Flight Paths

 “Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking.” Justin Cronin

Historian Ray Boomhower wrote: “On this day in 1943, Charles Hall of Brazil, Indiana, became the first African American pilot, and Tuskegee Airman, to shoot down an enemy fighter aircraft in World War II, blasting a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würge out of the sky while escorting B-25 bombers in his P-40 fighter on a mission over southwestern Sicily. Hall flew 198 mission during the war, becoming the first African American to win a Distinguished Flying Cross. A real Hoosier hero.” After the war Major Hall worked at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma until 1967, four years before his death.Terry Allen in center

In “They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967” David Maraniss described the death of Lt. Col. Terry Allen, Jr. during the battle of Ong Thanh.  The son of General Terry Allen, a veteran of both World Wars known as “Terrible Terry,” he left a wife and three daughters behind in El Paso and began having second thoughts about a military career after realizing that his marriage was on the rocks and another man was living in their house.  Commanding the famed 28^th infantry regiment known as the Black Lions, Allen died in an ambush while directing an assault on an enemy base camp.  He preferred overseeing his troops by helicopter but was ordered to be on the ground, where an overall view of events was denied him.  Cautioned by Lieutenant Clark Welch to wait for re-enforcements, Allen, prodded by superiors, was overconfident that he could accomplish the mission.  Maraniss wrote:

    His determination to stay on the battlefield was a manifestation of the pressure coming down, all the way down, from President Lyndon Johnson, who wanted good news and enemy body counts, to General William Westmoreland, who believed the war could be won by search-and-destroy missions in which the First Division pursued the enemy overland relentlessly, to General John Hay, who was feeling the heat for being too cautious, to Colonel George Newman, who wanted the Black Lions and their commander out there on the ground, not just searching but destroying, to Lieutenant Colonel Allen, who wanted to prove that he could do it.

Terry Allen’s father had written in a booklet on combat leadership, “The battle is the payoff.”  His son died slumped behind an anthill, cut down by AK-47 machine-gun fire, his body riddled with bullets and an eye shot out, one of 161 casualties, including 64 dead.  Against all evidence, the military brass declared Ong Thanh a great victory. By the time the senior Allen learned of his son’s death, he had already begun a decline into dementia.  As his condition worsened, he’d tell people, using the present tense, “Terry is a good soldier.  Terry would never get ambushed.” Though he took no part in the tragic fire fight, General Hay would be awarded a Silver Star for it.

 

Confirming through contacts that his son was dead, General Allen, according to Maraniss, went on a long walk and asked himself, “Why my son?  Why not me?”  As he prepared to get official notice from the commander of Fort Bliss, “Terrible Terry” steeled himself, muttered “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” and thought, “This is the house of an infantryman.  There will be no tears.”

 

Mary McDowell

I watched the final two episodes of historian Heath Carter’s series on unsung heroes whose religious faith made a difference in people’s lives and in the course of American history.  “The Angel of the Yards” described the half-century of settlement house work by Mary McDowell, a protégé of Jane Addams who ministered to the needs of poor people at Chicago House, located in the Windy City’s notorious “Back of the Yards” neighborhood. “A voteless people is a hopeless people” examined the lifelong activism of Amelia Boynton, who was knocked unconscious by troopers in 1965 on Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, an event that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Acts.  More than three decades earlier, Boynton had started the Dallas County Voters League in an attempt to secure the ballot for African Americans. In 2015 at age 103 Boynton crossed Edmund Pettus bridge next to President Barack Obama.

Amelia Boynton in 1965 ad 2015

Elizabeth Wuerffel interviewed Heath Carter on May 25, 2020, about why American cities such as Gary, Indiana, were so rigidly segregated after World War II despite the opportunities supposedly available to returning African-American servicemen during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.  One factor Carter emphasized was the practice of redlining:

    Black veterans found themselves effectively unable to take advantage of the G.I. Bill’s offer of a cheap FHA subsidized mortgage. This was because of the practice of redlining. Redlining is named for these maps that were used in conjunction with FHA mortgages. If you pull up one of these maps, you’ll see neighborhoods that are color-coded: yellow, green, blue, and red. Red were what the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation thought, at least, were the highest-risk neighborhoods and those were neighborhoods that had high concentrations of persons of color. Fundamentally, at some level, the grading system governing these maps reflects kind of just a racist point of view on the mid-20th century American city where, in many ways, race is being taken as a proxy for risk.

