Old Days

Drive-in movies, comic books and blue jeans
Howdy Doody, baseball cards and birthdays

Take me back to the world gone away
Memories seem like yesterday

         “Old Days,” Chicago

WXRT’s Saturday morning focus was on the year 1975, and in the car I heard “Old Days” by Chicago, “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John, “Lady” by Styx, and “Stand By Me” by John Lennon, which appeared on the “Rock ‘n’ Roll” album featuring such Fifties hits as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Bony Moronie.”  Two of my 1975 favorites are “Fame” by David Bowie and “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.

 Lanes and Horns at El Capitan, Oct. 2018; Kaiden on right with parents

Kay English

At Inman’s James’s teammate Kaiden Horn bowled a 259, his best ever.  After a strike and spare, he rolled seven strikes in a row before leaving a ten-pin in the final frame, converting it and ending with a strike.  Andrew English’s grandmother Kay was visiting from downstate, and I recalled that 30 years ago IUN student Annette Mendosa interviewed her about being a Girl Scout troop leader for nine years. She started as a volunteer, then was a den mother in Brownies for her daughter Janet’s age group.  Son John, a classmate of Phil’s, would help out with newspaper drives so he got to on a trip with them to Frankenmuth, Michigan.  He was the only boy.  One time Kay took the Girl Scouts to Florida.  She told Annette Mendosa: 

 One year we camped all the way around Lake Michigan.  We had two rental vans with all our stuff on the top.  We spent a day on Mackinac Island and rode bicycles for two around the island.  In 1979 our group recycled enough newspapers and had enough fundraisers that we were able to spend a week on a Dude Ranch south of Denver.  Over half the girls had never been on an airplane.  Only two or three had ever been in Colorado.  None had been white water rafting.  We were eight in a raft with an oarsman.  I’ve seen some of these kids become doctors and nurses, teachers and therapists.  Some have gotten in trouble; but you’re not raising them, you’re only working with them in Girl Scouting.

I spent much of the weekend reading Kate Morton’s former number 1 bestseller  “The Secret Keeper” (2012).  Much of it takes place in London during World War II.  It kept my interest for many hours of binge reading.  I should have anticipated the surprise ending from various clues along the way.  Once I realized Vivien wasn’t just a tangential character, I reread the beginning of Part Three, which described her childhood in Tamborine Mountain, Queensland, Australia, where the author grew up and attended a small country school.  In the novel Vivien is made to stay home as punishment for fighting a bully while her family attended the annual Cedar Getters’ picnic in Southport.  On the way home her parents and siblings perished when their car went over a cliff in the fog.  Vivien later heard her Aunt Ada (whose voice “shrilled like a fiddle string wound too tight”) irrationally blame her for the accident before shipping her off to an uncle, a headmaster in Oxford, rather than keep her. Vivien carried that guilt with her, which helps explains her later acceptance of ill-treatment from an abusive husband.

Ray Smock’s new book, “American Demagogue: Critical Essays on the Trump Presidency,” arrived in the mail.  Dedicated to public servants in the military and federal government  for “maintaining and defending this great republic,” my old friend from U. of Maryland days opens with this quote by Dionysius of Halicarnassus from 20 BC found in the sixth volume of “Antiquities of Rome”: “The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demagogues.” In the acknowledgments Smock thanked a dozen of us for our encouragement and critiques, most of all wife Phyllis, “who has supported my writing and research for almost 60 years.  I am a lucky guy.”  Leafing through the chapter titles, some recognizable from Facebook posts, I turned to one called “My Friend, George Will.”  A conservative columnist who formally left the Republican Party in the summer of 2016 after candidate Trump made disparaging comments about a judge of Mexican ancestry reared in East Chicago, Indiana, Will considers the President’s views a perversion of traditional principles.  In March of 2018 after Trump appointed warhawk John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser, Will claimed he would soon be “the second most dangerous man in America.” Smock wrote:

 Will sees the latest shake-up in the White House staff as marking the end of a delusion that many of us have had about the Trump administration, that if we just got some sensible adults to surround our childish president, he could be “cocooned with layers of adult supervision.”  The bubble has burst.  The president now has an all-Fox News team surrounding him on TV and in the White House.

