Women's Place

“When the working day is done

Oh, girls they wanna have fun”

         Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

In 1983 Cyndi Lauper, now 66 ,burst onto the American music scene with a debut solo album, “She’s So Unusual,” that contained four top-five hits, “Time after Time,” “She Bop,” “All Through the Night,” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” “She Bob” gained notoriety from mention of “Blue Boy,” a gay porn magazine, and contained these lyrics:

Hey, hey they say I better get a chaperon
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
Hey, I won't worry, and I won't fret
Ain't no law against it yet, oh she bop, she bop

An advocate for LGBT rights, Lauper won a Tony Award in 2013 for composing the score for “Kinky Boots,” which Toni and I enjoyed on stage in Chicago.

Grand Rapids, MI, was the latest venue for Trump’s rant-fest, as he baselessly claimed total exoneration of collusion charges and threatened to close the Mexican border totally due to yet another alleged caravan of immigrants from Central America seeking asylum.  Knowing no Lanes would be attending, I was curious when I received a jpeg from Alissa titled Trump rally.  She wrote: “So many hateful idiots in red hats out today. But proud so see the resistance is strong in Michigan.”  One sign greeting Trump read, “Keep your hate outta my state.”

For at least a hundred years American popular culture has been youth-oriented. During the 1920s high school girls emulated the Flappers and “It Girl” starlets in films and popular magazines. When women entered the work force in large numbers during wartime, government propaganda featured the slogan “For the Duration,” a double-edged message that implied they’d give up their jobs and become housewives once the war was won. Public health officials worried about unsupervised “latch Key” kids.  Teenage girls readily found work in pool halls, greasy spoon restaurants, and bowling alleys where  men, their elders feared, were liable to prey on them. According to William K. Klingaman’s “The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942,” V-Girls (Victory Girls) as young as 12 dressed to look older and sought excitement from men in uniform.  After  ajourney across America, British-born observer Alistair Cook, reportedon the V-Girl phenomenonin “The American Home Front: 1941–1942”:

   To their families they are often known as high-spirited daughters full of the joy of life.  To the soldiers they are  known as broilers, dishes, bed-bunnies, popovers, free-wheelers, touchables, Susies, teasers, [and] free-lancers.

Among the consequences were a rash of war babies and a venereal disease epidemic. Prostitutes complained that V-Girls were horning in on their business.

 lesbian gets tattoo during World War II

Jackie Gross and Catherine Borsch arrested in 1943 for violating Chicago's cross-dressing ban

In “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America” Lillian Faderman wrote: “The social upheaval of the war threw off balance various areas of American life. Troubling questions of life and death confronted many young women directly for the first time, and ‘normality’ and concepts of sexual ‘morality’ were seen as far more complicated than they appear during more ordinary years.”  Geographical and social mobility enabled gay and lesbian experimentation and made easier opportunities for heterosexual relations as well. Wives whose husbands were overseas experienced loneliness but more freedom than any other time in their lives. Those who sought employment often, to paraphrase Cyndi Lauper, wanted to have fun after their working day was done. Some had been pressured into marrying their boyfriends before they went off to war and were not ready to settle down.

If war deprived servicemen of constant female companionship, it exposed them to fleshpots both stateside and abroad.  In his autobiography “Weasal” East Chicago native Louis Vasquez wrote about his amorous adventures with a hairdresser named Renee while in uniform in France. After I published the manuscript as a special issue of Steel Shavings,historian Archibald McKinlay embellished his adventures in a Timescolumn that infuriated me but that Vasquez apparently loved.  Titled “The Lamented Lover,” the article  revealed as much about the author’s imagination as the reality of Louis’ experiences.  McKinlay wrote:

 Renee had more on her mind than coiffures.  She helped him with his French and a great deal more.  Weasal became the war’s first literal P.O.L.: prisoner of live.  After de-flowering the over-age altar boy, Renee held Weasal virtually incommunicado for a solid week.  She gave him a crash graduate course in French, exploring empirically the complete etymology of the term amour, with special emphasis on lab work. While his friend Clark stumbled around Le Mans using hand signals, Renee plumbed the very depths of Weasal’s ability to learn.

