Foursomes

“The foursome attempted to evoke the Zen-like closeness of artist and subject.  Might such representations of the wish to perpetuate intimacy express at once the confines and yearnings of the singular self?” Carolyn Burke, “Foursome: Alfred Stiglitz, Georgia O’Keefe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury.”

Foursome usually refers to golfers, as in this joke by author Bruce Lansky: “Some golfers fantasize about playing in a foursome with Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Sam Sneed.  The way I hit I’d rather play in a foursome with Helen Keller, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder.”  Foursome can also refer to group sex as in this proclamation by a character in a Jeaniene Frost fantasy novel from the Night Huntress series, who says, “I’ll become a swinger.  That’s right – threesomes, foursomes, and more.  Bones knows about a thousand chicks who’d love to hop into bed with us.  It’ll be kinky, we’ll get our freak on.”

 Stiglitz and his 1918 photo of O'Keefe

I’ve long been fascinated with photographer Alfred Stiglitz, a pioneer of modern art instrumental in photography coming to be accepted as a legitimate art form as well as a patron of  artist Georgia O’Keefe, his model, muse, lover, and wife.  For most of their marriage they lived separate lives with O’Keefe preferring to be in New Mexico, especially after discovering Alfred’s affair with another model.  Stiglitz preferred New York City and summers at Lake George.  I’ve read elsewhere that both had trysts with Rebecca Salsbury, but I’m not yet that far into Carolyn Burke’s book. I’m still in 1916 when Georgia was teaching in Texas and likely still a virgin but writing passionately to both Stiglitz and his protégé Paul Strand after meeting them at 291, Stiglitz’s gallery. To Paul she wrote: “I wanted to put my arms round you and kiss you hard.” To Alfred she described painting a self-portrait in the nude from reflections in the mirror, adding: “I couldn’t get what I wanted any other way.” He replied: “I’d like to kiss your body from top to bottom and then enjoy a long, long sleep – entwined.”

During the nineteenth century John Humphrey Noyes founded a utopian community, Oneida, based on a theory of perfectionism and the practice of complex marriage that permitted members to be sexually intimate with a variety of partners.  The 1969 comedy drama “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” was somewhat of a cop-out, as when the two couples finally share a bed together, the swapping does not advance beyond passionate kissing, at which point the action stops and the couples return to their spouses.  In recent times foursomes have experimented with living together as poly families. Kathy Labriola, a counselor who describes herself as involved in a polyamorous community, found that few such arrangements last for more than a year or two.  She wrote: 

  I’ve seen several households with a primary couple who add another couple and eventually end up as a threesome. It seems quite rare that all four people are compatible and flexible enough to handle the demands of a poly family, and eventually one of the four opts out. I’ve also seen some group marriages where two or even three of the partners stay together for many years but the fourth or fifth partners leave and are replaced by new people every year or so.  It’s certainly possible that there are successful foursomes or moresomes out there, but my data is empirical.

Photographer Cindy C. Bean noted on Facebook that I used some of her work in Steel Shavings, eliciting this reply from Diana Rudd: 

  So proud of you. Steel Shavingsis a marvelous collection of history of the region. Professor Lane was one of Jennifer's instructors when she attended IUN. One of the pieces he assigned her class to write focused on 1970, the year I graduated. She interviewed me for her paper and it was excerpted in a Seventies edition. I talked about the fluff of that year.. so many others contributed memories of the really important stuff.. Vietnam, the steel mills, politics. But even fluff memories have their place, I guess.