 One single question in Will’s column particularly grabbed my attention.  The question, and his answer to it, is a brilliant insight, perfectly stated: “How can the president square his convictions with Bolton’s?  Let’s say this one more time: Trump has. No convictions.”

Arriving at Nicole Anslover’s class just as Biology professor Spencer Cortwright was leaving, he quipped, who are you, Benjamin Button, morphing back to student days?  He was referring to a character played by Brad Pitt who ages in reverse.  I told him I always learned something new in Nicole’s class, and she told him I was a valuable contributor.  Students talked about World War II movies they’d viewed such as “Saving Private Ryan,” “Dunkirk,” and “Valkyrie” (2008), with Tom Cruise as German officer Claus von Stauffenberg, who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944.  Someone had seen “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946), which dramatized problems soldiers had readjusting to civilian life.  I mentioned “A League of Their Own” (1992), about a women’s baseball league formed when war threatened to dry up many minor leagues by a candy magnate modeled after Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley.  During the war chewing gum magnate Wrigley provided packs of Spearmint, Double mint, and Juicy Fruit to G.I.s and marketed his product as relieving thirst in foxholes.

When Nicole spoke about women wartime workers, not only in heavy industry but for other areas where there was a shortage, I brought up the double-edged meaning of the slogan “For the Duration,” both a pledge hoisted on women that they’d keep working until the war was won and an assurance to men that they’d get their old jobs back afterwards.  

Speaking about contributions by the WACs, WAVEs and SPARs, Nicole used the phrase “the tooth and the tail”referring to the distinction between front line troops and those in a supply role, which often far outnumber the former. After class I told Nicole about Lillian Federman’s assertion in her history of lesbian life in the twentieth century, “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991), that a women’s corps was an ideal option and breeding ground for lesbians – although, in my opinion, the term bisexual might have been more appropriate, since probably a majority later returned to civilian life and got married.  Federman quoted WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps responding to a request by General Dwight Eisenhower that she ferret out lesbians in her battalion:

 Yessir, if the general pleases, I will be happy to do this investigation.  But sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name in going to head the list.  You should be aware that you’re going to have to replace All the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool.  I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the general himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment.

Ike replied: Forget the order.  Phelps, who had joined the WACs to escape an unhappy marriage, went on to become active in the National Organization of Women and California Lesbian Task Force.

 Johnnie Phelps

I told Nicole about an article in Harper’sdiscussing Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, now part of a traveling exhibit, inspired by FDR’s Four Freedoms speech of January 6, 1941.   According toSmithsonianmagazine’s Abigail Tucker, the speech initially fell flat: “Congress barely applauded.  The next day most newspapers did not even mention the Four Freedoms.”  When Rockwell first pitched using the illustrations in war bond drives, the Office of War Information (OWI) rejected it until overruled by the President and new appointees to the OWI, setting off a near revolt among the staff.  Tremendously popular with the general public, the four representations of freedom of speech and religion and from want and fear of aggression appeared on 4 million sets of posters and ultimately their own postage stamps.   Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech poster, first appearing as a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover, greets visitors to  Portage Public Library.

I told Minority Studies chair Earl Jones that Chancellor Lowe had written about the origins of IUN’s Black Studies program in a Post-Tribunecolumn and included Black Caucus leader Gerry Samuels by name.  Here is part of the article, titled “Striving for educational excellence and equity”:  

  Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of working to achieve civic harmony and educational equity lives on both throughout our region and certainly on the Indiana University Northwest campus, where we are proud to be Indiana University’s most diverse campus.  Our commitment to diversity and inclusion took shape early, when, in 1969, the IU Northwest Black Caucus was formed, led by student Gerry Samuel and faculty advisor Dr. F C Richardson. Through the student group’s bold and formative actions, they urged the campus to engage with and reflect on Dr. King’s words, “to think critically”and inclusively by establishing a Black Studies program.

  This year, IU Northwest proudly celebrates the 50th anniversary of the African American and African Diaspora program, one of the first programs of its kind established in the United States.  Over the years, the trailblazing IU Northwest program has evolved, continuing to engage the history of African Americans and Africans, while challenging prevailing paradigms affecting race and inclusion.

