Strange Days

“Strange days have found us
Strange days have tracked us down
They're going to destroy
Our casual joys”

    “Strange Days,” The Doors

The Doors

Lori

James

People are putting all sorts of weird stuff on Facebook to relieve boredom during the pandemic.  One fad is melding one’s photo into an avatar look-alike.  Lori Montalbano was more successful than James Wallace, methinks.  Political commentary abounds, the latest batch debunking Trump’s threats to force governors to open churches on Sunday – this from a man pandering to the Christian right who only worships himself.  Fortunately, friends have not lost their sense of humor, as evidenced by this post by Cindy Bean:

I’ve finished posting album covers on Facebook but am enjoying choices by others, including Fred McColly (Warren Zevon), Chris Daly (folk and bluegrass singer John Hartford), and Gregg Hertzlieb (Steve Hackett, former lead guitar player for Genesis.  Brenden Bayer introduced me to School of Fish, an alternative rock band from L.A. who in 1991 recorded “3 Strange Days.”  Brenden also suggested posting a list of five people, four of whom you’ve met or been within a few feet of and one you haven’t and see if friends can guess the correct one.  Here’s a list of civil rights leaders: Julian Bond, Andrew Young, James Farmer, Jesse Jackson, Stokely Carmichael.  Here’s a second list of famous people: Dick Clark, Jesse Owens, Frank Borman, Muhammad Ali, Lyndon B. Johnson.  Can you identify one from each list I’ve never met?  Spoiler alert: answers are Andrew Young and Muhammad Ali. Surprisingly few people guessed Young but most guessed Ali (I thought more would select LBJ, who I saw speak in Lewisburg, PA, in 1960 when he was JFK’s running mate, or track star Jesse Owens, whose hand I shook when the Gary NAACP honored him at a luncheon at IUN).

 

Julian Bond

I met Julian Bond, who was then teaching at the U. of Virginia, at an Oral History Association conference. I heard Carmichael speak at IUN in 1979 on Pan-African socialism when he went by the name Kwame Ture. Richard Morrisroe was in the audience, and the two former freedom fighters embraced.  James Farmer, a founder of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and a 1961 Freedom Rider on a bus attacked by racists, spoke at IUN and I got him to sing one of the songs that calmed people on the bus - he had a great voice and it's on an episode of "Eyes on the Prize."  I first saw Jesse Jackson in 1968 speak on Solidarity Day in DC. Richard Hatcher brought him to IUN when he was running for President in 1984, and I spoke with him at a Genesis Center event on the 40th anniversary of the 1972 West Side National Black Political Convention. Ali visited Gary several times while Hatcher was mayor, but I never met him.  Janet Bayer wrote: “Mayor Hatcher's Evenings to Remember were great for meeting people. I actually was in line with Julian Bond behind me waiting to get to the Campaign Fountain. He was charming. Another year Rev Jesse Jackson came in to do some fund raising. The Black National Convention that was hosted by Mayor Hatcher had everybody. I was one of very few white people invited.  We were so fortunate to live in Gary.”

 

Brenda Ann Love suggested opening a book to page 45 and seeing what the first thing you read tells you about yourself.  Why not?  Pamela Roorda-Barnett wrote: "There was a clear sense that the school had invested in us, which I think made us all try harder and feel better about ourselves." Michelle Obama - “Becoming.” This was on page 45 of Hilary Mantel’s “Beyond Black” – of all things, a one-night stand with a bookstore manager, who sold her a book on tarot and the cards as well:

    He had a room in a shared flat.  In bed he kept pressing her clit with his finger, as if he were inputting a sale on a cash machine.  In the end she faked it because she was bored and getting a cramp.

This on page 45 of Jean Shepherd’s “A Fistful of Fig Newtons”: “The roar in the driveway meant the old man was home from bowling.  Our Oldsmobile made a distinctive, loose-limbed, gurgling racket that came from 120,000 hard miles and gallons of cheap oil. “YER LOOKIN’ AT A GUY THAT JUST ROLLED A SIX HUNDRED SERIES!”  He strode through the kitchen ten feet tall, smelling of Pabst Blue Ribbon and success.”  Moral: every dog has its day.