    If you’re an African American veteran who’s going into a bank to try to take advantage of the G.I. Bill, the banker would say, “Oh, where’s the home you’d like to buy? Oh, it’s in this neighborhood? Let me pull up my map.” They’d look on the map, if they didn’t already know. And that neighborhood’s graded red which means that it’s considered too risky for them to give you an FHA subsidized loan. And so what redlining meant [ was that] Black Americans were effectively boxed out of the housing market, and Black residents find themselves crammed into very tight quarters and are paying, often, an incredible premium. They’re often paying vastly more for rent in a kind of very challenging neighborhood than they would pay for a mortgage in a middle-class white neighborhood. So this was one of the sort of central obstacles for Black Americans seeking to kind of make their way in postwar America.

Mayor Jerome Prince of Gary, like his predecessor Karen Freeman-Wilson and longtime state legislator and educator Vernon Williams, grew up with a mother who stressed the value of education as a necessary path to a productive life.  Though a teenage mother living in modest circumstances, DaNita Marshall never wavered in that belief, Prince recalled in an interview on June 22, 2020 by Elizabeth Wuerffel for the Valparaiso University Flight Paths Project.

 

Born in St. Louis, DaNita Marshall moved from Chicago to Gary with her mother, stepfather and ten siblings from in 1956 at age ten to live with her grandmother in a one-story, three-bedroom, 700-square-foot flat on Indiana Street, later renamed Martin Luther King Drive.  When she was 17, DaNita frequently visited her grandmother, who had moved back to Chicago after deeding the house over to DaNita’s parents.  On one such visit DaNita established a relationship with Lloyd Williams and subsequently became pregnant.  On August 16, 1964, DaNita gave birth to a son at Gary Methodist Hospital, whom she named Abner Jerome Marshall in honor of her grandfather.  The baby’s first bed was a bassinet made out of a drawer.  In 1969 DaNita married David Prince, and the young family moved to the newly built East Point Terrace apartments.  They were its first residents; in fact, the cement was sill moist, so DaNita etched her and David’s names outside their unit.  Neighbor kids teased their son incessantly about his name, which was the same as a character in the TV series “Bewitched” and the comic strip “L’il Abner.”  Eventually he persuaded DaNita to change it to Jerome Abner Prince. His dad, meanwhile, had joined the marines and served in Vietnam. In 1973 the couple split up, and DaNita moved in with an aunt in Glen Park.

Prior to fourth grade, Jerome Prince, who presently is Mayor of Gary, had gone to a virtually all-black school.  Recognizing that he could use more structure and discipline with a father figure no longer on the scene, DaNita enrolled him at St. Mark’s School on Ridge Road.  His teacher was Sister Elise, and for the next four years he had mostly white classmates.  He learned how to fit in and with DaNita’s prodding spent many long evenings doing homework. Jerome went to Lew Wallace High School and in his junior year became a father. He decided to follow David Prince’s example and join the marines immediately after graduating in 1983.  After 13 weeks of boot camp, Jerome married his teenage sweetheart De Anna Slaughter, and she and their son moved to Concord, California, I the San Francisco Bay area to be with him. 

 

One reason Jerome had enlisted in the marines was because the employment situation in Gary had become dire by the 1980s, with U.S. Steel employing far few workers than in previous decades. Returning to Gary in 1986 after completing his tour of duty, Jerome asked his mother for advice.  DaNita, a sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics, suggested he seek a career in sales.  His work in real estate led to a position in the Calumet Township Assessor’s office as a real estate deputy.  In 1998 he was elected a Gary Precinct Committeeman.  One of his goals was to get streets in his neighborhood repaved.  Prince remembered:

  I thought that all I had to do was make some noise and get other people to join me, and so we took that path. I actually initiated a petition, took it around my neighborhood, and we submitted it to the administration at that particular time, and I don’t think it got a second look. It became very clear to me that you have to do a little bit more than this, but more importantly, you have to be in the position to effectuate change.  I quickly discovered that I could have a greater impact and connection to the constituents as a councilperson.

