Killers

“I'm the man, come round and
Nothing can break, you can't break me down”

         Killers, “The Man”

 Brandon Flowers and Ric Ocasek

The Killers, a rock band from Las Vegas, opened the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony TV special on HBO by belting out the Tom Petty classic “American Girl,” with a few bars of “Free Fallin’ thrown in, as shots of the late, great rocker from Gainesville, Florida flashed on a big screen. Then Killers frontman Brandon Flowers introduced Ric Ocasek and The Cars and mentioned their song “Moving in Stereo” being the soundtrack during the hot fantasy swimming pool scene in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” with  Phoebe Cates removing her red bikini top. The Killers are one of nephew Bob’s favorite bands. Dave included “The Man,” from the album “Wonderful Wonderful,” on his “Best of 2017” Christmas CD.  Its final lines go:

Who's the man with the plan?
I'm the man

I don't give a damn
I'm the man

Stevie Van Zandt introduced a half-dozen singles honored, including Link Wray’s “Rumble” (1958), probably the only instrumental ever banned by radio stations, and “Louie, Louie” (1963) by the Kingsman, ordered off airways by the governor of Indiana because it was supposedly a dirty party song. Others included “The Twist” by Chubby Checker and one of my all-time favorites, “Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum.  I particularly enjoyed the long overdue induction of Moody Blues, eulogized by Ann Wilson of Heart and their subsequent performance.  Even though “Knights in White Satin” is not one of my favorites, Justin Hayward still has an awesome voice that he showed off splendidly.  Sadly, founding member and flautist Ray Thomas died a few months ago.  He hadn’t been with the band the last few times I saw them live.

Moodies, Justin Hayward on left 

Reporting on “The Devil’s Ticket” by Gary Pomerantz to book club members at Gino’s, I mentioned that after Myrtle Bennett killed husband Jack over a bridge hand and was arrested, she shared a cell with Evelyn Holmes, a 29-year-old vaudevillian who had gunned down her husband after, to quote Pomerantz, “years of neglect and cruel treatment”:

  Evelyn Helms had known hunger and deprivation.  Her husband Frank had threatened to leave her.  She shot him during a chase in which he had run from their house and fallen in the yard.  She stood over him, gun in hand, and was heard to say, “You will leave me, will you?”  She fired once, repeated the question, and fired again.  She tried to turn the gun on herself, but there were no bullets left.  

Like Myrtle, Evelyn was prosecuted by Jackson County D.A. Jim Page but, unable to hire a prominent attorney such as Myrtle’s mouthpiece, Missouri Senator James A. Reed, she was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in jail. Pomerantz compares young Myrtle to Lorilei Lee in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and an aging Myrtle (she lived well into her 90s) to Auntie Mame. She overcame a hardscrabble childhood in rural Arkansas as well as the notoriety of her trial (unimaginable in our day and age, as Joy Anderson pointed out) and became a successful social director for a fashionable New York City hotel and continuing to enjoy bridge,

Before I began my talk, I introduced my guests, bridge couple Charlie Halberstadt and Naomi Goodman and old friend Rocky Fraire, who came with Barbara Wisdom.  It turned out he knew Charlie from backgammon games at Another Roadside Attraction Restaurant in the 1970s.  The night before, I had reminded Roy Dominguez and George Van Til of the event and both showed up.  Dominguez is active in the protest against Maya Energy’s bid to build a waste/recycling facility near Steel City Academy, as is our mutual friend Samuel A. Love.

Steel City Academy students at City Council; NWI Times photo by John J. Watkins

My talk produced a lively discussion about social trends during the Roaring 20s and the effect of World War I and the mass production of automobiles on the breakdown of traditional moral standards.  Lee Christakis quoted from the song “How Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm, After They’ve Seen Paree?”  Bennett’s husband Jack, a World War I vet born on an Illinois farm, had been a traveling salesman hawking Parisian perfumes, and Brian Barnes noted that his father had a similar job selling windows.   Jack was quite a charmer and had at least one mistress to whom he was about to flee when Myrtle stopped him in his tracks.  Ken Anderson noted that we’d met in a Miller bridge group that included the son of longtime IUN English professor Walter Brown.  Debra Dubovich compared “The Devil’s Ticket” to Erik Larson’s nonfiction masterpiece “The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America.”  Debra tried to get her bridge-playing mother to attend.

Ron Cohen and I finalized selections for the new chapter in the forthcoming third edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History.” My latest find: a photo by Guy Rhodes of Rudy Clay celebrating his 2007 election victory for Mayor at Tri-City Commons Shopping Center.  A Gary Roosevelt, grad, Clay served in the Indiana Senate and as Lake County Commissioner for 20 years prior to becoming mayor in a special election following the resignation of Scott King in 2006.  A year later, he was elected to a full term.  In April 2011, Clay cut short his re-election bid because he’d been diagnosed with cancer and endorsed Karen Freeman-Wilson as his successor.  As I was leaving, Ron gave me a brownie from a batch Nancy made for Ron’s movie night hosted by Larry Lapidus. 