On a positive note Facebook has connected me to online board games and bridge with friends and allowed me to learn about the doings of family members such as Dave, who’s been able to order appropriate masks for East Chicago Central seniors and volunteers.  Also Anne Koehler has taken the opportunity to write her memoirs. Here’s the latest installment:

In late 1957 I took the train from home in northern Germany to Sweden to meet a friend in Goeteborg. I had been an exchange student earlier in the year at Asa Folkhoegskola in Skoeldinge. In the beginning I did not know a word of Swedish, but became fairly fluent by the end of the Summer. People would ask "Aer Ni fran Skone?" (are you from Schonen, a southern part of Sweden) because of my accent. I considered that a compliment.  Back then the Danish isles were not all connected by bridges and tunnels as they are now. One had to get off the train or car and onto a ferryboat. Topside at the railing I started to talk to a young man from America who spoke German. He was a GI on vacation with a German family. After the 15-minute crossing it was time to get back to our respective modes of transportation and we exchanged addresses. His time of enlistment was up in 1958 and I did not see him again until 1960 when I came to the USA. We had corresponded for three years. Since Richard was fluent in German, the Army used him to spy on East German radio stations. He had a car and got to travel up and down the border separating East and West Germany. His mission was secret and he very reluctantly told me about it.- Two weeks after arriving in the USA we got married.

 

Desperate to find a decent movie I hadn’t already seen On Demand I discovered a category labeled Indie films – evidently in contrast to mainstream blockbusters and entered into film festivals – and found “Ophelia” and “Tumbledown.”  The latter was about a professor and a grieving widow collaborating on a book about  Hunter Miles, a dead folk singer whose songs in the movie were sung by Seattle folkie Damien Jurado.  “Ophelia” was a remaking of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” from Ophelia’s point of view, starring Daisy Ridley (below), who reminded me of high school redhead Gaard Murphy.

"Tumbledown" takes place in Gaard’s home state, Maine, where fans come to put momentos, including bottles of Jack Daniels, by their hero’s gravesite. Seen teaching a music pop culture class, Andrew (former SNL cast member Justin Sedeikis) appears to be a snob.  Lecturing on the music of The Notorious B.I.G., he asks the class, “Fiction or autobiography, pose or confession?” adding “Biggy was as much defined by as he was killed by his 10 crack commandments; what does that mean, to hinge your street cred on your own moral evanescence?” Say what?  As class ends, he asks students to analyze the assigned music in terms of cultural appropriation.  Boring!   In the course of the film Andrew drops his phony pretenses, shows endearing and vulnerable sides of his personality, and falls in love with Hannah (Rebecca Hall).  Highly recommended.

Women's Place

“When the working day is done

Oh, girls they wanna have fun”

         Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

In 1983 Cyndi Lauper, now 66 ,burst onto the American music scene with a debut solo album, “She’s So Unusual,” that contained four top-five hits, “Time after Time,” “She Bop,” “All Through the Night,” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” “She Bob” gained notoriety from mention of “Blue Boy,” a gay porn magazine, and contained these lyrics:

Hey, hey they say I better get a chaperon
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
Hey, I won't worry, and I won't fret
Ain't no law against it yet, oh she bop, she bop

An advocate for LGBT rights, Lauper won a Tony Award in 2013 for composing the score for “Kinky Boots,” which Toni and I enjoyed on stage in Chicago.

Grand Rapids, MI, was the latest venue for Trump’s rant-fest, as he baselessly claimed total exoneration of collusion charges and threatened to close the Mexican border totally due to yet another alleged caravan of immigrants from Central America seeking asylum.  Knowing no Lanes would be attending, I was curious when I received a jpeg from Alissa titled Trump rally.  She wrote: “So many hateful idiots in red hats out today. But proud so see the resistance is strong in Michigan.”  One sign greeting Trump read, “Keep your hate outta my state.”