I replied: “Diana’s memories of Lew Wallace and downtown Gary in 1970 are historically important.”  She mentioned her post-prom party at Tiebel’s in Schererville (still in business) with the live band World Column and getting a 1962 blue Chevy as a graduation present. Here is an account of Diana’s first job after high school:

 I began as secretary for a two-brother legal team whose office was located in the old Sun Building at 475 Broadway.  I made a hundred dollars a week, not bad for someone with no prior experience.  I received a Christmas bonus equaling a week’s pay.  Relying on public transportation was inconvenient at times.  I had to drive to work on Fridays so that I could run errands. I began to feel unsafe after a rape occurred during business hours, two doors down from my office.  My days working in downtown Gary were numbered. My bosses seemed unconcerned with our safety.  There were two secretaries in our office, myself and a girl from Portage, who were expected to work alone on alternate Saturdays, finishing up work left over from the week.  When our bosses wouldn’t rearrange the schedule, I began looking for another job.

At her next job as a claims secretary, she met claims adjuster Henry Farag, who sang with the doo wop group Stormy Weather.  “They were cutting their first record at that time,” she recalled.  

Thanks to Marianne Brush, I purchased four third row tickets to see Dave Davies, formerly of the Kinks, at the Art Theater in Hobert.  Alissa and Josh came down from Grand Rapids, and son Dave completed our foursome.  Beforehand, we met Marianne and daughter Missy at Montego Bay Restaurant, which served Caribbean food.  Marianne knew the waitress and her husband, the cook and owner, who came out and greeted us. Everyone congratulated Dave on being named East Chicago Central’s “Teacher of Excellence.” Corey Hagelberg, also going to the show, stopped by our table to say hi.  It was a beautiful spring evening. We had time to stop by Green Door Books.  Much to my delight, it was still open and IUN Fine Arts major Casey King was inside, along with the owners.  Casey talked to our group about his work that adorned two walls.  Nearby was Tom Lounges’ Record Bin, which also included a small studio for Lounges’s radio show and a seating area for intimate live concerts.  I found a favorite Night Ranger album on vinyl, “Midnight Madness” (1983) that contains “Sister Christian” and “(You Can Still) Rock in America” but the price seemed steep at 18 bucks.

Alissa selfie and photo, below, by Sam Love

Dave and I had seen the Kinks at the Star Plaza over 30 years ago when he and brother Ray hardly spoke to one another but put on a great show.  Josh said that when he and his friends wanted to play the guitar, Kinks riffs were the first they mastered.  Looking grandfatherly at 71, Davies, on Rolling Stone’slist of all-time greatest guitar players, could still play and had a serviceable voice.  He seemed delighted at the enthusiastic audience and mixed in Kinks hits such as “Till the End of the Day” and “All Day and All of the Night” with recently recorded numbers. At one point he asked if a woman he’d met when he’d played in Merrillville was in the audience.  “I remember, she was from Hobart,” he exclaimed.  We all had a great time.  Though I didn’t see them, Sam and Brenda Love were in the house.  Afterwards, she posted: “Finally a concert where I’m not the oldest in the audience.”

 The Beths

Back at the condo, I played for Josh the Weezer song “Take On Me,” which we’d seen the band perform earlier in the month, and “Billie Jean,” also on the Teal album.  I introduced him to the Beths’ CD “Future Me Hates Me” after he said he’d been listening to Australian punk bands.  The Beths are actually from Aukland, New Zealand.

After having prepared breakfast for Alissa and Josh, Toni hosted a Spring Solstice dinner for Angie and Dave’s family, including her dad and  a very pregnant Tamiya - ham with all the trimmings plus mussels and scallops.  Everything was delicious. Afterwards, we played the dice game Qwixx and Pass the Pigs where you score points or get wiped out depending on how the piglets land. Before dinner I watched an exciting 76ers victory over the Brooklyn Nets, as Joel Embiid not only had 31 points and 16 rebounds but a key assist while falling to the ground to enable Mike Scott to score the game winner, a three-pointer from the corner.

I watched the first episode of a series called “Punk,” hosted by Iggy Pop, whose Detroit band The Stooges were pioneers of the genre.  Iggy claimed the Kinks 1964 song “You Really Got Me,” with its famous guitar riff by Dave Davies, was an early inspiration, the only Top 40 hit, in his words “worth a shit.”  The distortion sound came from Dave Davies slicing the speaker cone of his amplifier and then sticking it with a pin.  Iggy’s mentors were the Motor City group MC5, whose trademark song “Kick Out the Jams, mother fucker,” roused crowds to a frenzy.