 When Weasal finally broke loose from Renee, he became the second coming of Don Juan.  He tore a swath through Gaul that made Sherman’s march to the sea seem like a parade and inspired the French imploration “pour l’amour de Belette!” When he was shipped home,  throughout France grateful females paused for 30 seconds and lay motionless in their beds with arms outstretched in mute salute.

 Barbara Wisdom

Barbara Wisdom will report on “A Slave in the White House” during April’s book club meeting.  Employed in the White House beginning at age 10 during the James Madison administration, Paul Jennings wrote a memoir on which the book is based.    Jennings never mentioned his mother’s name, only that she was part native American and impregnated by a itinerant merchant. First Lady Dolley Madison’s father was a Quaker who sold his slaves, moved to Philadelphia, and subsequently went bankrupt.  A social climber, Dolley regarded him as a loser and had no scruples about exploiting slave labor when she married the much older Virginia politician regarded as the “Father of the Constitution.”

Anne Balay spoke at Smith College about her book on LGBTI long-haul truckers, “Semi Queer.”  She wrote:“I did my first book talk about Steel Closets, as a promising new scholar in the field of queer and labor studies, at Smith in 2014. This will then be my last talk as a scholar hoping to leverage myself into an academic career. I believe in the power and impact of my writing, and I will find a way to keep doing it, but academia can kiss my aging but always uppity ass.”  Anne is hoping to do a book about sex workers if she can find the time and resources. 

Leslie Mann and Megan Fox

What little I know about sex workers beyond the exploitation of immigrant women tricked into prostitution is that both in the past and the present there are those who turned tricks from time to time due to economic necessity or, more recently, worked for escort services to support themselves in college or to maintain a more affluent lifestyle.  In “This Is 40” (2012), one of my favorite movies, Megan Fox plays such a person, causing boutique owner Debbie (Leslie Mann) to believe her employee is stealing from her until Fox (Desi) admits that she admits to occasionally moonlighting as an escort.

Speaking to VU sociology professor Mary Kate Blake’s class about early Gary, I stressed that the “City of the Century” was both similar to other Calumet Region industrial cities undergoing rapid growth during the early twentieth century, such as Whiting, Hammond, and East Chicago, but that each had its own unique characteristics.  U.S. Steel’s half-planned “different type of company town” (from Pullman, Illinois) left unskilled immigrant laborers to fend for themselves on the southside, whose Red Light district, “the Patch,” contained over a hundred saloons, many with prostitutes on the second floor. A number of women began their path toward upward mobility by running boarding houses whose row-to-row cots sometimes were shared by two steelworkers on alternate12-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week shifts.

At least a half dozen students hailed from the Region. Being used to 75-minute classes at IUN, I was amazed how quickly the 50-minute class flew by.  I was peppered with questions about race-relations in the schools, mills, and neighborhoods. Someone asked about the Ku Klux Klan in Gary during the 1920s; students were familiar with its presence in Valpo and that the Klan almost purchased VU until the Lutheran Church rescued the nearly bankrupt institution. In Gary the hate group dared not operate openly but supported Republican mayor Floyd Williams, a segregationist.  I briefly discussed the 1927 Emerson School Strike and the 1974 steel industry consent decree, which compensated African-American workers for past discrimination and led to large numbers of women hiring in.  I promised to return in a week when they will have read my Eighties Steel Shavings.   In addition to discussing the drying up of industrial jobs, I’ll compare Hoosier stepchild Gary and Indianapolis under Mayor Richard Lugar (1968-1976), the lack of Gary home rule (weakening the power of mayors), and grapple with the role of race as an explanation for Gary’s decline.