For at least a hundred years American popular culture has been youth-oriented. During the 1920s high school girls emulated the Flappers and “It Girl” starlets in films and popular magazines. When women entered the work force in large numbers during wartime, government propaganda featured the slogan “For the Duration,” a double-edged message that implied they’d give up their jobs and become housewives once the war was won. Public health officials worried about unsupervised “latch Key” kids.  Teenage girls readily found work in pool halls, greasy spoon restaurants, and bowling alleys where  men, their elders feared, were liable to prey on them. According to William K. Klingaman’s “The Darkest Year: The American Home Front, 1941-1942,” V-Girls (Victory Girls) as young as 12 dressed to look older and sought excitement from men in uniform.  After  ajourney across America, British-born observer Alistair Cook, reportedon the V-Girl phenomenonin “The American Home Front: 1941–1942”:

   To their families they are often known as high-spirited daughters full of the joy of life.  To the soldiers they are  known as broilers, dishes, bed-bunnies, popovers, free-wheelers, touchables, Susies, teasers, [and] free-lancers.

Among the consequences were a rash of war babies and a venereal disease epidemic. Prostitutes complained that V-Girls were horning in on their business.

 lesbian gets tattoo during World War II

Jackie Gross and Catherine Borsch arrested in 1943 for violating Chicago's cross-dressing ban

In “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America” Lillian Faderman wrote: “The social upheaval of the war threw off balance various areas of American life. Troubling questions of life and death confronted many young women directly for the first time, and ‘normality’ and concepts of sexual ‘morality’ were seen as far more complicated than they appear during more ordinary years.”  Geographical and social mobility enabled gay and lesbian experimentation and made easier opportunities for heterosexual relations as well. Wives whose husbands were overseas experienced loneliness but more freedom than any other time in their lives. Those who sought employment often, to paraphrase Cyndi Lauper, wanted to have fun after their working day was done. Some had been pressured into marrying their boyfriends before they went off to war and were not ready to settle down.

If war deprived servicemen of constant female companionship, it exposed them to fleshpots both stateside and abroad.  In his autobiography “Weasal” East Chicago native Louis Vasquez wrote about his amorous adventures with a hairdresser named Renee while in uniform in France. After I published the manuscript as a special issue of Steel Shavings,historian Archibald McKinlay embellished his adventures in a Timescolumn that infuriated me but that Vasquez apparently loved.  Titled “The Lamented Lover,” the article  revealed as much about the author’s imagination as the reality of Louis’ experiences.  McKinlay wrote:

 Renee had more on her mind than coiffures.  She helped him with his French and a great deal more.  Weasal became the war’s first literal P.O.L.: prisoner of live.  After de-flowering the over-age altar boy, Renee held Weasal virtually incommunicado for a solid week.  She gave him a crash graduate course in French, exploring empirically the complete etymology of the term amour, with special emphasis on lab work. While his friend Clark stumbled around Le Mans using hand signals, Renee plumbed the very depths of Weasal’s ability to learn.

 When Weasal finally broke loose from Renee, he became the second coming of Don Juan.  He tore a swath through Gaul that made Sherman’s march to the sea seem like a parade and inspired the French imploration “pour l’amour de Belette!” When he was shipped home,  throughout France grateful females paused for 30 seconds and lay motionless in their beds with arms outstretched in mute salute.

 Barbara Wisdom

Barbara Wisdom will report on “A Slave in the White House” during April’s book club meeting.  Employed in the White House beginning at age 10 during the James Madison administration, Paul Jennings wrote a memoir on which the book is based.    Jennings never mentioned his mother’s name, only that she was part native American and impregnated by a itinerant merchant. First Lady Dolley Madison’s father was a Quaker who sold his slaves, moved to Philadelphia, and subsequently went bankrupt.  A social climber, Dolley regarded him as a loser and had no scruples about exploiting slave labor when she married the much older Virginia politician regarded as the “Father of the Constitution.”