In 1999 Prince unseated longtime incumbent Cleo Wesson and became city councilman for Gary’s Fifth District.  Twice re-elected, he became a member of the Lake County Council in 2014 to fill a vacated seat. From there he successfully ran for Lake County Assessor, and in 2019 he defeated incumbent mayor Karen Freeman-Williams.  Crediting DaNita with setting him on the right path at critical times in his life, Prince claimed that she was his toughest task master, more than any marine drill instructor.

Mayor Jerome Prince and wife De Anna

Better Days?

“O, yes, I say it plain

America never was America to me

And yet I swear this oath

America will be!”

  Langston Hughes, from “Let America be America Again,” quoted by Martin Luther King and the epilogue to Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods”

 

scene from "Da 5 Bloods"

Interviewed by Joy-Ann Reed for Time magazine, film director Spike Lee, he recalled sitting on his Brooklyn stoop at age 11 when he heard his mother screaming hysterically, “They killed Dr. King!  They killed Dr. King!” What followed were cities across the nation going up in flames. I was a teaching assistant at the University of Maryland and a day or so later stopped class when I heard a crowd headed to the chapel and joined them.  No words could soften the bitterness I felt.  Directed to hold hands with people near me and sing “We Shall Overcome,” when we came to the words “Black and white Together,” I could feel the anguish in my heart and imagined how empty those sentiments must have felt to people of color. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination not long afterwards seemed confirmation that America was no longer blessed, that King’s hopes of a multiracial society living in harmony was a pipe dream.

 

With most movie theaters still closed or shunned, first-run films are debuting on Netflix or some other streaming service.  So far, I’ve found enough free movies on premiums channels I get such as HBO or Showtime, and I got hooked on the TNT series “Snowpiercer,” set during a time in the future when scientists, hoping to counter the effects of global warming, caused a new Ice Age so severe that the only survivors were on a thousand-car train that must keep circling the globe in order to keep everyone alive.  On board is a class society, with the very rich segregated from others, including “tailies” in the last car who managed to get on board without a ticket.

 

The country has gone without major league sports since March, and the greed of baseball owners threatens to derail plan for an abbreviated season without fans.  Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Murphy compared the deadlock to past labor wars, writing: “There are few things more American than the battle between capital and labor.  The national league was founded the same year as the Molly Maguire trials, the American league two years before Mother Jones led her march of Mill Children from Philadelphia to New York.”

 

In “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens, a wildlife scientist, Kya, the so-called Marsh Girl, came upon the term “Sneaky Fuckers” in a scientific digest, a term first coined by evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith to explain that subordinate males often take advantage of the opportunity to mate attracted to a dominant male that is already occupied. Owens provided this example: “Pint-sized male bullfrogs hunker down in the grass and hide near an alpha male who is croaking with great gusto to call in mates.  When several females are attracted to his strong vocals at the same time, and the alpha is busy copulating with one, the weaker male leaps in and mates one of the others.  The imposter males were referred to a ‘sneaky fuckers.’”  Kya also learned about competition between males to inseminate females:

    Male lions occasionally fight to the death; rival bull elephants lock tusks and demolish the ground beneath their feet as they tear at each other’s flesh.  Though very ritualized, the conflicts can end in mutilations.  To avoid such injuries, inseminators of some species compete in less violent, more creative methods.  Insects, the most imaginative. The penis of the male damselfly is equipped with a small scoop, which removed sperm by a previous opponent before he supplies his own.

Some male inseminators aren’t so fortunate.  A female praying mantis eats the head of the male while mating and then for nourishment devours the rest of his body.  Such sexual cannibalism led to several species of Latrodectus being nicknamed black widow spiders.

