Labor Day Weekend

Friday I examined the final page proofs of “Steel Shavings,” volume 40, which in essence is my Retirement Journal, called “Out to Pasture but Siill Kickin.’” It looked great except the photo for the front cover was cropped in a way that left out two important people, so they will adjust it and FAX me the change. In Anne Tyler’s 2006 novel “Digging to America” a character retiring from teaching compares the final days to “walking down a red carpet and then turning to find the attendants rolling it up behind you.” I used to hate people seeing me on campus and saying, “What are you doing here?” like I was an interloper. Now since I’m at IU Northwest regularly, that only occasionally happens, to which I reply, “I wasn’t ready to retire.” Recently I've been on an Anne Tyler reading binge, starting with "Breathing Lessons" and "Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant."

Saturday I interviewed Sheriff Roy Dominguez at school and listened to a telephone message informing me that due to a health setback Marion Merrill’s “Living Eulogy” has been postponed. There go the plans for our road trip east. In the afternoon I attended former colleague Fred Chary’s seventieth birthday party. Since we are both Philadelphia sports fans, I wore a Phillies t-shirt. He had on an Eagles jersey with (Donovan) McNabb and the number 5 on the back. I gave him a CD featuring a 35-minute excerpt of the “Joe Niagara Show,” circa 1957 (when Fred was a h.s. senior). I was a tenth grader then listening to the Coasters ("Searchin'), Fats Domino ("Blueberry Hill" and "Blue Monday"), and the Everly Brothers ("Bye, Bye Love" and "Wake Up, Little Susie"). Known as “The Rockin’ Bird,” Niagara was the evening mainstay on radio station WIBG until victimized by the so-called payola scandal. Someone gave Fred a DVD of the Eagles ten greatest games, and he had me watch the end of the 1978 “Miracle in the Meadowlands.” The NY Giants had the ball with a minute to go and could have run out the clock with their quarterback taking a knee, but he inexplicably attempted a handoff, fumbled, and the Eagles’ Herman Edwards picked the ball up in stride on a bounce and scored the winning TD. It cost the Jets coach his job. Two of the guests were faculty members still teaching who are older than I - Alan Barr and Jean Poullard. Poullard offered a toast to the year 1939, when both he and Fred were born. Alan, 71, suggested 1938 was a better choice given WW II breaking out in '39. Poullard actually grew up in occupied France and is married to a Berliner. I went from Fred’s to an "end of the summer" jam hosted by Marianne Brush, whose late husband Tim (“Big Voodoo Daddy”) was the lead guitar player in my son’s band Voodoo Chili. Dave jammed for about five hours with various musicians. I went up to a mike to sing the chorus to "867-5309" and "Surrender." It was Marianne's daughter Missy's eighteenth birthday, and Dave got her to sing three songs after singing the Cracker "birthday" song, only substituting "Missy" for "You" in the lines "Happy, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you and to me."

The Sunday Post-Trib had a huge article on the 1919 Steel Strike using photos obtained from Steve McShane at the Calumet Regional Archives. Writer Andy Grimm used quotes from former student David Janott’s Steel Shavings article, including this conclusion: “Blacks in Gary, regardless of their connection, if any, to the strike, were regarded as company scabs. They were made the scapegoat for the failure of the strike.” Steve emailed Janott’s article to Grimm as well as a memoir by Paul Dremeley that includes this quote concerning the gulf between immigrant workers and their native born bosses: “Italiano push wheel barrow/ Americano smoke seegaro.” Recently Ray Fontaine loaned me an excellent book on the year 1919 that had a photo of a person identified as Judge Elbert H. Gary. It looked nothing like the U.S. Steel head honcho and turned out to be of a labor leader. Jeff Manes’ “SALT” column also had a Labor Day theme, befitting the area’s rich industrial heritage. He interviewed United Steelworkers District Director Jim Robinson, who discussed the importance of labor solidarity with union members in Mexico. I interviewed Robinson, whose father-in-law was the labor militant Jim Balanoff, for a Steel Shavings issue co-edited with Mike Olszanski entitled “Steelworkers Fight Back.” The Wades had a cookout Sunday featuring crocket, ping pong, and the game “Wits and Wagers,” which I won mainly by knowing the approximate year Ernest Hemingway won a Pulitzer. One question asked what year the Panama Canal opened. I guessed 1914 but it was 1913, which Darcy Wade guessed on the nose.