Anne Balay spoke at Smith College about her book on LGBTI long-haul truckers, “Semi Queer.”  She wrote:“I did my first book talk about Steel Closets, as a promising new scholar in the field of queer and labor studies, at Smith in 2014. This will then be my last talk as a scholar hoping to leverage myself into an academic career. I believe in the power and impact of my writing, and I will find a way to keep doing it, but academia can kiss my aging but always uppity ass.”  Anne is hoping to do a book about sex workers if she can find the time and resources. 

Leslie Mann and Megan Fox

What little I know about sex workers beyond the exploitation of immigrant women tricked into prostitution is that both in the past and the present there are those who turned tricks from time to time due to economic necessity or, more recently, worked for escort services to support themselves in college or to maintain a more affluent lifestyle.  In “This Is 40” (2012), one of my favorite movies, Megan Fox plays such a person, causing boutique owner Debbie (Leslie Mann) to believe her employee is stealing from her until Fox (Desi) admits that she admits to occasionally moonlighting as an escort.

Speaking to VU sociology professor Mary Kate Blake’s class about early Gary, I stressed that the “City of the Century” was both similar to other Calumet Region industrial cities undergoing rapid growth during the early twentieth century, such as Whiting, Hammond, and East Chicago, but that each had its own unique characteristics.  U.S. Steel’s half-planned “different type of company town” (from Pullman, Illinois) left unskilled immigrant laborers to fend for themselves on the southside, whose Red Light district, “the Patch,” contained over a hundred saloons, many with prostitutes on the second floor. A number of women began their path toward upward mobility by running boarding houses whose row-to-row cots sometimes were shared by two steelworkers on alternate12-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week shifts.

At least a half dozen students hailed from the Region. Being used to 75-minute classes at IUN, I was amazed how quickly the 50-minute class flew by.  I was peppered with questions about race-relations in the schools, mills, and neighborhoods. Someone asked about the Ku Klux Klan in Gary during the 1920s; students were familiar with its presence in Valpo and that the Klan almost purchased VU until the Lutheran Church rescued the nearly bankrupt institution. In Gary the hate group dared not operate openly but supported Republican mayor Floyd Williams, a segregationist.  I briefly discussed the 1927 Emerson School Strike and the 1974 steel industry consent decree, which compensated African-American workers for past discrimination and led to large numbers of women hiring in.  I promised to return in a week when they will have read my Eighties Steel Shavings.   In addition to discussing the drying up of industrial jobs, I’ll compare Hoosier stepchild Gary and Indianapolis under Mayor Richard Lugar (1968-1976), the lack of Gary home rule (weakening the power of mayors), and grapple with the role of race as an explanation for Gary’s decline.

James Wallace

  Toni Dickerson addresses group on lack of black IUN faculty, 2018; Times photo by Carmen McCollum

At a Diversity luncheon hosted by IUN director James Wallace I was seated next to one of the award recipients, Black Student Union (BSU) president Toni Dickerson.  A Social Work major, Toni (like my wife, named after her father) attended Marquette Elementary School in Miller, as did Phil and Dave until we became disgusted over the paddling of kids for minor offenses.  I told Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson how pleased I was that she will be speaking to Mary Kate Blake’s VU students next Friday when they tour Gary. It was great seeing former Arts and Sciences dean F.C. Richardson, honored for his role as BSU faculty adviser 50 years ago when a Black Studies program was established.  He gave me such a big hug that his name tag ended up on my sweater.  Ron Cohen nominated Richard Hatcher for an award and daughter Ragen, Second District state representative, made a pitch in support of an anti-hate crime bill that included gender identity.

left, Eric Degas; below, Chuck Degas

The featured speaker was NPR TV critic Eric Deggans, author of “Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation” (2012), the subject he chose to discuss.  An Andrean and IU graduate whose father Chuck Deggans wrote a Post-Tribcolumn and hosted a radio show on WWCA called “Deggans Den,” Eric excelled that eliciting audience participation after showing media associations of white as good and black as evil and examples of situational racism. One clip involved a Minneapolis TV station claiming that Mayor Betsy Hodges flashed a gang sign while posing with community activist Navell Gordon, identified as a convicted felon.  Hodges had been critical of her city’s police, some of whom circulated the bogus story.  It reminded me that some years ago a nearby school district considered banning paraphernalia showing the IU logo since it was similar to a gang sign. IU caps wore at a certain angle were especially suspicious. 

