“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 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
Robert Buggs, Kay Westhues, and Jimbo
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.
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.
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