Juice man

“If life gives you lemons, make some kind of fruity juice.” Conan O’Brien

James in middle and in scene from "Honey, I Juiced the Kids"

James played a “juice man” in VU’s 47th annual Christ College first-year production of “Honey, I Juiced the Kids.” According to the program, quirky vigilantes “use morally questionable tactics to save a city controlled by the Church family.”   After the violent death of their eldest child, Mother and Father Church make everyone drink a concoction that takes away all emotions, both good and bad.  Initially, the rebels believed it necessary to kill Mother and Father, but a nonviolent solution prevailed.  All freshman honors students participated in the project (James was also production accountant), which featured original music and a 12-member orchestra.  I was extremely impressed.  As the program stated: “In just 10 weeks of intense collaboration, the students write, stage, and perform an original 90-minute theatre piece based on the ideas encountered in Texts and Contexts.”  A guy handing out programs was wearing a t-shirt from last year’s “Phrivilous Philosophy: A Phlight to Plourish.”  Previous titles included “Six Feet Under, or a Grave Matter” and “Blame It on the Lake Effect.”  All four performances were sellouts.

I wondered how many VU freshmen knew about O.J. “The Juice” Simpson.  I desperately wanted to believe that Simpson was innocent of murdering his estranged wife.  Ditto another African-American fallen hero, Bill Cosby, who inexplicably felt compelled to drug women before sexually violating them.  Dave was pretty certain that James’s class had discussed the Jonestown tragedy, in which cult leader Jim Jones killed over 900 followers by dispensing poisonous kool aid.  The phrase “drinking the kool aid” has come to refer to someone who has blind obedience to a cause or purpose, as, for example, a movement, politician or sports team. In 2012 Forbes magazine ranking “drinking the kool aid” the most annoying example of business jargon.

Jesse Salomon sent me retired Gary detective Hugh “Al” Shanahan’s recollections of racketeers Tommy (Gaetano) Morgano, who had been associated with Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit, and his son Snooky (Bernard):

    When Tommy got deported in 1963, he continued to visit Gary frequently from the Italian island of Capri near Naples. He came to the U.S. via Mexico, paying his way as he came and went.  The last time I saw Tommy was with Snook at a pizza joint in Glen Park near 49th and Broadway. It started as Pete and Snooks, then Pete started his own place, the Tower of Pizza at Fifth and Virginia.  Pete was a boozer and pill head, and Tommy tried to put him straight on many occasions. Then Pete started beating his wife, and that was a no-no for them in the day.  Extra babe on the side was accepted and almost everything else, but “family” in the more common use of the word was sacred to the very Roman Catholic Morgano family.  

  Tommy Morgano, also known as Tom Morgan, was a business partner in Flamingo Pizza with another Italian family, and at one time the business collected $0.25 from every pizza sold in Lake County.  They also had the cheese market from Chicago and eventually olive oil and pizza flour mix and toppings.  “Che Che” Paul Micholas was the partner and also lived in Miller.

    Snooky had two boys, and he kept them out of the business.  Both have gone on to do well.  In 1990 Snooky rolled over on everybody and everything he had, past, present, and made up, I think.  He named several Gary cops that he had some loose connections with for traffic beefs and some dicks on cars and minor burglary deals but nothing big. Snooky never did have any involvement in anything else but extortion and some power work for dead beats. He did 13 years instead of 30 and got out in time to see his grandchildren.  Snooky Morgano was driving from his house in Bristol with his granddaughter when he realized he was having a heart attack.  He managed to pull into a parking lot and ran the car into a brick wall.  No damage to the child, but Snook broke both his legs.  He never recovered and died shortly after that in 2010 at age 73.  Last I heard, Snook’s wife was still living in Bristol, Indiana, in rural Elkhart County, alone but near her daughter.

 Julia Child

Though unique, the careers of Emily Post (1872-1960) and Julia Child (1912-2004) have certain common themes.  Both came into prominence in middle age, Post after divorcing a faithless husband, Child in the midst of a fulfilling marriage, what Laura Jacobs called a true “soul match.”  A generation after Post’s books and columns codified proper manners for a burgeoning middle class, Child’s TV cooking shows introduced French cuisine to newly affluent, Kennedy-era Americans.  In her autobiography, Child wrote of the half-hour PBS program that debuted live on July 26, 1963: “There I was in black and white, a large woman sloshing eggs too quickly here, too slowly there, gasping, looking at the wrong camera while talking too loudly and so on.” While Post was a graceful matron, Child was a freak of nature, well over six feet with a shrill voice and comic mannerisms that ingratiated her to millions.  Once she flipped a potato cake that evaded the pan and broke into pieces on the stovetop.  She pressed it back together and advised: “You can always pick up, and if you’re alone in the kitchen, who is going to see.”  The line became famous and, like a fisherman’s tale took on a life of its own in the retelling.

Gary native Jim Muldoon, 81, met me at IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  I alerted library faculty Scott Sandberg, stationed near the library entrance, that I was expecting him, and he graciously escorted Muldoon to the third floor.  Jim grew up on Gary’s Northside and attended St. Luke’s and Emerson before his family moved to Glen Park and he transferred to Lew Wallace, graduating in 1956.  I showed him the Archives copy of the 1956 Wallace yearbook, Quill and Blade.  Next to his senior picture was one of his brother; they were born 14 months apart.  He’d driven by the house near 40th and Fillmore and was pleased that it was in better shape than during his previous visit. Of Slovak and Irish ancestry, Jim related that his maternal grandfather died soon after the onset of the great Depression, leaving a wife and seven children.  His father provided muscle for Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa (he was vague on what the old man actually did) and a brother became a union leader at the Budd Company.

