Embrace the Mess

“The messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.” Daniel J. Boorstin

Joe Madden and Don Ritchie; "c'est du vent" means "it's all hot air"

“Embrace the mess”sounds like a gimmicky motto thought up by Chicago Cubs manager Joe Madden, whose motivational sayings include “Try not to suck”and “Do simple better.” Two articles on pedagogy in the current Oral History Review (OHR)are titled “Embracing the Mess,” one about “Conflict Studies Classrooms” and the other on “Untidy Oral History.”  Both take a postmodernist approach, regard uncertainty of validation as a given, and discuss such concepts as deconstruction, dialogic relationships, indeterminacy, and intersubjectivity. Methinks these scholars created an unnecessary messiness themselves. I’m so grateful for fellow Marylander Don Ritchie’s “Doing Oral History,” which advocates plunging in armed only with a few practical words of advice and leaving the analysis until later.“

I am one of countless oral historians who have benefitted from Alessandro Portelli’s sage insights and example.  In “Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831-2014” (2017), now available in English, he distinguishes between memory and imagination and regards his craft as a creative endeavor.  His “symphony” of working-class voices (in the words of OHRcontributor William Burns) weaves a narrative similar to many post-industrial towns and cities. In “They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History” (2011) Portelli wrote:

  I have always admired the way in which people fight back under great odds and survive, especially in the United States, where one is not supposed to be up against impossible odds.  Harlan County [KY] does not display much pursuit of happiness.  But you see there the persistence of life in the face of danger and death.

  The handling of poisonous snakes in church is a test of faith and grace, just as catching them in one’s yard is a test of prowess and courage.  The deathly presence of the snake parallels the daily danger of the mines, and the culture takes a sort of ironic pride in its ability to handle it.  The snake is both something radically other and a household presence.

The most interesting article in the special OHR section on pedagogics, Leyla Neyzi’s “National Education Meets Critical Pedagogy: Teaching Oral History in Turkey,” views oral history as an alternative to “methodologically conservative nationalist history.”Neyzi’s mentor was folklorist and historian Arzu Öztürkmen of Bogazici University, who at the 1998 International Oral History Association (IOHA) conference in Rio de Janeiro presented a splendid paper entitled “The Irresistible Charm of the Interview.”  Phil and I danced with Öztürkmen at the U.S. Consulate’s gala for IOHA members.  I learned that the Turkish belly dance is similar to the Hawaiian hula except for the arm motion. 

Leyla Neyzi and Arzu Ozturkmen

In 2000, thanks in part to Öztürkmen, Bogazici University hosted the IOHA conference.  I was there when grandson James was born. In Istanbul I gave a talk about Inland Steel’s “Red Local” 1010 and the Steelworker’s Fight Back 1977 USWA election. One conference session was on the Armenian genocide during and after World war I resulted in the Turks extermination of approximately a million people.  When governmental officials threatened to prevent it, the IOHA threatened to hold the conference elsewhere.  An overflow audience included many people who were not IOHA members.  Neyzi wrote that this neglected episode in Turkish history illustrates “the silences and contradictions of public history”:

  When mentioned in history textbooks, Armenians tend to be referred to as “traitors” who were “relocated” during wartime for raison d’etat.  The prevalent view is that the (“so-called”) Armenian genocide is a myth Turkey’s internal and external “enemies” fabricated. Given that young people are raised with this public narrative (which masks an “open secret” only discussed in private), what are the implications of introducing the Armenian genocide as a historical event in the classroom, along with the memories of survivors as recorded by oral historians?”  

Neyzi broached this controversial subject in “’Wish They Hadn’t Left’: The Burden of Armenian Memory in Turkey,” a chapter in the 2010 book “Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey.”

Regal Beloit’s threat to move its Valpo operations to a plant in Monticello, Indiana, is shameful blackmail. All striking workers demand is a 75-cent hourly wage increase and health insurance not to exceed $15,000 a year. NWI Timescorrespondent Joseph S. Pete wrote: “The bearings manufacturing operation has a long history in Valparaiso and is even older than U.S. Steel's Gary Works. Regal Beloit, a multinational electric motors manufacturer, has only owned the former McGill Manufacturing Co. for five years.” Mayor Jon Costas released this statement:

  This decision would impact approximately 110 union workers and another 50-60 nonunion management positions. As a community, we are disappointed that Regal is considering shutting down this productive facility and urge them to reconsider this unfortunate option. 

