Small Farms

“Do what you love to do, and be around things that make you smile.  The cows make me smile every day.” David Jackson, Bentwood (Texas) Dairy

 David Jackson family at Bentwood Dairy

When I was growing up in the rural suburb of Fort Washington, PA, Wentz turkey farm was a mile from our house as well as the Van Sant farm, where seasonal work opportunities were available for teenagers. Living in Gary during the early 1970s, one could drive south on Broadway and come across farms later replaced by suburban sprawl.  In October we’d visit one to buy Halloween pumpkins; others sold Christmas trees. As teenagers during the 1980s Phil and Dave picked up spending money de-tasseling seed corn in rural Porter County.

Due in part to the expansion of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland, the number of family farms in America continues to shrink by more than 100,000 since 2013, according to Time magazine.  Farm debt has rose close to $500 billion, and more than half of all farms lost money each of the past seven years.  According to the Department of Agriculture in 2017 the average farm size was 434 acres, and the number of small farms of less than 10 acres had shrunk to 273,000.  Farms of more than 2,000 acres accounted for 60 percent of total agricultural production.

 Mike Certa (3rd from left) in 2007 IUN retirement photo with Leroy Gray, Patti Lundberg, Florence Sawicki

Mike Certa wrote a piece titled “Two Treat Day” about visiting a dairy farm in Merrillville, Indiana, when he was a kid.

    When I was at Edison Elementary School in Gary, we were told that our class of “city kids” was going to have an outing to the “country” to see the Tony Smith Dairy Farm out in the wilds of Merrillville.  In addition to the farm, the Smith family ran a store as an outlet for their dairy products.  When I told my Mom where my class was going, she said, “Did you know that we’re related to Tony Smith?”  Of course, I didn’t.  Mom continued, “My grandma was Clara Schmit, and she was Tony Smith’s brother.  She was married to my Grandfather Michael Boesen.  Clara was my mother Anna’s mother.”

    I was confused and full of questions, “How come her name was Schmit and her brother’s name was Smith?  Who was Clara again?” Mom explained that the family came from Germany and that their name was originally Schmit.  Mathias Schmit and wife Catherin were granted possession of land in what is now Merrillville in 1852.  Their Grandaughter, Mom’s Grandma, Clara Schmit married Michael Boesen  in 1894. At that time, the entire family was known as Schmit.  During World War I (1914-1918), when Germany and America fought one another, many Germans living in American changed their names to more American sounding ones.  Schmit was changed to Smith.  When Tony (Schmit) Smith started his farm, he used his American name.

    Later I discovered what an amazing woman Clara (Schmit) Boesen was.  Widowed at an early age with four small children (Margaret, Francis, Raymond, and Anna), she began teaching school in Merrillville.  She later became the Griffith Postmistress, a post in which she served for decades.  Because of her job, she owned one of the first automobiles in Lake County.  Since she didn’t drive, she was chauffeured around by her youngest son, Raymond (also known in the family as Scotty).

    Mom remembered visiting her Uncle Tony’s farm with her mother and grandmother.  She told me to let them know that I was related to the owner.  She said, “Tell them that Tony Smith is your Great-Uncle.  Say that your mother is Cecelia Mae Govert from Griffith.”  The day of the school field trip she made sure that I took a piece of paper with me with that information on it.

    The bus picked us up in Brunswick.  As we got close to the farm, we could see cows in the fields and some barns.  The actual field trip is a bit of a blur.  They showed us the milking barn and some cows.  I was waiting for the visit to the dairy store for two reasons:  that’s where Mom told me to let them know who I was, and rumor had it there might be some sort of treat.

    Sure enough, once we got to the dairy store we were told we could get either a fudgesicle or a creamsicle.  When I got to the lady passing out the goodies, I said, “Tony Smith is my Great-Uncle.  My Mom is Cecelia Mae Govert from Griffith.”  The lady said, “What?  Who?”  I repeated my speech.  Still, the lady looked confused.  I pulled my piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it to her.  She took it and went into the back room, calling out to someone.  I don’t know who was back there, but when she came out she was smiling.  She said, “Well, since you’re a relative, you get a special treat.”  Then she gave me two treats: a fudgesicle AND a creamsicle!!!!!!!!!!  I was the envy of the entire class.

