Lake Rats

“At Crown Point, where I graduated in 1967, kids would call those of us from Cedar Lake “Lake Rats.”  At times it was a little rough because of the stigma.”  Bob Carnahan

 logo for the indie band Lake Rats

I’ve been enjoying Jeff Manes’ “All Worth Their Salt: The People of NWI,” volume II, which includes interviews with such IUN colleagues as archivist Steve McShane, reference librarian Barb Kubiak, former Communication Department secretary Dorothy Mokry, former Labor Studies prof Ruth Needleman, and former A+ student of mine Bob Petyko.  A self-described “Lake Rat,” Petyko now teaches at MacArthur Elementary in Cedar Lake, which he attended during the 1950s.  He worked for Standard Forge in East Chicago after high school and started college at IUN at age 41.  Petyko wrote so compellingly about growing up poor in Cedar Lake that it inspired me to edit a special Steel Shavings issue on his historic hometown.  It proved to be controversial because of Petyko’s candid coming-of-age story about, in Petyko’s parlance, “the wages of sin” (at least in the eyes of respectable society) set against a backdrop of class and generational conflict.  In 2008 Petyko told Manes:

  I remember my third grade teacher giving me a bag of clothes because I had only one pair of pants to wear to school everyday.  I wore an old pair of dad’s shoes – size 11s.  That was embarrassing.  But at MacArthur there were a lot of kids like me.

  I had five brothers.  We’d prop a garbage can inside the front door so we’d know when the old man came home drunk.  My dad was the kind of guy who would hit you while you were asleep.

Petyko recalled Cedar Point Park a half-century ago:

  I grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood.  When my father had a job in Illinois, he’d stay the whole week in Chicago and come out weekends on the bus.  I found out later that he had a girlfriend in Chicago.  He was a butcher.  He’d give my mom maybe $60 a week, and that would keep us going.  We didn’t have a car.  We didn’t even have a phone until 1967.  And, of course, my parents never owned a home.  The American dream, man.

  There were eight of us.  Whenever my dad lost his job, we’d get kicked out of the place we were living.  Then we'd move to another house.  We used to put our furniture on wagons and sleds.  We’d be like gypsies going through the neighborhood.  We liked to move in winter because it was easier to push the stuff.  All the neighborhood kids would help us.

  We lived in this one house that had a little lean-to addition where I slept.  Once it snowed, and the room caved in.  My mom took a sheet and thumb-tacked it up along the doorway.  We spent the whole winter like that.  It would be windy, and that sheet would flap around.  We didn’t have hot water.  When we flushed the toilet, we had to go to the lake to get a bucket of water to make it work.

  There were so many taverns, especially on the east side, that you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting one.  In one area of less than a mile there was Chatterbox, the VFW, the Amvets, Mother Tucker’s, Melody Hill, Coleman’s, and the Band Box.  The adults used to get hammered all the time.  Men, and women in my family’s case, they’d get tanked up.  When I was real young, my dad would send me down to the bar for beer or a bottle of Seagrams, and I’d just walk it home.  They’d put it on my dad’s tab.  There was never a problem about my being underage.

  Illinois people would drive around the Point, staring at us “porch monkeys.”  That’s what we were.  Everyone would sit on stoops with our clothes half on, and it must have been like a zoo to them.  I’m sure some must have said to guests, “I have to take you down here; you must see this.”  And they’d drive around and gape, as it to say, “Oh look.  It’s inhabited.”

  The first time I heard the phrase “Lake Rat” was from an older brother.  One of his teachers said, “Oh, I got the Lake Rat class.”  I think Crown Point people coined it.  I call myself a Lake Rat to this day and am proud of it.

  We bought Lake Rat patches for our blue jean jackets at a head shop in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.  My junior year they made us stop wearing our Lake Rat jackets to school.

Bob Petyko described his fourth grade students and colleagues at MacArthur to Jeff Manes:

  I have a couple kids who might be considered upper middle class, and then I have all these kids who are poverty.  That’s why I don’t give homework.  Besides, moms don’t like getting Cs.  My kids work for me: from the time they sit down until the end of the day.  They owe me that.

  The people at MacArthur have genuine love for the kids.  MacArthur is a special place.  Our custodian has a thing called Carnahan’s Helpers; the kids love and respect him.

At Gardner Center Friday Jeff Manes (above), a former steelworker, recited Carl Sandburg’s poem “The Mayor of Gary” and one of his own entitled “Thirst.”  I’ll use these lines in my upcoming talk at Calumet College:

Screech, roar, POOM! Blast.

Bells and whistles out the ass.

Gaudy knickknacks.  Goofy nicknames.