M.G.M.T.

I called granddaughter Victoria, attending Grand Valley State, to wish her a happy birthday, telling her she was the most mature 19 year-old I knew.  She had recently replied to something I put on Facebook about my musical tastes by writing,“Why is my grandpa so cool?”  Nice. We talked about concerts we’d attended together in Grand Rapids by Cracker and the Head and the Heart.  I told her I’d check on upcoming shows at 20 Monroe.  One that looks promising is indie rock band M.G.M.T. in mid-May.  The group's most successful CD, which I own, was “Oracular Spectacular” (2007), which contains the hits “Electric Feel” and “Kids.”

Dean Bottorff found a photo from my China trip some 25 years ago when I was staying with them in Hong Kong.  We had visited Macau, then a Portuguese colony, and crossed into a village where I took photos with Red Army teens and friendly women who may have been sex workers. I teased Dean about how he’d warned me not to give money to kids begging and then he did so himself, resulting in them following us around hoping for more. Our former Maple Place neighbors, they were great hosts prior to my lecturing for several weeks at Chinese University.  They taught me how to navigate Hon Kong’s always crowded min-busses by slowly making your way toward the rear exit.

Fat Tuesday is Paczki Day in the Region, and stores have been well-stocked with doughnuts filled with various jams and topped with powdered sugar, icing or glaze. Back when Vickie Milenkovski was secretary of History and Philosophy, adjunct Ed Kenar would bring in a box of Paczkis every year from a bakery in Hammond.  They were huge but delicious and must have contained close to a thousand calories.

 above, Judy Tarpo; below, Terry Bauer, Mary Kocevar, Carol Miller, Chuck Tomes

Barbara Walczak’s first March Newsletter contained a great shot of four bridge friends who ranked in Unit 154’s top 100, plus a “Welcome” shout-out to new player Judy Tarpo, a retired microbiologist at St. Mary Medical Center.  For 27 years she has been in the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus, so Dick Hagelberg probably knows her.

Strolling Down Memory Lane

“Come, let's stroll
Stroll across the floor . . .
Well, rock my soul
How I love to stroll”
The Diamonds

Toni got reunion photos developed, including a group photo of all classmates in attendance, a shot of me with Jay Bumm, Chris Koch, and Pete Drake, one of Wendy with me and Suzi Hummel’s husband, and three taken when I was dancing the stroll with Janet Garman, Phil Arnold, Barbara Ricketts, the Stroups, and Mary Dinkins Lewis and her husband. I mailed the dance photos to Barbara and Janet, writing on the back, “Strolling Down Memory Lane.” My two favorite Stroll songs are “C.C. Rider” by Chuck Willis and “Walking to New Orleans” by Fats Domino. Chuck had a double-sided hit of “What Am I Living For” and “Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes.” I had at least a dozen of Fats Domino’s 45s, including rarities found at the Montgomery Mart (long gone, Terry Jenkins informed me). Fred Scott, the reunion deejay, played “Blueberry Hill” but not “My Blue Heaven.” Whenever it came on at sock hops, I’d get Judy Jenkins to dance with me.

Nancy Schrope is making a photo compilation CD, Connie Heard Damon reported, adding: “ I'm still on Cloud 9. It was all just too wonderful for words!! Several weeks ago I thought the 50th would be our last reunion, but this one was so good that we're already thinking of a picnic in 2 years, and then our 55th to follow.” I sent Connie nostalgic musings from my blog and she replied: “This is WONDERFUL!! I'm in tears...partly because you did such a great job, and partly because I have such happy memories of the whole weekend. I still can't believe how special it was. Thanks for sharing this.” Judy Jenkins emailed: “Both Lee Lee and Wendy sent me a few pictures which were wonderful to see. They said it was a fabulous reunion and a great turnout. I spoke to Wendy today and her crown was stolen en route home. She was very upset, but I'm glad she had the opportunity to wear it at the reunion. Lee Lee and I talked for at least an hour and she pointed out who everyone was in the class photo and gave me lots of details. Not quite like being there, but still fun. Obviously a great success!” Sent a request for photos to Lee Lee and back came jpegs of a dozen, including a great one of Sissy Schade with Eddie Piszek. At breakfast Sissy mentioned seeing an ailing Louise Jester the night before and recalled comforting her on the Fort Washington school playground after boys had made fun of her, claiming she had “cooties” (imaginary bugs). I hope I never did anything directly to hurt her feelings. Eddie almost skipped the reunion because he’d been feeling disoriented lately but was in good form. We joked about the trouble we caused Ron Hawthorn’s father (Mr. Haw-thee-Haw, we called him) when we were on his Babe Ruth League team.