 

Union stalwart Bill Carey posted a poem by Imelda May, a singer/songwriter most famous for recording “Tainted Love.”  “You don’t get to be racist and Irish” recalls a time when Irish immigrants were discriminated against.  It begins:

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

You’re not entitled to sing songs

of heroes and martyrs

mothers and fathers who cried

as they starved in a famine

 family of Heath Carter

Heath Carter’s second talk on the history of religion in America dealt with protests over the forced removal of Cherokee Indiana from Georgia in the age of Andrew Jackson. As Carter stated, history holds no easy answers and some Christian believers had deeply flawed beliefs; but the church-led opposition to Indian removal generated the largest national protest movement up to that time.  Many petitioners were assimilationists who urged Native Americans to adapt to white man’s ways.  Most Cherokees did just that, taking up farming, drawing up a constitution modeled after the U.S., and even converting to Christianity. Missionaries who championed their cause were incarcerated by Georgia authorities and put in chains.   Even though the Supreme Court ruled in their favor, the federal government forced them west along a “Trail of Tears” that saw 5,000 perish. Even though the anti-removalists failed to stop this atrocity, many who heretofore had favored resettling former slaves in Africa changed their position and joined the ranks of abolitionists demanding an immediate end to slavery.

 

Don Coffin wrote this haiku while peering out his back door:

Sunset approaches,

Clouds shifting in the wind and

I need only watch.

Photo by Don Coffin taken from his back door

When I’m down, lyrics to The Head and the Heart’s “Library Magic” give me a small measure of hope:

I can see the sunshine's rays gleaming through the clear waters
Telling me you gotta hop in for this chapter's ride
There will always be better days

Tomfoolery

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.” Mark Twain

Thomas Skelton

The origin of the word “tomfoolery,” meaning to acting even worse than a fool, comes from England in the time of William Shakespeare.  Thomas Skelton was a sadistic jester at Moncuster Castle in Cumbria who allegedly played vile jokes on those whom Sir William Pennington disliked, once cutting off the had of a butcher with whom
his master’s daughter had fallen in love with his own knife.  Rumor had it that he’d sit under a tree and tell passersby who asked for directions to take a path that led to quicksand and their death.

Trump’s latest tomfoolery is to announce that despite the pandemic he’ll be holding a MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, location of the infamous 1921 massacre that killed scores of black people and destroyed their neighborhood. The original date was June 19, known as “Juneteenth” and celebrated when slaves learned of their emancipation. Attendees have to sign a waiver agreeing not to hold sponsors liable in case they catch Covid-19.  Imagine. Trump also announced that he’d be giving his Republican National Convention speech in Jacksonville, Florida, on August 27, the sixtieth anniversary of that city’s notorious “Axe Handle Riot,” when a Klan-inspired white mob attacked peaceful black demonstrators with axe handles.  Trump has also criticized those who wish to rename the dozen military bases (Bragg, Hooker, Benning, etc.) named for Confederate leaders. 

Don Coffin passed on this statement by former General David Petrakis: “For an organization designed to win wars to train for them atinstallations named for those who led a losing force is sufficiently peculiar, but when we consider the cause for which these officers fought, we begin to penetrate the confusion of Civil War memory. These bases are, after all, federal installations, home to soldiers who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. The irony of training at bases named for who took up arms against the United States, and for the right to enslave others, is inescapable to anyone paying attention. Now, belatedly, is the moment for us to pay such attention.”

Even more damning was a recent statement by former Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis, branding Trump the first president in his lifetime “who does not
try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.”  The country has not been so polarized in 50 years, since Nixon, Vietnam, and Watergate. Some, referencing the poem “Second Coming” (1919) by William B. Yeats, fear the center won’t hold and that the country is slouching toward anarchy. But for the prospect of voting Trump out of office in November, they may have a point. Here are the first lines of “Second Coming”:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world 

Republican Senator from South Carolina Tim Scott, an African American, appeared on the Sunday talk shows to tout a bipartisan legislative proposal for police reforms regarding the use of choke holds, no-knock procedures, and compiling a record of complaints against individual.  When Scott described to fellow Republican legislators how he’d been stopped and hassled numerous times by cops, including after he’d become a member of Congress, they supposedly were shocked and mortified.  While I doubt that anything meaningful will come from Scott’s efforts, given Trump’s intransigence to any gesture of compromise, Republicans are clearly worried about a possible election debacle.

 On Flag Day historian Ray Boomhower quoted Norman Thomas: “If you want a symbolic gesture, don’t burn the flag; wash it.” The flag Trump seems most eager to defend lately is the Confederate Battle flag.  In fact, when NASCAR announced that Confederate flags were not welcome at its events, he ridiculed the decision-makers. 

