Edgewater

"Growing up in Edgewater, I was always aware of Lake Michigan's presence, whether it was the roar of the whitecaps from a blustery north wind or the smell of dead alewives rotting on the beach." John Laue 

                          Dorreen Carey with whitecaps and Chicago skyline in background
John Laue asked my advice on expanding the oral history of Edgewater, located near Lake Michigan just east of Gary’s Miller district in Porter County, that I had published in “Tales of Lake Michigan” Steel Shavings (volume 28, 1998).  He had written then that his family had moved there from Chicago in 1951 when he was six and that their log cabin was in a wooded area at the bottom of a large sand dune at the end of one-block-long Oak Place. In a new essay he wrote:

  The Edgewater community was a great place to grow up.  There were lots of Baby Boomer kids to play with, and wonderful places to explore.  Like most children of that era, we were able to leave our homes right after breakfast and not return until dinnertime during the summer. We spent hours playing in the woods, wetlands, sand dunes, and white sand beaches along the Lake Michigan shoreline.   We built forts in the woods, played baseball and football in the sand, and swam in the lake. 

    My friends and I learned how to adapt our sports activities to our unique dunes environment.  For example, we played hours and hours of baseball on a field of sand where we quickly learned how to hit a baseball in the air instead of on the ground.  A ground ball, on matter how hard it was hit, would only travel a few feet in the soft sand.  So we learned how to hit line drives, fly balls and pop-ups…any ball hit in the air was better than hitting it on the ground.     In the fall, we played tackle football on the top of a nearby sand dune.  Even though I was very small and skinny (5’6”, 125 lbs.), I never got hurt playing tackle football.  We need shoulder pads or any other equipment because the soft sand provided a nice cushion for tackling.  As one of the smaller and quicker kids on the field, I usually ran my way out of trouble, but I remember one time someone hitting me so hard at the line of scrimmage that I was thrown into the air and fell to the ground with a thud.  Except for some sand in my mouth and some wounded pride, I wasn’t hurt at all, and I don’t remember anyone else ever getting seriously injured either.

    One of the amazing things about sand dunes is their regenerative power and their movement from one place to another.  Any evidence of the sand lots where we played baseball and football 50 years ago have been covered over by large sand dunes covered with Miriam grass.  The Indiana sand dunes are constantly shifting and moving.  The sand dune where we played football as kids has now moved south into an oak forest, burying large trees and everything else in its path.  It’s no coincidence that the always shifting sand dunes and constantly changing environment become the birthplace of the science of ecology.

Laue (above) noted that several strip clubs existed o Route 20 in Gary near and even within the boundaries of what became Indiana Dunes National Park. I recall a prominent attorney being killed when he stopped to turn left into Dante’s Inferno and his car being plowed into from behind.  Laue wrote:

   I still remember the excitement and anticipation of walking into Dante’s Inferno, as it was called back then.  The girls would hustle you for drinks between their turns on the dance floor, and if you had some decent cash in your pocket, you could invite one of them to join you in one of the booths way in the back of the lounge where they could titillate you and took more of your money.  This bar has gone through several makeovers and name changes. After Dante’s Inferno, it was renamed The Scuttlebutt.  Through all these name changes, the scene inside remains the same.  There’s always a big, tough-looking bouncer at the door to check your ID, and, depending on the time of day, the girls are inside walking around with vacant, cokehead stares, looking to sit down and hustle some drinks and money out of you.

John Laue asked me to write down memories of living in the disappearing community of Edgewater, now part of the Indiana Dunes National Park.  While renting a house in Miller, we looked for one to buy that would not be close to Lake Michigan, with a decent yard, and not badly in need of repair.  After a two-year search, realtor Gene Ayers showed us one in good shape just east of County Line Road at 9649 Maple Place in a wooded area just a few blocks from the lake with an adequate yard.  Voila!  I loved it and didn’t mind that the federal government intended to buy it and offer us a 20-year leaseback.  When that happened, we made enough of a profit that it paid the total cost of the leaseback, meaning we had a free house for 20 years, later extended.  We wouldn’t have any equity but were able to buy savings bonds for what we’d have been paying for rent. The previous owners, two former nuns, had hoped to convert the garage into living quarters for one of their fathers, but it hadn’t panned out.  After we moved in, one of them drove up Maple Place and parked at the bottom of the driveway several times but would quickly depart when we’d see if she wanted to look around.  We subsequently learned that she was miffed that we had gotten a better deal from the park department that she’d been offered. About ten years later, a daughter of the original owner stopped by and was delighted when we offered to let her come in.  Built after World War II, the house was her childhood home and she recalled Phil’s bedroom once being hers and watching Elvis on TV in the front room.

