Turning 79

“Treasure all your happy moments; they make a fine cushion for old age.” Booth Tarkington

After a breakfast of Rice Krispies with banana slices, bacon, coffee, and a small slice of cake left over from when Dave’s family visited on Sunday to celebrate both Toni and my birthdays, I got a call from Alissa and Josh, who serenaded me. On the computer were over 50 Facebook “Happy Birthdays,” some with photos or jingles, and emails from friends, IUN, and Franciscan Heath, where I recently had PSA blood work. The Toyota salesman who sold me a Corolla five years ago even called.

I share my birth date with Winslow Homer (b. 1830), Steve Jobs (b. 1955), and George Thorogood (b. 1950), whom I saw put on a stellar performance at the Holiday Star. I had thought Henry Wordsworth Longfellow was born on February 24 as well, but I was off by three days. On my birthday I tend to think of people I admire who are ten years older than I and still going strong, but the numbers are diminishing. One role model: bowling teammate Frank Shufran, whom I may be reuniting with if things become semi-normal by the fall and the knee holds up. I am in apparent good health as Bucknell history professor William Harbaugh told me a year or two before he died, just arthritic in the right wrist, shoulder, and hip.

This morning I picked up a few items at Strack and Van Til’s and withdrew cash from Horizon Bank in Chesterton. At noon I made myself a turkey sandwich and walked out to pick up the mail without my winter coat, it being in the high 40s. On the afternoon to-do list: bridge online with Charlie and Naomi and pick up Jess Walter’s “The Cold Millions,” recommended by classmate Gaard Murphy Logan; it takes place in 1909 Spokane and features Wobbly organizers such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. I’m currently reading Benjamin Moser’s biography of essayist Susan Sontag, the child of an alcoholic mother who at a young age consumed the popular travel books by Richard Halliburton, such as “The Royal Road to Romance” (1925) and “The Complete Book of Marvels” (1941), published posthumously two years after Halliburton vanished somewhere in the Pacific attempting to sail a Chinese junk christened “Sea Dragon” from San Francisco to Hong Kong.

I got an email from high school classmate Chuck Bahmueller, first time in 30 years. Larry Bothe spread the word that Upper Dublin was honoring Chuck and had his current email address. We were last together in 1990 at our thirtieth reunion and argued politics for an hour beforehand. If I recall correctly, one topic was affirmative action, which he felt had cost him a future in academia (instead he worked at a conservative think tank). During the 1960s, graduate school enrollment ballooned, causing the job market to dry up by the time he completed his PhD and then published a book on Jeremy Bentham. When job openings did occur in the 1970s, formerly all-white, male departments naturally either wanted to hire women or minorities or were under pressure to do so. My friend Pete Daniel, who had written a pathbreaking book on peonage in the South, “The Shadow of Slavery,” was also a casualty, as departments wanted African Americans to teach Black history.

In my email I told Chuck that I regretted anything I might have said that annoyed him if it were a cause of our losing touch for so long. I recalled some ancient memories, such when he, Vince Curll, and I went to a Cavalcade of Stars show in South Philadelphia starring Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, the Flamingoes, Dion and the Belmonts, and many other 50s rockers. Chuck had an old beater Buick from the 1940s that we rode to sports events; it was both a gas and oil guzzler, and we had to rock it to get more than a gallon of fuel in the tank. The summer after we graduated, Chuck, Vince, and I decided to visit “Old U.D.” after consuming a few beers. We first stopped to see guidance counselor Mr. Dulfer, always good in a pinch for a hall pass; he wisely gave us mints before we proceeded to sexy French teacher Renee Polsky’s room.

I’ve been corresponding with Merrillville H.S. teacher Rob Bedwell, who sought my advice about a proposed Masters degree thesis on the Calumet Region during the Great Depression. My main suggestion: pare down the scope, perhaps concentrating on a single city or incident, such as Mexican repatriation or the Little Steel strike. Rob had read my Gary books and even used in class a special Steel Shavings magazine I’d published in the late 1980s featuring John Letica’s memoir “Totin’ Ties in the Region,” a coming-of-age tale about two brothers growing up in East Chicago. The issue also contains an interview John’s older brother Bart Letica, who brought me the manuscript after Bruce and Linda Amundsen got us in touch. Their father worked at Inland Steel and took part in the 1937 strike. Here’s part of the interview where Bart talked about hauling junk:

We kids would take old buggies and make wagons for hauling junk. We could get good wheels with wood spokes. We’d pick up bottles and rags and go door-to-door for old newspapers and magazines. A lot of young ladies liked it. To them it was a nuisance getting rid of the stuff. They’d tell us to come around every Saturday. It was our route. It was how we got show money or money for Christmas presents. Newspapers were something like 15 cents for a hundred pounds. Magazines would be 20 cents. Rags would be 30 cents. Milk bottles were four for a penny.

