Salt of the Earth

“No man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” Edward R. Murrow (below)

What newsman Edward R. Murrow said of the red-baiting Republican Senator from Wisconsin Joseph R. McCarthy seems particularly relevant during a time when, once again, the timidity of Republicans allows demagoguery full reign, this time from the White House.  In 1954, during the so-called Army-McCarthy hearings, attorney Joseph Welch enunciated what others were too timid to say on the record: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency?”

The phrase “Salt of the earth”comes from the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus purportedly said to fishermen and, in effect, all simple folk, “Ye are the salt of the earth.”  It was a fitting title for a 1954 film about Mexican-Americans fighting for decent treatment at Empire Zinc Mine in the company town of Silver City, New Mexico.  The company paid Mexican-Americans less than Anglo miners and housed them in segregated units that lacked indoor plumbing or hot water.  Producer Paul Jarrico and director Herbert Biberman had been blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House UnAmerican Activities and in Biberman’s case, jailed for six months.  Will Geer played the role of sheriff; most cast members were not professional actors but rather miners themselves. When a Taft-Hartley injunction prevented workers from picketing, their wives took their place, in some cases against the husbands’ wishes.  Esperanzo Quintero, pregnant with a third child, gets arrested for leading the protest and is jailed, and, when consoled by a comrade, says, “I don’t want to go down fighting.  I want to win.” When the company attempts to evict the Quintero family, the community comes to their aid and the 15-month strike ends with the company granting most demands.  Most theaters refused to show “Salt of the Earth” after the American Legion called for a nationwide boycott, but it has since been recognized as a classic.

               Jencks in movie and later

Ron Cohen had me pick up a book for him mailed to the History department, “McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks” by Raymond Caballero.  A University of Colorado graduate, Jencks (1918-2002) served in the air force during World War II and after receiving an honorable discharge found work at Asarco’s Globe Smelter in Denver. Joining the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a radical union, he worked as a labor organizer in New Mexico and supported miners who in 1950 went on strike at Empire Zinc Company. Jencks participated in the blacklisted film “Salt of the Earth,” playing a role based on his own experiences.  In 1952 FBI agents arrested Jencks on charges of falsifiying a document by denying he belonged to the Communist Party. Convicted largely due to the testimony of FBI informant Harvey Matusow, who later recanted, Jencks appealed.  In 1957 the Supreme Court exonerated him due to his having been denied access to documents used against him.  During the 1960s he earned a PhD in Economics at Berkeley and became a professor at San Diego State before moving to Grand Rapids, Michigan with his third wife, a former grad student.

The Portage Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is awarding an AR-15 to the winner of their raffle.  In an understatement Post-Tribunecolumn Jerry Davich opined that the prize was in bad taste.  One reader was more emphatic, branding it “crazy” and only possible in “redneck” Portage.  Other FOPs sadly have done the same despite the threat to law enforcement officers posed by semi-automatic rifles capable of mass destruction.

On the first week of bowling the Electrical Engineers were down to a single former electrical engineer, Frank Shufran, from our old Gary Sheet and Tin league, due to the retirement of Dick Maloney (macular degeneration) and Mel Nelson (bum shoulder). Fortunately, we picked up Ron Smith from Duke Cominsky’s Pin Heads, which disbanded due to teammates’ similar health problems. Lorenzo Rodriguez, on the DL all last year, would have been our fourth bowler had another team not reached him first.  Early in game one Lorenzo fell, sat down until his head cleared, then left, his return doubtful.  