Employees agreed to return to work while negotiations continue regarding the dispute and the company’s heartless position.

Anne Balay wrote:

Memories. Ten years ago today, at a faculty meet and greet, James Lane suggested to me that I do oral histories of gay steelworkers. I was telling him about my interest in blue collar queers, and he said this was an interesting and fun opportunity. I was an English professor with no background in ethnography or interviewing. I was an introvert. I never looked back and the people I know now because of that work are the greatest gift anyone could have.

Last October, in Montreal for an OHA conference session Anne Balay organized, I teared up at lunch with one of Anne’s Haverford students, Phil Reid, describing my suggestion that she interview LGBT steelworkers and how her department chair held that against her, preferring that Anne keep churning out largely unread children’s lit articles.

Ray Smock photographed the Milky Way near Spray, Oregon and wrote:

   The Milky Way this time of year dominates the sky from horizon to horizon. We had two nights of crystal-clear sky with stars so bright it was easy to see in total darkness. Spray, Oregon a town of 150 was six miles from our viewing site and blocked by a mountain. No light pollution!  We got lucky in the high desert with beautiful days and star filled nights. We went to a country store where we were the only ones not wearing camouflage. It was opening day for elk hunting for bow hunters.

On the second week of bowling I rolled a 473 (148-152-173) as the Electrical Engineers took two games and series by a mere 12 pins.  In the tenth frame of game three Ron Smith doubled, I struck and spared, setting the stage for 87-year-old Frank Shufran, our clean-up man, who needed to pick up a ten-pin, normally his nemesis, in order for us to prevail.  He nailed it and flashed four fingers, signifying the number of times he had converted it.  On an adjacent alley, 82-year-old Gene Clifford, a former Valpo H.S. bowling coach, rolled a 236 despite missing a couple spares.

Steve and Wanda Trafny

Historian John C. Trafny gave me a copy of his latest Arcadia “Images of America” volume, “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel,” co-authored by his sister Diane F. Trafny.  On the cover is a Calumet Regional Archives photo of a parade float provided by Gary Works passing the Lake Superior Court Building during the 1931 Gary Silver Jubilee celebration.The book includes several photos of the Trafny's parents, Steve, who saw action in the Pacific during World War II, and Wanda, a refugee from Poland.  In the introduction they paint a vivid picture of Gary’s downtown commercial district during its 30-year heyday beginning in the 1920s, which drew shoppers and pleasure seekers from throughout the Calumet Region despite stores being closed on Sundays prior to the 1950s except for gas stations and pharmacies:

 Shoppers were offered a host of stores. Large national chains like Sears, J.C. Penney, Florsheim, and S.S. Kresge Co., and Chicago-based stores like Goldblatt Bros. became popular with blue-collar families, especially those who wanted a good deal on furniture or appliances.  H. Gordon and Sons, which opened on Broadway in the early 1920s, became one of the area’s premier clothing stores.  Others included Pearson, a women’s clothing store, and Henry C. Lytton and Sons, menswear.  Baby boomers may recall Comay’s Jewelers with its record shop, Tom Olesker’s, W.T. Grant, and Robert Hall clothing on East Fifth Avenue.  No matter the store, sales associates asked shoppers, “May I help you?” 

  Along Fifth Avenue visitors could patronize Olsen Cadillac, Baker Chevrolet, and Baruch Olds. Bakeries such as Cake Box and Sno-White provided delicious baked goods. Slicks Laundry, the Blackstone, the Lighthouse, Walts, and Gary Camera were other businesses located along the street. In addition, there were plenty of taverns in the area.They included Parkway, Cozy Corner, Trainor’s, the Spitfire Lounge, the Ingot Inn, and a host of others.  On payday Mondays, the saloons did good business as steelworkers cashed checks there instead of the banks.  It was, after all, a steel town.