I arrived home in time to see Janet and Kirsten Bayer, who had a business meeting scheduled at Ivy’s Bohemian House in Chesterton and brought her mom along from Indy, who dined at Lucretia’s with Toni.  Having visited her brother-in-law Joe in Finland, she predicted Dave and I will love Helsinki and that Joe’s house, where we’re spending the mid-summer holiday weekend, is a mere half-block from the subway, which will get us anywhere in the city.

 Melvin Tolson

I found a great Denzel Washington biopic on HBO, “The Great Debaters” (2007), is based on the true story of Wiley College debate coach Melvin B. Tolson, who during the 1930s in Jim Crow Texas coached a successful debate team that included 14-year-old James Farmer.  The movie opens with Tolson reciting “I, Too, Sing America” by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Driving to a debate, team members come across a black man who’d been lynched and set on fire.  The lone woman debater, Samantha Booke, was based on Henrietta Bell Wells, who went on to marry an Episcopalian minister, Wallace L. Wells, and became a teacher and social worker in Gary at the time St. Augustine’s Church was built.  James Farmer founded the civil rights group CORE in 1942, not long after graduating from Wiley College.  I heard him speak at IUN when he described being on the 1961 Freedom Ride.  Tolson, a noted poet, was accused of being a radical because he was active in organizing tenant farmers.  He later began teaching at Langston University, another historically black institution, and between 1954 and 1960 served three terms as mayor of Langston, Oklahoma.

My two favorite TV series are “Barry” starring Bill Hader as a hired killer (it’s kind of a weird comedy”) and “The Americans” in its final season. The most recent episode, “Harvest,” was particularly violent, as former Soviet spy Philip Jennings reluctantly comes out of retirement to protect wife Elizabeth and shoots two FBI agents in a gun battle and then chops off the head and hands of a dead comrade to prevent the Feds from learning her identity.  I tried not to look. 

 Alissa and Toni

For Mother’s Day Alissa drove down from Michigan and Dave’s family arrived after visiting Angie’s mom with Chinese food from Wing Wah. Toni gave Alissa plants and flowers from her garden.  I donated Gene Clifford’s hand-crafted bird feeder for her and Josh’s backyard.  They have it fenced in for the dog, Jerry, and recently put in a patio.

I spoke to Steve McShane’s summer class about interviewing someone who is in a bowling league.  After I told them their oral history paper will be deposited in a Archives collection and excerpts published in a forthcoming Steel Shavings, student asked me what the purpose was.  I talked about how sociologists and social historians are interested in social organizations and how they changes (and declined) due in part to TV and the Internet. I explained that history can be defined as the record of change over time and that a number of bowlers in my Mel Guth Seniors League can recall a time before automatic pin setters and scoring devices.  Some bowl in both mixed leagues and men-only leagues, where it is common for teams to use risqué playing cards for betting purposes to reward strikes and/or spares in a version of poker.

Kelly Cochran

A Hobart woman, Kelly Cochran, 35, was convicted of murdering husband Jason by injecting him with a massive dose of heroin and then smothering him.  Previously, assisted by Jason, she had murdered a boyfriend in Michigan, cut up the body, and, according to rumors, barbequed parts of him.  She had been a suspect in other incidents of foul play as well and will serve a life sentence in prison without possibility of parole.

At bridge Joel Carpentier noticed the Inman’s Bowling League shirt I was wearing and said he bowled with deaf teammates there after Camelot Lanes in Portage abruptly closed in mid-season.  That’s why grandson James started bowling there.  I told Joel that most of my teammates on the Electrical Engineers were half-deaf as well.  Barb Mort said she ran across my name reading Jerry Davich’s “Lost Gary.”  I replied that even though I disagreed with the emphasis Davich put on such themes as declension and corruption, I respected that he included my views and presented them accurately.  Davich has an interesting section on 86  all-concrete Thomas Edison Concept row homes built over 100 years ago as housing for workers. Davich wrote that many are presently unoccupied, in ruins, and scheduled for demolition despite their historical significance.

