Old Days

Drive-in movies, comic books and blue jeans
Howdy Doody, baseball cards and birthdays

Take me back to the world gone away
Memories seem like yesterday

         “Old Days,” Chicago

WXRT’s Saturday morning focus was on the year 1975, and in the car I heard “Old Days” by Chicago, “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John, “Lady” by Styx, and “Stand By Me” by John Lennon, which appeared on the “Rock ‘n’ Roll” album featuring such Fifties hits as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Bony Moronie.”  Two of my 1975 favorites are “Fame” by David Bowie and “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.

 Lanes and Horns at El Capitan, Oct. 2018; Kaiden on right with parents

Kay English

At Inman’s James’s teammate Kaiden Horn bowled a 259, his best ever.  After a strike and spare, he rolled seven strikes in a row before leaving a ten-pin in the final frame, converting it and ending with a strike.  Andrew English’s grandmother Kay was visiting from downstate, and I recalled that 30 years ago IUN student Annette Mendosa interviewed her about being a Girl Scout troop leader for nine years. She started as a volunteer, then was a den mother in Brownies for her daughter Janet’s age group.  Son John, a classmate of Phil’s, would help out with newspaper drives so he got to on a trip with them to Frankenmuth, Michigan.  He was the only boy.  One time Kay took the Girl Scouts to Florida.  She told Annette Mendosa: 

 One year we camped all the way around Lake Michigan.  We had two rental vans with all our stuff on the top.  We spent a day on Mackinac Island and rode bicycles for two around the island.  In 1979 our group recycled enough newspapers and had enough fundraisers that we were able to spend a week on a Dude Ranch south of Denver.  Over half the girls had never been on an airplane.  Only two or three had ever been in Colorado.  None had been white water rafting.  We were eight in a raft with an oarsman.  I’ve seen some of these kids become doctors and nurses, teachers and therapists.  Some have gotten in trouble; but you’re not raising them, you’re only working with them in Girl Scouting.

I spent much of the weekend reading Kate Morton’s former number 1 bestseller  “The Secret Keeper” (2012).  Much of it takes place in London during World War II.  It kept my interest for many hours of binge reading.  I should have anticipated the surprise ending from various clues along the way.  Once I realized Vivien wasn’t just a tangential character, I reread the beginning of Part Three, which described her childhood in Tamborine Mountain, Queensland, Australia, where the author grew up and attended a small country school.  In the novel Vivien is made to stay home as punishment for fighting a bully while her family attended the annual Cedar Getters’ picnic in Southport.  On the way home her parents and siblings perished when their car went over a cliff in the fog.  Vivien later heard her Aunt Ada (whose voice “shrilled like a fiddle string wound too tight”) irrationally blame her for the accident before shipping her off to an uncle, a headmaster in Oxford, rather than keep her. Vivien carried that guilt with her, which helps explains her later acceptance of ill-treatment from an abusive husband.

Ray Smock’s new book, “American Demagogue: Critical Essays on the Trump Presidency,” arrived in the mail.  Dedicated to public servants in the military and federal government  for “maintaining and defending this great republic,” my old friend from U. of Maryland days opens with this quote by Dionysius of Halicarnassus from 20 BC found in the sixth volume of “Antiquities of Rome”: “The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demagogues.” In the acknowledgments Smock thanked a dozen of us for our encouragement and critiques, most of all wife Phyllis, “who has supported my writing and research for almost 60 years.  I am a lucky guy.”  Leafing through the chapter titles, some recognizable from Facebook posts, I turned to one called “My Friend, George Will.”  A conservative columnist who formally left the Republican Party in the summer of 2016 after candidate Trump made disparaging comments about a judge of Mexican ancestry reared in East Chicago, Indiana, Will considers the President’s views a perversion of traditional principles.  In March of 2018 after Trump appointed warhawk John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser, Will claimed he would soon be “the second most dangerous man in America.” Smock wrote:

 Will sees the latest shake-up in the White House staff as marking the end of a delusion that many of us have had about the Trump administration, that if we just got some sensible adults to surround our childish president, he could be “cocooned with layers of adult supervision.”  The bubble has burst.  The president now has an all-Fox News team surrounding him on TV and in the White House.

 One single question in Will’s column particularly grabbed my attention.  The question, and his answer to it, is a brilliant insight, perfectly stated: “How can the president square his convictions with Bolton’s?  Let’s say this one more time: Trump has. No convictions.”

Arriving at Nicole Anslover’s class just as Biology professor Spencer Cortwright was leaving, he quipped, who are you, Benjamin Button, morphing back to student days?  He was referring to a character played by Brad Pitt who ages in reverse.  I told him I always learned something new in Nicole’s class, and she told him I was a valuable contributor.  Students talked about World War II movies they’d viewed such as “Saving Private Ryan,” “Dunkirk,” and “Valkyrie” (2008), with Tom Cruise as German officer Claus von Stauffenberg, who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944.  Someone had seen “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946), which dramatized problems soldiers had readjusting to civilian life.  I mentioned “A League of Their Own” (1992), about a women’s baseball league formed when war threatened to dry up many minor leagues by a candy magnate modeled after Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley.  During the war chewing gum magnate Wrigley provided packs of Spearmint, Double mint, and Juicy Fruit to G.I.s and marketed his product as relieving thirst in foxholes.