Ron Cohen treated Steve McShane and me to lunch at Captain’s House in Miller.  The main order of business was doing whatever necessary to hire Steve’s replacement before he retires in a year.  As Archives co-directors, Ron and I agreed to write Library dean Latrice Booker and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Vicki Roman-Lagunas to urge authorization so a search can commence.   Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy had brought me a copy of the Gary Crusaderthat contained an article about the third edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  Ron told me that the Katie Hall Educational Foundation has been selling them at a brisk pace.

Rolling Stone National Editor Matt Taibbi’s article “Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid” compares the President to a “mad king” whom “most people would not leave alone with a decent wristwatch, let alone their children.”  Here’s a description of him at a rally in Cincinnati: “His hair has visibly yellowed since 2016.  It’s an amazing, unnatural color, like he was electrocuted in French’s mustard.  His neckless physique is likewise a wonder. He looks like he ate Nancy Pelosi.” He scolds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being disrespectful to “Nancy.”  Taibbi writes: 

 Nancy!  The lascivious familiarity with which Trump dropped her name must have stung like a tongue in Pelosi’s ear.  The Speaker, from that moment, was cornered.  A step forward meant welcoming the boils-and-all embrace of Donald Trump. A step back meant bitter intramural surrender and a likely trip to intersectionality re-education camp.

If “race, class, and gender” was once the politically correct historians’ Holy Trinity, “intersectionality” has become its unitarian synthesis. Coined by black feminist scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, it’s the assertion that aspects of political and social discrimination overlap with gender.

 intersectionality

In “Chances Are” novelist Richard Russo introduced memorable minor characters such as closeted American History professor Tom Ford, who gave students the lone final exam question on the first day of class: “What caused the Civil War?” Michael, Sr., Mickey’s father, “like so many workingmen, always carried his money in a roll in his front pocket, no doubt comforted by the weight, the illusion of control you couldn’t get from a flimsy credit card.”A pipe fitter with a heart murmur that he neglected, one day he remained in the restaurant booth when his buddies got up to leave, his heart having beat for the final time.  When I told Gaard Logan that “Chances Are” was named for the 1957 Johnny Mathis song, she recalled that the brother of the African-American crooner (the secret heartthrob to many suburban young women I knew) was rumored to be a toll booth attendant in San Francisco when she moved there. 

End of an Era

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” Arthur Miller

I’ve begun to organize what to tell the Valparaiso University Urban Sociology students in Mary Kate Blake’s class next week when I distribute my 1980s Steel Shavings,“The Uncertainty of Everyday Life” in the Calumet Region. I’ll identify myself as a regional, rather than a purely local, historian and define the Calumet Region as the Great Lakes basin geographic area drained by the Grand and Little Calumet rivers in northwest Indiana and northeast Illinois.  I’ll distinguish among the four main Lake County cities, Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, and Whiting, all of which grew rapidly as a result of industrialization and largely unrestricted immigration at the turn of the twentieth century.  I’ll contrast the memoirs and oral histories that constitute most of the issue’s contents with the essay by Lance Trusty, “End of an Era: The 1980s in the Calumet,” based largely on census figures and other written sources. Finally, I’ll explain the title, “The Uncertainly of Everyday Life,” especially in connection with the Ronald Reagan presidency, the 1986-87 U.S. Steel lockout, and the drastic decline in mill employment due to automation.  The phrase, though true to some extent in every decade, was inspired by misfortunes that affected adolescents as well as such unexpected tragedies as the slaying of elderly Glen Park Bible teacher Ruth Pelke, the Cline Avenue Bridge collapse, and the sudden death of 47 year-old stalwart First District Congressman Adam Benjamin, Jr.

Sandra L. Barnes

A book on Mary Kate Blake’s reading list by urban sociologist Sandra L. Barnes, “The Cost of Being Poor: A Comparative Study of Life in Poor Urban Neighborhoods in Gary, Indiana” (2005), contains an interesting interview with Tamara Davis (it isn’t clear if that is her real name) who grew up in Gary, graduated from IUN, lives in a Merrillville apartment, and is a caseworker in LaPorte.  Her parents were staunch Baptists and stressed the value of family and education. Thirty years old when interviewed some 30 years ago, Tamara told Barnes, now a professor at Vanderbilt, that her dad was illiterate but worked for American Bridge Company until the Gary plant closed at the end of the 1970s.  Barnes recorded Tamara’s recollections:

 I remember when I was real little, my mother was working at the bank and my father got laid off. At first I really couldn’t tell that things had changed, but as I got older, we used to collect aluminum cans for money and recycle newspaper, so then I knew that [father’s layoff] had affected our finances.  They used to argue about the division of labor.  My mother said that if she came home from work, the dinner should be ready and that type of thing.  I do remember him cooking occasionally but only one or two things so I’m not sure he really could cook.  I know he did not clean.  But he did do a lot of babysitting even if it was just dragging the kids around wherever he was going.