CBS Morning Newsco-host Gayle King made one of six covers for Time’s 100 Most Influential People issue, primarily from staying calm while interviewing singer and accused pedophile R. Kelly.  Adorning our copy in the mail was Taylor Swift - seemingly a poor choice since she hasn’t recorded an album since 2017.  She was on a Timecover last year for suing a radio host who groped her ass; I suppose her image sells magazines and in any case. the choices seem pretty arbitrary. No literary figure made the list.  On the cover of New York magazine: Peter Buttigieg. A sidebar listed Mayor Pete’s favorite books; they include Ulysses by Irish writer James Joyce and Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  

A package arrived from the Abraham Lincoln Association.  Ken Anderson, a fellow book club member, gifted me a membership.  With a cover letter came a copy of the Association’s Winter 2019 journal, which contained an article by IUN professor Chris Young about the 1887 dedication of Augustus Saint-Gauden’s 12-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago's Lincoln Park and its replica in London’s Parliament Square, unveiled in 1920.  In 1861 the 13 year-old Saint-Gaudens observed the President-elect standing in a carriage and bowing to a crowd of supporters. Four years later, he was among the thousands of mourners who viewed Lincoln’s body lying in repose at New York’s City Hall. Saint-Gaudens designed monuments to other Civil war leaders, including William Tecumseh Sherman.  His bronze of the Roman goddess Diana is on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Senator Elizabeth Warren wants to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump and proposed wiping out almost everyone’s student debt, causing IUN grad Amanda Marie Board (below, in middle), who recently passed the National Registry EMT exam, to write: “Okay, you may have just become my front runner.” I’m still for Klobuchar/ Buttigieg – or maybe Buttigieg/Klobuchar.

Spring Solstice

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party.’”  Robin Williams

Toni prefers celebrating the Spring solstice rather than Easter, but egg dying is an annual ritual, as is hiding James and Becca’s Easter basket.  The busy weekend began with James moving in, Toni making a standing rib roast, and the arrival of Phil’s family en route to Naples, Florida.  Becca and Angie returned from their Florida choir trip Saturday in time for Chinese carry-out.  Sunday, Toni was up at 3 a.m. to see Phil’s family off to O’Hare Airport, then served a delicious roast to eight of us, including Angie’s dad and Tamiya Towns, who forwarded photos she took (below) to me. 

above, Toni; below, Tamiya, John Teague and Jimbo

“Roseanne,” which debuted 30 years ago, is back on the air with the original cast. The initial episode received huge ratings and a congratulatory shout-out from Trump since actress Roseanne Barr is a supporter, as is her character on the show, who resembles “All in the Family” bigot Archie Bunker.  Sister Jackie is the liberal foil, and there is an African-American grandkid to demonstrate, I guess, that Roseanne isn’t a racist.  As always, John Goodman (as Dan Connor) was hilarious, first appearing in bed wearing a breathing mask for sleep apnea.  At one point Dan goes outside to urinate because the bathrooms were occupied and then claims to have waved to a neighbor with his free hand. Like most sitcoms, the plot seemed contrived, with one of Roseanne’s daughters wanting to be a surrogate mother and a grandson attending first day of school in girl’s clothes.  When Dan first hears about it, he escapes to the garage. Roseanne cautions about disturbing him until he’s had a couple beers, then moments later says, “That should be long enough.” 