I made a small wheelbarrow, and we’d go along the tracks and find car blockings and wood. Along we’d also find wood that drifted in from the barges. We’d haul it home and use it for kindling. We didn’t burn railroad ties but a lot of people did. They would cut them into foot-long blocks. They were saturated with creosote. On a Saturday if you were playing and spotted coal, everything stopped. Somebody would walk ahead and keep making little piles. Somebody else would go and get a wheelbarrow to haul it home. We also gathered up coal along the railroad tracks.

In the Harbor there were two or three junk yards. The junk men mainly dealt with kids. You’d quibble with them. Sometimes if you felt you got cheated, you’d get even by putting a little iron or sand inside the squashed-up aluminum. It all evened up. Junk dealers would go to various stores to gather cardboard. In the process they would find all this candy and just put it aside. We found out about it and go there in the evening to get some of this candy. It was totally without permission.

We used to pick up cigarette butts and smoke them once in a while and get sick. Or chew tobacco. During the Depression pre-packages cigarettes were a luxury. Mostly my dad rolled his own: Bull Durham, Golden Grain, Prince Albert – brands like that. People didn’t smoke as much. It was too much trouble and the cigarettes – when they finally got down to them – there wasn’t too much to them.

Alissa arrived in time to dance with me to The Beth's "Whatever" and for my birthday dinner of pizza with many toppings followed by anecdotes about past experiences and the opening of presents from Beth, in my case a novel ("The Goldfinch") and coffee mug with images of Joe and Kamala. 

Indiana Landmarks provided grants to install steel doors at North Gleason Park Community Building ($8,000) and roof and chimney repairs for St. Augustine Episcopal Church ($10,000). Both historic buildings came about as a result of the city’s segregationist legacy. Built during the 1920s, North Gleason was the site of a nine-hole Negro golf course. Unlike the 18-hole whites-only South Gleason course, the area reserved for Black golfers frequently flooded in the spring as a result of overflow from the Little Calumet River. During the 1940s the clubhouse was used as a community center for dances and receptions, and until a few years ago was a Police Athletic League training center for boxers. In 1927 St. Augustine was chartered after Black congregants found themselves unwelcome at Christ Episcopal. Designed by acclaimed Chicago architect Edward D. Dart, the present building, completed in 1959, has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives provided historical documentation to church historian Paula DuBois and the university’s Center for Urban and Regional Excellence in championing efforts to preserve and refurbish these sites. I recall seeing the North Gleason clubhouse when using the Gleason Park driving range nearby, and I was inside the magnificent Episcopal Church for the funeral service of beloved colleague Garrett Cope.

Republican lawmakers recently booed longtime Gary Representative Vernon Smith as he was speaking in the Indiana General Assembly in opposition to House Bill 1367, that would allow predominantly white Greene Township to leave the South Bend school district. This followed similar treatment toward Indianapolis legislator Greg Porter. When Smith recounted evidence of discrimination he has encountered personally as an African American, several lawmakers left the chamber. Smith told reporters, “People stood up and tried to stop me from speaking. And I wasn’t going to get stopped.” Afterwards, Republican Alan Morrison followed him into a restroom and launched into a tirade, calling him a bully and a coward.” When Smith quickly left without engaging him, Morrison continued to berate him in the hallway. Smith, an IUN Education professor, said: “I just don’t feel that I should be in a situation where I’ve got to fear physically for my safety.” In a Post-Tribune column Lake County Democratic chairman Jim Wieser wrote that Smith is “a fierce advocate . . . [but] the epitome of civility, gentleness, and respect in the Indiana General Assembly.” As one who has known Vernon for many years, I can attest that Wieser is absolutely correct. In 1927 Smith's mother was forced out of Emerson School after striking racist students demanded her and a dozen other Black students' ouster. I've never known Vernon to express bitterness over the past, only determination to move forward with love, hope, and charity.