Nippon Bukodan

When I woke up, mom and dad are rolling on the couch.
Rolling numbers, rock and rolling, got my Kiss records out”

    Cheap Trick, “Surrender”

Nippon Bukodan is an indoor arena in Tokyo first used for judo during the 1964 Olympics.  The name means martial arts hall and is most famous for hosting rock concerts.  The Beatles played Bukodan, for example in 1966 and other acts included ABBA, Queen, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Kiss, and many more, including Cheap Trick, whose “Live from Bukodan” album is one of my favorites.  It opens with a rousing “Hello There,” closes with “Goodnight,” and contains the Fats Domino classic “Ain’t That a Shame” and the hit single “I Want You to Want Me.” My favorite cut is “Surrender,” much superior to the studio version and a staple for Dave’s Band “Voodoo Chili,” before which he’d often invite me up to sing the chorus with him.  I saw the power pop band from Rockford, Illinois, led by guitarist Rick Nielson and singer Robin Zandar twice at the Holiday Star in Merrillville, once in the tenth row with Dave, a niece, and her boyfriend.  The warm-up band drummer threw a sharp-pointed broken drum stick into the audience that landed between the two.  It could have taken an eye out.

“Someone's got it in for me
They're planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they'd cut it out quick
But when they will I can only guess”

    Bob Dylan, “Idiot Wind”

Bob Dylan’s earlier albums “The Times They Are A-Changin’” (1964) and “Highway 61 Revisited” (1965) had a greater impact on music and society, but my favorite Dylan recording was his fifteenth studio effort, “Blood on the Tracks” (1975).  Initially receiving mixed reviews, it is one of Dylan’s most personal and has since been acclaimed as a classic.  Side one opens with “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Simple Twist of Fate” and contains “Idiot Wind,” which I inevitably sing along to; the highlight of side two is the tale of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.”  What a treat from the ever-surprising minstrel of folk and pop, known affectionately to Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne as Boo Wilbury.

“Don’t let me down

Take me to another shore”

    “Alda Reserve, “Ancient Lies

My favorite band that hardly anyone has heard of is Alda Reserve, whose lone album was “Love Goes On” (1979).  The brainchild of keyboardist Brad Ellis, it was released by Sire records after legendary music executive Seymour Stein (who signed the Talking Heads, Ramones and Pretenders) heard the band at New York’s CBGBs.  When “Love Goes On” received mediocre reviews, the record company failed to promote it. Compared unfairly to The Doors and not punk enough for purists, the album nevertheless got airplay on Chicago radio station WMET, “the mighty MET,” (now a country station), where I must have heard it.  There’s not a bad song on the album, which includes “Some Get Away,” “Whiter Than White,” “Pain Is Mine” (with the line, “She looked at me with kamikaze eyes”), and my favorite, “Overnight Jets.”  I know still know every word to “Overnight Jets.”  There aren’t many; each verse contains a four-syllable phrase repeated four times: “Overnight Jet,” “Land on the Dunes,” “When the Windows Shine,” and “Don’t Know Her Name.”  I  found Alda Reserve songs on YouTube, including a couple from the ill-fated second album never released on vinyl.  Bill Daily wrote of “Some Get Away: “This tune was my college band’s signature song.”  It opens:

    “Standing on the edge of night, it takes me away

    Hiding away from the light, been waiting all day”

In a 1915 interview Brad Ellis spoke of coming to New York City and living with a cousin Virginia whom he described as an artist and commie. After moving to the Bowery and becoming part of the East Village gay and punk scenes, he began a 14-year relationship with painter Carl Apfelschnitt.  Ellis lost numerous friends during the AIDS epidemic.  He told an interviewer, “I can’t say I really knew Gary Indiana but I have had some cordial conversations with him.  I didn’t just like his book, I loved it.”  Gary Indiana (born Gary Hoisington in 1950) was a prolific author (“Rent Boy,” “Gone Tomorrow”), actor, director, playwright, and Village Voice art critic.

                                                                      Gary Indiana

I try not to dwell on inconveniences caused by the pandemic since my situation is in no way comparable to those suffering economic hardship or illness, but it would be nice to know when it will abate and what the “new normal” will be.  I recently learned that a National Humanities Conference session I’m part of was accepted as well as a paper to be presented at the Oral History Association conference.  Both are scheduled for October, also the month my high school reunion is supposed to take place.  We’ll see.

                                                     

I received this email from Elaine McKearn:

    My mother was born in Gary, Indiana 1918. She was baptized Josephine Kankowski. She attended a Catholic school until third grade. She graduated from Gary Horseman High School. She married Bert Laskowski in 1938. I was born in Gary in 1943. We have reconnected with almost all of her first cousins who all are presently living in Southeast Poland as well as near Chelm, PL and Lublin.  She died in 2009 in La Porte, Indiana as well as my father in 2000.  I recently (Jan 26, 2019) did a presentation to the Polish Genealogical Society of California at the LDS Family Center in Los Angeles.  I have a lot of memories of Gary during my childhood.

I replied that I’d like to know more about where her parents lived and works as well as her Gary experiences and added:

    Very interesting email.  As you may know, in addition to having written a history of Gary, I am co-director of the Calumet Regional Archives at IU Northwest.  We'd be interested in obtaining a copy of the paper you presented and, although closed now along with the university, would welcome a visit if you come to NW Indiana in the future.  Some of our manuscript collections might be of interest to you, as well.  We also have Horace Mann yearbooks that your mother might be in.