Bawdy jokes and poker games.

Preachers, bikers, pikers, thugs.

Dinosaurs and engineers.

Holy rollers.  Carpenteers.

Melters, blowers, hookers too.

A college boy from Whatzmatta U.

Lary Car and Sal O’Manders

Steamboat Jack and Gerry Manders.

Lead and coke gas tough to hack.

Our snot and spit is always black.

The time has come I’ve paid the bill.

Thirty years in the mill.

I woke up Saturday eager to learn the Semi-State basketball results. 21st Century Charter School lost despite 42 points from Eugene German (above). To my shock I read that a car sideswiped the bus carrying Griffith players to Lafayette. The driver lost control of her car after spilling coffee on herself.  The bus veered off I-65 and overturned.  There were scrapes and bruises aplenty, but, miraculously, no fatalities. 

 above, NWI Times photo by Jonathan Miano; below, Post-Trib photo by Rich Leber

 

In the NCAA third round IU won an exciting contest against longtime rival Kentucky to reach he “Sweet Sixteen.”   Facing off were Hawaii, where I received an MA, and Maryland, where I received a PhD.  I had one eye on the game while playing bridge at Brian and Connie Barnes’ house in Crown Point.  It remained close until the Terrapins went on a 12-2 run midway through the second half. 

The NWI Times has been highlighting the origins of Region communities.  According to LaPorte County historian Fern Eddy Schultz, its first resident of Westville was Miriam Benedict, who passed through the area during the 1820s with her husband on her way to Illinois.  When he died shortly thereafter, she moved to Westville, the story, perhaps apocryphal, goes, because an Illinois law prohibited widows from keeping their children. 

Nicole Anslover invited me to her History seminar on “The Media and Modern America.”  The topic was press coverage of the Vietnam War.  During the first part of class students discussed media treatment of current events, including North Korea firing off missiles, violence at Donald Trump rallies, and President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba.  I got laughs speculating that an upcoming Rolling Stones concert in Havana will probably get more media coverage and again noting that Pope Francis has joined Twitter.  When I was teaching, sometimes I’d pass another classroom, hear laughter, and be slightly envious.  I normally did not go for laughs, but when they did occur, I generally was so focused on the lesson that it did not fully register.

Home Mountain Press delivered 400 copies of Steel Shavings, volume 45, to IUN’s mailroom.  As always, the cover design is topnotch and the color photos of the highest quality.  Since I basically underwrite its publication through a donation to IU Foundation, I’ve decided to give copies away rather than deal with all the necessary hoops that sales would entail.

For an oral history assignment in her Indiana History class Kaitlyn Ingram interviewed her “grandpa” Frederick William Ingram, born in 1943 to Zula and Fred Ingram in Valparaiso. Zula, born in 1912, grew up in Gary with 11 younger brothers and sisters whom she helped her mother, also named Zula, care for.  She married Fred Ingram in 1935 and had daughter Judy in 1936.  Fred, Jr., an only son, recalled:

Growing up was tough; we didn’t have the most money in the world, and because of it both parents were gone a lot. My sister had to watch after me and considered me a bother.  My father passed away when I was only 5, so I don’t remember him much.  Memories of my stepfather aren’t the fondest.  I looked forward to school each day despite walking 10 miles uphill to Northview Elementary, barefoot in the snow, of course.

Fred and Judy Ingram

Fred Ingram’s pet crow, named Joe, followed him everywhere, he claimed, telling a skeptical Kaitlyn:

This stupid old bird would sit in the tree outside my house, and as soon as I made the trek from our home on Campbell Street to school, he would fly right above my head and follow me all the way to school. He would sit in the tree outside of my fourth grade class window, and wait until I left, and then follow me home all over again. One day he was making a ruckus, and my teacher finally got fed up enough and yelled “Freddy, take your bird home now!”  I thought to myself, “Well thank you Joe,” because I took my sweet ol’ time walking home and back.

Fred recalled stepfather Jack Forman:

My mom really loved him, but I could not for the life of me figure out why. He was quiet, never seemed too interested in what was going on with anyone, and never seemed happy.  He wouldn’t let me play sports and instead wanted me to get a job or do something beneficial to the family. I was really good at basketball but never allowed to play so I became interested in hunting and fishing.  Once you were outside the Valparaiso city limits, where Vale Park Road is today, it was all country and good hunting land. My buddies and I had some good times out in those woods. We would go out in the morning and sit all day, hoping to find deer, but mainly ducks.  We usually wound up laughing so hard out that we scared all the dang birds away.