James Wallace

  Toni Dickerson addresses group on lack of black IUN faculty, 2018; Times photo by Carmen McCollum

At a Diversity luncheon hosted by IUN director James Wallace I was seated next to one of the award recipients, Black Student Union (BSU) president Toni Dickerson.  A Social Work major, Toni (like my wife, named after her father) attended Marquette Elementary School in Miller, as did Phil and Dave until we became disgusted over the paddling of kids for minor offenses.  I told Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson how pleased I was that she will be speaking to Mary Kate Blake’s VU students next Friday when they tour Gary. It was great seeing former Arts and Sciences dean F.C. Richardson, honored for his role as BSU faculty adviser 50 years ago when a Black Studies program was established.  He gave me such a big hug that his name tag ended up on my sweater.  Ron Cohen nominated Richard Hatcher for an award and daughter Ragen, Second District state representative, made a pitch in support of an anti-hate crime bill that included gender identity.

left, Eric Degas; below, Chuck Degas

The featured speaker was NPR TV critic Eric Deggans, author of “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation” (2012), the subject he chose to discuss.  An Andrean and IU graduate whose father Chuck Deggans wrote a Post-Tribcolumn and hosted a radio show on WWCA called “Deggans Den,” Eric excelled that eliciting audience participation after showing media associations of white as good and black as evil and examples of situational racism. One clip involved a Minneapolis TV station claiming that Mayor Betsy Hodges flashed a gang sign while posing with community activist Navell Gordon, identified as a convicted felon.  Hodges had been critical of her city’s police, some of whom circulated the bogus story.  It reminded me that some years ago a nearby school district considered banning paraphernalia showing the IU logo since it was similar to a gang sign. IU caps wore at a certain angle were especially suspicious. 

Forgiveness

“While wallowing in my own self-pity, I suddenly pictured somebody with a whole lot more problems . . . . Paula Cooper.” Bill Pelke

 Bill Pelke and Paula Cooper

An address by Calumet Region native Bill Pelke, entitled “The Answer Is Love and Compassion for all of Humanity” and about his personal healing from a family tragedy, will kick off SPEA’s Public Affairs Month at IU Northwest. The founder of Journey of Hope . . . from Violence to Healing, Pelke spoke to a group of IUN students at my behest about ten years ago and was incredibly moving discussing a life-changing event.  In 1985 four young teenage girls went to the Glen Park home of Bill’s 78 year-old grandmother Ruth Pelke on the pretext of seeking Bible lessons.  Once inside, one of them struck her on the head with a vase. Then, they stabbed her over 30 times with a 12-inch butcher knife and left her dead on the floor, taking ten dollars and the keys to her car, which they ditched when it ran out of gas.  The following day, Bill’s father discovered the body lying in a pool of blood with the knife still in her.  Soon apprehended, the girls were found guilty and 15 year-old Paula Cooper, the supposed ringleader, sentenced to death by electrocution.    

A few months after listening again to the grisly details of how her beloved grandmother died at the sentencing hearing, Bill Pelke, a crane operator at Bethlehem Steel, broke down in tears and a vision came to him of his grandmother’s image with tears streaming down her face.  Bill next experienced a sudden epiphany.  As Pelke later wrote, “I knew those tears of Nana were tears of love and compassion for Paula and her family. And I knew Nana wouldn’t have wanted Paula to be put to death even though Paula had killed her.”  From that moment on, despite opposition from his own family, Bill Pelke dedicated his life to saving Paula’s and, beyond that, waging a worldwide campaign against capital punishment.  

 Paula in prison kitchen; Bill in Brussels

A petition to have Paula Cooper’s sentence reduced garnered over 2 million signatures, and Pope John Paul II made a personal appeal to Governor Robert Orr, who in 1987 signed legislation raising the minimum age for capital punishment from ten to 16 years.  It did not apply ex post facto to Paula, but in 1989 the Indiana Supreme Court reduced Cooper’s sentence to life imprisonment.  While incarcerated, Cooper met Bill Pelke, who forgave her, and the two stayed in touch.  Becoming a model prisoner, Paula was released in 2013 after serving a little over 26 years. She appeared to be adjusting to her new life but in May of 2015 committed suicide. She had recently broken up with a man and perhaps didn’t trust her instincts or was overcome with guilt or remorse.  The news devastated Pelke but did not derail him from continuing his work on behalf of death row inmates. Just last October Pelke represented Journey of Hope in a campaign against the death penalty in Uganda.

