Man on the Moon

“Moses went walking with the staff of wood 

Newton got beaned by the apple good
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask

Yeah yeah yeah yeah” 

    “Man on the Moon,” R.E.M.

 Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman

Over the holidays I watched “Man on the Moon” (1999) starring Jim Carrey as comic genius Andy Kaufman, Paul Giamatti as his collaborator, Danny de Vito as his manager, and Courtney Love as his girlfriend.  Among Kaufman’s zany bits were a unique Elvis impression and singing along to a corny old standard. He loved stunts and put-ons, such as wrestling Jerry Lawler and reading “The Great Gatsby” for hours to a college audience. The film was both hilarious and sad, as Andy died young of cancer.  As the credits rolled, R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon” played in the background.

Toni, Marianne, Jimbo, Missy; photo by Angie Lane

Marianne Brush’s Holiday party featured a present exchange where everyone contributed a gift and when your number was drawn, you could either select a new one or steal someone else’s.  After three trades a gift was safe.  I stole someone’s 6-pack of craft beer.  Someone took it but another 6-pack was still available to pilfer.  I didn’t have it long; the thief first said, “I’m sorry,”then “I’m really sorry,”and finally, “I’m not really sorry.”   I ended up with a safe bottle of vodka since I was the third owner. Afterwards I jokingly told the culprit he did a pretty poor job pretending to be sorry.  He looked contrite and offered me one of the bottles.  I laughed and said that wasn’t necessary.

We had a full house Christmas afternoon for chili, tree trimming, and the annual March of Presents and even more the next day for our Christmas dinner and party. Among my presents were jelly, a belt, cool briefs Josh bought in Spain, and the party game Telestrations (for laughs, no winners). I learned Qwixx, a neat dice game, played Perudo and Texas Hold ‘em, and washed dishes while most others engaged in several games of Werewolf.  At one time I counted 18 folks at the condo, including many who slept over for several days.

I finished “Heirs to the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster.” My impressions were confirmed that Clay and Webster were, for the most part, admirable patriots while Calhoun was a pompous secessionist. Reading about the 1830 Webster-Hayne Senate debate during the nullification crisis, I recalled how school children once memorized Webster’s stirring defense of the Union.  His most statesmanlike act: remaining Secretary of State after William Henry Harrison died a month after assuming office in order to negotiate an important Canadian border treaty with Great Britain.  For more than a generation, Clay strove to find ways to prevent the slavery issue from destroying the country, an impossible task given western expansion.

Fifty years ago, what had been a miserable 12 months of war, assassinations, race riots, “white backlash,” and Nixon’s election climaxed with three astronauts aboard Apollo 8, including Gary native Frank Borman, circling the moon.  At the time I wasn’t much impressed. As Norman Mailer would write, it signaled a triumph for technology, which he despised, and the dawn of an uncertain age.  Now I am more in awe of the achievement and appreciative of space exploration.  Some asked why spend billions in a race to get to the moon before the Russians while there are so many needs at home; of course, gutting NASA wouldn’t necessarily have translated to more War on Poverty funding.

 Sharon Fisher

My 470 series helped the Electrical Engineers take two of three games despite opponent Sharon Fisher’s 582 series, 5 less than best women’s league score of the season (held by her).  I couldn’t figure why Mikey Wardell’s Kyle Schwarber shirt was red rather than Cubbie blue until he turned around and on the front it said Indiana.  Of course, he went to IU!  I kept my good ball in the car and two days later had a good time bowling with Phil and Dave,  the winner despite not having bowled since the three of us were at Inman’s a year ago.

Robert Blaszkiewicz’s “Best of 2018” mix CD contains some old favorite bands who are still making good music, such as the Jayhawks, Parquet Courts, Decembrists, and They Might Be Giants, as well as others I’d never heard of, including Superchunk (“What a Time To be Alive”) and Dirty Projectors (“That’s a Lifestyle”). Beach House again made the mix, this time with “Dive,” reminiscent of Beach Boys harmonies. I was delighted to find Kurt Vile’s “Loading Zones” among the 20 songs selected, as well as John Prine’s “No Ordinary Blue.” Robert explained that his annual exercise keeps him current with new music, that Superchunk delivers “a fitting dose of outrage in the opener,”and that “occasionally there’s a discovery that’s a pure delight”:

This year, that was The Essex Green’s album, “Hardly Electronic,” their first after a 12-year absence for this Brooklyn band. It’s a great pop record, stylistically diverse, beautiful melodies, and a lyric in the sublime song “Patsy Desmond" that stunned me first time I heard it – “Calumet City, Miller Beach, Chicago skyline just out of reach.”  

When I noticed “The Joke” by Brandi Carlile, it reminded me that once, when invited to a party at Anne Balay’s, knowing that she was a Brandi Carlile fan, I gave her a CD by the Go-Gos, mistaking Brandi Carlile for Go-Gos singer Belinda Carlisle.  Anne tactfully said she liked Go-Gos.

 Jef between son Jordan and John Hendricks (photo by Chuck Halberstadt)

Jef Halberstadt’s annual Game Weekend lasted six days, Thursday through Tuesday, attracting regulars from as far away as Wisconsin and Fort Wayne.  During my appearances I avoided the marathon games but did get in Acquire and learned a board version of Lost Cities.  When somebody asked Jef how we knew each other, he mentioned taking my Sixties course in 1981 and inviting everyone to attend.  I was the only one to take him up on it.  I have been a regular ever since, often with Phil and Dave. This New Year’s Eve I was home before dark and in bed well before midnight.  Good riddance to 2018, as Trump has shut down the government over his damned wall.  Since so many senior Republican Senators have retired, the only one left with half a spine seems to be Utah’s Mitt Romney, perhaps hoping, like Ike 70 years ago, to save the GOP from extremists.

Looking over the many Happy Holiday cards we received, including greetings from Rosalyn and Jimmy Carter and the message “Tis the season to ratify the ERA” from NOW, we heard from old friends (Phil Arnold from high school, Dick Jeary from college) former neighbors (Dean, Joanell and Ann Bottorff) and Seventies students Jim Reha and Kathy O’Rourke, among others. A few signed with first name only I had to ask Toni about.  William and Pamela Lowe’s card featured artwork by IUN students Casey King, Christopher Hartz, and Kimberly Variot.  Nice.

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.