When Nicole spoke about women wartime workers, not only in heavy industry but for other areas where there was a shortage, I brought up the double-edged meaning of the slogan “For the Duration,” both a pledge hoisted on women that they’d keep working until the war was won and an assurance to men that they’d get their old jobs back afterwards.  

Speaking about contributions by the WACs, WAVEs and SPARs, Nicole used the phrase “the tooth and the tail”referring to the distinction between front line troops and those in a supply role, which often far outnumber the former. After class I told Nicole about Lillian Federman’s assertion in her history of lesbian life in the twentieth century, “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991), that a women’s corps was an ideal option and breeding ground for lesbians – although, in my opinion, the term bisexual might have been more appropriate, since probably a majority later returned to civilian life and got married.  Federman quoted WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps responding to a request by General Dwight Eisenhower that she ferret out lesbians in her battalion:

 Yessir, if the general pleases, I will be happy to do this investigation.  But sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name in going to head the list.  You should be aware that you’re going to have to replace All the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool.  I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the general himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment.

Ike replied: Forget the order.  Phelps, who had joined the WACs to escape an unhappy marriage, went on to become active in the National Organization of Women and California Lesbian Task Force.

 Johnnie Phelps

I told Nicole about an article in Harper’sdiscussing Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, now part of a traveling exhibit, inspired by FDR’s Four Freedoms speech of January 6, 1941.   According toSmithsonianmagazine’s Abigail Tucker, the speech initially fell flat: “Congress barely applauded.  The next day most newspapers did not even mention the Four Freedoms.”  When Rockwell first pitched using the illustrations in war bond drives, the Office of War Information (OWI) rejected it until overruled by the President and new appointees to the OWI, setting off a near revolt among the staff.  Tremendously popular with the general public, the four representations of freedom of speech and religion and from want and fear of aggression appeared on 4 million sets of posters and ultimately their own postage stamps.   Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech poster, first appearing as a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover, greets visitors to  Portage Public Library.

I told Minority Studies chair Earl Jones that Chancellor Lowe had written about the origins of IUN’s Black Studies program in a Post-Tribunecolumn and included Black Caucus leader Gerry Samuels by name.  Here is part of the article, titled “Striving for educational excellence and equity”:  

  Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of working to achieve civic harmony and educational equity lives on both throughout our region and certainly on the Indiana University Northwest campus, where we are proud to be Indiana University’s most diverse campus.  Our commitment to diversity and inclusion took shape early, when, in 1969, the IU Northwest Black Caucus was formed, led by student Gerry Samuel and faculty advisor Dr. F C Richardson. Through the student group’s bold and formative actions, they urged the campus to engage with and reflect on Dr. King’s words, “to think critically”and inclusively by establishing a Black Studies program.

  This year, IU Northwest proudly celebrates the 50th anniversary of the African American and African Diaspora program, one of the first programs of its kind established in the United States.  Over the years, the trailblazing IU Northwest program has evolved, continuing to engage the history of African Americans and Africans, while challenging prevailing paradigms affecting race and inclusion.

M.G.M.T.

I called granddaughter Victoria, attending Grand Valley State, to wish her a happy birthday, telling her she was the most mature 19 year-old I knew.  She had recently replied to something I put on Facebook about my musical tastes by writing,“Why is my grandpa so cool?”  Nice. We talked about concerts we’d attended together in Grand Rapids by Cracker and the Head and the Heart.  I told her I’d check on upcoming shows at 20 Monroe.  One that looks promising is indie rock band M.G.M.T. in mid-May.  The group's most successful CD, which I own, was “Oracular Spectacular” (2007), which contains the hits “Electric Feel” and “Kids.”

Dean Bottorff found a photo from my China trip some 25 years ago when I was staying with them in Hong Kong.  We had visited Macau, then a Portuguese colony, and crossed into a village where I took photos with Red Army teens and friendly women who may have been sex workers. I teased Dean about how he’d warned me not to give money to kids begging and then he did so himself, resulting in them following us around hoping for more. Our former Maple Place neighbors, they were great hosts prior to my lecturing for several weeks at Chinese University.  They taught me how to navigate Hon Kong’s always crowded min-busses by slowly making your way toward the rear exit.

Fat Tuesday is Paczki Day in the Region, and stores have been well-stocked with doughnuts filled with various jams and topped with powdered sugar, icing or glaze. Back when Vickie Milenkovski was secretary of History and Philosophy, adjunct Ed Kenar would bring in a box of Paczkis every year from a bakery in Hammond.  They were huge but delicious and must have contained close to a thousand calories.

 above, Judy Tarpo; below, Terry Bauer, Mary Kocevar, Carol Miller, Chuck Tomes

Barbara Walczak’s first March Newsletter contained a great shot of four bridge friends who ranked in Unit 154’s top 100, plus a “Welcome” shout-out to new player Judy Tarpo, a retired microbiologist at St. Mary Medical Center.  For 27 years she has been in the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus, so Dick Hagelberg probably knows her.