Concerned about not seeing any publicity for Bill Pelke’s April 1 appearance, I broached the subject with Dean Pat Bankston, and he promised to look into the matter.  I notified columnist Jerry Davich and will contact reporter Carole Carlson.  I am tempted to ask Karl Besel, who arranged the event, if he needs someone to introduce Pelke.  Reverend Dwight Gardner, a longtime Gary resident who once worked at IUN, would be perfect. His sermons at Trinity Baptist Church on Virginia Street often stress forgiveness as central to Christianity.

I consider myself a forgiving person but am still ambivalent about the three home invaders who terrorized Dave, Angie, and me 19 years ago.  Had they been apprehended and imprisoned, I believe I could have found it in my heart to forgive them. That is certainly true of two young sidekicks who seemed under the control of the ringleader, who called himself Don Corleone.  That bastard deserved to serve hard time.  He was needlessly sadistic, threatening violence, kicking me in the back hard enough to collapse a lung, and whacking Dave over the head, causing a concussion.  Had any of them touched Angie, pregnant at the time, we’d have fought them and probably be dead now. 

below, Midge and Vic Lane in Easton, PA on Lafayette campus across from their home

Spotting William K. Klingaman’s “The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942” in the Chesterton library New Books display, it once again hit me that Midge and Vic were expecting their first child, me, at the time of Pearl Harbor. As Marquis Childs observed in “I Write from Washington” (1942), the country was slipping “down the shelf of time into another era in the soft days of 1941, but we had little or no awareness of it.”  Had I not come along, Vic probably would have gone off to war, and our lives might have turned out drastically different.  As it was, he received a deferment due to being a chemist engaged in important home front work and was on the way to providing a comfortable middle-class lifestyle for his family.  Vic was conflicted about not serving, given the adventures and accolades veterans experienced. Not that it mattered to me or my buddies.  Though we sometimes played war games, we never bothered to ask veterans about their war stories. Nor did they seem eager to offer any.

 Detroit police keep eye on white protestors and arrest black protestors at Sojourner Truth housing project

From Klingaman’s book I learned that FM radio stations came into being in 1941, and a limited number of televisions were sold in New York City and a few other markets. RCA advertised a phonograph containing a “Magic Brain” capable of playing both sides of a record without flipping it over.  The 1942 confrontations over blacks moving into Detroit’s Sojourner Truth Housing Project highlighted white resistance to integration.  With African Americans streaming into the Motor City, there was a desperate housing shortage, which the Sojourner Truth facility was intended to ameliorate.  Over the objections of black community leaders, it was built adjacent to an all-white ethnic neighborhood.  As six black families prepared to move in, protestors burned a 20-foot cross and rallied to prevent them. During subsequent stand-offs some 40 people were injured and over 200 arrested.  Eventually a heavy police presence restored order, but federal officials postponed indefinitely occupancy by blacks.  Detroit’s police commissioner lamely stated, “There is no use moving these people in if you need an army to protect them.”  “These people” in many cases had sons in the military and were supporting the war effort.  All they wanted was a decent place to raise their families.  

Sam Chase senior yearbook picture

Pat Chase recently donated family documents to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives. Included are photographs of his grandfather, who worked at American Bridge, and his father’s memoir, “The Life of Samuel Moore Chase.”  In 2004 94 year-old Sam Chase heard former President Bill Clinton on TV discussing his autobiography, and he decided to do the same. Chase sent a copy to Clinton and received an autographed letter of thanks.  He grew up in the Ambridge neighborhood on the west side in Gary Land Company housing built for American Bridge Company employees.  Chase wrote: 

 We had sand dunes and woods a block from our home.  One day I came home with a beautiful yellow flower for my mother.  It was a cactus!  She spent an hour picking the “prickles” out of my fingers with tweezers! I remember a great toboggan slide at the American bridge Company that had been built for us to use in the winter. My first experience with campaign politics was when R.O. Johnson was running for mayor.  He promised us a new playground if elected; needless to say, he got elected and we never got the playground.