  Once I got older, I knew that we were poor. One time, these jeans came out that had like, fake leather on the front, and everybody had some.  And I was gonna lose my mind if I didn’t get any. All my friends wanted to take these pictures together in school with these same jeans on. My mother didn’t have the money and I was just screaming and crying, so she borrowed the money from my aunt.  And I remember her on the phone talking to my other aunt about what my aunt puts you through to borrow money from her and I felt bad that I had put my mother through that just for a pair of jeans.

Tamara told Barnes that she would consider living in Gary but only if she could live in a good neighborhood.  She added:

  Gary is my home, probably because I grew up there.  And the people I work with are from Gary.  I still have close community ties with people from Gary – and it’s the one area here that has the most Black people. 

  I try to show as much support for Gary as I can, but I try not to be stupid either. Things like groceries would be too expensive to get in Gary.  But I bank at a credit union in Gary.  If you look at young people in Gary, they’re wearing one hundred dollar gym shoes and outfits where the pants alone were one hundred dollars, so it’s how you choose to spend your money. I think there’s a lot of money to be spent in Gary, but unfortunately it’s not being spent in Gary.

  I work with White people all the time, and they always say, “You go to Gary?" – as if people are just falling down dead on every corner.  When it’s not that.  If you’re engaged in the wrong types of activities, which could happen in Valparaiso, Hammond, Portage, Merrillville or where ever, then you run the risk of, you know, murder or whatever. But unless you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time – and you just never go to those places – then you are relatively safe.

In a New Yorker profile David Remnick wrote that Chicago Blues legend Buddy Guy feared he might be the last of his ilk. When a teenager, Guy paid 50 cents to see Guitar Slim (1926-1959) at the Masonic Temple in Baton Rouge.  When the band started playing “The Things I Used To Do,” the headliner was nowhere in sight.  Remnick wrote:

 It was only after a while that anyone could see Slim, his hair dyed flaming red to match his suit, being carried forward through the crowd by a hulking roadie. Using a 300-foot cord to connect his guitar to his amplifier, he played a frenzied solo as his one-man caravan inched him toward the stage. And, once he joined the band, Slim pulled every stunt imaginable, playing the guitar between his legs, behind his back.  He raised it to his face and plucked the strings with his teeth.  As Guy watched Slim, he made a decision: "I want to play like B.B. King, but I want to act like Guitar Slim.”

A quarter-century ago, I saw Buddy Guy at a Star Plaza House Rockin’ Blues concert produced by Henry and Omar Farag.  He pulled off some of the same stunts he'd observed Guitar Slim doing that evening, including strutting up and down the aisles and up in the balcony while playing a guitar solo.

Former IUN colleague Ed Escobar sent this response to my piece about the Concerned Latins Organization (CLO) that referenced our book “Forging a Community” that mentions the Latino Historical Society, to which we both belonged, and two of its presidents, Jesse Villalpando and David Castro:

 The CLO was before my time there but I certainly remember being regaled with stories from David Castro and to a lesser extent from Jesse Villalpando about its accomplishments.  Among the many joys I had while I was in Indiana was hanging out with them when we were building the Historical Society.  

 Both Gayle and I continue to be active historians.  She is having an article published by a journal affiliated with the Ninth Circuit Court on her book on the California women’s suffrage movement and gave a presentation before the L.A. History Group on her new work on women journalists in the early 20^th century.  I continue to work on my second book on relations between Chicanos and the LAPD (1945-2000) which is now about 80% completed.  After totally lapsing into inactivity due to the disruption of moving, I’ve joined a writing group of historians at Berkeley and am picking up steam again.  Wish me luck.