Sometimes I confuse Roseanne Barr with Rosie O’Donnell, whom Trump hates.  The feud evidently goes back 12 years to when O’Donnell criticized Trump for not firing a Miss USA winner who admitted to drug use and underage drinking.  Trump responded by calling her fat and a real loser.  Five years later, when Rosie became engaged to Michelle Rounds, Trump tweeted that he felt sorry for Rounds and her parents.  In 2014, when O’Donnell returned to the TV show “The View,” Trump tweeted, “Rosie is crude, rude, obnoxious, and dumb – other than that, I like her very much.”  During the first Presidential debate of 2016, when Megyn Kelly questioned Trump about demeaning women by using words such as pigs, slobs, and disgusting animals, Trump interrupted to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

In Richard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic” Jack Griffin encounters an Archie Bunker type while at the Old Cape Lounge.  After the guy belittles his companion and ex-wife Marguerite, Jack ruminates: “How good it would feel to coldcock him, knock him clean off his bar stool, bloody his fucking nose.  Here she was, trying valiantly to be happy, and this asshole wouldn’t let her.” After he breaks up with Joy, Jack dates fun-loving Marguerite. When he meets Joy’s new “friend,” Jack labels him a fart-hammer, an expression he recently picked up from an old-timer.

Danna Conley thanked me for latest Steel Shavings, which mentions her and late husband Pat several times and contains excerpts of an article by Hayley Sekula, whose grandmother is her good friend.  A year ago, Danna thanked me for volume 46 and wrote: “Recently my granddaughter mentioned seeing someone dressed as a flower child who looked as if she came from the 1960s.  She had learned about the Hippie Era in history.”  On the card’s cover: Georgia O’Keefe’s 1937 painting “Red Hills and Flowers,” which juxtaposed still-life elements against a far-off desert landscape alive with color and undulating curves similar to a human body.  Many feminists believed O’Keefe’s flowers were symbolic of female genitalia.  She was adamant that, in her words, “the subject matter of a painting should never obscure its form and color, which are its real thematic elements.”  O’Keefe’s work reminds me of the photos of Liz Wuerffel, who often focuses her lens on symbols of decay and aging.  At present Liz is at Bryce Canyon National Park, where IUN grad Amanda Marie Board worked last year.

 Bryce Canyon National Park photo by Liz Wuerffel

For Nicole Anslover’s Diplomatic History class dealing with Ricard Nixon’s Vietnam policy I gave a short report on Rick Perlstein’s “NIxonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America” in order to point out that secrecy and deception  were standard Tricky Dick operational procedures.  I had Nicole put these paragraphs on the screen: 

    In March of 1969, Nixon ordered the bombing of sections of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that meandered through Cambodia, the beginning of a long-term plan called Operation Menu (its component parts were Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Dessert, and Supper).  This scaled new peaks of deception: the bombings were recorded on a secret ledger, which was later destroyed.  A half million tons of ordnance were eventually dropped on this neutral country, 3,875 sorties without Congressional knowledge.  “The State Department is to be notified only after the point of no return,”Nixon instructed.  

. . . .

    On May 15, paratroopers from the 101^stAirborne Division stormed up an objective Americans called Hill 937.  The AP ran an evocative dispatch on May 19:  “The paratroopers came down the mountain, their green shirts darkened with sweat, their weapons gone, their bandages stained brown and red – with mud and blood.”  It reported them cursing their commander, whose radio call was Blackjack: “That damned Blackjack won’t stop until he kills every one of us.”  It became known as Hamburger Hill.  The soldiers won the objective, just as Americans often won their military objectives; 633 North Vietnamese main-force soldiers were killed, fewer than 100 Americans. Then the hill was abandoned, just as Americans often abandoned objectives in Vietnam.  “We are not fighting for terrain as such,”Commander Creighton Abrams explained.  “Don’t mean nothin’,”answered the troops, a refrain echoed all the way back home. Senator Ted Kennedy called the Hamburger Hill assault “senseless and irresponsible, madness, symptomatic of a mentality and a policy that requires immediate attention.”

To an obscene degree, Nixon expanded upon trends begun by predecessors, including dirty tricks against political opponents and basing diplomatic maneuvering on domestic political calculations. During Nixon’s presidency over 21,000 Americans died in Vietnam and about a million and a half Vietnamese. The terms Nixon settled for in 1973 were obtainable when he came into office, but he continued the war for political gain, an unforgivable sin, in my opinion.  The result was not “Peace with Honor,” as he claimed, but an obscene stain on America’s legacy.