 My mom was great but could be stern. When Paul Cavanaugh and I were 4, we opened the window of my bedroom, climbed out, and got on the porch above. Mom came to the window and said, “Are you having fun, boys?  Better come in now.” When we got in, she gave me a good spanking, the only one that I remember.  Mom played the piano and we’d sing and she’d accompany me on the clarinet. She’d put on plays for us.  She was a great actress.  Every Thursday, Mom would bake bread for the week.  She always made me cinnamon and sugar rolls from her dough.  She was a good mother.

At age 14 Chase saw a sign advertising plane rides for three dollars and took a 15-minute ride.  He recalled: “The pilot sat in the front and I in the back.  When we banked to come in for the landing, I felt safe because I could hold on to the wing above me – what a thrill.”  

Chase was senior class president at Gary Emerson in 1927 when a majority students boycotted classes in reaction to 18 African Americans being transferred to their school.  At a mass meeting Chase voiced opposition to the strike, arguing that ample channels of communication existed for the arbitration of student grievances. Chase recalled “making a speech, sitting on the goal post at the football field; they threw stones at me - I wasn’t very popular.” He was shouted down, and a cry went up for new elections.  The school board caved to the strikers’ demands, and the boycott ended after five days in time for the football season.

Here are happier senior year memories recounted by Sam Chase:

 I started in the band playing drums and switched to clarinet.  We went by train to the state band contest in Indianapolis and won first place.  We had a chartered train with night coaches.  On the Circle in Indianapolis we found a novelty shop and bought all sorts of goodies, such a itching powder and sneezing powder.  We put the sneezing powder in the fans on the coach and the itching powder in Bobby Bucksbaumm’s bunk bed.  That same year, we went to the national contest and were part of a thousand piece band directed by John Philip Sousa in Grant Park in Chicago.  We stayed 3 days and 2 nights on Navy Pier.  We slept on army cots – fun!

 I organized a 15-piece dance band to compete in the annual “Spice and Variety” program.  We won!  Then the Palace Theatre asked us to take the place of Vaudeville for a week.  We did and put some of the other “Spice and Variety” acts in the show – fun!  I was also in a musical trio.  Harrison Ryan played banjo and Louis Snyder and I clarinets.  Our biggest gig was playing Saturday mornings on WLS radio station. We’d take the South Shore line each week for several months.

 One Friday I got caught smoking at an off-campus hang-out.  Principal E.A. Spaulding kicked me out of school.  As it was a weekend, I didn’t tell my parents.  Calling my dad at the office Monday morning when they wouldn’t let me back in school, he said, “You got yourself in this mess, get yourself out.” I did.

 I worked three summers in Hall’s Drug Store.  Clarence Hall, the owner, loved to go to the horse races in Chicago and would leave me in charge.  One day, he told me to change the window display while he was gone.  I did.  When he came back, he was mad. I soon found out why.  I had put milk of magnesia and toilet paper in the same display.

 On graduation day Dad took me to lunch at the Gary Hotel and gave me a beautiful Waltham watch as a gift.  After lunch we offered me a cigarette.  He had never let on that he knew I smoked.  We smoked together for the first time -gee, today I’m a man.

Chase worked at Hall’s that summer and in the fall went to college at IU in Bloomington. With the Great Depression in full force he dropped out after two years and spent the next decade playing in various bands before getting married and settling down to raise a family.

After I posted information on Bill Pelke’s upcoming talk, Patty Butler Jones, who like Bill lives in Anchorage, wrote: “I went to IUN from 1981-1983 and lived at 43rd and Jefferson [in Ruth Pelke’s neighborhood] while I was studying there before transferring to IU South Bend. Wonderful of you to tell your story to the students and faculty in Gary.”  Regarding Paula Cooper taking her own life, Helen Pajama wrote: “Sometimes it’s difficult for prisoners to forgive themselves.  Most are not the same person they were when they went in.  It is a real test for victim survivors to choose forgiveness over rage, or self-pity, while others in society want to kill the offenders. Thanks, Bill, for your voice.”  