Dave and Angie had a good time at Marianne Brush’s Halloween, which we missed due to the reunion. Marianne and Lorraine Todd-Shearer recently went past our place on a hike, and on Facebook Lorraine quipped: “How did you ever keep from going over that cliff?” Actually I had a couple close calls when putting down gravel and cinder blocks in a continuing effort to fight erosion. Checking other friends on FACEBOOK, I noticed one of them listed was an attractive African American named Brown SugarBaby. I have no idea who she is although she identified herself as an Indiana University Northwest student. She notes: “I went through a MASSIVE friend deleting; if you survived, you’re special to me.” How we became friends is beyond me, and I haven’t yet learned how to de-friend folks.

The goal of tomorrow’s Gary summit, according to The Times, is to revitalize Northwest Indiana’s urban core. Called GRIP (The Gary and Region Investment Project), the initiative, according to newspaper publisher Bill Masterson, is to “build bridges across municipal borders, between the public and private sectors, with the state and federal governments and even our counterparts in metropolitan Chicago.” While Mayor Rudy Clay seems on board with the idea, generally when outsiders talk regional cooperation, what they really seek is control of Gary assets such as the airport and bus service. Minority Studies professor Earl Jones, for one, is skeptical, noting that this “will probably be the first time when Gary's future is determined by 1) external political entities (NIRPC, Chicago Metro Planning, the RDA), 2) gvt departments (U.S. HUD), and 3) the private sector (The Times, Quality of Life Council).”

Choice sent me a review copy of “Dropping the Torch: Jimmy Carter, The Olympic Boycott, and the Cold War” by Nicholas E. Sarantakes. I always thought it was folly for the United States to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. President Carter claimed it was in retaliation for the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, but all it did was reignite the Cold War and ruin many athletes’ dreams. For one thing it denied the men’s basketball team a chance to revenge the 1972 controversial defeat in the enemy’s capitol. In turn Russia and its allies to boycott the Los Angeles games in 1984. Ironically, the Soviet Union was worried about Muslim extremists just as we presently are. Some of the same people who foiled the Russians are now fighting what they consider to be the American invaders.

Ray and Trish Arredondo sent me a copy from the Midwest Book Review that calls “Maria’s Journey” “a fascinating read and a must for anyone looking for a story of American immigration.” Right on! Revised slightly my Forward to “Maria’s Journey” for my speech Thursday at Purdue North Central Hispanic Heritage Month panel, adding this concluding paragraph: One final note: Maria Perez Arredondo actually made three journeys to America. Her first took place in 1918 at age 11 with her mother to join her brother Francisco, who worked for a railroad company. They lived in a boxcar. The second took place in 1926 when the 19 year-old had a three year-old daughter and was joining husband Miguel. Once again they lived in a boxcar before eventually making their way to the Chicago area. Similarly, when U.S. Steel recruited Puerto Rican laborers after World War II, the first to arrive were housed in old Pullman cars. Maria’s third journey was the most arduous and took place in 1939 at age 32 after her mother had been deported and she accompanied her back to Mexico. Pregnant and with eight children in tow, she was stopped at the border because she did not have the necessary papers with her, but finally a sympathetic guard let them pass when he realized that the young kids spoke fluent English and must have been American-born, as they claimed. At present some Republican leaders want to amend the constitution to deny citizenship to children born here. As historian John Bodnar notes in the introduction to “Maria’s Journey,” Fierce debates among Americans have once again marked the issue of immigration, and xenophobes have called for mass deportations. But that’s another story.

