Consumer Counterculture

    “The natural foods movement launched many citizens into activism for nutritional equity, food workers’ rights, and sustainable agriculture and contributed to the neoliberal definition of the marketplace as a force for social justice and self-fulfillment.” Maria McGrath

 Maria McGrath                                                                          Carol Flinders

In the introductory chapter to “Food for Dissent: Natural Foods and the Consumer Counterculture Since the 1960s,” titled “The Gathering Storm: Baby Boomers and Their Discontent,” historian Maria McGrath profiles Carol Flinders, co-author of “Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition” (1976).  In 1967, married with a two-year-old daughter and living in Berkeley, California, Flinders met future collaborator Laurel Robertson at an antiwar activity.  After involvement in encounter groups, potting, and eastern meditation, she reconnected with Robertson and joined the Food Conspiracy, a natural foods buying club.  Sharing Beat poet Alan Ginsberg’s contempt for “Supermarket America” as a symbol of capitalist America’s unchecked excesses and civic irresponsibility. Flinders, McGrath concludes, found community and purpose.  Nourishing the body with non-processed foods, she believed, had the potential to transform one’s life and help save the planet.  

 Selma Miriam and Noel Furie at Bloodroot Restaurant

McGrath, daughter of Upper Dublin High School classmate Susan Floyd, quotes hippie Raymond Mungo, author of “Total Loss Farm” (1970) responding to critics who claimed he had retreated from political action by moving to a Vermont commune: “We are saving the world.”  In other words, the personal is political, a rallying cry of student activists, feminists, queers, and natural foods advocates.  During the 1970s, McGrath concluded, cultural nonconformists attempted to create the markets services, and societies that matched their dreams for a better world in the pursuit of “right livelihood.”  One example, which Maria talked about at the Oral History Association conference in Montreal last year, is the vegan restaurant and bookstore Bloodroot Collective in Bridgeport, Connecticut, whose cookbooks proclaimed that carnivorous people were part of a “Blood culture” while vegetarians honored the cycles of nature. Lesbian owners Selma Miriam and Noel Furie are still keeping the faith 42 years after Bloodroot’s debut.

Justin Henry Miller, "Wannabe Satyr";     James Deeb, "Pyles Regiment" 

Toni and I attended John Cain’s annual Holiday Reading, “Don We Now Our Gay Apparel,” at Munster Center for the Arts.  Beforehand, we enjoyed the gallery exhibit “Things that go bump in the night,” whose paintings and sculptures had a ghostly Halloween flavor.   We ran into numerous Miller friends, including Karren Lee and Judy Ayers.  Elaine Spicer introduced me to folklorist Sue Eleuterio, who directs Goucher College’s graduate virtual writing center and is a consultant with the American Folklore Society.  She was familiar with my Gary books.  Last year Sue took part in a Walk the Line protest against oil pipelines running through residential neighborhoods in Griffith, Hammond, and East Chicago.   

 Susan Eleuterio with Vietnam Vets exhibit

The meal was vegetarian, featuring tomato bisque, quiche, fruit, rolls, salad, and pumpkin mousse.  It was nutritious, without processed foods so far as I could tell, and filling without leaving you stuffed like often the case at such functions. At the IUN table I talked to Mark Hoyert about meeting fellow Marylander Jim Muldoon.  Mark told me he was a History major about 10 years after I graduated, and that his favorite professor was military historian Gordon Prange, author of the popular account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and a consultant on the set of the movie. David Klamen asked about the rumor that the Jackson 5 had once lost a talent show at IUN.  It happened at Gary Roosevelt, I told him, when audience applause for a skit by high school jocks exceeded their ovation.  Papa Joe Jackson supposedly was so angry he kept the brothers up all night rehearsing.    

A somewhat embarrassed Art in Focus director Micah Bornstein, adorned with angel wings and halo, introduced John Cain and Jim West, who read a humorous 1950s account of a kid watching “The Lawrence Welk Show” in his pajamas with a cynical father and chain-smoking grandmother followed by one about a New York City family celebrating both Hanakkah and Christmas.  Last year, at his twenty-fifth Holiday Reading, John indicated it might be his finale. I’m glad he reconsidered; with some 300 people in attendance, it remains a popular and profitable affair. Toni and I find Cain to be charming, and by now he knows both of us by name.

 Marcia Carson on left

At bridge Jim and Marcia Carson were wearing Red for Ed Action t-shirts, having been among the 15,000 demonstrators assembling earlier outside the Indianapolis statehouse. For many years Marcia taught Art, a program that has suffered from draconian budgets and policies forcing educators to concentrate on preparing students for standardized exams to the neglect of cultural enrichment.  Indiana State Teachers Association president Keith Gambill told the crowd, “To the legislators in the statehouse today we say pencils down, time’s up.” Average pay for Indiana teachers is $51,000, less even than in most Deep South states.  Speakers also blasted a recent bill requiring teachers to complete 15-hour “externships” free of charge with local businesses as a condition of having licenses renewed. At Banta Center Charlie Halberstadt and I finished second to Chuck and Marcy Tomes by a single percentage point.  In out three hands head-to-head we played them pretty much to a draw.