Below, Thomas Edison Concept Homes along Adams St.; photo by Jerry Davich

The Holidays

“The problem with winter sports is that they generally take place in winter.” David Barry

Celebrating Christmas a day late so we could have everyone at the condo after completing other obligations, we had over a dozen over-nighters.  Numerous friends dropped in, including Beth Satkoski’s brother Jim with wife Erika and daughter Annalisa and Dave’s former student Denzel Smith, who attends Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida.  Denzel knew all about founder Mary McLeod Bethune, a friend of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a National Youth Administration (NYA) director.  When soliciting funds for her school, she’d wear a shabby coat to emphasize her frugality.  My gifts included a File 7 tablet, a half-dozen CDs (including “Nothing to Find” by the War on Drugs and Dave’s “Best of 2017” compilation that included “Dirty Laundry” by All Time Low), a flannel shirt, Aspen cologne, and a couple fancy jellies.  Dave mentioned that the Moody Blues finally got voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with other favorites Dire Straits, Bon Jovi, and the Cars. 

Dean Bottorff announced that he and Joanell have sold their Roosevelt Inn near Mount Rushmore and are retired but certainly not sedentary.  He wrote:

  We made a big home improvement by finally getting the cabin on a real foundation. Previously, it was perched on pylons; now the back wall has a genuine, native stone foundation. Yes, we know, most people build a foundation first, then put the house on it, rather than build the house and put the foundation under it . . . but why do it the east way when there’s a harder way?  A contractor told us he could build a foundation for $23,000, but we figured that with all the rock around here and a hundred bags of concrete and mortar we could do it cheaper . . . and so it was if you don’t count the cost of Tylenol.

  Once we mastered the knack of building with native stone we kinda got carried away and built a new stone wall at the gate and another one around the back deck.  They may not be the prettiest or best walls ever made but they look good to us.  Also, one can take a lot of pride in being able to sling around an 80-pound bag of mortar.

 Will Kellogg

My holiday reading included Howard Markel’s “The Kelloggs: Battling Brothers from Battle Creek” (2017), about physician John Harvey Kellogg, director of a world famous medical center and spa, and younger brother Will, founder of Kellogg’s cereal company.  John and Will feuded for most of their lives but their development of ready-to-eat, easily digestible corn flakes revolutionized what millions ate for breakfast.  Will came up with such advertising gimmicks as putting toys and comics inside cereal boxes and investing in a huge electric sign atop the Mecca Building in Times Square. The W. K. Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation, dedicated to caring for vulnerable children, became one of the nation’s largest charitable trusts.  According to Markel, when Will was a child he had a pet horse that his father sold to a neighbor.  After he made his fortune, he bought property in California’s Pomona Valley and assembled a stable of prize Arabian thoroughbreds including Jadaan, that Rudolph Valentino rode in “The Son of the Sheik.”  When I taught in Saudi Arabia, a student invited me to dinner and took me to see his daughter ride her Arabian horse.

Holly Tucker’s “City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris” presents a portrait of “Sun King" Louis XIV that seems remarkably similar to his English contemporary Charles II.  Both seemed more interested in frolicking with mistresses than affairs of state but were canny enough to appoint competent ministers, in Louis’ case, Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

I’m rereading Gary Pomerantz’s “The Devil’s Tickets,” about a bridge game that turned deadly in 1929.  When reporting on it to history book club members, I’ll emphasize how the game’s burgeoning popularity was connected to themes of the Roaring Twenties, including urbanization, the growth of the middle class, the rise of mass advertising, and the New Era revolution in manners and morals.  Here are a few anecdotes gleaned from Pomerantz.

·     * In the 1930 comedy “Animal Crackers’ Harpo Marx sits on a woman contract bridge opponent’s lap, inspiring Chico to quip: “He thought it was contact bridge.”

·      * Algonquin Round Table regular George S. Kaufman, an inveterate bridge player, made this comment after a partner departed for the bathroom: “That’s the only time this afternoon I’ve known what he had in his hand.”

·      * Some New York City Flappers danced without panties and shaved their pubic hair in the shape of a heart or, to symbolize their allegiance to dapper chief executive Al Smith, a derby.

Alice Joyce

Sports Illustrated noted the passing of broadcaster Dick Enburg (above), famous for the understated expression “Oh, My.”  During a game of Texas Hold ’em, I found a dramatic occasion to utter the expression.  Former Philadelphia Phillies who passed away in 2017 included Cy Young recipient Jim Bunning, manager of the 1980 World Series champs Dallas Green, catcher on the 1993 National League champs Darren Daulton, and 2010 21-game winner Ray “Doc” Halladay, who pitched a post-season no-hitter against the Reds.

I turned down an opportunity to see the latest “Star Wars” flick, “The Last Jedi,” but enjoyed several good movies OnDemand over the holidays, including “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992), based on the 1826 James Fenimore Cooper novel; “Frida”(2002) about Mexican revolutionary artist Frida Kahlo and starring Salma Hayek; “The Door in the Floor” starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger and based on John Irving’s 1998 novel “A Widow for One Year”; and “The Legend of Ben Hall,” about a nineteenth-century Australian bushranger whose exploits made him a folk hero and inspired several bush ballads. 