    Nowadays, when I drive past the intersection of Old Merrillville Road and 59th Avenue, and see the Smith Dairy Store (that is now across from Saints Peter and Paul Church), I think of that old location as part of my family’s history, enough to get me TWO ice cream treats. 

In 2018 NWI Times correspondent Jane Ammeson interviewed Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society president Roy Foreman, who recalled: “Smith's Dairy Farm on the north side of Merrillville gave tours to groups of school children and to Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.”

Small Farms Apartments

Gary’s Small Farms on the west side near the Little Calumet River dates at least as far back as the 1930s.  Most homesteads are gone now, but Small Farms Apartments along 24th Avenue was constructed during the late 1970s, federally subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  It is one of the neighborhoods included in a Flight Paths initiative I’m involved with as an oral historian. I ran into fellow participants Kay Westhues and Allison Schuette at a Gary Public Library reception organized by the Calumet Heritage Partnership titled “Calumet: The Land of Opportunity.” It included Calumet Regional Archives photographs and other items Steve McShane loaned them, including a Jackson 5 concert poster that caught my eye when I first arrived.  I chatted with colleague Ken Schoon, former IUN campus cop Ron Jones, labor activist David Klein, Gary librarians Maria Strimbu and David Hess, library board member Robert Buggs,former Gary council member Rebecca Wyatt, and Cedar Lake Historical Association director Julie Zasada, whose organization contributed a century-old sign advertising Bartlett cottages and who was one of the exhibit organizers. The buffet included chicken wings that thankfully weren’t so spicy as they appeared as well as miniature chocolate eclairs among the desert selections.

Robert Buggs, Kay Westhues, and Jimbo 

 ethnic kids at Gary's Bailly Branch library, 15th and Madison, 1922

Ron Cohen found a copy of Jean Shepherd’s “A Fistful of Fig Newtons” (1981) that contains a chapter titled “Ellsworth Leggett and the Great Ice Cream War” that begins with the author returning for a funeral to his hometown of Hammond, Indiana, which “stood craggy and sharp against the grayish multi-colored skies of the Region [and] resembled a vast, endless lakeside junkyard that had been created by that mysterious wrecking ball known as Time. . . An adult theater was on the very site on which the proud Parthenon theater had reposed, named after the Parthenon itself of ancient Athens.  It had been famous for its elegant lobby and its graceful Fred Astaire movies.  Now, TOPLESS MUD WRESTLING and dealers in greasy film cartridges shot in the cellars of Caracas.  Where Clark Gable was once the king, Linda Lovelace now reigned.” Shepherd contrasted his nondescript rental car with the old man’s Pontiac Silver Streak 8: 

    With its three yards of gracefully tapering obsidian black hood, its glorious Italian marble steering wheel with gleaming spidery chromium spokes – a steering wheel that could well hang on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art – its low, menacing purring classic Straight 8 engine, it bore as much resemblance to this 85-dollar-a-day tin can as the Queen Mary does to a plastic Boston whaler. 

    A giant dump truck roared past me, flinging bits of gravel and what appeared to be molten tar over my windshield.  Heavy diesel fumes rolled on my window.  I frantically tried to crank it up, but naturally the handle came off in my hand.  I flung it under the seat with a snarl, there to join the handle from the other door and the empty Pabst Blue Ribbon can thoughtfully left for me by the previous renter.

On the evening of the “war” between The Igloo’s owner Mr. Leggett and an ice cream franchise that had opened across the street from his ice cream emporium, the old man had taken the family out to “watch the mill”:  Shepherd wrote:

  “Watching the mill” was a special treat known only to the residents of the Region.  On hot nights people would drive to the lakefront and park in the velvet blackness near the shore to watch the flickering Vesuvius fireworks of the blast furnace and the rolling mills across the dark water.  Cherry-red ingots and sepia-shaded orange glowing sprays of sparks flung high in the air by the Bessemer converters made a truly beautiful and even spectacular sight as the hissing colors were reflected in the black waters of Lake Michigan.

    The smell of the lake was part of it, of course, Lake Michigan, that great, sullen, dangerous, beautiful body of water, is, in midsummer, like a primitive reptilian animal in heat.  For miles inland on such nights,  the natives can “smell the lake.”