The Searcher

“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus,” Martin Luther King, Jr.

An HBO documentary about Elvis Presley,  appropriately titled “The Searcher,” emphasizes Presley’s fascination with black music, both gospel-tinged ballads and upbeat rhythm and blues.  It offers a nuanced view of manager Colonel Parker, who guided Elvis’ career to heights it probably wouldn’t have otherwise reached but, in the words of critic Jon Pareles, treated him like a commercial workhorse, making trivial movies and performing like a nostalgia act. Elvis was a unique talent and true American hero, with tragic flaws that cut short his extraordinary career.

When I put on my 1958 dance party for Art in Focus seniors in Munster, I’ll open with a recording of Elvis singing “Hard-Hearted Woman” ( from the movie “King Creole” and Presley’s first Gold Record for RCA), One Night,” originally an R&B hit in 1956 for Smiley Lewis and called “One Night of Sin” – with sanitized lyrics,changing, for example, “One night of sin is what I'm now paying for”to “One night with you is what I'm now praying for.” Elvis sometimes inserted the original words during live performances. The third Elvis song in the medley will be “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck,” and I’ll have Dave turn up the volume for the final spectacular drumroll. 

The 1956 film “The Searchers,” directed by John Ford, starred John Wayne as Ethan Edwards, a Confederate Civil War veteran on a mission to rescue his niece Debbie (young Natalie Wood looking ravishing in Native American dress) from Comanches.  Ethan is a racist, bent on revenge and, until the very end, intent on killing Debbie or bringing her back to “civilization,” even against her will.

above, Tori at prom; below,James (with tie) at final curtain call

Daughter-in-law Beth spent the night after catching the final performance of James in “The 25^thAnnual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”  At Strack and Van Til primarily for donuts, I found my choice of shelled peanuts limited to raw, hot and spicy, or dill-flavored.  WTF?  I opted to go with hot and spicy to my later regret.  Why no lightly salted roasted nuts?

At Inman’s award banquet, James sat with his Bowling for Donuts teammates while I chowed down two slices of pizza next to Angie and Dave, whose pot luck contribution was a delicious salad.  Toni prepared a veggie platter, with hot peppers being the most popular item. I limited myself to one but took a half-dozen of the slow-moving black olives.  During the award presentations a young kid made a hand motion that, according to Dave, was giving dap.  The practice originated with black soldiers in Vietnam chest-bumping or exchanging intricate handshakes and now can be any number of subtle hand gestures.  Racist critics jumped on President Obama for giving dap by using an innocuous gesture.

Watching Jeopardy, I did a double take when in an ad a young woman eating an ice cream cone under a tree was day-dreaming when bird droppings landed on her thigh; she scooped it up with her finger and was ready to eat it.  The sponsor was For Eyes demonstrating the victim's need for glasses. I knew all the “Rhymes with Bob” Jeopardy answers but was slow on the draw with “Eighteenth-century Enlightenment” terms, failing to come up with Denis Diderot’s “Enyclopedie” or one I should have known, Voltaire’s religious philosophy, Deism.

Host James Wallace and IUN’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Multicultural Affairs (ODEMA) honored graduates who belonged to ALMA, Brother 2 Brother, My Sisters’ Keeper, Delta Phi Rho (a Latin-based fraternity), the Asian American Association, and MORE (Minority Opportunity for Research) Scholars.  