On the cover of Time is Lil Nas X (Montero Lamar Hill), a gay, black, country rapper, with the hottest song of the year, “Old Town Road,” which has topped the Billboard charts for a record 19 weeks and already streamed well over a billion plays on Spotify, outperforming such heavy hitters as Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran.  Just a year ago Lil Nas X was homeless, sleeping on a sister’s couch.  Here are lyrics to “Old Town Road”:

My life is a movie
Bull ridin' and boobies
Cowboy hat from Gucci
Wrangler on my booty

Can't nobody tell me nothin

Chancellor Lowe and Laila Nawab

Over a hundred faculty, administrators, staff, and students turned out for the Chancellor’s “Campus Conversation,” which resembles a convocation (something I suggested a decade ago) but without the typical pomp and ceremony. In her welcoming remarks Vice Chancellor Vicki Roman-Lagunas noted the steep increase in on-line offers to a round of applause (I felt like booing but kept silent) and paraphrased Chancellor Lowe’s statement that IU Northwest is the campus of the future, but we’re doing it now.  Faculty Org president Susan Zimmer’s most memorable line was, “Some students drink at the fountain of knowledge, and others just gargle.”  Chemistry major Laila Nawab, president of the Student Government Association gave the student welcome, noting efforts to get more students involved in campus affairs. Business students described an innovative mentoring program they started. 

Chancellor Bill Lowe’s state of the campus address was surprisingly upbeat, compared to the normal doom and gloom over budget matters.  He claimed that enrollment and retention were up after several lean years and that the university’s financial affairs were in order. Touting Hanif Abdurraqib’s October visit to campus, Lowe noted that all students can get a free copy of “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.” Before introducing Diversity director James Wallace, Lowe noted that the campus will soon be celebrating IU’s Bicentennial year and 60 years of being at our present Glen Park location.

At a luncheon in Savannah gym East Chicago Central grad David Bork, one of Dave’s best former students, who was recently hired as an assistant to Athletic Director Ryan Shelton, greeted me warmly.  Sitting with Chris Young and Nicole Anslover with plates of salad and brisket, string beans, rice, ands gravy, I told Chris I was looking forward to his September book club talk on the Pony Express.  He is presently reading Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” because his son has been assigned it in high school, something I did James’s senior year. I congratulated Nicole on being the new department chair.  Since she is teaching a fall upper division course on Postwar American, I told her about David Goldfield’s “The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good” (2017).  She plans on inviting me to speak about race-relations in postwar Gary. Joining our table were sociologists Jack Bloom and Kevin McElmurry, geologist Zoran Kilibarda, photographer Jennifer Greenburg, and sculptor Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford (below).

Unexpected Surprises

“Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected.” Elizabeth Warren

Senator Elizabeth Warren recently posted a 1978 video of Ted Kennedy, who would now be 85 if still alive, speaking about the need for health care reform.  She noted:

Not a day goes by in Massachusetts that we don’t miss his leadership, his passion, and his commitment to fighting for working families. Senator Kennedy called his work on health care reform “the great cause of his life.” He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but he said: “We can’t afford to wait, and we can’t afford to fail.” I can think of no better way to celebrate Senator Kennedy than to make sure his dream of quality, affordable health care for everyone lives on.

Janice Wilson with kids and by herself

Indiana History student Crislyn Arcuri interviewed Janice Wilson about unexpected surprises in her life during the 1990s.  She recalled:

    In December of 1991, I found out that I was pregnant 18 days before my 23-year-old daughter’s wedding.  At the time, unbeknownst to me, she was 3 months pregnant. I became a grandmother and a mom again in the same year.  My husband and I were both euphoric because we had been married 7 years and had tried everything except in vitro.  When Daniel was just 6 weeks old, we took him to see my grandfather, who noted how big he was. His wife loved him because his hair was so black. We didn’t want to just have one baby and succeeded in producing a second, Michael. They were wild kids, nicknamed the Wilson boys, like they were little bandits. I was pregnant for such a short time between the two that a lot of people thought I was pregnant with the same baby.  Both boys always loved playing cowboys with their little scarves and guns. Michael would say “tick them up, tick them up” and get upset when his brother refused to obey him. 