    Not until I left the Region as a semi-adult did I realize that not everywhere was the northern sky a flickering line of orange and crimson, a perpetual man-made sunset.

Bridge opponent Lila Cohen recommended Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” about the daughter of Mormon survivalists in Idaho home-schooled until she was 17, who, remarkably, earned a PhD from Cambridge University.  Lila had reviewed it for an AAUW publication.  Fred Green mentioned suffering a career-ending football injury at Indianapolis Brebeuf in eleventh grade. A linebacker and pulling guard, he’d been recruited by Notre Dame and West Point.  In “A Fistful of Fig Newtons” Jean Shepherd recalled being an intrepid defensive lineman at Hammond High where he “irrevocably shattered the ligaments of my left knee.” At a table with feisty 89-year-old partner Dottie Hart playing against two equally feisty octogenarians, we started the three hands late because our opponents had to use the bathroom. When we finished before the four other tables, one said, “Well, I guess we had time to use the restroom.”  I replied, “Yes, you’d even have had time to go number 2.”  She said, “TMI” – standing for too much information, a criticism she frequently gets from her grandchildren.  We all had a good laugh.

In Banta Center’s library I found Bob Greene’s “When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams,” about the author’s unlikely 15-year gig as a backup singer at Oldies concerts for surf duo Jan and Dean.  “Surf City,” Jan and Dean’s first Number One hit, contains the line, “Surf City, where it’s 2 for 1, two girls for every boy.” Another couplet goes: “When we get to Surf City, we’ll be shootin’ the curl and checkin’ out the parties for a surfer girl.”  Greene compares his experience at middle-age to a kid’s fantasy of running away from home and joining the circus. Invited up on stage for the first time, he spotted headliner Chuck Berry waiting in the wings, mouthing the words to “Help Me Rhonda,” the Beach Boys hit Jan and Dean were covering.

Ray Smock 

Ray Smock shared an open letter constitutional scholar Richard Bernstein wrote to his former law professor Alan Dershowitz, which reads in part:

     I never thought that you would stoop so low as to embrace the pseudo-monarchical conception of the presidency treasured by President No. 45 and by those who enable him and do his bidding. Today, sad to say, those of us who are constitutional historians, who remember Watergate, and who know that a president of the United States is not a king of any kind are consumed with disgust, contempt, and revulsion by your embrace of the idea that a president can define the national interest by reference to his desire to win re-election, and that nothing but a violation of criminal law resulting in indictable felony can be an impeachable offense.

    You disgrace the legal profession, you disgrace this country, and you disgrace yourself by what you are saying in seeking to argue that No. 45 cannot be impeached except for an indictable felony.

At Cressmoor Lanes the impeachment trial was on TV but mute, no doubt a rehash of arguments repeated ad nauseum.  Instead of real cross-examination, the Democrats questioning the House managers and the Republicans tossing softball questions to Trump’s lawyers. I rolled a 450 series, slightly above my average.  My only double came in the final frame and helped the Engineers eke out series over Frank’s Gang.  Mark Garzella, disgusted with the Cubs, is switching loyalties to the White Sox.  I’m considering doing it, too, and told him I had been a Sox fan when former Philadelphia Phillies great Dick Allen was with the team. Jim Rennhack, a tall lefty, said he met Allen when invited to the Phillies’ spring training camp in Clearwater, Florida, right out of high school 50-some years ago. He was not offered a contract but received a check for $5,000.

Paul and Julie Kern, on the final leg of a 2500-mile road trip to visit their son in California, noticed a church sign near my favorite watering hole when I’d visit Midge, Pappy and Harriet’s, a haven for old hippies and the young at heart.

Changes

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.  Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.” Lao Tzu

In an email titled “Change Is Coming” bridge Newsletter editor Barbara Walczak (above) announced that she is ending her tenure after 1000 issues.  While she hopes someone will take over what seems like a herculean task, that seems unlikely. Admitting that she is “worn out,” Barbara wrote: “I have begun this labor of love 14 years ago, and I’ve come to a time when I wish to pursue interests other than concentrating so heavily on bridge.  There are so many other things to do in life.”  I responded: “Say it ain’t so!  We’re losing a vital historical source.  Let me know if you wish to deposit your photo files or other items to your collection in the Calumet Regional Archives.”