For a crossword puzzle Toni wanted to know the name of a Finnish architect.  Voila! Alvar Aalto, who designed many buildings in Jyvaskyla, including the university where the upcoming oral history conference will take place. Before returning Deborah Swallow’s Guidebook to the Valpo library, I learned not to tip in Finland and that Finns loves saunas, especially during the long winter.  Swallow passed on these sayings popular with a laconic people belonging to an egalitarian society: “Behave in a sauna as you would in a church”and “Remember what the fleas say, you’re just a man like any other.”

At bridge, partner Dee Van Bebber asked if I persuaded my wife to play on Wednesdays.  “Never,”was Toni’s answer. We tried it when we first moved to Indiana and she disliked it.  We did meet a nice couple at Temple Israel and invited them to our house. After they arrived, they mentioned having been on the radio earlier talking about being practicing nudists. Telling that story led Sally Will to say that one of her friends is a nudist.  Jim Carson told of camping at Lake Mead near Vegas during a heat wave. He was outside his tent when a young French woman wearing nothing but a string bikini bottom walked up to him needing help to locate her campsite. Jim, usually not at a loss for words, was so befuddled all he could do was stammer incoherently.

 photos by Cindy Bean; above, Horace Mann; below, barred window of abandoned Gary store

At Crown Point Library I enjoyed an exhibit of Cindy Bean’s photography, especially shots of Gary.  On hand were old friend Rocky Ferrer and fellow book club member Barb Wisdom, who asked if I knew IUN History professor Bill Neil (he hired me), who was good friends with her father.  I brought up that he played the bagpipes, and she recalled hearing him play.  Small world. Arriving early, I perused Amy Chozick’s book Chasing Hillary,about the 2016 election.  She believed Trump’s outrageous antics detracted attention from  and distracted Hillary from concentrating on winning over working-class voters.  Also husband Bill was a millstone around her neck, neutralizing the issue of Trump’s abusive treatment of women.

For her forthcoming book “Semi Queer: Inside the World of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers” Anne Balay wrote this blurb for the University of North Carolina Press website:

      Long-haul trucking is linked to almost every industry in America, yet somehow the working-class drivers behind big rigs remain largely hidden from public view. Gritty, inspiring, and often devastating oral histories of gay, transsexual, and minority truck drivers allow award-winning author Anne Balay to shed new light on the harsh realities of truckers' lives behind the wheel. A licensed commercial truck driver herself, Balay discovers that, for people routinely subjected to prejudice, hatred, and violence in their hometowns and in the job market, trucking can provide an opportunity for safety, welcome isolation, and a chance to be themselves--even as the low-wage work is fraught with tightening regulations, constant surveillance, danger, and exploitation. The narratives of minority and queer truckers underscore the working-class struggle to earn a living while preserving one's safety, dignity, and selfhood. 

     Through the voices of drivers who spend eleven- to fourteen-hour days hauling America's commodities in treacherous weather and across mountain passes, Semi Queer allows truckers from marginalized communities to speak for themselves, revealing stark differences between the trucking industry's crushing labor practices and the perseverance of its most at-risk workers.

The Gift

“Life does not consist only of what you have. The bigger part of life is what you can give.” Hollis Donald, “In the Presence of a Gift”

IUN poet laureate Hollis Donald’s forte is inspirational messages indicating that life is precious, often written on the occasion of somebody he admires retiring – or dying, often too young. “In the Presence of a Gift” begins:

On your left and on your right is mercy and compassion,

Straight ahead is a door, depending on your desire, you can open it.

See through the eyes of a child;

Get out of the wilderness and wear your best smile.

All around you is daylight and sunshine

Reach out and take your share

You are standing in the presence of a gift.

Barbara Walczak’s Newsletter mentioned our upcoming IUN oral history project involving bridge players, to wit:

The papers will become a part of the IU Northwest Calumet Regional Archives highlighting bridge in the Calumet Region.  Students will be encouraged to come to their subject’s games and get a better sense of the game of bridge.  What a wonderful opportunity to share our joy of the game!  Thanks to Dr. James Lane for spearheading this unique plan to involve university students in bridge.