 I quit working for the hospital and became a school health services director. I also did the wellness program at Portage. We opened up a community health center and a teen health clinic so students wouldn’t have to miss school. I did a blood drive once because the superintendent’s daughter had cancer and needed a bone marrow donation. In 1997, a student ran into my office and said a teacher had just had a baby in the bathroom.  It was actually a student.  She let me take the baby from her and I held it close to keep it warm. My white clothes got blood all over them. I kept telling the girl to sit down but she wouldn’t. She just zipped up her pants. Worried that she might go into shock, I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and to get blankets for the baby. It was an exciting experience but nothing I would wish to happen to a young girl.

Kenya Johnson in Aetna and posing for fourth grade photo

Kendell Buckley interviewed Kenya Johnson, who was born in 1986 and grew up in the Gary neighborhood of Aetna.  Kenya has three older brothers, two younger brothers, and a little sister. Her mother was a stay at home mom and her father worked at Inland Steel.  Buckley wrote that Kenya was not allowed to play outside as a young child because her parents were very strict and did not want her around boys. When she started kindergarten, she was very shy. Because of her family’s religious beliefs, Kenya was only allowed to wear dresses and skirts, and the other children made fun of her.  In the summer, Kenya’s mother took her children to Marquette Park. They were not allowed to get into the water though because her mother couldn’t swim and feared that they would drown. Their family would also go to Marquette Park for Fourth of July Fest. In the spring her brothers played Little League baseball.  Kenya told Buckley: “The concession stand sold the best hot dogs and pickles. My mom would give me quarters to buy pop and pixie (candy) sticks.” Kenya told Buckley about an old green abandoned house up the street from theirs rumored to be haunted:

The kids on our block decided to play “ding dong ditch” at that house. The grass had grown up very high, and stray dogs liked to hang around in the yard. One day my brother Ben dared me to knock on the door, saying he’d buy me a bag of chips if I did.  As I approached the house, I scoped it out for dogs and cobwebs and seemed to be in the clear. There was a creepy old knocker on the door. I walked up, knocked three times, and ran for my life, screaming. I thought the boogie man was going to take my soul. I ran all the way home and burst through the front door. Ben was behind me laughing. A few years later, someone moved into that house, fixed it up, and painted it yellow. It became the neighborhood candy store.

Kenya told Buckley about a TV show called “In Living Color” that did segments with a humorous character called Homey D. Clown, an ex-con performing as part of his mandated community service.

Kids' imaginations started running wild. All over Gary, there were Homey D. Clown sightings and rumors that he kidnapped kids and was a serial killer. Aetna School has a big sand dune behind it. Kids started saying that Homey the Clown lived on the sand dune. During recess kids were dared to go up the sand dune to see if they could spot the clown. Some kids said they saw him. Parents started picking their children up from school instead of letting them walk home. My first grade class faced the sand dune. I spent much of my day looking out the window trying to spot the clown. I spotted someone walking up the sand hill and it freaked me out. I told my classmates and everyone ran to the window.

Kenya’s dad had road rage a lot.  After a funeral, he got a sticker to head the procession to the cemetery in our family van.  Kenya recalled: “Some driver cut my dad off, causing him to fall behind in the procession. My dad started cursing and blowing his horn. The driver that cut my dad off started chasing us down every street we drove down.  At this point, we didn't know if the guy had a gun or what he was going to do if we stopped. My dad was angry at first but then fearful. He kept driving in the direction of the cemetery. At the cemetery, the driver got out of his car and threw a brick at our side window. Then he casually walked back to his car, got in, and drove off. He didn't break the window but it was chipped pretty badly.”

Kenya recalled an excursion to Mississippi:

In 1999, my oldest brother graduated from high school and enrolled at Jackson State. Whenever we traveled, my dad wanted to do all the driving, even though my mom and oldest brother had licenses. Well, Mississippi was like a 12-hour drive. My dad would swear up and down that he wasn't sleepy, but my mom would catch him dosing off behind the wheel, and have to force him to pull over at a rest stop. He thought he could drive all the way there without any rest. At one point, he took the wrong exit.  Instead of exiting and getting back on, he decided to drive backwards on the ramp. We were in a 15-passenger van practically screaming at him while he was trying to maneuver backwards. It was late at night, so luckily no drivers were around.