Completing Ralph Kiner’s “Baseball Forever,” I noticed the word DISCARDED on the front cover.  The culprit: Valpo Public Library, just 15 years after the book’s publication.  Kiner had harsh words for executive Branch Rickey, who broke the color line while with the Brooklyn Dodgers but did not add any African-American players to the Pirates roster during his unsuccessful five-year tenure in Pittsburgh.  After the 1952 season, during which the Pirates finished the cellar, he wanted to cut the slugger’s $90,000 salary 25% despite his having led the National League in home runs, saying, “We can finish last without you.” Rickey ended up trading Kiner to the Cubs.  Kiner admits that when a Mets broadcaster, he was known for malaprops, such as calling his press box sidekick Tim MacArthur rather than McCarver, catcher Gary Carter Gary Cooper, and sponsor American Cyanmid American Cyanide.  Oops!  He once claimed that “if Casey Stengel were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.”  

 Ralph Kiner and first wife, tennis star Nancy Chaffee

Thrice married, Kiner also dated actress Janet Leigh for three weeks until a jealous Tony Curtis returned from a movie set and reclaimed her.  Years later, Kiner ran into Jamie Lee Curtis, and without missing a beat she exclaimed, “Daddy!”  That night, Kiner did the math and realized that Jamie Lee was joking.  Kiner became friends with many Hollywood celebrities, including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and like them, made his home in Rancho Mirage near Palm Springs, where my mother spent her final years.

 

On HBO Saturday I watched “The Horse Whisperer” (1998) starring irresistibly sexy Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas as his love interest, and Scarlett Johansson (I was delighted to discover) as a 13-year-old who became traumatized after a riding accident that killed her best friend, caused her leg to be amputated, and severely injured her horse Pilgrim.  Later Toni and I braved the snow to dine with the Hagelbergs at Longhorn Steakhouse, finally exchanging Christmas presents after a month of being unable to find a mutually agreeable date.

Sunday I went to an Aquatorium fundraising event, the screening of “The Bridges of Toko-Ri” (1954), starring William Holden as Navy Lieutenant Harry Brubaker and classy Grace Kelly as wife Nancy.  One of the few movies dealing with the unpopular, inconclusive Korean War, it focused on a World War II bomber pilot unwillingly called back to active service despite having a wife and two daughters and a successful practice as an attorney.  For comic relief 5’2” Mickey Rooney plays a pugnacious helicopter pilot; for gravitas the veteran Frederic March was Rear Admiral George Tarrant.  In one hilarious scene the Brubakers visit a Japanese bath house, and uptight Nancy makes Harry get in the water before the kids can see him naked.  To their surprise a Japanese family arrive to use the adjacent pool; when they disrobe, Nancy shields the girls until they are in the water.  Soon the two families exchange pleasantries, with the children, unlike Nancy, unconcerned about skinny-dipping.

 Ted Williams; below, John Rudd senior yearbook picture

Beforehand, host Greg Reising explained that like the main character, many pilots, known as “dual draftees,” were called on to serve both in World War II and Korea. One of these was baseball great Ted Williams. I chatted with several familiar Millerites, including realtor Gene Ayers (who recently met with IUN student Casey King to discuss Frank-N-Stein Restaurant), Nelson Algren museum founders Sue Rutsen and George Rogge (about an April speaker's new book on photographer Art Shay), and John and Catherine Rudd, a couple I introduced myself to, who turned out to be 1976 Lew Wallace grads.  John was wearing a Wallace swim team jersey, and we discussed past Hornet basketball stars, such as Jerome Harmon, Tellis Frank, and Branden Dawson.  I told them that in 1976 IUN held its commencement ceremony in the Wallace gym.

 MJ and Kobe

In the car I learned the shocking news about basketball great Kobe Bryant, 41, dying in a helicopter crash, along with eight others, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who had hoped one day to play in the WNBA and whom Kobe coached in a league he’d founded.  They were on their way to a game despite heavy fog.  A quarter century ago, Bryant had gone right into the pros from Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia area and tried to emulate his hero Michael Jordan in the way he talked, dressed, practiced, and played through illness and injury. In a moving eulogy Jordan wrote: “I loved Kobe – he was like a little brother to me.” Some criticized the NBA for not cancelling games later that day, but players honored his memory in gestures of respect on the court and in public statements.