At the time we moved in, most Maple Place residents were moving out, having accepted the government’s offer to pay for them to purchase another house and moving expenses.  A neighbor across the street left many boxes of trash.  Scavenger that he was, Phil found Christmas tree bulbs and a Ku Klux Klan pin and robe.  In retrospect, I should have kept the pin for the Archives but told him to get rid of them. Neighbors in back of us had three boys, including a pot smoker who enjoyed lighting up and playing Rush albums at full volume outside while he washed his car.  For a year or so, Dean and Joanell lived next door; we became friends and even more so after they moved to a farm near Valpo where they raised goats and a bee colony. Down the street from us was a “mystery” cabin that appeared to be used by long distance truckers.

Although our yard was rather small, we played wiffleball even though if a righthander pulled the ball, it was liable to go over the hill into the ravine.  You really had to loft the ball to get it over the centerfield trees and then it was likely to go on the neighbors’ roof. We didn’t run the bases but designated what were singles, doubles, and home runs.  After the Bottorff property was returned to nature, the boys invented a wiffleball golf course with six different holes and three different places to tee off for each one.  In winter we sometimes went sledding on the access road.  Even though we had a Gary mailing address and phone number, being in Porter County reduced our insurance substantially and enabled Phil and Dave to attend Portage schools and play Little League baseball.  During snowstorms Portage street department took good care of us despise our remote location.  At Christmas and Easter Toni caked cakes that I took to street department headquarters.

Through John Laue, who lived two blocks down (toward the lake) from us, I got to know his dad Gib, a poet, and artist Dale Fleming, who had an intricate train platform in his house.  One of John’s neighbors was Joyce Davis, who came to own Lake Street gallery.  Our friend Sheila Hamanaka moved into a place formerly owned by a prominent Chicago conductor.  A friendly dog belonging to an attorney roamed the neighborhood and beyond, once venturing a mile into Miller and befriending Dave and Angie when they rented a house on Shelby and Lake Shore Drive.

Our Maple Place home had a fireplace room and plenty of wood outside that I could scavenge and chop or cut with a chain saw and a finished rec room where we played ping pong and often used as a guest room.  Upstairs were three bedrooms and a large family room; the only drawback was its distance from the kitchen, but a small fridge relieved the need for beer runs.  During the 35 years that we lived “on the hill,” we had as many as 15 people sleep over when relatives visited or after parties.  Our pets, especially Marvin the cat, loved being able to roam outside and learned to steer clear of raccoons and deer.  Whenever a feral cat came on our property, however, Marvin got in a fight to protect his turf, usually resulting in his needing to be taken to the vet, something he hated so much we had to cage him in order to get him in and out of the car.



Seeing my Facebook post, Dean Bottorff, who was an editor at the Post-Tribune, wrote:          I have many fond memories of Maple Place, Miller and working in Gary. Too often people think of Gary negatively in terms of crime and urban decay but I actually had some of the best times of my life there. I loved the diversity in Gary and Northwest Indiana and making friends with a broad range of different backgrounds. “Urban” people like you greatly contributed to the vast range of new experiences for this guy from the rural, Western state of South Dakota. Memories include everything from watching pierogi made by little old ladies at a Glen Park church to smelt fishing on the beach at 2 a.m. to riding my bicycle to work from Maple Place to 11th and Broadway.
    I prefer to remember the good times and some of the best might be considered dangerous ... like the time Knightly and I went into a blind pig on Washington Street at 2 am when a couple of pimps almost got into a gunfight. Or the time Galloway went on an interview and Tom and I posed as his body guards.

Trump seems incapable of holding a press conference without lying and demeaning reporters, first by insisting that anyone who wants a Covid-19 test can get one and then by insulting Weijia Jang.  West Virginian Ray Smock wrote:

    Trump stormed off the platform, ending the briefing suddenly, when CBS reporter Weijia Jiang asked a perfectly reasonable question about why the president keeps casting this pandemic as a global competition among nations. He shot back that she should ask China that question. She lowered her mask and asked why he was asking this of her. He replied that her question was nasty and ended the briefing. This is not the first time Trump has tangled with Jiang, a distinguished American journalist of Chinese ancestry who was raised in Wild and Wonderful West Virginia.

The latest Facebook fad is to post covers of one’s ten favorite albums a day at a time.  After former student and now friend George Sladic nominated me to participate, I began the daily ritual with this remark:

    OK, George Sladic, here's my favorite power pop album, "Present Tense" by The Shoes. Saw them at a small club near O'Hare Airport circa 1982 and a year ago at Memorial Opera House in Valpo.