        

In “The History of Rock and Roll” Ed Ward mentions that the Vee-Jay 1962 smash hit “Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler was actually recorded the year before while Candler was a member of The Dukays. When Vee-Jay signed the Four Seasons, Ward noted, the New Jersey group called themselves the Varietones, anda bowling alley was the inspiration for their new name.  Ward wrote that Vee-Jay acquired the rights to “The Wayward Wind” by Frank Ifield and “Please, Please Me” by the Beatles from the British company EMI after Capitol records passed on the deal.  Ward added: “In its haste to get “Please, Please me” out, Vee-Jay misspelled the band’s name as the ‘Beattles’ in the trade ads and on the record.”

Bowling teammate Frank Shufran contacted the brother of Bill Batalis, who passed away a few years ago, and retrieved score sheets for the Electrical Engineers dating back to 1961. Against the Hot Shots, a team we swept the week before in a position round, we barely won game one, got crushed by more than 100 pins in game two, and miraculously squeaked out a win in the finale when Robbie, Dick, and Mel all doubled in the final frames.  After struggling for six frames, I did a little jig upon striking.  Opponent Norma Haines remarked, “Careful not to fall,” a reference to a spill the week before.  My right ear is still slightly discolored.  I marked my final three frames while Hot Shots Jim Fox and Tom Cox left splits in crucial situations on apparently good hits.

Augusta (Georgia) University English professor Seretha Williams (above) contacted me for information on the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary hosted by Mayor Richard Hatcher.  A 1988 Lew Wallace graduate, Seretha had purchased Steel Shavings magazines at IUN Bookstore containing excerpts of my oral history of the Hatcher administration.  I told her I conducted the interviews myself and that audiotapes are housed at the Calumet Regional Archives.  In fact, thanks to an IU project, they are will be digitized.

This from Jim Spicer:

      A little old lady who had lost her marbles was running up and down the halls in a nursing home. As she ran, she would flip up the hem of her nightgown and say, "Supersex." She ran up to an elderly man in a wheelchair; flipping her gown at him, she said, "Supersex."
      He sat silently for a moment or two and finally answered, "I'll take the soup."

The Man in Me

“There's kind of a Zen aspect to bowling. The pins are either staying up or down before you even throw your arm back. It's kind of a mind-set. You want to be in this perfect mind-set before you release the ball.” Jeff Bridges

Most Jeff Bridges lines as The Dude in the cult film “The Big Lebowski” (1998) are scatological.  Oft-repeated witticisms by fans of The Dude include “Hey, I’m housebroken” and (when the Nihilists invade his bathroom with a trained ferret) “Hey, nice marmot!”  My favorite: “I was one of the original authors of the Port Huron Declaration.  Not the compromised second draft.”  What immediately hooked me upon watcing “The Big Lebowski” was Bob Dylan singing “The Man in Me” during the opening credits (son Dave sings it even better than Dylan).  When Lebowski claims that what makes a man is being prepared to do the right thing whatever the cost, The Dude replies, “Sure, that, and a pair of testicles.”

At Hobart Lanes my Electrical Engineers bowled against 2 R’s and 2 L’s.  During warmup I said to William Pfeiffer, “None of your names start with either R or L.  What’s the deal?”  You’ll see,” he replied. Two were lefties and the other two right-handed. Teammate Bob “Robbie” Robinson said, “Hey, you made the front page of the newspaper” and related that he was 6 at the time of Pearl Harbor and understood it was important from his parents’ reaction. For two and a half games I struggled until Frank Shufran told me I wasn’t following through.  I promptly rolled five straight strikes to finish with a 210, my best game in two years.  Demonstrative Judy Sheriff, whose middle game was even more horrendous than mine, rebounded with a 190, exclaiming “yahoo” and copying Frank Vitalone’s Italian salute when she picked up a ten-pin by gripping the biceps of her right arm and raising her fist. 