Former Valparaiso University History professor Heath Carter, now at Princeton
Theological Seminary, has made available on Facebook a lecture series he’s
giving at Nassau Presbyterian Church on the church during times of crisis. Introducing
himself, Carter noted that the series will offer both comfort and cautionary
tales. The initial one dealt with racism during a time of epidemic - the 1793
yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia, founded by Quaker William Penn as the
“City of Brotherly Love” and then the nation’s capital and largest city. Noted
doctor Benjamin Rush, believing African Americans to be immune to the disease,
convinced many free blacks to nurse the sick with dire consequences. Not only did
many perish, others were unfairly blamed for thefts and for spreading the disease.
After the terror abated, members of St. George’s Church, heretofore integrated,
voted to restrict blacks to the balcony. When Richard Allen refused to obey the edict and was forcibly removed, the other black members walked out and subsequently founded Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church, which is still in existence. Meanwhile, at Valparaiso religious leaders and many others of good will participated in a peaceful vigil and later a die-in to honor and mourn the black victims of police violence.

photo by Allison Schuette

Liam off camera

Sampter in sports jacket

Alissa visited overnight, and James celebrated his twentieth birthday with friends Andrew, Nate, and Liam. Dave got them to go on Facebook and sing Smash Mouth’s “All Star” (You’re an all star, Get your game on”). Janet Bayer found a1990 photo her
friend Anita took of a Going Away party for the Bayers upon their move to Vermont. I’m wearing a blue vest and tie and except for the nerdy glasses was looking quite dapper but, I wrote Janet, not as dapper as Al Sampter, mentor to my mentor, Mike Bayer.

Eleanor Bailey wrote:

    On This Day-June 15, 1943 -77 years ago. The town of Sumava Resorts in Newton County Indiana had been flooded for several days. (May-June flood Kankakee River 1943). We lived on the first road to the left. Mother was expecting her third child and our family was staying temporarily at the home of Dr. Raymond Merchant, who made house calls and had his office in his basement, in Lake Village. My brother Bill was born at Gary Methodist Hospital on June 15. I remember being in the car and crossing the railroad tracks at entrance to Sumava. There was a sign
that read 15 miles an hour to avoid dust. The flood waters were half-way up on
the sign post. R.I.P. Bill Bailey (1943-2014).

I was tempted to respond with the song title, “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?” but feared it would be taken the wrong way.  I befriended Eleanor Bailey thinking she was a high school classmate, but she knows mutual friend Kay Westhues – so I don’t know Eleanor very well.

Anne Koehler wrote about growing up in Germany with two brothers and a sister on a farm in Damendorf, northern Germany, less than a two-hour drive from the Danish border.

    The farm was medium sized with a variety of crops and animals. We grew wheat, barley, rye, potatoes, sugar and regular beets, flax, alfalfa. There were horses, about 25 milk cows, turkeys, ducks,laying hens and pigs. We were located in an end moraine.  Rocks and stones would surface every year and had to be picked off the fields. They were crushed and used for roads.- Our little pond in back of the garden had diving boards in three heights. This is where the children from the whole village would gather for a swim. We had to share it with calves and pigs, which did not bother us in the least. Great times until one day a boy drowned. A trained diver found him, but he could not be revived. It was a sad experience. - The low fields behind the farm would flood and freeze over in winter, making a splendid skating surface. The older boys would play ice hockey, we would skate or be be pulled on sleds. We also had a chair-like sled, -- In those days we did not own a milking machine. A hired man was singly in charge of milking the cows. Occasionally he got days off. So on Easter 1955. We had to help with the chores. I had gone to a party in the village tavern the night before and was hung over. While milking the cow Undine, my visiting cousin Hermann from southern Germany decided to take a photo. He captioned it: The city dweller says: oh that's where the milk comes from. The cow looks really good. It is a Holstein!!!

Oldies

Some people like to go out dancing
And other people, (like us) they gotta work
And there's always some evil mothers
They'll tell you life is full of dirt.