While completing World War II homefront unit, Nicole Anslover told the class about the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots, one the central events in Escobar’s “Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity: Mexican Americans and the Los Angeles Police Department, 1900-1945.”   During a discussion of Japanese internment, justified at the time as a military necessity.  I mentioned that in Hawaii, where the threat of Japanese invasion was more plausible than on the West Coast, Japanese-Americans were not interned, except in exceptional cases.  For one thing, it would have been impractical, considering it would have applied to 40 percent of the population.  When Nicole brought up the Tuskegee Airmen, I noted that black officers were arrested at Fort Freeman near Seymour, Indiana, for trying to desegregate an all-white officers’ club. Most military training camps being located in the South, a series of ugly attacks on servicemen caused essayist James Baldwin to conclude that many parents of black soldiers were relieved when their sons left the South to be shipped overseas into combat. 

above, arrested Tuskegee Airmen; below, Anne Balay with Stephanie and Brandie Diamond

Despite two nationally acclaimed books, on LGBT steelworkers and long-haul trucker, Anna Balay does not have a full-time position in the Fall and may leave academia.  What a disgusting commentary on the current state of the profession and the gutless, faint-hearted professors who claim to be her supporters.  Here’s her latest post as she embarked on a trip to Oxford, Mississippi to speak about her book “Semi-Queer.” On the way Anne reunited with trucker buddies Stephanie and Brandie Diamond:

 I'm trying to give myself permission to be angry and sad that I'm leaving academia because no school has hired me, but also hold on to the real value of my writing and activist scholarship. SO, out this morning for an early run, trying to face the future with joy, I tripped and fell full length smashing both knees, an elbow, and my face. Icing now.

 below, Ray Smock and historian Richard Rector

At a talk and book signing for “American Demagogue,” an audience member asked Ray Smock if Trump could be re-elected.  Ray admitted its possibility and afterwards composed these reflections:

 We learned the hard way in 2016 that a blatant demagogue can win the highest office in the land. Not only did Trump beat Hillary Clinton, he first had to beat 11 other Republican nominees and five more that dropped out before the primaries got underway. This should alert us to the power to sway voters that is contained in the tactics of fear, hate, ridicule, smears, lies, bombast, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. 

  Whoever emerges from the Democratic Party to take on Trump in 2020 will have to be a strong, self-assured individual who can stand up to Trump’s nuclear blasts of demagoguery. And the Democratic candidate cannot afford to take the low ground of demagoguery to fight Trump the Demagogue. I wonder if there are enough American voters who can set aside their own fears and anxieties long enough to see through the dark forces of Trumpism.

The Democratic candidate who can defeat Trump will have to be able to use humor rather than outright ridicule to challenge Trump. It is the rare politician that has a natural ability to use humor. Humor can be an important political tool, and it can be a hopeful, positive tactic to de-fang demagogues. Trump has no sense of humor. It takes empathy to be funny. It takes a broader understanding of human nature to use humor than it does to appeal to fear and hate.

  A Democratic challenger to Trump needs to be a good story teller who can tell stories about America and the promise of America. The Democratic challenger needs more than a slogan like “Make America Great Again,” which is nothing but a dog whistle for keeping America white. Americans love a good story, one with a moral. Trump is not a story teller. He tells stories only about himself. His concept of humor is ridiculing his enemies.

While at Inman’s watching James bowl, I read a few pages of “I Am Malala,” given to me by former student Terry Helton. Malala Yousafzai’s childhood in Mingora, Pakistan was unimaginably different from American adolescents, yet she listened to Justin Bieber and enjoyed Twilight Saga movies. Her mother was illiterate and her father, reared to value education, the founder of a school for girls.  The youngest Nobel Prize laureate, Malala at age 12 was shot in the head while on a bus by a Taliban gunman because she was an advocate for women’s education.  During my grandson’s third game I started paying close attention as he flirted with a 200, needing a strike in the tenth for a double. Instead he calmly spared and settled for a 196.

Christina Thompson’s “Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia” documents centuries-old efforts to understand a seafaring people who colonized islands stretching more than half way around the world.  As New Zealand ethnologist Elsdor Best wrote, “Could the story of Polynesian voyageurs be written in full, then it would be the wonder-story of the world.”  4,000 years ago, during the Ice Age the sea level was several hundred feet lower, and a continent existed where the Southeast Asian nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, and New Guinea are today.  Beginning around 2000 BC and ending around 1100 A.D. Polynesian settlement spread from New Zealand north to Hawaii and southeast to Easter Island. Contact with Europeans (and contagious diseases) decimated Oceana, threatening some native populations with extinction.