Weezer

“On an island in the sun

We’ll be playin’ and havin’ fun

And it makes me feel so fine

I can’t control my brain”

         “Island in the Sun,” Weezer

 Tori, Alissa, Josh, and Jimbo at Weezer concert

A few days ago, son Phil called from Grand Rapids.  Through his PBS station he had obtained free tickets to a concert featuring Weezer and the Pixies.  He couldn’t go, but I was all in, along with Alissa, Josh, and Tori. I arrived at a Days Inn the afternoon of the show, and Alissa picked me up from her job at Grand Valley State.  At their place Josh played some Weezer to get us in the mood, and we ordered pizza slices around the corner from Van Andel Arena.  We arrived in time to catch a few songs by British rock band Basement, finishing up a 30-minute set.  Next came the Pixies, who blasted through a rousing set virtually non-stop. I’m more familiar with lead singer Frank Black’s subsequent solo work but recognized such Pixies late-Eighties classics as “Here Comes My Man,” “Debaser,” and “Monkey Goes to Heaven.” I was disappointed the two big screens were off.  I would have enjoyed close-ups of the individual members, especially Black (called Black Francis while with the band).  Did the band request no screens, I wonder, or was it out of deference to Weezer, the headliners?

 Black Francis (Frank Black) in Grand Rapids with Pixies

Weezer concert at Van Andel Arena

Weezer won over the audience right away.  After “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets came over the loud speakers, someone announced, “And from Kenosha, Wisconsin, Weezer.” Actually the band started in L.A. some 27 years ago.  Out came Brian Bell, Scott Shriner, Patrick Wilson, and Rivers Cuomo dressed like a barbershop quartet and sang several numbers a Capello and duo wop style. Mounting the stage, they rocked out on many numbers but not to such a degree as to drown out crowd favorites such as “Buddy Holly,” “Pork and Beans,” “Hash Pipe,” and “Island in the Sun.” The latter produced hundreds of lighters and cell phones from the near sell-out crowd. About halfway through the set Rivers Cuomo got aboard a boat carried up one aisle and down another by burly roadies and, stopping directly below us, sang the Turtles’ “Happy Together” while playing acoustic guitar.  Back on stage he brought the house down with the 1982 Toto favorite “Africa” and Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.”  The band’s first encore was my absolute Eighties favorite by A-ha, “Take On Me,” followed by “Say It Ain’t So.”   Totally awesome. 

 1187 Battle of Hattin

Knights Templars burned at stake

Back at Days Inn, before meeting Phil, Delia, and Miranda for lunch I watched a documentary on the History channel about the Knights Templars, whom I had learned about in David Parnell’s Crusades class.  Catholic warrior monks formed supposedly to protect pilgrims visiting the Holy Land, after a disastrous military defeat at Hattin in 1187 at the hands of Saladin and the subsequent loss of Jerusalem, the secret Order morphed into powerful European land owners and money lenders until French King Philip the Fair, in debt to the Templars, persecuted its leaders on charges of heresy. The episode featured four seemingly knowledgeable historians.  Normally I can’t stand History channel fare, with all its commercials and emphasis on warfare, conspiracy theories, and disasters. This contained elements of all three but captured my interest.

I had intended to stay at the downtown Holiday Inn, but no rooms were available. Days Inn “near downtown” (as advertised) was less than half the cost, including free breakfast, but had lackadaisical check-in staff, more interested in chatting with staff or friends than being helpful.  A door to my room had to be forced open and shut, and my phone did not stop blinking (the front desk was no help), a noisy fan kept going off and on.  Pillows were comfortable and there was no sign of bedbugs nor ants, so I was satisfied.  As the saying goes, you get what you pay for. When I first arrived at the address, a sign said Baymont Inn but nothing about Days Inn. I drove around a bit before venturing inside and discovering both were part of the Wyndham hotel chain. It reminded me of Avis and Budget at the same airport car rental booth.