On a TV screen above us was a golf tournament featuring sexy Paulina Gretzky, daughter of the hockey great Wayne Gretzky and girlfriend of Dustin Johnson.  A guy on the alley next to us said he’d watch more golf if she were competing.  At home over the phone we wished Jim Migoski “Happy Birthday.”  Thirty years ago I started bowling because of him.   

At Hobart Lanes my Electrical Engineers bowled against 2 R’s and 2 L’s.  During warmup I said to William Pfeiffer, “None of your names start with either R or L.  What’s the deal?”  You’ll see,” he replied. Two were lefties and the other two right-handed. Teammate Bob “Robbie” Robinson said, “Hey, you made the front page of the newspaper” and related that he was 6 at the time of Pearl Harbor and understood it was important from his parents’ reaction. For two and a half games I struggled until Frank Shufran told me I wasn’t following through.  I promptly rolled five straight strikes to finish with a 210, my best game in two years.  Demonstrative Judy Sheriff, whose middle game was even more horrendous than mine, rebounded with a 190, exclaiming “yahoo” and copying Frank Vitalone’s Italian salute when she picked up a ten-pin by gripping the biceps of her right arm and raising her fist.  At home over the phone we wished Jim Migoski “Happy Birthday.”  Thirty years ago I started bowling because of him.   

Due to bowling, I skipped IUN’s Holiday Reception since teammate Dick Maloney is on the DL after a hand operation.  Pianist Billy Foster and accordionist Eve Bottando were providing entertainment, and I’m sorry to have missed emeritus faculty regulars Fred Chary and Rick Hug. Saturday I’ll miss a Lady Redhawks basketball game because of bridge club.  Sunday I’ll be at Memorial Opera House for “Meet Me in St. Louis” and miss a puppet show and radio play at Gardner Center.  Monday I have to attend a condo board meeting while the Gary Symphony Orchestra is performing at the Gary Genesis Convention Center.

With the temp in the low 20s and worse weather predicted on the horizon, I wore a hoodie for the first time ever. Alissa gave me a green Michigan State hoodie a couple years ago, but it seemed a little warm for indoors.  My work space behind the Archives, being next to a north window, gets cold, however, and my hats weren’t doing the job outside.  It’ not unusual for me not to wear new clothes right away, but I should have tried wearing it sooner. Now I’ll probably be virtually living in it.

Ray Smock emailed, “I got a nice surprise in the mail today. Glad I was on your short list [to get a copy of “In God We Trust”]! I sat down and started reading it again and I started laughing out loud again at Jean Shepherd's great stories and his wonderful writing. It's an American classic and so are you, my friend. Our hearty best wishes to you and Toni and your entire family.”  On Facebook Smock posted:

  Soon I will be back to full speed on politics, not that it has ever been out of my mind. But I did feel the real need to get away from it for a while by watching old Westerns, engaging in my photography hobby, and I even cleaned up the storage area in our basement. Anything but watch news of another Trump appointment. Sunrises and sunsets remind me of things more eternal and I look for these golden hours to reflect on things. I took this image at sunset last night. I sat on a lovely hill for almost an hour waiting for the low light and watching the clouds go from white to red. Good for the soul.

 West Virginia before the snow came, photo by Ray Smock' below, Jim Spicer, Packer fan

This from Jim Spicer:

            A 65-year old woman had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. While on the operating table she had a near death experience. Seeing God she asked, “Is my time up?”

God said, “No, you have another 33 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.”

Upon recovery, the woman decided to stay in the hospital and have a face-lift, liposuction, breast implants and a tummy tuck. She even had someone come in and change her hair color and brighten her teeth! Since she had so much more time to live, she figured she might as well make the most of it. After her last operation, she was released from the hospital. While crossing the street on her way home, she was killed by an ambulance. Arriving in front of God, she demanded, “I thought you said I had another 33 years? Why didn't you pull me out of the path of the ambulance?”