March Madness climaxed with Villanova, my pick to go all the way, winning its second NCAA title in three years.  With star player Jalen Brunson on the bench saddled with foul trouble, sixth man Donte DiVincenzo scored an amazing 31 points to enable the Wildcats to cruise to victory.  Within hours, Sports Illustratedhad DiVincenzo on its latest cover.

 Faye Anderson; photo by Barb Walczak

Bronze Life Master Faye Anderson, 98, passed away. Barb Walczak wrote:

  It was never in Faye’s plans to become a Life Master, but one day I said, “Let’s hop a plane to Reno and get started on our Life Master gold.”  She was game for the adventure.  We traveled to many places in the next nine months until we had our 25 gold.  We even had the thrill of playing with Eddie Wold and Mike Passell (ranked in the top 12 in ACSL) in Lake Geneva.  Faye was feisty (in a lovable way) and had a fun teasing personality endearing her to everybody.  Gunnar Berg called her “Bulldog” – and I think she liked that nickname.

  One of Faye’s biggest regrets was that she was not able to go to college.  It was in the 1930s and there were 12 children in the family, and it couldn’t happen. It was a shame – her potential was never fully realized.  She was a smart lady.

At bridge, on director Alan Yngve’s advice, I asked Barbara Stroud about Bridgerama, whose origins in Northwest Indiana go back decades.  Evidently started by women belonging to Tri Kappa, an Indiana service sorority, Stroud took it over when it was in danger of ending.  There’s one group of women and a second male-female group.  Couples play 20 hands at the host’s home, turning in the results to Stroud.  I told her about the Archives Bridge collection, and she said she recently emptied a file cabinet of many back records. Dee and I finished slightly above average (53.17%) for .28 of a master point.  In one hand I was dealt 8 Diamonds, including the top 5, two King-Jacks, and a bare King.  After determining that Dee held one Ace, I bid 5 Diamonds.  There was a Club lead to my singleton King, leaving no way to cash in one Dee’s Ace and Queen.  Even had Dee’s Ace overtaken the King, leading the Queen of Clubs would not have helped.   We went down one, as did another couple. The two other North-South pairs made 6 Diamonds when opponents led out an Ace rather than a Club.

Beverly Gray’s “Seduced By Mrs. Robinson” revealed that “The Graduate” (1967) was a low budget movie with a relative unknown, Dustin Hoffman, in the lead role as a disillusioned college graduate who has an affair with an older woman but is hot for her daughter.  It became a surprise box office hit primarily because of its appeal to Baby Boomers.  Though it did not deal with race tensions, the Vietnam War or campus protest, the film, wrote Gray, “appeared in movie houses just when we young Americans were discovering how badly we wanted to distance ourselves from the world of our parents. . . .  If we were anxious about parental pressure, or about sex (and our lack thereof), or about marriage, or about the temptations posed by plastics, it was all visible for us on the movie screen.”

 John S. Haller

My old fellow Marylander and IUN colleague John Haller reviewed Philip F. Gura’s “Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War” for the Journal of American History.  Haller concludes that the seven reformers, including Horace Greeley and Henry David Thoreau, culminated their intellectual journey “in their fatuous worship of John Brown and his murderous band of outlaws.”  Haller equates their “high-minded resolve to acquire liberty and equality even if it necessitated violence” to Maximilien Robespierre, architect of the French Reign of Terror.  Really?  

Teaching in Saudi Arabia 30 years ago, I was shocked at how down on John Brown the students were because Brown’s Kansas band of Free State volunteers murdered five pro-slavery Border Ruffians who had burned and pillaged the Free Soil town of Lawrence.  Later, when one student claimed that Nixon would have been a great President had it not been for Watergate, I replied that compared to John Brown, Nixon was a mass murderer, responsible for more than a million Vietnamese dying in an unwinnable war.  Some hold Brown partly responsible for bringing about the Civil war, which killed a half-million Americans.  Does Haller?