That evening the GRAMMY awards took place at the Staples Center, where Kobe played his entire 20-year NBA career; his jersey, number 24, stayed illuminated throughout the show.  Hostess Alicia Keys and Boys to Men sang a special tribute to Bryant’s memory.  The live performances were awesome and included a few old-timers, including Billy Ray Cyrus in a Lil Nas X number, Gwen Stefano in a duet with Blake Shelton, Tanya Tucker backed by Brandi Carlile, and Arrowsmith performing “Walk This Way” with Run-D.M.C. Lizzo, as always, was incandescent and obviously shaken by Kobe’s death.  Honoring the lifetime achievements of Chicagoan John Prine, Bonnie Raitt sang “Angel from Montgomery,” whose chorus goes like this:

Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go

While Vampire Weekend won a GRAMMY for best alternative album, my choice would have been Jeff Tweedy and Wilco’s latest, “Ode to Joy.” I particularly like “An Empty Corner,” which includes this verse:

Now that I’m not longed for

Wild life seems wrong

Won’t care, won’t stare

You’ve got family out there

“Everybody hides,” Tweedy sings in one of the album’s best songs, but the folky selections are surprisingly candid at times.

 Michael Griffin, George Van Til, Richard Hatcher, 2018

Assisted by Samantha Gauer, I interviewed former IUN student and Lake County surveyor George Van Til for a second time, in the Calumet Regional Archives. We covered his introduction to politics at age 23 in Highland town government and years of service as a precinct committeeman, learning lessons that facilitated his becoming county surveyor and proved useful on the way to winning 16 of the 17 times he ran for elected office.  The one loss came early in his career as a result of the last-minute entry of a spoiler candidate.  He later had the pleasure of handily defeating that person.  The 60 minutes flew by.  George considered it good preparation for his February book club appearance and motivation to resume working on an upcoming autobiography.

 

Timothy Vassar’s “Jeremiah Wasn’t Just a Bullfrog: A Story of Passion, Pursuit, Perseverance . . . and Polliwogs” contained a 1974 photo of him wearing a Mayor Hatcher Youth Foundation t-shirt with nine African-American AAU summer track and field teammates.  Vassar explained: “I was recruited out of Highland [after his sophomore year] to be part of this team and was honored to be part of an exceptional group of athletes.”  In the book he described being on the 880-yard relay team with athletes from Gary Roosevelt and West Side, track and field powerhouses coached by Willie Wilson and John Campbell:

    All of the team members were black.  Except one.  I felt like the middle layer of an Oreo cookie.  Practices were held at Gary Roosevelt in the “Midtown” section of Gary.  At that time, Gar had a reputation as a violent, crime-ridden city.  As I was warming up during the first practice, I carried my “spikes” with me.  One of my teammates, Jimmie Williams, began to jog with me and asked why I was carrying my spiked shoes.  I told him I didn’t want anyone to take them.  He told me that wasn’t a problem because “Track is sacred in Gary.” I dropped my spikes right then and never worried about them again. As the summer season progressed, our relay team of Michael Johnson, Lawrence Johnson, Robert Buckingham, and I qualified for the state championship.  As we were warming up for the event, I asked Michael, a 9.6 sprinter, what he needed from me.  He simply said, Just get me the baton.”  I did just that.  It was awesome to see Michael, Lawrence, and Robert finish out the race with a huge lead.  Lawrence went on to play football for the Cleveland Browns during the “Kardiac Kids” days.  All three of my teammates were far more talented than I was, and it was a blessing to be part of that relay team.

Jerry Davich wrote a Post-Tribune column on Brent Schroeder, 55, who during the 1980s and 1990s played with such heavy metal bands as Prisoner and Hap Hazzard. Schroeder grew up in Boone Grove idolizing KISS and AC/DC and in high school formed the band Panama Red, which learned such numbers as “Cocaine” and “Highway to Hell” and got banned from a local talent show. After working as a welder in Chicago and playing area bars, Brent took his band to Hollywood, “flirted with success” (Davich’s words), and came back to the Region to sober up and eventually form a new band Midwest Cartel.  After suffering a stroke in 2011, brent wrote a memoir titled “Heaven Became Hell.” He’s been shot by Los Angeles gang members and stabbed and hit with a broken bottle while flirting with a guy’s girlfriend. Commenting on his shaved head, Schroeder remarked: “I see guys with long hair like that, I say, ‘Hey dude, the ‘80s are over.’”  At present Schroeder is back in Boone Grove living with his 83-year-old father who, wrote Davich, “never quite understood his son’s lust for life as a brash young rock’n’roller.”