Charlotte and Terry Kegebein

In bowling the Electrical Engineers took all 3 games from Portage Four despite having to spot them 28 pins.  Back from Georgia because his wife Charlotte is in the hospital, Terry Kegebein rolled a 530 series and after a 220-game quipped that he was still not bowling his weight.  Leading off, Joe Piunti rolled a 180 and won the league pot in game 2 for most pins over average.  Despite a sore shoulder I bowled 20 pins over average opposite Neda Gonzalez, who carried a 146 average.  Each game we were virtually neck and neck.

For IU’s Bicentennial oral history project, I interviewed IUN Dean of Health and Human Services Patrick Bankston, who will be retiring after 42 years of service to the university.  He grew up in a community near Rochester, New York, and majored in Biology at Hobart College before earning a PhD at the University of Chicago and teaching for five years at Hahnemann Medical College.  Bankston was proud of collaborating on a research paper with Nobel Laureate George Palade. When he was hired as a professor of anatomy and cell biology, only one year of medical school was available on the Gary campus. Classes took place in World War II “temporary” buildings that endured into the twenty-first century.  Bankston was instrumental in expanding the program to all four years and, more recently, launching an initiative that allowed graduates to take part in residency programs at area institutions. Among his heroes were predecessor Dr. Panayotis Iatridis, Congressman Peter Visclosky, Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana legislator Charlie Brown (who calls him “my brother from a different mother”), and his wife of 25 years Dr. Glyn Porter, an IU School of Medicine graduate whom he has known for 40 years.  “I guess she knew what she was getting into,” I quipped, as we concluded the productive 70-minute interview.

After the interview Bankston told me about recently attending a Muslim wedding of two former IU medical school graduates.  Years earlier, the Pakistani father of the bride brought her to meet with him while she was still in high school  in order to learn what was needed to become a doctor. Pat joked about his political career, “unsullied” by ever winning an election.  He was appointed to finish out the term of a Porter County commissioner and during his brief tenure found outside funding to replace a dangerous, century-old bridge in Union Township from the state and the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission (NIRPC).  During the ensuing election his opponent falsely claimed the project wasted local taxpayers’ money.  As Media Production Specialist Samantha Gauer, who taped the 70-minute session, was leaving, Pat said he hoped he didn’t bore her.  “No, I learned a lot,”  she replied.

Samantha Gauer

Valparaiso University professor Liz Wuerffel’s podcast students signed a “Thank You”card with expressions of gratitude for my guest appearance.  Noah wrote: “Keep history alive.”  Liz added: “I appreciate that you were willing to share your [interviewing] mistakes that helped you be a better oral historian and recorder, too.  Much appreciated!”  

Felicia Childress

Wuerffel’s Welcome Initiative co-founder Allison Schuette recently interviewed 101-year-old Felicia Childress, who moved to Gary from St. Louis during World War II.  Born prematurely in the house of her grandfather, a Baptist minister, she and a twin brother each weighed less than three pounds and were not expected to live. She knew the wife of Joseph Chapman, hired to head up Gary’s Urban League chapter, and initially came to help the Chapmans get settled.  Joe Chapman would play a key role in mediating the 1945-46 Froebel School Strike.  Childress recalled:

   When we came into Gary, we were coming up 5th Avenue, and I was amazed. I looked out the car window and there was tumbleweed blowing down the streets. I said, “This looks like the Wild West.” I could see sand hills between buildings and said, “It’s so flat.” Nobody had a house over two stories. I found out that everyone wanted to come to Gary because there was a mill. All the way down Broadway we could see the gates to the mill and realized that was why people came to Gary. In the old days, the mill would take the huge, molten steel and dump it directly into the lake. These were the days before EPA, and when that hot steel hit the water, Uh-whump! - it was so loud you could hear it past the borders of Gary. I cringed and said, “I don’t like it.”  But I’ll tell you what I did like. I learned about the South Shore.  I could relate to the South Shore because it looked so much like the streetcars in St. Louis. When I got on that South Shore, I looked out the window and there were trees. And then past that canal, you could see pheasants with beautiful feathers.  You could see the colors of their feathers as they would be flying through the trees. But they were soon gone, I think because whatever they were throwing into the mill was so frightening, and so they left. 

At Chesterton library I came across the Goo Goo Dolls “Miracle Pill” and found the 2019 CD irresistible.  Formed in Buffalo some 33 years ago, the band, featuring Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac, enjoyed two smash hits,“Iris” and “Slide,” in the late 1990s from the album “Dizzy Up the Girl” and then pretty much dropped out of the spotlight. The track “Autumn Leaves” differs from the 1945 Johnny Mercer standard, covered by countless crooners including Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Robert Goulet, Johnny Mathis and more recently, Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan. An instrumental version by pianist Roger Williams became a number one hit in 1955. The Goo Goo Dolls “Autumn Leaves” contains these lines:

Life is change, we move on

And where you go,

I hope the summer goes along.

In my CD collection, lo and behold, was a nearly forgotten 1993 Sting album, "Ten Summoner’s Tales.”  Most titles were unfamiliar and fun to discover, and to my delight were the tracks “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” and “Fields of Gold.”  Here are the latter's bridge lyrics:

        I never made promises lightly

        And there have been some that I've broken

        But I swear in the days still left

        We'll walk in fields of gold