God replied: “I didn't recognize you!”

I received an email from Melinda Oswalt Ramsden, who recently learned that she is the granddaughter of Paulino Monterrubio, whom I interviewed and wrote about in “City of the Century.”  Melinda thinks Paulino’s son was a nightclub singer.  Her mother was an Estonian immigrant whose family fled the country rather than live under Soviet domination.  Melinda subsequently was adopted and raised by a loving couple in Illinois.  She wrote:

In the years before I found information on my birth father’s family, I had hoped he was still in Chicago.  I threw myself into Mexican history via books, television series, and as much as I could find via the Internet.  I learned how many Mexican families came North to work in steel mills and/or in the meat packing industry.  And it was because of your book that I could understand why one of the birth certificates for one of the family members indicated that Paulino Senior was working in a pool room, and how they had lived in Joliet (where my father, Paulino, was born).  Never did I take so much interest in history until I realized how much of it was in the making in the lives of both of my family members.

I emailed back, “Thank you for sharing such an inspiring story.  In the Roy Dominguez book “Valor” I talk about how memorable my interview with your grandfather was.  It’s been over 40 years since I interviewed him, but I still remember it vividly.”  Here’s what’s I wrote in the Afterword to “Valor.”

  John Bodnar’s epic “The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America” (1987) developed the paradigm of immigrants and their offspring as active agents rather than as mere victims.  I had a similar epiphany after interviewing Gary steelworker Paulino Monterrubio.  All I initially wanted to question him about were the ways he was discriminated against, which he was, and that’s certainly part of the story.  But he wanted to tell me about being a neighborhood warden during World War II, and he was eager to show me his citizenship papers, union cards, and pictures of his family.  Thankfully, I was a good listener, the first prerequisite for an oral historian. Paulino put up with the discrimination, but the reality of his life – the way he wanted to be remembered – was not just as somebody who was kicked around but as a man who had this, did that, and left a mark through his relatives and his kids.

Astronaut John Glenn, a marine fighter pilot during World War II and Korea (baseball great Ted Willaims was his wingman) and the first American to orbit Earth (in 1962), is dead at age 95. Although I was not all that caught up in America’s space program during the 1960s, I was deeply impressed by Glenn’s entire career, including four terms in the Senate. In 1998 at age 77 Glenn boarded a space shuttle and went back into space. From all indications he didn’t let being an American hero go to his head.  Ray Smock, who knew him from when he was House historian, wrote these words:

  One time I was waiting on the Senate side to take the subway to the Capitol. Senator Glenn was nearby talking to two other senators. A woman, with three young kids in tow along with her husband, came up to me and said, “Excuse me, could you tell me who that person over there is (pointing to Glenn), he looks like someone I should know.” I replied, “Yes ma’am, that’s John Glenn.” She beamed with surprise and a sense of wonderment that she had laid eyes on him. She gathered up her family and went over to the senator and introduced herself and her family. Senator Glenn was gracious as he so often was in such cases. He shook everyone’s hand, he engaged them in conversation, and out came the camera and he posed for a picture with the family. I’ll bet that picture still hangs in a prominent place in their home.

Ray and Phyllis Smock, Mike Gilette, John and Annie Glenn, Mary Jane Veno, Pat and Dick Baker (2007)

I picked up gummy bears (for Dave) and macadamia nuts (for Toni) at the Albanese Confectionery outlet on Route 30 for Christmas presents. The nuts are a tradition as a way of recalling our living in Hawaii the first 18 months of our marriage.  Scott Albanese started the company in 1983, and the gummies, which come in 16 flavors and in the form of worms, bears, and soldiers, are shipped all over the world. The Albanese factory produces 50,000 gummies a day.