Temple Israel

“Happiness is the only goal, justice the only worship, truth the only torch, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.” Robert Ingersoll

Nicknamed “The Great Agnostic,” nineteenth century lawyer and orator Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899) lectured on everything from political issues of the day to the plays of William Shakespeare.  In “The Great Infidels” Ingersoll poked fun at the Christian concept of Hell, declaring: “All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word – Hell.”

 Cullen Ben-Daniel harvesting tomatoes

At Temple Israel Cullen Ben-Daniel traced the history of Gary’s Jewish community.  The first Temple, a temporary wooden structure, dates from 1908.  Before that, according to legend, early Jewish settlers held services in a hayloft.  Temple Beth El was built four years later.  Temple Israel is celebrating its 104th year.  Orthodox Jews attended Beth El, while Temple Israel was home to a Reformed congregation.  Evelyn Shaevel wrote:

  My grandfather, Aaron Bornstein, moved to Gary in 1908 and established a wholesale fruit company located at 16th and Broadway. He was one of the men who established Temple Beth El. He was killed January 26, 1929 when his car stalled on railroad tracks.

back row, fifth from right, Rabbi Carl Miller (1906-1984)

Phil and Dave went to pre-school at Temple Israel 40 years ago.  One day Dave told us he met God.  It was actually the Rabbi.  We’ve gone to several Bar and Bat Mitzvahs there, as well as Sunday breakfasts when there’d be speakers.  I heard pacifist David Dellinger, one of the “Chicago Conspiracy 8,” speak there.  When Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History” came out, we were on the program. In January the place will be jumping on Trivia Night.

 Trivia Night hosts with Mayor Freeman-Wilson

Around 1973 I interviewed Rabbi Garry Joel August at Ambassador Arms Apartments on Gary’s near West Side.  A cultured man who was the first president of the Gary Symphony, August served Temple Israel for 25 years, beginning in 1926.  In 1929, after 23 year-old Arthur Shumway poked fun at Gary’s absence of culture except in the immigrant neighborhoods, August replied that Gary might be roughhewn like other young cities but not backward.  In fact, he concluded, “Gary is America.  Every American city is Gary writ large or small.”  At his retirement banquet he stated: “My congregation had a heart that was warm, a loyalty that was always intense, an imagination that was always alive, and love that was always profound.”  In “Gary’s First Hundred Years” I wrote:

  Reverend Thomas S. Pierce described his oratorical ability as like that off a magnificent actor, with perfect elocution and a deep resonant voice.  In 1932, debating the merits of Prohibition with Frederick W. Backemeyer, he delighted the audience and infuriated the abstemious Presbyterian pastor by predicting that when his [Backemeyer’s] boys grew up, they’d be drinking beer.

“Indiana’s 200” contains an essay on Rabbi Morris Feuerlicht of Indianapolis, the first Jew to serve on the State Board of Charities and a vocal opponent of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when that hate group dominated Indiana politics.  Feuerlicht had a healthy respect for agnostics such as Robert Ingersoll and Clarence Darrow, whom he debated before an audience of several thousand at Cadle Tabernacle, arguing, as he put it, that “without a soul, man would not be a man, but only a species of animal.”

At the Holiday bowling banquet at Hobart Lanes I pigged out on hot beef sandwiches, deviled eggs, corn pudding, veggies, and brownies.  My pickle spears went fast, and a woman inquired where I had bought them (Jewel in Chesterton).  Robbie brought an entire cake.  The Engineers took two games from Frank’s Gang despite a 687 by Mark Garzella, Sr., who had a chance for a 700 series but left an 8-10 split in his final frame.  A few years ago Garzella rolled a 767.  Our anchor Frank Shufran finished with a turkey for a 245, enabling us to win series.  Opponent Tom Iseminger resembled Al Pacino.  Duke Caminsky, resplendent in a Christmas shirt, shouted to Melvin Nelson to “hit the head pin, dummy,” although it seemed like every time Melvie did, he left a split.  Before leaving I polished off two homemade cookies and wrapped a couple brownies in a napkin for Toni.

The Gary Roosevelt and Indianapolis Crispus Attucks basketball teams who in 1955 vied for the state basketball championship were 2015 South Shore Wall of Legends inductees.  Also honored: General Lew Wallace, Civil War general and author of “Ben Hur,” and Civil War soldiers from the Twentieth Indiana infantry 

A writer who calls himself Gary Indiana made the New York magazine “top ten” list with a memoir titled “I Can Give You Anything But Love.”  The author has also written the novels “Depraved Indifference” (2002) and “Do Everything in the Dark” (2003). A gay veteran of the Haight-Ashbury scene who now teaches literature and philosophy (?) at New York’s New School, Indiana admits, “I’m old enough to justify writing about my history, but too old to remember much of it.” Living in 1919 in a commune populated by “emotionally flattened hippies . . . fond of elaborate, cruel psychological games,” Indiana recalled:

  In the long rancid afterglow of the summer of love, the Haight-Ashbury had puddled into a gritty slum of boarded-up head shops and strung-out junkies, thuggish dealers, undercover cops in love beads and fright wigs.  The hippie saturnalia had continued as a sinister parody of itself, featuring overdoses and rip-offs and sudden flashes of violence.

Steve McShane distributed ten copies of “Education the Calumet Region: A History of Indiana University Northwest” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2004), co-edited with Paul Kern at a meeting of the Council of University Historians, charged with planning projects for IU’s bicentennial in 2020.