Among my friends, albums by the Ramones, Tom Petty, and the Beatles have been popular choices, so I put off listing any of them for the moment. Here’s my day 2 choice and remarks:

I've been a Graham Parker fan ever since he recorded "Squeezing Out Sparks," featuring "Nobody Hurts You," "Passion Is No Ordinary Word," and "Don't Get Excited," with The Rumour in 1979. Toni and I saw Graham-bo at the Vic Theater in Chicago with Terry and Kin Hunt. He's also in the under-rated movie "This Is 40."

Inspired in part by the death of legendary rocker Little Richard, whose singles I collected in high school, Here is my day 3 choice and commentary:

    The first album I ever bought was "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles. In the 1950s I bought .45s by Rock and Rollers Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard, and others that I played on an inexpensive record player in my room. After hearing "What'd I Say" I wanted to listen to any Ray Charles song I could get my hands on, and my second album were songs recorded live in concert with his full band and the Raelettes. Awesome!

Stevie Kokos recalled what a thrill it was to have Ray Charles perform at the Holiday Star, where he worked for many years.  Connie Mack-Ward wrote that one of her first albums was “The Genius of Ray Charles” and she saw him perform live at one of Gary mayor Richard Hatcher’s “Evening to Remember” fundraisers.

 1973 was a great year for albums - "Band on the Run," "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, "Innervisions," "Dark Side of the Moon" - but I loved to rock out to the Doobie Brothers' "The Captain and Me," which leads off with "China Grove." In Paul Kern and my history of IU Northwest Milan Andrejevich recalled: "My parents took a lot of vacations, so I'd have parties. Lane loved to dance and was always trying to put on China Grove."

Milan and Marsha Andrejevich introduced me to David Bowie and several New Wave groups, including the Police and the Romantics. When I stayed with Terry and Gayle Jenkins in1980 while attending my twentieth high school reunion, I gave them the Romantics album that contains “What I Like about You,” and he three of us dance together. A couple years after the Romantics were out of fashion, I saw them in concert at Valparaiso in front of a few hundred people and they rocked out like they were playing for tens of thousands.

Ray Boomhower wrote about a little-known campaign to retake Alaska’s Aleutian Islands from the Japanese:

    On this day in 1943, men from the Seventh Infantry Division landed on Attu in the Aleutian Islands to wrest it from control from Japanese forces, who had taken Attu and Kiska as part of the Battle of Midway. American soldiers were hampered in their attempt to win back the treeless, volcanic island by inadequate clothing, perpetual pea-soup fog, icy rain, blinding snow, sudden gale-force winds (called williwaws), and boggy terrain. A sergeant remembered that while fighting in Attu’s mountainous terrain, conditions were so severe that, even when unconscious, wounded men’s bodies “trembled violently from the cold.”

    Time correspondent Robert L. Sherrod covered the Aleutian campaign, arriving on Attu on May 25. Attu was no “taxicab war,” said Sherrod. “The only way to get to the battle lines was to walk over mountains where a mile an hour was fair speed.
To keep warm, the reporters and cameramen on Attu dressed in one to three sets of underwear, a field jacket, parka, sweaters, woolen cap beneath their helmet, two or more pairs of woolen socks, shoepacs (special cold-weather footwear) or leather boots, and raincoats.”

    Uncomfortable conditions, to be sure, Sherrod said, but “looking at the suffering infantrymen and the supply carriers who had to take loads up steep mountains and the little carriers who had to bear the wounded down [from the mountains], we could not feel very put out.”

    Many of those fighting in the snow-covered mountain peaks became “so cold and miserable,” he said, “they didn’t give a damn whether they lived or died,” Sherrod reported. One soldier told Sherrod that he had been cold for so long he no longer believed “there is any warmth left in the world. I have not been able to wiggle my toes for more than ten days.”

Correspondents could honestly write in their dispatches, Sherrod noted, that not “since Valley Forge have American troops suffered so much” and finally mean it, and they could view their colleagues in London, Algiers, Melbourne, and even Moscow as “sissies.”

Early in World War II, Sherrod had wondered if American soldiers had what it took to win the war. He had been encouraged by what he witnessed from the soldiers on Attu. “In this primitive, man-against-man fighting enough of our men rose up to win,” he said.  Sherrod also learned a valuable lesson he remembered as he covered subsequent campaigns: “not all soldiers are heroes—far from it; the army that wins, other things being fairly equal, is the army which has enough men to rise above duty, thus inspiring others to do their duty.”