Hollis Donald dropped off an Easter essay about turning around one’s life through faith. He wrote: “Life can take you on many roads and can get so tangled up and twisted and lost in the tide, there can appear to be no way out.  You may need a new life, and Jesus is the giver of life.”  As the Doobie Brothers put it, “Jesus is just alright with me.”

Slow Train

“Big-time negotiators, false healers and woman haters

Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition

But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency

All non-believers and men stealers talking in the name of religion

And there's slow, there's slow train coming up around the bend.”

            “Slow Train,” Bob Dylan

 

Recorded in 1979 at Muscle Shoals with Mark Knopfler on guitar, “Slow Train” was also lead song on the 1989 live album Dylan recorded with the Grateful Dead.  If the train is a symbol of a coming apocalypse, the slow speed may indicate deliverance is not coming any time soon.  The reference might be a nod to Woody Guthrie and the traditional folk tune, “This Train Is Bound for Glory.” The song harks back to Dylan’s early “finger pointing” anthems with its indictment of man’s inflated ego and outdated laws that would have “Jefferson turning over in his grave” in “the home of the brave.”

At a MusiCares event in his honor Dylan thanked performers who first popularized his songs, such as Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, The Turtles, and Jimi Hendrix.  Razzing those who took exception to the sound of his voice, he said: “They say I sound like a frog.  Why don’t critics say that about Tom Waits?  Critics say my voice is shot.  That I croak.  Why don’t they say that about Leonard Cohen?  What have I done to get this special attention?”  Dylan’s parting words, according to columnist George Varga, were: “I’m going to get out of here.  I’m going to put an egg in my shoe and beat it.  Let’s hope we meet again.  And we will, as Hank Williams said, ‘If the good lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise.’”

The first time Dylan played Merrillville’s Holiday Star it was during his born-again Christian phase. I didn’t go, only to hear that he performed many old hits, as well as songs from “Slow Train Coming.”   His second appearance I made sure to go, and he was great, playing with a tight-knit quartet of artists, including SNL bandleader G.E. Smith.  The warm-up band was so loud, however, that many folks walked out, including IUN professor George Roberts.

My favorite Dylan numbers are “When the Ship Comes In,” “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “Monkey Man” (with the Traveling Wilburys), and “Idiot Wind.”  The latter, which references Woody Guthrie’s “Grand Coulee Dam” folk song, is on “Blood on the Tracks,” along with “Tangled Up in Blue” and “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.”  Solid gold!

Nicole Anslover showed excerpts of an Eleanor Roosevelt documentary that candidly spoke about FDR’s womanizing and the First Lady’s passionate attraction to both lesbian Lorena Hickok and bodyguard Earl Miller, 12 years her junior.  Biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook declared that Eleanor was probably bisexual and enjoyed ardent, romantic relationships with both women and men.  Cook might have added that bisexuality was somewhat in vogue among dynamic “New Women” of the 1920s, including poet Edna St. Vincent Millay and artist Georgia O’Keefe.  After O’Keefe married photographer Alfred Stieglitz, both had affairs with women, and, in the case of Rebecca Strand, the same women.

above, Edna St. Vincent Millay; below, Georgia O'Keefe

During the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s Blues singers Bessie Smith and Gertrude “Ma” Rainey were lovers and had other affairs with both women and men.  Known as the “Mother of the Blues,” Rainey in 1925 got arrested in Chicago for allegedly participating in an orgy with women in her chorus and got bailed out by Bessie Smith.  Her 1928 song “Prove It on Me,” talks about going out in drag wearing a collar and a tie and contains these lyrics:

“They say I do it, ain’t nobody caught me. 

Sure got to prove it on me. 

Went out last night with a crowd of my friends. 