Fred and his buddies cruised Lincolnway at a time when gas was only about 25 cents a gallon.  After Fred graduated from Valparaiso High School in 1961, Zula, and Jack moved to Pakistan on business.  Fred enlisted in the service.  Stationed in Iceland, he intercepted and deciphered telegrams. He recalled:

Iceland was beautiful but cold and boring. I was out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of guys. We ended up getting pet rocks.  We’d take them with us to the bar on our down days. We’d grab a seat, order a beer, and ask for a little dish to pour a little beer into for the pet rock.  They needed to have fun, too!  After my time in the service, my mother did not recognize me because I had grown so much. 

Fred hired in at Bethlehem Steel and began to save up money.  In January of 1967 the great Valparaiso snowstorm hit.  It took Fred almost 2 hours to drive home from the mill.  A couple days later, Fred and Kenny Jenkowski decided to attend the VU basketball game and to Tony’s Pizza Place afterwards. Fred told Kaitlyn, “That was where I met your grandma, and the rest is history. We dated and in May of ’67 we got married and that was that.” 

 Proud parents

In her paper Kaitlyn wrote that Fred and Roberta Ingram have been married 48 years.  Their first house was on Campbell Street, close to where he grew up. Eventually had one built a couple miles south in Morgan Township, where they still live.  In 1970 son Geoffrey was born.  A year later they found that Geoff had retinoblastoma in his left eye, necessitating its removal. Fred said, “It was horrible and terrifying but a blessing all in one because we found it fast enough to contain the problem.”  Paul, Kaitlyn’s father, came along in 1972. The boys were the best of friends growing up.  Like their father, they shared a love for sports, and Fred, vowing not to be like his stepfather, encouraged them. He coached Little League teams, played catch in the yard, and attended Geoff’s basketball and baseball games for Morgan Township and Paul’s track and field meets.  As time went on, Geoff and Paul got married and grandkids started arriving, much to Fred and Roberta’s delight.

         In 2000 Geoff, who had beaten cancer as a child, was diagnosed once again, this time terminal. Fred recalled: “It was a sinking feeling when he drove home from Indy and told us the news. It just wasn’t fair.  Knowing your child has a terminal illness and that there really isn’t anything you can do about it, that’s a pain that I wouldn’t wish on anyone ever.” Geoff passed away on April 1, 2001.  Kaitlyn’s grandpa, teary-eyed, confided, “No parents should ever outlive their child. That’s not how the world is supposed to be. But I suppose that’s life.”

 Proud grandparents

Write That Down

“Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.” John Adams

My cellar-dwelling Engineers swept three games from a team of 200+ bowlers called Write That Down, as Dick Maloney and Robbie Robinson finished the night 70 pins above their averages.  Stringing together a four-bagger, I rolled a 202 in the only close game, which we won by ten pins.  Their ace, lefty Mike Novak, who has several dozen perfect games to his credit, left seven-pin after seven-pin on apparently perfect hits.  Rather than gripe, he was philosophical about it and quite friendly.

In 1979, flushed with having been recently tenured, I taught a History of Journalism course and advised IUN’s student newspaper, the Northwest Phoenix, which had published a single issue the previous semester.  Under my tutelage, one came out each week, often causing controversy.  It was invigorating, and I became friends with several students, including SPEA secretary Michele Yanna and the Nommensen brothers, Neil and Mike, whom I first knew as neighbor kids.  Mike Nommensen’s cartoons in the student newspaper gave new meaning to “Airin’ My Beef.”  Neil and Jeff Vagnone [son of Arts and Sciences administrator Helen Southwell] house-sat our pets during a family trip to the Bahamas with some of the Porter Acres softball gang; the walls shook during their Nerf basketball games, Neil admitted later. 

At Country Lounge following the final class Michele presented me with a drinking mug inscribed, “Write It Up.”  The phrase had become my mantra whenever someone pitched a good story. 

The brothers Nommensen: above, Mike as santa; below, Neil

Titillatingly titled “Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood” investigates the unsolved 1922 murder of actor-director William Desmond Taylor.  Police questioned a dozen suspects, half of them women; one on her deathbed confessed 40 years later.  In all likelihood, a blackmailer, Blackie Madsen, did it.  Taylor’s primary lover, George Hopkins, was a skilled set designer for such movies as “Casablanca,”” Aunty meme,” “Hello, Dolly,” and “The Day of the Locust.”  The latter was based on a Nathaneal West novel describing Hollywood outcasts much like Blackie Madsen.  Author William J. Mann has written biographies of Barbra Streisand, Liz Taylor, and Katharine Hepburn, as well as “Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood.”