Ray Smock wrote:

  Taking notes as Trump attorneys create alternative narrative. Was amused by argument that Trump did not go to Warsaw, Poland to meet President Zelensky on Sept. 1 because he had to manage Hurricane Dorian. You will recall that Trump used a Sharpie to show the hurricane would hit Alabama and spent the next 4 days in a tweet fight with our own weather experts. He can sure manage a disaster!

Jonathyne Briggs invited me to his freshman seminar class on Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  The reading assignment included excerpts from Norman Mailer’s “Miami and the Siege of Chicago.”  The students were soft-spoken and reticent about discussing an event that must have seemed to them like ancient history.  Briggs engaged them by relating what happened to things students were familiar with, such as recent protests over abortion and gun control, the death of Kobe Bryant, and contemporary TV programs. I mentioned that Gary was one of the few cities that avoided rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King and that I cast my first vote in 1964 for Lyndon Johnson because he promised “no wider war.”  

Because students seemed unfamiliar with Mailer, I mentioned that beginning with a 1960 Esquire article on John Kennedy, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” the novelist began to concentrate on what became known as “New Journalism” that made no pretense of objectivity and that his account of the 1967 antiwar march on the Pentagon, “The Armies of the Night” was an instant classic.  I stifled a desire to read my favorite paragraph from “Armies” describing what he (and I, marching with fellow Marylanders Ray Smock, Pete Daniel, and Sam Merrill) witnessed on that memorable day:

    The trumpet sounded again. It was calling the troops. "Come here," it called from the steps of Lincoln Memorial over the two furlongs of the long reflecting pool, out to the swell of the hill at the base of Washington Monument, "come here, come here. come here. The rally is on!" And from the north and the east, from the direction of the White House and the Smithsonian and the Capitol, from Union Station and the Department of Justice the troops were coming in, the volunteers were answering the call. They came walking up in all sizes, a citizens' army not ranked yet by height, an army of both sexes in numbers almost equal, and of all ages, although most were young. Some were well-dressed, some were poor, many were conventional in appearance, as many were not. The hippies were there in great number, perambulating down the hill, many dressed like the legions of Sgt. Pepper's Band, some were gotten up like Arab sheiks, or in Park Avenue doormen's greatcoats, others like Rogers and Clark of the West, Wyatt Earp, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone in buckskin, some had grown moustaches to look like Have Gun, Will Travel-Paladin's surrogate was here!-and wild Indians with feathers, a hippie gotten up like Batman, another like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man-his face wrapped in a turban of bandages and he wore a black satin top hat. A host of these troops wore capes, beat-up khaki capes, slept on, used as blankets, towels, improvised duffel bags; or fine capes, orange linings, or luminous rose linings, the edges ragged, near a tatter, the threads ready to feather, but a musketeer's hat on their head. One hippie may have been dressed like Charlie Chaplin; Buster Keaton and W. C. Fields could have come to the ball; there were Martians and Moon-men and a knight unhorsed who stalked about in the weight of real armor. There were to be seen a hundred soldiers in Confederate gray, and maybe there were two or three hundred hippies in officer's coats of Union dark-blue. They had picked up their costumes where they could, in sur- plus stores, and Blow-your-mind shops, Digger free emporiums, and psychedelic caches of Hindu junk. There were soldiers in Foreign Legion uniforms, and tropical bush jackets, San Quentin and Chino, California striped shirt and pants, British copies of Eisenhower jackets, hippies dressed like Turkish shepherds and Roman senators, gurus, and samurai in dirty smocks. They were close to being assembled from all the intersections between history and the comic books, between legend and television, the Biblical archetypes and the movies. The sight of these troops, this army with a thousand costumes, fulfilled to the hilt our General's oldest idea of war which is that every man should dress as he pleases if he is going into battle, for that is his right, and variety never hurts the zest of the hardiest workers in every battalion. 