 Miranda, Delia, Jimbo, Phil

At a Mexican restaurant in Phil and Delia’s neighborhood Miranda mentioned that a stranger recognized her from her Instagram account, which evidently has hundreds, if not thousands, of followers.   Someone recognized Delia from Miranda’s Instagram photos.  Miranda has applied to the Peace Corps and hopes, if accepted, to be assigned to the island nation of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon).  When I told her I might attend a conference in Singapore in 2020, she invited me to come visit her. I brought up that Weezer was introduced as being from Kenosha, reminding me of the scene in “About Schmidt” (2002) where Jack Nicholson is in a trailer campground when a couple from Kenosha invites him for dinner.  He brings a six-pack and while hubby goes out for more beer makes a clumsy pass at the wife, who makes it clear he should leave.  Phil recalled how sad it was when Schmidt retired from his job as an actuary and Kathy Bates jumping nude into a hot tub with him.  We were both surprised Delia, a movie buff, had never seen it.

Over 30 Facebook friends registered likes to my account of the Weezer concert, and I received a half dozen comments.  Allison Schuette wrote: “Liz [Wuerffel] wondered if you could still hear afterwards.”  Tom Wade said he treadmills to Weezer’s rendition of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Nephew Bob wrote: “Party on Lanes!”

left, Terrapin Bruno Fernando; below, Wildcat Jermaine Samuels

March Madness has begun.  Since I won David’s pool twice in the past three years picking Villanova, I went with the Wildcats once again, even though they are just a sixth seed.  Maryland, the only team I really care about, is also a sixth seed, so I picked them and two other six seeds, Buffalo and Iowa State, to reach the Final Four.  In the unlikely event any go all the way, I should be the only one to have selected them. Home in time to cheer on Maryland, surviving a scare to dispatch Belmont 79-77.  In the evening Villanova topped St. Mary’s 61-57.  So far, so good.

Chancellor Bill Lowe hosted a faculty reception in the new Arts and Sciences Building, featuring piano stylings by Billy Foster and plentiful food and drink. Wife Pamela was demonstrating a long bent nail that she had run over, resulting in a flat tire. Zoran Kilibarda commented on my shirt, which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of IUN’s Black Studies program.  Diversity director James Wallace confirmed that F.C. Richardson, adviser to the Black Student Union in 1969, will be a guest of honor at next week’s IU Bicentennial banquet.   Spencer Cortwright, excited over Momma Mia!coming to the Memorial Opera House.  I congratulated David Parnell on his nomination for a Founders Day teaching award.  Jonathan Briggs, a Weezer fan, said he’d almost driven to Grand Rapids for the convert. Parnell commented that Weezer’s rendition of “Africa” isn’t as campy as the original by Toto but pretty good.

When I speak to VU professor Mary Kate Blake’s class about the 1980s, they’ll have read Lance Trusty’s “End of an Era: The 1980s in the Calumet,” so I’ll read them the final paragraph from Trusty’s “Centennial Portrait of Hammond” published in 1984.  Trusty wrote:

 Hammond was a chastened city as it celebrated its centennial in 1984.  The 1980 census revealed that the population had declined rapidly to 93,714 citizens.  The few large industries that had survived the dismal Seventies and the Calumet region’s steel mills and oil refineries continued to reduce their work forces. Times weren’t desperate for most, but near-term optimism was hard to find.

 The Hammond of 1984 had many hidden strengths.  It was still part of the enormously resilient Chicago metropolitan area and shared in its markets and transportation web.  The Hammond of 1984 was a residential city of skilled workers, enjoying the often overlooked benefits of a sound Catholic liberal arts college and a fast-growing university.  An era was ending in 1984, as the tough industrial city sought a new economic base in a fluid, unpredictable economy.

In 1992 Trusty was less sanguine: “In ten years Hammond, seemingly the least changed city in the Calumet, lost a tenth of its population, its downtown, and most of its industrial base."

Since Andrew Laurinec’s article in the Eighties Shavings is not part of the VU class’s assignment, I’ll read this paragraph: 

 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 soap and God knows what else into the sir.  It was not unusual to see people washing their cars the next morning.  After all, there already was soap on their car.

In 1980 there were 1,600 Lever brother employees at that plant.  In 2015 the number was down to 350.