The political news continues bleak, but at least there is hope in West Virginia in the race for Robert Byrd’s old Senate seat that Governor Joe Manchin will defeat Republican businessman John Raese. Recently revealed: the agency behind a GOP ad sought “hicky-looking” actors wearing flannel shirts and John Deere caps to portray supposedly angry West Virginians. Raese has been lumping together Manchin and the President, but during a debate Manchin said that he hated to inform his opponent but Mr. Obama’s name will not be on the ballot.

Time had a cover story on Alzheimer’s, a disease that has affected millions, from President Ronald Reagan on down. Thirty years ago I was an oral history consultant for a project designed to support caregivers to Alzheimer’s patients. Bailly Alliance mainstay Ed Osann and former Post-Trib managing editor Terry O’Rourke were just two of many Region Alzheimer’s victims. Mary Ann Becklenberg, who has Early-Stage Alzheimer’s, wrote that she’d hang up the phone and not recall the party on the other end of the line. She’d return from a trip and forget her husband had been with her. Mary Ann’s advice to others afflicted: be gentle with yourself, keep humor in your life, and lower your expectations. In other words, don’t feel that you are inadequate and falling apart. Easy to say.

Got a message from the Sand Creek condo board president that I will be on the ballot for board secretary unopposed. I’ll have to tell neighbor Tom Coulter that he’ll be needed as Court One director.

Gravers

“Dream as if you’ll live forever,
Live as if you’ll die today.”
James Dean

Tuesday: Had lunch with Paul Finkelman, at IU Northwest to deliver a lecture comparing the nefarious Arizona immigration law to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Chris Young having ordered me a roast beef sandwich box lunch, I joined other History Department members as well as Chuck Gallmeier and Jack Bloom from Sociology and Social Work professor Frank Caucci. Bloom got into a heated discussion with our guest over Middle East foreign policy. Afterwards, Finkelman wanted a tour of Gary, so with Chris Young driving I showed him Roosevelt School, Michael Jackson’s home (we saw floral bouquets and a monument dedicated a few months ago), the field where Froebel School once stood, the ruins of Pennsylvania train station, Memorial Auditorium, and City Methodist Church, and attractive new public housing sites located not far from abandoned buildings overgrown with weeds. Noticing the boarded up storefronts in the once thriving Midtown area, Finkelman said Gary’s devastation reminded him of East St. Louis, Illinois. Passing by the old jazz district, I recalled a student who played drums in a band inviting me to a club near Seventeenth and Broadway. One Saturday night in 1971 Toni and I took her sister Sue and husband Charley, a Philadelphia cop to it. We were frisked at the door and the only white people in the place, but everyone was friendly. Around eleven the bandleader introduced the Duke and the Duchess, adding that he meant no offense to “our blue-eyed soul brothers and sister (meaning us).” The couple stripped down to skimpy loin cloths and did some dirty dancing that would have put Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey to shame. For years Sue and Charley teased us about the Duke and the Duchess.

Paul Finkelman needed a space to prepare notes for his talk, so I took him to the Archives. Sheriff Roy Dominguez, there to be interviewed about his honoring of women police officers, gave him a miniature badge. I gave him my Gary book as well as Earl Jones’s “Central District Tour” booklet. Sheriff Dominguez is traveling to his hometown in south Texas and hopes to interview relatives, including the uncle who brought Roy’s family to Northwest Indiana in a truck. His account of the trip might make a good epilogue or else add to the early chapters.

At four I caught Chuck Gallmeier’s Glen Park Conversation talk about “Gravers” who gather at the sites of such iconic figures as James Dean, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison, Natalie Wood (who drowned in 1981), and Michael Jackson. On the anniversary of Rudolph Valentino’s death in 1926 at age 31 mourners still show his silent film “Son of the Sheik” (which has a controversial scene where he ravishes a vamp) on the side of his crypt. In the small town of Fairmount, Indiana, Dean lived with his aunt and uncle after his mother died of cancer when he was nine. “Deaners” tend to be uncomfortable talking about his bisexuality, Gallmeier related. He talked of examining poems, letters, drawings, and other items left at his gravesite although he does not open envelopes marked CONFIDENTIAL or FOR JAMES DEAN’S EYES ONLY. Since the family throws away stuff every couple weeks, Chuck said he doesn’t consider himself to be a grave robber. This weekend the James Dean Festival in Fairmount will feature a car show, lookalike contest, memorial service, dance contest, and viewings of his three films, “Rebel Without a Cause,” “East of Eden,” and “Giant.”