Monday : The suburban community of Lowell had a Labor day parade, a tradition dating back 90 years. Good for them. Some “Tea Party” protestors showed up to heckle Congressman Pete Visclosky for his support of Obama and health care. The rightwing is determined to derail anything the President tries to do, even pressuring schools not to carry his message to children to work hard and stay in school (a tradition started by Ronald Reagan). We had a cookout and played bridge with the Hagelbergs to end the long weekend.

Surfing the Internet

A package arrived in the mail recently from David Janott, who was one of my first students after I started teaching at IU Northwest in 1970. He was returning a book he borrowed almost 40 years ago, "Nixon Agonistes" by Gary Wills (the book got the author on the President's Enemies List), plus he threw in a book he thought I'd find interesting, "Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang" (I devored it and then passed it on to colleague Diana Chen-lin). What prompted Janott's gesture was that his wife typed his name on Google. Lo and behold, he was cited for being in my 1977 book about Gary, City of the Century. I had quoted from a student paper he did on the 1919 Steel Strike. He hadn't known he was in the book and ordered a copy. His package and note prompted me to send him "Gary's First Hundred Years" and a Steel Shavings magazine on the Calumet Region's Formative Years, 1900-1920 (volume 15) that, unbeknownst to him, contained his article.

That happy coincidence prompted me to Google my own name. The first entry, as expected, was the IU Northwest History Department's Home Page, where I am situated under "emeritus faculty." Next came a bunch of other James Lanes and some James Blanes, including info about a professional poker player and an escapee from Sing Sing. EBay had my and Ron Cohen's Gary Pictorial History on sale for a whopping $157.27. Amazon had a half-dozen Shavings issues on sale (including a rare out-of-print volume on United Steelworkers of America Local 1010 for 11 dollars) and five of my books, including my first, "The Enduring Ghetto," which I did with David Goldfield, and "Forging a Community," which I edited with Ed Escabar. A site called alibris had even more "James B. Lane" books, including a 1930s Shavings issue for $45 that originally sold for $2.50 and a book I edited with Steve McShane called "Skinning Cats: The Wartime Letters of Tom Kreuger."

The Oral History Review site claimed that for a 2000 issue I had reviewed Staughton Lynd's "We Are All Leaders." As much as I admire Lynd, I had never reviewed his book. Clicking onto the site, on the page in question was the last papagraph of my review of "Central Avenue Sounds," followed by the beginning of the Lynd review that someone else did (I think you have to pay to open up the whole thing). This is how I ended my review: "The impermanence of America is nowhere as apparent as in Los Angeles, and the rise and decline of this mostly black enclave is told with a bittersweet candor. The book reveals the institiutional racism and hypocrisy rampant during the mid-twentieth century in Los Angeles, but it also shows that for a time there was a beacon of tolerance in the Central Avenue jazz subculture."

Also under James B. Lane I found mention of an article I did on Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" in 1973 for the Negro American Literature Forum that showed up in the SSSL Bibliography. My 1974 essay on "Down These Mean Street" by Piri Thomas showed up on a site called Book Rags. The Encyclopedia Britannica reprinted a review that Andrew Hurley wrote for the Indiana Magazine of History of "Gary's First Hundred Years" (he called it breezy and engaging). The Journal of American History listed an article of mine they published on Industrial History Museums, and there's even a citation where I am mentioned in the book Nearby History.

Just when I was about to stop searching, I came across citation number 152 for my Steel Shavings website, which was set up as part of the larger Calumet Regional Archives site. Voila! Anyone who comes across that site can actually click on "James B. Lane Blog" and read this and other entries.