingaround Philadelphia's southern suburbs
in cars usually driven by Bob Reller, Skip Pollard or Pete Drake. Often we’d check out Montgomeryville Mart, a giant flea market and end up at a drive-in restaurant, where we’d admire the waitresses and hope to run into girls. Our next town, Ambler, PA, provided occasional sightings of hot Italian girls we’d fantasize about and speculate about bra size and how far they’d go when on a date. 
After buying doughnuts at Jewel and fixing breakfast Sunday, I did laundry and watched the 76ers defeat the L.A. Lakers, and LeBron James, 143-120, as MVP candidate Joel Embiid of Cameroon scored 37 points. Recent acquisition Tobias Harris added 22 and JJ Redick 21, mainly on deadly 3-point shots. That night I stayed up for most the Grammys, which featured an emotional appearance by Michelle Obama. I particularly enjoyed songs by Lady Gaga and Kacey Musgraves, whom I hadn’t seen before, and performances by Dolly Parton (who sang “9 to 5” with Miley Cyrus) and Diana Ross on her seventy-fifth birthday. Toni and I saw Ross with the Supremes while at the University of Maryland; Stevie Wonder was the warm-up act. Critics harped on Jennifer Lopez leading the Motown tribute, but the whole point of the Motown sound was to accentuate a shared heritage and create soulful music for all people. Smokey Robinson came to her defense.
Tyrell Anderson at Union Station
I went to an Art in Focus talk at the Munster Center, as Decay Devils founder Tyrell Anderson spoke of his group’s history and work beautifying Union Station in Gary. Introducing Anderson, John Cain read this paragraph from my “Gary Haunts” exhibit essay:
Gary’s haunts lie dormant near Lake Michigan and steel mills responsible for their creation, sometimes inhabited by the homeless and visited by curiosity seekers and photographers fascinated by urban ruins. Still eerily beautiful, they are representative of the grand illusions of early twentieth-century city builders and symptomatic of a throw-away society with a short historical memory. Six decades after its birth in 1906, victimized by corporate greed, federal neglect, race tensions, and the allure of suburban living, Gary underwent middle-class flight, business disinvestment, and the erosion of its tax base.
Anderson was inspired by developments that have taken place in downtown Detroit. The Decay Devils are also concentrating on sprucing up area adjacent to Union Station, including Gateway Park, where the Gary Land Company Building sits, Gary’s first permanent structure. In the audience I spotted Jan Trusty, who agreed to donate husband Lance Trusty’s papers to the Archives. After the interesting talk we visited the exhibit, which had just opened. Particularly moving was a photo of the once-grand Palace Theater in ruins. Cain recalled sitting in the balcony Saturdays eating giant Nestle’s candy bars. I told John that Henry Farag’s “The Signal” contains colorful anecdotes from those years about going to the movies: In a chapter titled “Come Go With Me” he wrote:
The Palace Theatre at 8th and Broadway was a gothic, Moorish, heavenly place with surreal stars twinkling over a lighted blue ceiling. Sunday afternoons it was a gathering place for teens – the adults came in the evening. Hoosier James Dean, star of Rebel without a Cause,” was becoming my generation’s symbol of undefined alienation. The musical movies said the most to us, however, like “The Girl Can’t Help It” with Little Richard or Alan Freed features. In one movie or another, we saw Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, the Platters, the Treniers, and many more. There were two movies, sometimes three – the latter usually being Westerns. At this point we’d make the usher’s life miserable.
John Cain, who curated the exhibit, used a wonderful 1993Camilo Vergara photo of Gary’s Blackstone Hotel at Fifth and Madison from the Calumet Regional Archives collection. In my “Gary Haunts” brochure essay I wrote:
A quarter-century ago, Peruvian-born photographer Camilo Vergara, first introduced to Gary’s ”Haunts” while attending Notre Dame, invited me on one of his frequent excursions that provided material for “The New American Ghetto” (1995), “American Ruins” (1999), and other acclaimed publications. Making selections for our “Gary: A Pictorial History,” Ronald Cohen and I included shots Vergara took of City Methodist Church, the Blackstone Building at Fifth and Madison (titled “Survivor in a tough city” but subsequently demolished), children playing basketball among the ruins of a gas station (one begged Camilo to let him change into his Michael Jordan jersey), a “Donate Plasma TODAY!” billboard on a vacant corner of Fifteenth and Monroe, and a photo display of Martin Luther King in murals located in a dozen inner cities adorning Four Brothers Market at 1139 East 21stAvenue, which Vergara has revisited on almost all of his forays into Gary. Vergara initially wanted them placed inside City Methodist Church, but community organizer Samuel A. Love and I convinced him to agree to a traveling exhibit. Stops included the former site of Stewart Settlement House.
If City Methodist is refurbished and made part of a ruins garden, I’ll ask Vergara if we can have a permanent photo display of his shots of Martin Luther King in murals.
above, John Cain; below, ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen
VU Sociology professor Mary Kate Blake asked for suggestions on where to take students on their Gary tour, in addition to Union Station and the downtown library. I told her that both those stops were good ideas and to check out Flex Maldonado’s mural on the history of Gary near the library’s Indiana Room. She’s planning to go to Miller, and I suggested they check out the Aquatorium with statues honoring Octave Chanute and the Tuskegee Airmen. She wanted suggestions for lunch, so I called up the ArtHouse: A Social Kitchen, located near RailCat Stadium. Old friend Scott Williams answered. The Portage City Councilman and wife Vickie are evidently working there as managers or volunteers. Summers, they take in several RailCat baseball players. While ArtHouse doesn’t have a restaurant per se, Scott offered to hire a caterer who’d prepare a meal for the 20-25 visitors. I passed the information along to Mary Kate. Described as a culinary incubator/art gallery, ArtHouse was funded in part through a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.
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