Hosting the Glen Park Conversation, Garrett Cope was his usual charming self, asking Ron Cohen and me what we were working on and introducing Chancellor William Lowe and a former student who picketed to get the university to honor Martin Luther King Day after it became a national holiday. He was with a group outside the library when it began pouring. Everyone else went inside, but he remained with his placard. Several people tried to get him to go inside, including Chancellor Peggy Elliott, who placed a call to Bloomington and then promised the young men that instead of holding classes a year from then, IU Northwest would honor King’s legacy. Within a year all eight IU campuses followed IUN’s lead, thanks to that young man’s grit.

Chuck’s excellent presentation ended just in time for me to catch Chris Young’s introduction of Paul Finkelman, who traced the history of immigration law. He contrasted what Arizona wants to do with state personal liberty laws passed during the 1850s to protect northern blacks against being kidnapped. He argued persuasively that an open immigration policy would allow the government to track newcomers and ridiculed Arizona Senator John McCain for flip-flopping on the issue in order to fend off a rightwing primary challenge. Both his grandparents were technically illegal aliens, Finkelman said, because one entered through Canada fearing his poor eyesight would cause officials at Ellis Island to reject him and the other lied about his age and entered therefore under false pretenses. He was passionate in claiming that the Taliban want to expunge our freedoms, which threaten their sexist, anti-intellectual, fanatic way of life. During Q and A an old Trotskyite professor made a long rambling anti-Bush diatribe. Finkelman finally interrupted to say that he could respond in one word, yes, then after a pause added, “Or maybe, better yet, Duh!” He went on to say that just because George W. Bush was an idiot didn’t mean that he was always wrong and even a clock that had stopped recorded the correct time two times a day. He was great. Ron Cohen knew him and had roomed with him at a history conference. Heather Hollister and the History Club provided refreshments for the surprisingly large crowd.

Chris Young emailed: “Thanks for the great tour of Gary. I really enjoyed it. I've been meaning to ask you for one since I arrived in NW Indiana. I loved the way you talked about Gary.”

Indiana Magazine of History had a very positive review of my “Retirement Journal,” calling it a fitting culmination to my social history of the Calumet Region series. In the same issue appeared a glowing review of Steve and Gary Wilk’s book “Steel Giants,” which contains historic photos of Inland and U.S. Steel. Put in my review requests for Magill’s Literary Annual, including a biography of Justice William J. Brennan and one called “Fall of the House of Walworth: A Tale of Madness and Murder in Gilded Age America. My top choice was “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quannah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Tribe in American History.” Don’t know much about any of the three subjects.

Fell asleep shortly after David Hasselhoff was voted off “Dancing with the Stars.” A guy from the reality “Jersey Shore” who calls himself The Situation barely survived.

Wednesday: We turned over the keys to our old house to Ranger Anthony Sutphen, who praised Toni for what a splendid job she did readying the house for the government to take it over. A caring person, he is going to help an elderly lady two blocks down move a 1,300-pound rock that originally came from her childhood farm. Sent to Iraq with his Air Force National Guard unit during the Gulf War, Sutphen believes his health problems stem from exposure to depleted uranium while on combat missions. Last stuff to go were our mailbox and toaster oven (to Goodwill) and concrete blocks from our screened-in porch (to Angie’s).

Got Clark to bowl for me since I’m still feeling the effects of my shoulder injury. I stayed to watch and have a couple Leinies on draft. A few years ago while serving as consultants to an industrial heritage museum, Steve McShane and I toured the Leinenkugal Beer facilities in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Clark bowled a 529, and the Engineers won five of seven points, losing the third game when lefty Al Burns rolled a 269. Delia’s Uncle George was also on the DL, having broken three vertebrae (among other things) during a 12-foot fall from a ladder onto concrete. He's fortunate to be alive.