 Jim Muldoon receives Coast Guard safety award

Muldoon lost his football scholarship at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN, due to an injury and joined the air force, at which time he took numerous college courses offered by the University of Maryland’s overseas program. After receiving an honorable discharge, he completed an undergraduate degree in Political Science in 1966 at Maryland’s College Park campus and then a law degree from Georgetown.  He worked several years as an aide and driver for Senator Birch Bayh and on a couple occasions accompanied the Indiana lawmaker to the White House, where he met President Lyndon Johnson.  Bayh once told him that his proudest legislative accomplishment was securing the 1972 Title IX amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which led to equal funding for women’s collegiate sports programs. In 1979 Muldoon founded the Washington, DC, management consulting company METCOR.  Knowing that he was an avid sailor and former president of the U.S. Sailing Association, I discovered that Jim had not sailed Lake Michigan while growing up.  

Muldoon was very friendly and interested in my writings on Gary.  He had personal stories about local sports stars Tony Zale and Alex Karras and about being thrown in a jail cell with a murderer after a scuffle with a cop.  After chatting at the Archives for an hour, we had lunch at Abuelo’s in Merrillville.  He showed me photos relating to his sailing career and a statement of recognition Maryland Representative Steny H. Hoyer inserted into the Congressional Record on December 17, 2010.  It read in part: 

  Muldoon has been an advocate of community sailing programs at the grassroots level, especially in the areas of youth sailing, training, and safety. He has long been actively involved in international sailing and boating-related organizations. He has captained his own 73-foot yacht, DONNYBROOK, with a highly competitive amateur team in hundreds of races and has accrued over 

75,000 miles of ocean racing.

  In August, more than two dozen, sailing and boating-related Organizations [including the coast guard and Special Olympics of Maryland] assembled to honor Mr. Muldoon for his lifelong contributions to boating safety. During the ceremony, Martin O'Malley, Governor of Maryland, awarded Mr. Muldoon with the Chesapeake Bay Ambassador Award.

Becca and Paige

Becca starred as Velma in the Chesterton H.S. production of the musical satire Chicago, about two performers who murdered their cheating lovers but beat the rap thanks to the machinations of attorney Billy Flynn. Catherine Zeta-Jones played Velma in the successful 2002 film.  Becca was great throughout and brought the house down singing “All That Jazz.”  Phil, Delia, Alissa, Miranda, and Beth arrived for the final Sunday performance. Beforehand, when a photo of Becca with Paige Fowler (who played Roxie)  appeared on the front page of the Chesterton Tribune, I didn’t recognize her at first because of the black wig.

Miranda selfie with Alissa and Jimbo

IUN library is evidently getting rid of books published prior to 2000, hopefully with some exceptions.  Not many books are utilized in these times of instant internet access, but the decision still seems mind-boggling.  Previously, many journals, including Indiana Magazine of History volumes going back a hundred year, got tossed out, rationale being that they are available online, so I don’t think this is a space issue.  I sent an email to library faculty recommending the creation of an Indiana Room to house books about and by Hoosiers that otherwise might get the axe.  

A memorial service for James Dye will take place on Sunday.  I sent this remembrance to his executive secretary in case the family might want to make use of it:

October 19, 2018: At the request of IU’s Bicentennial Committee, I interviewed former trustee James Dye, 87, a retired builder and major university donor. Since virtually the entire Instructional Media Center staff was at a conference downstate, the camera person was late arriving, and we had to halt twice because of a low battery.  It was maddening, but Dye, a Hammond native and Hammond High graduate, didn’t complain; and the interruptions were a blessing in disguise, as Calumet Regional Archives curator Steve McShane took the opportunity to inform him about our facility and I showed Dye the Rev. Robert Lowery library study area funded by the James and Betty Dye Foundation.  The foundation has offered scholarships to hundreds of IUN students. 

  Growing up during the Depression, Dye recalled earning nickels as a young boy seeping sawdust at the family lumber business and getting a whipping for buying a dime’s worth of candy at the corner store. Manager for IU’s football and basketball squads in the early 1950s, Dye recalled a Sigma Chi fraternity party that lasted 48 hours after the Hoosiers beat Notre Dame in football in 1950 and the celebration following a one-point win over Kansas for the 1953 NCAA basketball championship. He joked that IU probably gave him an honorary degree for attending so many losing gridiron contests.  Dye was an imaginative entrepreneur who built his first house virtually by himself at age 20 in Cedar Lake.  His company built Mansards Apartments in Griffith, and Dye competed with former Gary mayor George Chacharis on its tennis courts.  A pilot for over a half-century, Dye told me about his love of flying.  He praised IUN past IUN chancellors Dan Orescanin and Peggy Elliott and asked me about Chancellor Lowe.  

  October 24: I called the office of former IU Trustee James Dye to apologize for the various snafus during his visit to the Archives.  His son Jim answered and recognized my voice since his sister had taped the interview.  Claiming his dad had enjoyed himself immensely, he strongly suggested I call him at home so I did. Eleven years my senior, Dye still has a keen mind and a quick wit.  We talked for a good half hour; he told me about a buffalo farm he took over during the 1990s hurt by the failure of Ted Turner’s restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill, specializing in bison, to take off.  Unlike cattle, Dye informed me, only a relatively small portion can be harvested for food, andbuffalo hides are not profitable.  From what I could gather, the farmland Dye acquired turned out to be a wise investment in the long run.  I told him that I admired people like himself who remained active in retirement.  Dye replied that doesn’t feel his age until he looks in the mirror.  Those were his last words to me.  I wish I’d known him better.