They must’ve been women, cause I don’t like no men. 

Wear my clothes just like a fan,

Talk to the gals just like any old man.”

 Gertrude "Ma" Rainey

Blanche Wiesen Cook asserts that Eleanor encouraged the affair between her husband and Missy LeHand (almost as good a name as Cubs first baseman during the 1970s Pete LaCock), who inherited half his estate upon his death.  On FDR’s funeral train, however, upon learning that his old flame, Lucy Mercer, was with him when he died, she was upset that he had broken his promise never to see her again.

Nicole pointed out that Eleanor Roosevelt continued to be a liberal force in the Democratic Party during the Truman administration and up to the time of her death.  She also repeated a trivia question asking for Eleanor’s maiden name; the answer was Roosevelt although her side of the family pronounced it as if it rhymed with two, not toe.

Searching the Gary collection in the Archives for Harry Hall’s autobiography,  “My Story,” I came across Margaret Cook Seeley’s “My Life in Gary, 1911-1956.” It was a Xerox copy of a manuscript I’d picked it up from Margaret Seeley in Hobart 30 years ago when she loaned me photos for Steel Shavings.  Born August 23, 1911, at St. Mary Mercy, Seeley starts the story on day 1 of her life:

  “I was in a front upstairs room next to one occupied by a mentally disturbed women.  She couldn’t stand to hear me cry so she came into Mother’s room with a knife ready to kill me.  My mother screamed to save my life.  She had already had a brutal delivery as many were in those days.  This, added to the threat of having her baby murdered, sent her into a high fever.  They packed her in ice.  Meanwhile, they had to find something to feed me.  Eagle brand condensed milk came to the rescue.

My brother Jack was born July 16, 1913.  Mother wasn’t taking any chances this time and had good Dr. Evans deliver the baby at home, 558 Connecticut.  As kids Jack and I took turns riding our Irish Mail cart up and down Connecticut Street.  We played with cardboard boxes in the backyard.  One time I bit Jack, so Mother tied me to the fence post and said if I was going to bite like a dog, I’d have to be tied up like one.  I never bit again.  Once I wandered away from home and ended up in Simpson’s Furniture Store.  They took me to the police station where I was reunited with my mother.

There was a butter and egg store near Sixth and Broadway where the clerks slid behind the counter on sawdust.  Jack and I thought that would be great fun.  One day when Mother went to town we buttered the kitchen floor with a pound of butter.  We slid and slid.  When she got home, she was horrified to say the least!

Mother was pretty slick.  We ate calves liver because she told us it was special beef steak.  We ate rabbit and thought it was the breast of chicken.  We didn’t complain too much when served corn meal mush because she said that was Santa Claus’s favorite meal.  The only spanking I ever had was when I refused to eat the fat on a pork chop. We were supposed to clean our plates.  Yes, we heard about the poor starving children.

Most millworkers carried a large aluminum lunch pail to work.  There was an upper tray for coffee and a lower part for lunch.  When dad came home from work, we kids would run to see what surprise he had in his lunch pail for us.  Sometimes it would be huckleberries he had picked along the slip that was the inlet to the mill from the lake.  Sometimes it was sassafras bark he had dug along the E.J. and E. tracks.  We loved sassafras tea; Mother called it pink tea. Sometimes it was just leftover food, which we ate.  Once it was a little gopher he had caught.  He got a kick out of surprising us.

Dad smoked one cigarette a day, and that was in bed.  Just as I passed their bedroom one night, I noticed smoke coming up from the side of the bed.  I asked where the smoke was coming from.  He jumped up and began pounding out the fire with his pillow.  He never smoked in bed again.

Our company house was so hot in the summer.  At night I’d pull my bed to the window so I might get a breath of air.  If that didn’t work, I’d take my pillow and sheet downstairs.  Doors were left open.  The milkman would wake me up in the morning with his clattering bottles.