Chuck Gallmeier and I exchanged badinage at lunch about campus characters, and he introduced me to Natalie Haber-Barker (above), an IUN grad and niece of former Nursing professor Donna Russell, who went on to earn a PhD in Sociology and is now an adjunct.  Board president of the North Central Rural Crisis Center, Natalie recently visited in Durban, South Africa, which gave me an opportunity to talk about my brief sojourn there ten years ago prior to an oral history conference in Pietermaritzburg.  From an oceanfront hotel I called home using a special card that required me to dial 30 numbers.  First evening I walked around in search of a sports bar until it became obvious the area was dangerous, a fact later confirmed by a tour guide who took a group of us to the  highest peak in the Maloti mountain range, located in the landlocked kingdom of Lesotho. 

Communication adjunct Alex Semchuck dropped off two copies of his documentary “Stagnant Hope: Gary, Indiana,” one for me and the other for the Calumet Regional Archives.  If critics thought “My Name Is Gary” was negative, it was downright cheery compared to “Stagnant Hope.”  Describing “The city of the century . . . a century later,” Semchuck stated:

  “It took Gary, Indiana less than 20 years to grow from a fledgling company town to a mini-Chicago.  After several decades of prosperity, it took roughly the same amount of time to resemble a post-industrial ghost town.  For decades the place known as the ‘Miracle City of the 20^th Century’ has been plagued with a series of social, economic, and perceptual problems that is keeping it fighting for its life in the 21^st century.”

Tim Sutherland invited the Archives staff to the annual library Holiday lunch.  With plenty of meat choices, I opted for a juicy beef sandwich, salad, scalloped potatoes, and chocolate cake.  I told Anne Koehler, who earlier in the day had ordered William Mann’s “Behind the Screen: How Gays and lesbians Shaped Hollywood” for me through interlibrary loan, about Alissa’s recent visit to Berlin, where her sister lives.

 Dr. William Scholl

At Lake County Welcome Center John Davies hosted the tenth annual Legends Wall of Fame ceremony with customary enthusiasm and panache.  The only living honoree still alive, Frank Borman, 88, currently resides in Montana. The three others were inventor Neil Ruzic, Medal of Honor recipient Frank Ono, and podiatrist William M. Scholl, founder of Dr. School’s, one of the most successful businesses of the twentieth century.  For the occasion I had on a pair of Dr. Scholl’s shoes.  Like me, Tim Sutherland attended, in part to validate Steve McShane’s invaluable participation in a worthy endeavor.

Nearly a half-century before Gary’s birth as a company town, Frank Borman’s great-grandfather moved to Tolleston, a German community later annexed to Gary.  A native of Hanover, Germany, Christopher Bormann had found work as a tuba player in a traveling circus.  Anxious to avoid conscription during the Civil war, he planned on moving west and boarded a train. According to family lore, at the Tolleston depot a conductor bellowed: “All immigrants get off here.” Bormann dutifully obeyed, perhaps thinking he had reached his destination, Texas.  He opened a trading post that housed Tolleston’s first post office.

Born in Gary, when Borman was six, his family moved to Arizona because the polluted air from the steel mills cause Frank to suffer from chronic sinus infections.  In “Countdown” Borman recalled that in 1933 his father paid five dollars o take his five year-old son for a ride in a biplane with a former barnstorming pilot.  Frank recalled: “I sat next to Dad in the front seat, with the pilot in the cockpit behind us, and I was captivated by the feel of the wind and the sense of freedom that flight creates so magically.”

On January 14, 1966, Gary dignitaries honored the West Point graduate and NASA astronaut who’d completed the 14-day Gemini 7 mission months earlier.  Mayor A. Martin Katz presented him with a key to the city.  An estimated 50,000 spectators lined Broadway for a parade that featured marching bands from local schools.  Prior to an evening banquet, Borman spoke to school children, civic leaders, and students at IUN.   On Christmas Eve 1968, Borman, James Lovell, and Bill Anders orbited the moon ten times.  Their unprecedented accomplishment, coming at the end of a turbulent year of assassinations, urban riots, and setbacks in Vietnam, prompted Time magazine to name them “People of the Year.” In 1976 Borman returned to Gary to accept an honorary degree from my esteemed institution.