On the Basis of Sex

 “I ask no favor for my sex, all I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” Ruth Bader Ginsburg, quoting Sarah Grimké during her first oral argument before the Supreme Court

 Sarah Grimké  

Sarah Grimké (1792-1873) and sister Angelina were prominent abolitionists and feminists.  Born into a prominent South Carolina family, Sarah sympathized with slaves she grew up with and resented that her own education was inferior to her brother’s due to social norms of the day.  She moved to Philadelphia, became a Quaker, and lectured about two issues dear to her, the immorality of slavery and discrimination against women. She once wrote: “I know nothing of man’s rights, or woman’s rights; human rights are all that I recognize.”

 Ruth Bader Ginsburg portrait

 “On the Basis of Sex” follows the early career of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of just nine women in her 1956 Harvard Law School class. At the time, the building lacked a woman’s bathroom. Despite her academic credentials, no New York City law firm would hire her as an associate, so she began teaching at Rutgers and then Columbia Law School.  The film highlights a case Ginsburg successfully argued with her husband, a tax attorney, before the Tenth Circuit of Appeals of a man denied a tax deduction for hiring a nurse to care for his mother so he could continue working.  She wrote the brief in the 1971 Reed v. Reedcase in which the Supreme Court extended the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to women.  In 1972 she became general counsel for the ACLU Women’s Rights Project.  Felicity Jones played Ginsburg as iron-willed, extremely intelligent, and compassionate. I loved Sam Waterston as unctuous Harvard Law School dean Erwin Griswold and Kathy Bates as veteran civil liberties activist Dorothy Kenyon.

A graduate of New York University Law School, Dorothy Kenyon (1888-1972) was an important feminist and New Deal liberal who worked with the ACLU, NAACP, and agencies offering legal services for the poor in New York City.  When Red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy falsely accused her of being connected to subversive organizations, Kenyon (above) called him a liar and a coward hiding behind Congressional immunity.

In “I’m Not Taking This Sitting Down” (2000) humorist Dave Barry described donning the lizard costume of the Miami Fusion soccer team mascot P.K. (for penalty kick) and learning to his chagrin the fine line between being an object of affection and ridicule. He discovered that children “love to run directly into mascots at full speed and tend to hit you” right where one would be well-advised to “wear a cup.”  Barry was at a gala where Mick Jagger made an appearance, looking “like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig” and probably the only one in the room his senior.  In high school Barry’s band attempted to play Rolling Stones songs, such as “(Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Under My Thumb” but could never get the chords right.  Barry wrote:

    He seemed like a pleasant enough person, as near as I could tell from watching a crowd of avant guard people trying to get as close to him as possible while pretending not to.  I considered trying to push my way in there and start up a conversation with Mick, maybe try to find out the correct chords to “Under My Thumb.”

Former student Fred McColly stopped by on the way to the Archives to drop off two new journals about working at South Lake Mall on Macy’s department store’s loading dock.  He enjoys his co-workers but fears that Amazon and other direct mail giants will soon render stores like Macy’s obsolete.  Cosmetics appears to be Macy’s most important big-profit item. For Sears, mail order pioneers who lost their way, in its last days as a department store the main sellers had been paint and kitchen appliances until new competitors undercut them.

To celebrate bridge player Joe Chin becoming an Emerald Life Master, having accumulated 7500 master points, over 70 people gathered in Gary to honor him, including nonagenarian Jennie Alsobrooks, who, in Chin’s words, “started a lunch-hour foursome at Gary West Side High and taught me bridge basics.”  Barbara Walczak, who planned the event, presented him with a 50-page illustrated book citing some of his accomplishments and tributes from former partners and opponents.  Walczak’s Newsletter reported on the death of Claire Murvihill, noting that at Claire’s request the last hour of her funeral celebration was devoted to bridge; seven full tables participated. Back playing after a two-week hiatus,  Dee Browne and I finished third out of ten couples with 58%.