         “Sweet Jane,” Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground

 Velvet Underground in 1993: Sterling Morrison, Moe Taylor, John Cale, Lou Reed

In a single set on WXRT’s Saturday morning flashback show about the year 1970 I heard “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel, Elton John’s “Take Me to the Pilot,” “Green-Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf, “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground, and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” (about Vikings).  Though pretty much typecast initially as Andy Warhol’s house band, Velvet Underground were pioneers of punk rock at a time when the Hippie ideal was becoming a casualty of late Sixties violence and disillusionment.  I once asked Dave if he ever got tired of singing a particular song. “Green-Eyed Lady,”he replied. On the other hand, Voodoo Chili’s rendition of “Sympathy for the Devil” remained a crowd favorite and one he loved to invite friends (even me) on stage to sing the chorus.  When the Stones performed the song at Altamont just months after Woodstock, a fight broke out, forcing the band to stop and then restart it. Later, during “Under My Thumb” (not “Sympathy for the Devil” as first reported) Hell’s Angels hired to provide security killed unruly fan Meredith Hunter.

 Harry Hamlin as Big Dog

Due to the year-long IUN library heat and air conditioning project, I had to move once again, this time to an Emeritus office that I share with DeeDee Ige in the new Arts and Sciences Building.  Spreading out, I thought of the Curb Your Enthusiasmepisode where Larry has to share his office kitchen with a bully played by Harry Hamlin who calls himself “Big Dog” and hogs most of the cabinet space.  Accompanying Jeff Gilmore and my computer across campus, I noticed a huge courtyard project under way, evidently intended to convert the area into a green space. Later, at Moraine Student Union, a bunch of seventh graders from a Hobart middle school were having lunch.  A guide, probably mistaking me for a visitor, gave me an IU lanyard.  A kid explained that it also can be used to charge one’s cellphone.

Chesterton library’s “New Books” display contained a paperback by journalist Robert Strauss titled “Worst President Ever.”  On the cover (who else?) was James Buchanan, my “Uncle Jimmy,” as Upper Dublin teacher H.M. Jones dubbed him.  Historian Kai Bird claimed it to be the “funniest Presidential biography ever.”  We’ll see.  Upstairs I found a greatest hits CD by Night Ranger and Weezer’s Teal album.  The check-out guy’s dad had seen the band in Grand Rapids, same as I.  He’d gone to see the Pixies but was very impressed with Weezer.

 Heath Carter

This NWI Timesheadline got my attention: “Valparaiso Democrat announces he is leaving region after winning election.” I recognized the photo of history professor Heath Carter, who accepted a tenured position at Princeton Theological Seminary.  I spoke in Heath’s class several times and am sorry to see him leave.  Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Durnell, Carter’s next-door neighbor, told reporter Bob Kasarda:

  Valpo will miss not just one, but two, great community leaders when Heath and Thais Carter move. I trace nearly all of my civic engagements in Valpo, from becoming involved in Central Neighborhood Association, to buying a local business, and now running for mayor, back to a conversation with Heath Carter.  His positive community impact is surpassed only by the quality of his friendship.

He’ll be missed, that’s for sure.  Fellow VU professor Liz Wuerffel, also nominated for an at-large council seat, posted a photo taken during a downpour that resembled an impressionist painting.

Dave Seibold reminisced about old high school friends and familiar places, such as Wentz Turkey Farm not far from Upper Dublin High School.  Wally and Pam Illingworth’s father worked there.  Out neighbor, he claimed to hate our playing ball in his side yard because sometimes we’d run into (and through) his hedge, but he never kicked us out.  On mischief night he’d hide in the back yard (or so we heard) to stop teenagers from pulling pranks.  Terry Jenkins told me that while he complained when his collie Taffy came onto his property, he’d be affectionate to the dog when he thought nobody was watching.  One place unfamiliar to me was Hustle Inn, which Seibold described as a teen nightclub near Doylestown.  He wrote: “We used to go with special dates when there were not any parties around.  I thought it was a neat place! It had a topnotch juke box and sound system and played teeny bop music we liked. My wife is 2 years younger than I and in her senior year was not permitted to go. The place turned into a drug haven and was busted several times.  We knew nothing about the drugs but would go into the parking lot to sneak beer we had brought.”

Dave and Nicki Seibold