 Chancellor Dan Orescanin, President John Ryan, Borman, trustee Carolyn Gutman

At the end of the program four Portage High School junior ROTC cadets (including a Latino and an African American) performed a complicated rifle exhibition drill in honor of Private Frank Ono, a Japanese-American who grew up in North Judson and fought with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat team. During the battle for the town of Castellina Marittima in Italy he almost singlehandedly held off an attack on his unit’s position by German forces.

above, David Ruzic; below, Jim Brix.  NWI Times photos by John J. Watkins

In attendance were numerous relatives of Ono and Ruzic, plus Borman’s hippie-looking nephew, Jim Brix, whom I’d love to know better.  Filling in for Scott Bocock, who nominated Dr. Scholl.  Scholl, whose father was a cobbler, became interested in repairing shoes at a young age and practiced his trade in Cedar Lake.   He invented and patented an arch support that was the secret to his initial success.  In my seminar on Cedar Lake Carnahan’s son Scott interviewed both beloved town historian Beatrice Horner and his dad, who recalled working at the Cedar Lake roller rink, staring at age 11.  Bob Carnahan recalled:

            I put skates on kids and later did the announcing and floor guarding.  I learned to set counters up and how to put paint on a wood floor.  I even learned a little about plumbing and furnaces.  It was a practical education.

            I worked as a kid in a lot of places, including Kohler’s Bakery and Grocery Store, where they would stack cereal boxes all the way to the ceiling.  They had this stick device that you would use to lower the boxes down.

            Edgewater Beach had a bathhouse where you could change clothes.  One day in March the owner said he lost his fishing pole out in the lake. I jumped in the cold water and rescued the rod and reel.  It actually had a fish on it when I pulled it out.  That summer he let me operate his pier concession, charging folks a quarter to put their clothes in a basket.  Many customers came from a picnic grove located across the street. 

            I used to caddy for Nick Schafer, the golf pro at South Shore Country Club.  When we got to the refreshment sand, he’d buy me a hot dog and coke.  Then after we got back to the clubhouse, he’d buy me a hamburger, French fries, and coke and pay me two dollars for caddying 18 holes.

            I remember Stan Kenton’s band playing at Midway Ballroom, where I parked cars as a kid.  Sometimes they had live entertainment in all three rooms.  One night they had the Everly Brothers in in the back section, Bobby Vee in the center section and a local group from Hobart called the Sundowners in the front section. 

The United States will finally establish diplomatic relations with Cuba after 53 years, and a full quarter century since the Cold War.  Perhaps President Obama finally feels free to follow his instincts.  Predictably, save for libertarian-leaning Rand Paul, Republican presidential hopefuls are howling, but Colin Powell and Pope Francis are all for it. Shame on Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz for not embracing this new page in Cuban-American relations, which promises to improve dramatically the lives of their poor cousins.

I asked Blandine and Frederic for permission to subtitle my forthcoming Steel Shavings “My Name Is Gary” and use photos from their noteworthy documentary by that name. Blandine replied:

  “Hello Jimbo, it¹s good to hear from you (we still follow every post on your blog) and of course you can use ‘My Name is Gary’ as subtitle and photos of the film and of us for the cover. In fact, we are really proud to be included in the new Steel Shavings.  We are trying to think about the next documentary project, which is a little difficult for us for the moment because our mind and our heart are still in Gary!  But we would like for sure to come back to the USA. I think that all the people we met in Gary, and you especially, gave us the desire to come back for a next film in the USA.”

Wouldn’t it be awesome if the French filmmakers next focused on Miller Beach, Gary’s unique “jewel” by the lake?  They’ve entered “My Name Is Gary” in film festivals in Toronto and Chicago and eventually will make a copy available to the Archives.  Blandine invited us to stay at her Paris apartment.  I’d love to see them again, perhaps with Toni and Victoria.

Time’s Persons of the Year are the Ebola Fighters in West Africa.  Other finalists included the Ferguson protestors, Vladimir Putin, and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma.  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2015 inductees will include Green Day, Lou Reed, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.  What a show that will be.

Grandson James is studying the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition.  He knew about Shoshone Indian guide Sacajawea and the slave York but not about the monster blue catfish caught by a Private Goodrich in the Missouri River that weighed 130 pounds and was 51 inches long.  With Alissa, Miranda, Beth, and Toni, I visited Fort Clatsop in Oregon, where the explorers made camp during their second winter after finding sites closer to the Pacific inhospitable.

Gasolineos down to near two dollars a gallon, good news for folks counting their pennies, such as secretary Vickie Milenkovski, bowling teammate John Uylocki, and unemployed English professor Anne Balay.

On WXRT I heard “Meet the Flintstones” by the B52s, who promised that when you’re with that “modern stone age family,” you’ll have “a yabba dabba doo time, a dabba doo time, . . . a gay old time.”  Twenty years ago, when John Goodman was Fred and Rosie O’Donnell played Betty Rubble in the Flintstones movie, I tried to get Alissa to check it out while we were at the theater for a different film to see if she might want to see it later.  She recoiled at the suggestion, as if I were asking her to break the law.