Captain James Cook

Having lived in Hawaii for 18 months, I was intrigued by Thompson’s account of Captain James Cook’s death on February 14, 1779.  According to legend, the Hawaiians believed he was the god Lono and killed him when they realized he was human and ate his flesh.  Thompson explained that Cook arrived while a festival honoring Lono, the god of fertility and peace, was underway, and Cook was honored not as a deity but simply as the human embodiment of Lono. Cook sailed away but returned several days later after a ship’s foremast broke during a sudden storm with gale force winds.  Since the festival had concluded, Cook and his men were now met with distrust.  When repairing the mast, the crew encountered hostility, and thefts began occurring, including the disappearance of a cutter vessel. During the subsequent standoff, a Hawaiian chief was shot, causing angry natives to attack Cook’s party, killing the Captain.  The Hawaiians were not cannibals and cooked part of Cook’s body, not for food but because they believed that his power lay in the bones.

Meagan Flynn of the Washington Postwrote about the conviction of six Beatrice, Nebraska, outcasts (including one named James Dean), some of whom were tricked by a police psychologist into confessing to the 1985 rape and murder of an elderly woman.  The shrink convinced three of them that they were suffering from “memory repression.”  Several were involved in the porn industry, which originally brought them to the attention of authorities.  Police interrogators would tell suspects details of the crime and suggest that the truth would be revealed to them in their dreams. DNA tests eventually exonerated the so-called Beatrice Six, and recently the Supreme Court upheld a 28.1 million dollar judgment for wrongful conviction.

Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer

Lash Out

“I can feel it on the back of my tongue
All of the words getting trapped in my lungs
Heavy like a stone, waiting for the river to run
I wanna lash out”

         Alice Merton, “Lash Out”

In 2017 German-born Canadian Alice Merton scored an international hit with “No Roots.” I like her more recent “Lash Out” even better.  I once had a short fuse.  Now I claim to be “mellow Jimbo,” and Toni just snickers, unerringly aware of my inner thoughts. Every once in a while, I need to give vent to the frustration and lash out, often with a loud “goddammit,” as when the computer is giving me trouble right before I want to leave school.  The first two lines of “No Roots” go:
                    I like digging holes and hiding things inside them
                    When I'll grow old I hope I won't forget to find them

When we were kids, Terry Jenkins and I buried a bottle containing private thoughts in his side yard, hoping someone would come upon it years later. Three years ago, we passed by the site on a tour of our old Fort Washington haunts.  I have no idea what we might have written.

 Maria McGrath at Dickinson College in carlyle, PA, alma mater of Pres. James Buchanan

I told Terry and Gayle Jenkins about meeting food historian Maria McGrath, a professor at Bucks County Community College and daughter of Upper Dublin classmate Susan Floyd, in Montreal at the Oral History Association conference, first at her session on “Queer Voices, Queer Lives,” then at a reception with Anne Balay and her Haverford student Phil Reid. Since then Maria and I have exchanged several emails.  For example, I wrote:

 I  thoroughly enjoyed your excellent paper on Bloodroot Restaurant and the opportunity to talk with you at the conference diversity reception.  What an unexpected and delightful experience, especially since you got to meet Anne Balay, whom I’m so proud to have been part of her scholarly growth.  Here are two books that I recommend if you haven’t read them:Howard Markel’s recently published “The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek” is absolutely fascinating (the brothers would turn over in their graves at Kelloggs now selling sugar-coated cereals).Harvey Greene’s “The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, 1915-1945” has wonderful social history material, and the chapter on the food revolution of the 1920s was the basis for an entire lecture in my Twenties course.  By the way, one of my friends in school was Eddie Piszek, whose dad founded Mrs. Paul’s frozen foods.  He’s from Port Richmond, the same Polish neighborhood in Philly my wife Toni is from and started out peddling crab cakes. They lived in a mansion off Pennsylvania Avenue between Fort Washington and East Oreland, and the Piszek chauffeur took Eddie and me to U.D. basketball games before we could drive.