Terry Brendel, in charge of the Valpo game with Charlie Halberstadt in Arizona, complimented my letter to the NWI Times complaining about Gary and its political leadership.  The editor had left out some of my supporting material, but Terry reminded me of the policy limiting letters to 250 words or less.  I did like the headline: “Positive solutions needed to Gary’s problems.”  It fit with my final sentence: “What is needed in the face of Gary’s present travail is regional cooperation and positive solutions, not ugly stereotyping by those who, in my opinion, long ago ceased wishing the city well.”

In the Banta center library was “Baseball Forever” by Ralph Kiner, my first sports hero growing up in Easton, PA.  Kiner’s father, Ralph, Sr.,  had been a steam-shovel operator in the New Mexico copper-mining town of Santa Rita who died when Ralph was just four.  Mother Beatrice moved the family to Alhambra, CA, worked as an insurance company nurse for $125 a month, and, in Kiner’s words, kept a clean house and close eye on her son, sending him to military school for a semester when he lied about his after-school activities.  Kiner played for Pittsburgh, my dad’s hometown, and led the National league in home runs a record six years in a row, twice hitting over 50.  He briefly played for the Cubs and Cleveland Indians before a bad back ended his playing career.  Chicago oldtimers fondly recall Kiner in rightfield, slow-footed HR hitter Hank Sauer in left, and Frank Baumholtz in center, expected to cover most of the outfield. Beginning in 1961, Kiner became a New York Mets announcer until his death in 2014.  

At bowling, after overhearing Jim Daubenhower and I discussing Gary, George Yetsko mentioned that he was a 1951 Lew Wallace grad (he recalled French teacher Mary Cheever’s murder, which led to women protesting crime and corruption tolerated by the Democratic machine).  Wife Marge was a Horace Mann grad.  Her grandfather, a dentist, lived in a large house with a spiral staircase that was later torn down to make way for RailCats Stadium. 

 Tim Vassar

Daubenhower brought me Timothy Vassar’s autobiography “Jeremiah Wasn’t Just a Bullfrog: A Story of Passion, Pursuit, Perseverance . . . and Polliwogs.”  Vassar, a Butler University grad, taught special education, coached track and field at Lake Central High School, and is presently Director of Student Teaching at IUN. A Highland native, Vassar attended Mildred Merkley Elementary School, a name Region humorist Jean Shepherd (whose style Vassar’s resembles) would have appreciated.  Tim father worked at the mill plus two weekend jobs to provide for his family of six.  Vassar wrote: “My Dad used to say that Northwest Indiana was one of the only places on earth where you could run your furnace and central air on the same day.  Since we didn’t have central or any other type of air conditioner, I had to take his word for it.”  

Tim Vassar played centerfield on a Highland team coached by Andy Domsic that competed in the 1970 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA after winning state and regional tournaments.  In Williamsport Vassar noticed Taiwanese players eating with chop sticks and met Pirate great Pie Traynor and 1968 Olympic medalist Chi Chang, the first woman to run 100 yards in ten seconds flat.  Tim’s moment of glory came when he fielded a line drive on two hops and threw out a runner jogging from first to second. After defeating a German team consisting mainly of sons of American servicemen, Highland lost in the semi-finals to eventual champ New Jersey.  The town of Highland threw a parade for the returning heroes, and players rode in convertibles.  The following year, 1971, a team from Gary, led by Lloyd McClendon, reached the Little League finals, losing to Taiwan in the longest game, nine innings, in tournament history. After McClendon homered in five consecutive at-bats, opposing coaches intentionally walked him every time he came to the plate.

Princeton professor Imani Perry was the featured speaker at VU’s Martin Luther King Day celebration.  Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972, she is the author of six books, including “Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry” and one on the history of the Negro National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Perry’s keynote speech lamented the “Disneyification of Dr. Martin Luther King” and urged students, my grandson James, a VU freshman among them, to overcome the rancid present political climate. NWI Times correspondent Doug Ross quoted her as saying, “Hope is not an organic feel for me at this moment.  I don’t just feel it, I create it, and we all have to do that.”

Jim Spicer’s latest senior citizen joke:

  An elderly man in Louisiana had owned a large farm for several years. He had a large pond in the back. It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.
    One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond and look it over, as he hadn't been there for a while. He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end. One of the women shouted to him, “We're not coming out until you leave!” The old man frowned, and proving that some seniors still think fast he said, “I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim or make you get out of the pond naked. I'm here to feed the alligator.”