At Cressmoor Lanes James Smith rolled a 300, then got nine more strikes in a bid for a second perfect game.  He finished with a 797 series, almost twice my total for the night.  Teammate Frank Shufran, 82, bowled a series in the high 500s.  He works out daily and takes long walks with his dog, sometimes carrying the pet if it tires before Frank.  he once rolled 17 strikes in a row over two different games.

“Say It Ain’t So,” headlined the Chicago Tribune in reaction to Little League officials stripping Jackie Robinson West of its title as U.S. champs.  The offense: recruiting players outside its district and then covering it up with a fraudulent district map.  “Say It Ain’t So” supposedly is what a boy said to Chicago White Sox player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson in the aftermath of the 1919 “Black Sox” World Series scandal.  One wonders whether the South Korean or Las Vegas rosters would stand the same scrutiny.

George Van Til; Post-Tribune photo by Jim Karczewski

Judge James Moody sentenced George Van Til to 18 months in federal prison for actions that are probably standard practice for public officials.  While Van Til admitted to wrongdoing, he claimed (and I believe him) that he never took a bribe or threatened anyone.  My heart goes out to him, as his enemies bearing a grudge against him pretty much destroyed his reputation and his health.  Ed Bierschenk of the NWI Times reported: “The government pointed to a document that contained a report of a phone call made to the FBI in June 2012 by Speros Batistatos, president and chief executive officer of the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority. According to the report, Batistatos told of a conversation on a trip to a White Sox game where a worker in Van Til's office spent her time doing political work.”

Home due to lake effect snow, I caught up on “The Americans” (my favorite TV show) and checked out the new AMC series “Better Call Saul,” a “Breaking Bad”  prequel about a shyster attorney.  I’ve been partial to lawyer shows since “Perry Mason.”  The Bulls defeated the Lebron James and the Cavaliers in Derrick Rose’s best game of the season.  In his summary of 2014 humorist Dave Berry wrote: “Lebron James decides to return to Cleveland, revealing his decision in a heartfelt and deeply personal first-person story written by Lee Jenkins.  Overjoyed Cavalier fans rush to purchase Lebron James jerseys to replace the ones they burned when he left.”

above, Derrick Rose; below, Tony Zale and mom

“Tony Zale: The Man of Steel” by Thad Zale and Clay Moyle contains a wealth of photos, some from the Archives and many I’d never seen before.  One with his mother shows the fighter sporting black eyes. On “Boxing Glove” website Peter Silkov mentioned that in 1915 when Zale was two years old, his dad died while bicycling to get medicine for him at a pharmacy.

Ron Cohen told me that historian Vicki Ruiz interviewed Ed Escobar’s mother Carmen for her book on cannery worker.  Checking in Index of “From Out of the Shadows,” I noticed Carman also appeared in the article on “Flappers and Chaperones,” telling Ruiz that she could entertain boyfriends at home only if her mother or brother were present.  During the 1930s Carmen worked for California Sanitary Canning Company and is quoted in a chapter entitled “With Pickets, Baskets and Ballots.” A union stalwart, Carmen told Ruiz, “My father was a busboy and to keep the family going in order to bring in a little more money my mother, my grandmother, my mother’s brother, my sister, and I all worked together at Cal San.”

On day one of the Jeopardy teachers tournament all three contestants went into Final Jeopardy with about $13,000.  The category was World Geography, and the question asked for a river that, though only 1569 miles long, has 29 cities of over 100,000 on its banks.  Two knew the answer, Ganges, but the third first wrote Danube (my guess), but only got down the first two letters of Ganges and lost $10,000.  On day two the final category was Names on a Map and asked for the name of an English explorer whom nothing is known about prior to 1600 or after 1611.  I knew the answer was Henry Hudson but none of the contestants did.  With his ship Discovery trapped during the winter of 160-16112 in Hudson Bay, the crew mutinied when Hudson wanted to resume efforts to discover a Northwest passage rather then return home and set his and his son aboard a small boat.  He was never heard from again.