 Ben Hall

I had little interest in holiday bowl games (although Terry Jenkins informed me that the Georgia-Oklahoma contest was one for the ages) or the final week of the NFL season; the Eagles had already clinched a bye and home field throughout the playoffs and the Bears and Skins had no chance for a winning season.  I did watch the 76ers win an exciting overtime game against the Knicks and parts of two Bulls games. I’m a fan of Niko Mirotic, returning better than ever after teammate Bobby Portis sucker-punched him, causing a concussion and facial injuries. Ice hockey doesn’t get interesting until the Stanley Cup playoffs, and IU’s basketball team is one of the worst in recent memory.

At Hobart Lanes, the Engineers took two games and series from first-place Just Friends, thanks in large part to Dick Maloney’s 530 series.  Due to macular degeneration, Dick can hardly see the pins and several times removed his glasses to determine if any were still standing. During the second game, he told Doris Guth, on her way to a 200 in a losing cause, to “take it easy on us,” eliciting a “bullshit” in reply. 

Condo resident John Mario passed away.  An accountant, he produced budget print-outs for the association for many years.  When Phil and Dave were teenagers, Mr. Mario refereed numerous youth soccer matches, and his sons John and Mark played soccer and tennis with the boys.  I often ran into him at Jewel, where we’d brag about our respective grandchildren.

For three days, I attended Jef Halberstadt’s game weekend and learned a new board game called Stockpile.  Railroads of the World looked intriguing but lasted several ours, so I just watched.  Don Price sent his regrets from Ventura, California, along with a 1984 Halberstadt Game Weekend shirt he’d outgrown that ended up being worn by Jef’s daughter-in-law Anna. Jef’s brother Glenn, who recently retired from Indianapolis Public Library, told me that he enjoyed reading Maria’s Journey (which I edited) by Ramon and Trisha Arredondo; it had been selected for inclusion in the library’s Bicentennial summer reading program.  I had said my good-byes on the final day when Tom Wade tempted me into staying for a five-player Acquire.  Charlie Halberstadt, who introduced Tom to our favorite game a half-century ago, lost to Dave by a paper-thin margin.

In bed by 10 p.m. December 31, 2017; good riddance to a disillusioning year.

In bridge Helen Boothe and I finished third; winners Jim and Marcia Carson made a grand slam against us. Every other couple playing the hand took all 13 tricks but stopped at six No Trump. Helen often lays with Joel Charpentier, who’s in Florida and got a write-up in Barbara Walczak’s Newsletter for doing well “with a myriad of partners.”  Barb wrote: “He does a lot of volunteer work – most notably in the food pantry.  He had 4 children and 7 grandchildren.”

On my first day back at IUN, it was minus 7 outside and not much warmer at my cage (thank heaven for the space heater Cheryl found me).  Doing research on Gary history at the Archives was Ball State professor of Architecture and Planning Olon Dotson, who was familiar with my work.  On You Tube I found a lecture he delivered in Indianapolis entitled “Through the Lens of Fourth Theory.” Usually the phrase “Fourth World” is employed to describe poverty stricken parts of Third World countries, but, for Dotson, it is “a methodology for examining and developing greater understanding of the extent of the distress and abandonment commonly found in the cores of American cities.”

 Olon Dotson

Olon Dotson’s relatives have lived in Gary since 1918. In a Design Altruism Project article entitled “Gary, IN: Geography of a Fourth World City,” Dotson wrote:

  The severe physical distress and institutional abandonment present throughout the entire city proper, resulting from de-industrialization, historic segregation and discrimination patterns, erosion of a viable tax base, racism, inability to embrace the concept of desegregation and civil rights legislation by choosing ‘exit’ over ‘voice’, fear, despair, crumbling infrastructure systems, disinvestment in urban school systems, and environmental justice issues, qualify Gary, Indiana as model Fourth World city.

The tome “Kurt Vonnegut: Complete Stories” comes in at over 900 pages and brings together virtually all of the Hoosier bard’s short stories, including some heretofore never published.  In the Foreword, Dave Egger calls them moral stories rarely written anymore, telling readers what is noble, what is evil, and how to live with dignity.  In “The Honor of a Newsboy” a ten-year-old helps a sheriff solve a case, leading the officer to ruminate that it was a pity everyone couldn’t remain ten the rest of their lives and, if so, “maybe rules and common decency and horse sense would have a Chinaman’s chance.”  Looking in the mirror, the sheriff sees “a tired old man who tried to make the world wat the ten-year-old thought it was.”  Eggers summarizes Vonnegut’s philosophy thusly: “Be kind.  Do no harm.  Take care of your family.  Don’t start wars.”  Amen to that.