Friendsgiving

 “There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

Michael and Jimbo; photo by Kirsten Bayer-Petras

Since the 1970s it’s been a tradition to have Thanksgiving with our oldest Gary friends, Michael and Janet Bayer.  We missed some years after they moved to Vermont but revived the tradition upon their relocating to the Indianapolis area.  In the past couple years we realized having our families together on Thanksgiving was impractical, so we moved it to an earlier date. This year August worked best because we could take advantage of Kirsten and Ed’s pool.  The weather was perfect, sunny and in the low 80s, then cool enough after sundown for a fire to make smores.  Grilling burgers, brats, hot dogs, chicken, and corn of the cob and eating outside was more relaxing than a sitdown meal of turkey and ham with all the trimmings. Our group of 20 ranged in age from 4 to 77.  Though the eldest, I played two games of cornhole with Phil as partner and went 1-1against tough competition.  Kirsten made delicious cherry cobbler from a recipe she got from me.  Brenden Bayer, a Great Lakes boat captain, gave Toni an International Longshoremen’s Association sweater, which she’ll treasure.

 Kravitz family; below, Chez Roberts and friends (Kirsten on right)

Several folks had watched season 2 of “Little Big Lies” and, like me, were blown away by Meryl Streep and the other actresses, in particular Zoë Kravitz, the daughter of singer Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet – talk about cool parents! Joining us was Chez Roberts, one of Kirsten’s oldest friends who manages an Italian restaurant and soon will open a place of his own.  He is from Columbus, Ohio, as is Hanif Abdurraqib, author of “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.” Abdurraqib describes his hometown with bittersweet candor, avoiding nostalgia:

  The mission of any art that revolves around place is the mission of honesty.  So many of us lean into romantics when we write of whatever place we crawled out of, perhaps because we feel like we owe it something, even when it has taken more from us than we’ve taken from it.  The mission of honesty becomes a bit more cloudy when we decide to be honest about not loving the spaces we have claimed as our own.

We spent the night at Mike and Janet’s in Fishers and then were back at Kirsten’s in Carmel for breakfast.  Recently retired, Janet talked about taking a “gap year” (a phrase I became familiar with recently and now seemingly hear all the time) before pursuing another phase of her life.  She’s thinking about starting a blog and hopes to write about famous people she’s met as an activist over the years, and I mentioned some I interacting with Bayard Rustin and Julian Bond.   Brenden, who lives just a few miles from us, suggested we go back on routes 31 and 30 instead of taking I-65, so we followed his advice.  It took about the same amount of time and was much more relaxing, with fewer trucks and traffic.  Summer construction is unavoidable but not so much a hassle on the new route.

                                               Buck Swope and Roller Girl

Home in time to catch the Cubs getting swept by the Washington Nationals, whose hitters were more disciplined than the strike out-prone Cubbies.  I finished watching “Boogie Night,” depressing but with a cool scene where a drug-crazed cokehead is dancing and singing along to “Sister Christian” by Night Ranger and Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl,” which contains the line, “Jessie’s got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.”  In fact, I enjoyed the music throughout, including “Got To Give It Up” by Marvin Gaye and “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys. The two most sympathetic characters were Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), a porn star who dresses like a cowboy and hopes to open his own stereo store, and Roller Girl (Heather Graham), a nightclub waitress who ultimately goes back to school.

First day of Fall semester at IUN, I was fortunate to find a parking space in the lot adjacent to the Arts and Sciences Building.  I couldn’t hear my phone messages so Rogelio “Roger” Torres from Tech Services came to my rescue.  He was impressed I could pronounce his name, so I showed him my book with former Lake County sheriff Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez.  Reminding me he’d taken my Vietnam war course 32 years, Jon Becker asked me to speak about the history of IUN in his freshman seminar.  I ran into old family friend Mike Applehans, who teaches math for IVY Tech, which shares the new building with IUN.  I delivered 20 Shavingscopies to Liz Wuerffel at VU, whose podcast students I’ll be talking with next week.  I may see if James wants to show me his dorm room and go to Culver’s afterward.  

Miranda spent the night after picking up a friend’s cat Duke in Chicago, who’s visiting her husband’s Syrian relatives in Saudi Arabia.  The person they first left Duke with left him in a dark room all the time. Last weekend Miranda went to a festival featuring rap and electronic music, and thieves made off with hundreds of cell phones, some worth up to a thousand dollars.

Liz Wuerffel (above) and Miranda Lane

One reviewer called Richard Russo’s new novel, “Chances Are” an elegy for the Baby Boom generation.  Three 66-year-old best friends in college, Lincoln, Teddy, and Mickey, reunite on Martha’s Vineyard. Russo introduced the prologue with these lines from “Miss Atomic Bomb” by The Killers:

For a second there we were.

Yeah, we were innocent and young.

Teddy, editor of a failing university press, Lincoln, a real estate broker, and Mickey, a musician, were self-described hashers who had served food at a college sorority.  Arriving on a Harley, Mickey mocked his buddies’ taste in music. He labeled the alt rock groups Teddy favored – Mumford and Sons and the Decembrists – as faggot music and the selections on Lincoln’s phone – Herb Alpert and Jonny Mathis (including “Chance Are”) – as elevator music.  Mickey had nicknames for everyone, in Teddy’s case, Tediosli, Teduski, and Tedmarek.

Cerebral and cautious, Teddy, the son of high school teachers, was susceptible to sudden mood shifts and described his goal as avoiding Sturm und Drang(storm and stress).  Ordering a second IPA at a tavern, he rationalized that he had no place to go, this weekend of any other. Haunted by recollections from his past, he lamented, “Wasn’t memory, that bully and oppressor, supposed to become soft and spongy?”His dim-witted high school basketball coach called him a pussy because he wouldn’t play dirty.  Russo wrote:

  The coach, attempting to free a stick that had become wedged between the blade and the frame of his lawnmower, without first turning the motor off, managed to slice off the top joint of what he always referred to as his pussy finger. Teddy, when he heard about it, couldn’t help smiling.

Barb Walczak’s Newsletter reported a 72-50% game by Claire Murvihill and Harry Dunbar (above).  The tight end on my seventh-grade football team was Bill Dunbar, a handsome African American with red hair.  Harry praised Claire’s good attitude and added: “I like to hear her sing religious songs even though I am not a religious man.  She makes herself available in giving me rides in a very pleasant way.  She’s become an expert at finding my house on a dark night.”

At Chesterton Judy Selund mentioned that she is about to embark on a two-week trip to Poland with 6 friends, three of them bridge players.  They’re taking a limo to the airport large enough for seven women and their luggage. For a going away dinner Don Geidemann made noodles Warsaw, with kluski noodles, sausage, cabbage, and spices.  He described the hotels they’re staying at as palatial.

Gator Robb, the Florida man who trapped Chance the Snapper in Chicago’s Humboldt Park, is back in the news.  While in the Windy City he met Kadi Flagg, and the two have been dating ever since. “She’s the total package,” he told reporters after they toured Shedd Aquarium, adding: “Most people see those animals and they kind of get the heebie jeebies.  That wasn’t a problem she had. She seemed to be all about it.”