She replied:   

  I'm so pleased that you were able to attend my talk and that we could hang out later that evening. Anne is a fascinating person, I certainly hope someone hires her soon. As far as I can tell, she is a real scholarly "catch."  I've read other Harvey Greene books, but not the one on Everyday Life. I will have to look that one and your other recommendation up.  Make sure you let me know when you are in Philly area. We will have to have a multi-generational reunion. Best, Maria 

Don Cornelius; below, Barry White singing "I Can't Get Enough of You, Baby"

Like Anne, Maria would be a good scholarly catch, especially after the publication of her forthcoming book “Food for Dissent: Natural Food Politics and Cultures Since the 1960s.”  During our two-hour conversation in Montreal, she mentioned learning dance moves on “Soul Train” that she still uses.  I wrote back:

  Chicagoan Don Cornelius started “Soul Train” and TV doesn’t get any better than seeing Stevie Wonder singing "Superstition" or Barry White (“the world’s sexiest fat man”) perform with “Soul Train” dancers  in the background. I would love to see you again in Philadelphia.  Terry Jenkins and I talked about going to a Phillies game with your dad last summer, but the only time the Cubs came to Philadelphia was late August, a bad time for my son Dave to come since he was already in school and coaching tennis.  Terry and Gayle were excited when I told them about meeting you.  I claimed I was a little reticent, wanting to get to know you as a history colleague and not just a friend’s daughter, but when I think about our long chat, I guess the “real Jimbo” came out, as Terry would say.

I recall describing a visit to IU’s Kinsey sex institute, lashing out at IUN’s “old boys” who cheated Anne Balay of tenure, and describing a block party in Miller that terry and Gayle attended and Dave’s band Voodoo Chili played at where an over-exuberant dancer bumped against me and her teeth drew blood from my forehead.

On the radio I heard “A Million to One” by Jimmy Charles. The summer of 1962, when I met Toni, “A Million to One” was playing on my 1956 Buick car radio the night before I was to return to Bucknell for my junior year.  We got out of the car and danced to the lament, performed in Jimmy’s distinctive crying style, which begins:

A million to one
That's what our folks think about this love of ours
A million to one
They say that our love will fade like yesterday's flowers
They're betting everything that our love won't survive

At the time Toni was Catholic and I was Lutheran, and both our mothers were leery of the romance and skeptical that we’d stay in touch. Well, we did, often long distance, fell in love, and beat the odds. Two years earlier, I had said goodbye to my summer girlfriend, said goodbye, and never looked back.

 James Dye

At the bequest of IU’s Bicentennial Committee I interviewed former IU trustee James Dye, 87, a retired builder and large university donor. Since virtually the entire Instructional Media Center staff was at a conference downstate, the camera person was late arriving and we had to halt twice because of a low battery.  It was maddening, but I didn’t lash out at the culprits who didn’t check the battery and then went to the wrong room.  Dye didn’t complain and the interruptions were a blessing in disguise, as Steve took the opportunity to inform him about the Archives and I showed him the Rev. Robert Lowery library study area that the James and Betty Dye Foundation funded.  It also offers scholarships to many IUN students. Like Bernie Konrady Jr., founder of Konrady Plastics, Dye was an imaginative entrepreneur who built his first house virtually by himself at age 20.  

Manager for IU’s football and basketball teams in the early 1950s, Dye recalled a Sigma Chi fraternity party that lasted 48 hours after the Hoosiers beat Notre Dame and then Kansas for the 1953 NCAA championship. He joked that IU probably gave him an honorary degree for attending so many losing gridiron contests. His company built Mansards Apartments in Griffith where Toni and I played tennis and Dye competed with former Gary mayor George Chacharis and his driver John Diamond.  I kept silent when Dye, a fiscal conservative expressed admiration for Purdue president Mitch Daniels, who seems to care more about profits than academic freedom.  He praised IUN past IUN chancellors Dan Orescanin and Peggy Elliott and asked me about Chancellor Lowe. I lauded Lowe’s participation in community affairs, History Department functions, and IUN student functions.

