Chesterton

“You know what we say in Chesterton, it’s a Chester ton of fun.” Jim Gaffigan

According to NWI Times correspondent Eloise Marie Valadez, “Happenings in Chesterton” was a “Community Calendar” comedy segment on a recent airing of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” On hand to poke fun at his Hoosier hometown was 55-year-old Jim Gaffigan, the youngest of six children who played football at La Porte La Lumiere High School and whose Irish Catholic father was CEO of Mercantile National Bank. Known as a “clean comic” whose stand-up routines often center on such subjects as food, fatherhood, and laziness, Gaffigan currently lives in Manhattan with a wife and five children and has appeared in KFC commercials as Colonel Sanders.

Among the things to do in Chesterton, Indiana, where Toni and I now live, mentioned by Colbert and Gaffigan were a Family-Friendly Improv Comedy event on the beach at the Indiana Dunes, Destruction Derby Night at the Porter County Fair, a Lake Michigan bachelorette cruise featuring an appearance by the Men of Michigan City Strippers, and European Market (which I’ve attended), where goods, according to Colbert, come from Milan, Illinois, Paris, Michigan, and French Lick, Indiana.

Prior to moving to Chesterton in 2010, I had heard that, like many rural Indiana towns, Blacks historically had been unwelcome; otherwise, I didn’t know much about the community beyond what a few of my IUN students had written for articles that appeared in issues of Steel Shavings. At one time downtown Chesterton evidently sported a movie theater and a roller rink. Forty years ago, Kevin B. Ryan interviewed Baillytown teacher Miss Larson, who recalled that during the 1920s numerous farmers went to work in the steel mills and young girls out of school could find jobs as clerks in downtown Gary stores and shops. During Prohibition many folks made their own homebrew, and Porter County sheriff W. F. Forney conducted frequent raids against bootleggers and their illegal stills.

In “Chesterton in Transition” Michael J. Hayduk wrote that during the 1920s many farmers were obtaining electricity, Dunes Highway (now U.S. 12) was completed, land developers, both legitimate and illegitimate, were proliferating, and downtown stores were selling such new consumer items as Kodak cameras and Pyrex glassware. Hayduk also wrote about railroad accidents and an unnecessary shooting:

The most controversial 1920 story in the pages of the Chesterton Tribune involved the New York Central railroad crossing on Calumet Road in the heart of the downtown section. After a woman was killed by a train in January, there were editorials advocating better safety precautions. Then when a beloved milkman was struck fatally in May, the outcry increased. Finally, after three Chicagoans died at the crossing on July 1, the New York Central replaced the incompetent guard with a new man and added warning bells and gates to “Death Crossing.”

The people of the Chesterton area imagined that their community was free of the problems besetting such cities as Gary and Chicago, but occasionally a crime story would shatter this bucolic image. The trial of two railway detectives charged with shooting a motorist who had been changing a tire at midnight near company property not only captured much public attention but revealed an undertone of racism in the proceedings. Those interested in freeing the detectives dwelled on the criminal record of the motorist and inferred that he was a Negro who had been trying to pass as white. The trial was not very fair, and the jury rendered a not guilty verdict on grounds of self-defense.