 Lowe at Chancellor's forum Oct. 17, 2018; below, controlled burn in Miller; photos by Kyle Telechan 

An editor of IU’s Bicentennial magazine, “IU200,” is preparing an article about Red Scare victims, including Saul Maloff, an IUN English professor once active in an organization later deemed a communist front group.  I sent her Paul Kern and my history of IUN that includes an interview with then-director Jack Buehner, who received orders from Bloomington not to renew Maloff’s contract at a time when IU administrators basically controlled regional campuses.  Buehner told me:

  Under pressure from IU president Herman Wells and Trustee Ray Thomas, I asked Saul Maloff, a marvelous conversationalist, to tell me straight out the full story so that I’d know how to defend him. He refused to level with me.  I’m sure he had his reasons, but I was not prepared to go to bat for him on blind faith alone.  I deserved to know what I was defending.  It was a very upsetting experience.  Maloff’s wife had a nervous breakdown.  It was an infringement of academic freedom, but the only one that occurred under me.

During this time Herman Wells was taking heat for defending sex therapist Alfred Kinsey and bent on desegregating the campus, so he already had his hands full dealing with disgruntled trustees and legislators on those fronts and thus made defending accused communist sympathizers a lower priority.  

The Bicentennial magazine editor hoped I’d consider contributing an article. I’m thinking of updating one written 20 years ago entitled, “The Professor Wore a Cowboy Hat (and nothing else): Ethical Issues in handling Matters of Sex in Institutional Oral Histories: IU Northwest as a Case Study.”  It centered on four male professors accused of sexual indiscretions, two with coeds, who got off lightly, the others involving alleged gay activity were treated more severely and, in one case, with tragic consequences.  I wrote about the first two, which became cause celebresbut not the two others, which were hushed up and not public knowledge.  During the 1970s virtually all History colleagues of my generation got divorced and later married former students – albeit the women well into their 20s who almost always initiated the relationship.  Since then, with a much older faculty, I presume that less student-teacher sex takes place, but discrimination against LGBTQs remains troublesome. Gay faculty who didn’t remain in the until securing tenure were likely not retained, with Anne Balay’s case being the most glaring example.

Anne Balay in truckers parade over Mackinac Bridge

This from Jim Spicer:

  The year is 2020 and the United States has elected the first woman as well as the first Jewish president, Susan Goldstein. She calls up her mother a few weeks after Election Day and says: "So, Mom, I assume you'll be coming to my inauguration?"
"I don't think so. It's a ten hour drive, your father isn't as young as he used to be, and my arthritis is acting up again."
"Don't worry about it Mom, I'll send Air Force One to pick you up and take you home, and a limousine will pick you up at your door."
"I don't know, everybody will be so fancy-schmaltzy, what on earth would I wear?"
Susan replies, "I'll make sure you have a wonderful gown custom-made by the best designer in New York."
"Honey,"Mom complains,"you know I can't eat those rich foods you and your friends like to eat."
The President Elect says, "Don't worry Mom. The entire affair is going to be handled by the best caterer in New York; kosher all the way. Mom, I really want you to come."
So Mom reluctantly agrees and on January 20, 202 Susan Goldstein is being sworn in as President of the United States. In the front row sits the new President's mother, who leans over to a senator sitting next to her and says, "You see that woman over there with her hand on the Torah, becoming President of the United States?"The Senator whispers back, "Yes, I do."
Mom says proudly, "Her brother is a doctor."

In a position round to determine first place in my senior bowling league, the Electrical Engineers took two games and series from Just Friends, whose team includes two mid-Fifties Gary Horace Mann graduates. I had trouble picking up spares but rolled my average thanks to a two-bagger and a turkey (three strikes in a row).  In the only close game, opponent Dennis Cavanaugh struck out, Frank Shufran needed a mark for us to win.  He picked up a ten-pin (often difficult for him) for a spare and the game.  Miket Wardell had all sorts of trouble for 20 frames but rebounded with a 209.  During the first 2 games he exhibited facial and body expressions ranging from anger to bewilderment but unlike me in that situation, no profanities.  The week before, Dick Maloney, so blind teammates had to tell him which pins remained standing after his first shot, bowled well over average against the same team.

Nicked myself shaving this morning, right under my lip, something that rarely happens with anymore with modern blades. It bled like a sonuvabitch – serves me right for shaving first thing in the morning.