 Billy Foster

Visiting the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA) was jazz pianist Billy Foster, a local legend who taught for many years in the Gary schools as well as Valparaiso University and IUN.  He hosts a local radio program and performs with the Billy Foster Trio and with wife Renee Miles-Foster.  He recently donated materials that will comprise CRA 482, the Billy Foster Collection.  He is a kidney cancer survivor, and the University of Chicago Medical Center featured him in a TV commercial entitled, “Metastatic kidney cancer trial keeps jazz pianist playing on.”

A Munster Center for the Visual and Performing Arts brochure listed the Art in Focus 2017-2018 season of lectures and films.  They include “Duneland Dynamics” by Ken Schoon and Maestro Kirk Muspratt on “The Mikado.”  Here’s how Director of Education Jillian Van Volkenburgh summarized my appearance on October 23:

Join James Lane, Emeritus Professor of History at Indiana University Northwest, co-director of the Calumet Regional Archives and editor of Steel Shavings magazine for a lecture on the sights and sounds of late 50s pop culture. He will also be spinning hits by Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Special guests TBA.

Regarding my special guests, I’m hoping son Dave and Henry Farag’s group Stormy Weather will each do a song or two. Dave already knows Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day” and “Wake Up, Little Susie” by the Everly Brothers.

 scene from Dunkirk

I saw Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk on IMAX after Rolling Stone called it the movie of the year.  I’m glad I did – it’s a spellbinding and realistic dramatization of survival set in 1940, as British troops desperately try to survive Nazi air attacks during one of the largest evacuations in history. More than 300,000 servicemen were rescued over a nine-day period, mainly by a flotilla of 700 civilian boats thrown into service because of the difficulty in larger ships reaching the beaches.   The movie concludes with a survivor reading an account of Winston Churchill’s June 4 speech in Parliament:

  [We] shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

.

Reviewer Christopher Orr wrote in “The Atlantic”:

  Nolan’s three stories take place on land, on sea, and in the air, and although they are intercut with surgical precision, they take place over three separate but overlapping spans of time. Over the course of a week, a young British soldier (Fionn Whitehead) makes his way to the beach at Dunkirk, there to wait with the masses of his fellows for a rescue that may or may not arrive. Over the course of a day, a British civilian (Mark Rylance) and two teenagers pilot his small wooden yacht across the Channel to save whomever they can. And over the course of an hour, an RAF Spitfire pilot (Tom Hardy) tussles with the Luftwaffe in the skies, trying to protect the men below. Occasionally these narratives intersect, but more often they merely offer alternative vantages, a Rashomon in which the separate tales are intended to enrich rather than confound one another.

 Phil Chase (left) and Seyfrieds

At Edmonds and Evans Funeral Home in Chesterton the body of Phil Chase lay in an open casket, looking so realistic as to almost be eerie.  Present were condo neighbors Janice Custer and Ken and Loretta Carlson.  In addition to photos and floral displays, I noticed a Cubs jersey with the number 50 on the back.  I couldn’t recall any Cub players who wore that number, but Dave came up with Les Lancaster, who won 34 games for the Cubbies during a five-year stint beginning in 1987.  It’s possible someone gave it to Phil on his fiftieth birthday seven years ago or that Phil once played on a softball team with that nickname.  On the Edmonds and Evans Tribute Wall website, Nancy Seyfried posted a photo and these words: “I will miss your smiling face and enthusiasm you shared about your life.  A truly beautiful man both inside and out.  RIP Phil.”

I stopped by Hunter’s Brewery hoping to buy a six-pack of pale ale, but the only available carry-outs were 32-ounce or 64-ounce growlers, with the containers themselves costing six bucks.  Thus, a 64-ounce growler, including tax, was nearly $25.  I settled for a 16-ounce draft of Meridian IPA (Meridian is the name of a street nearby), which I drank at the bar.  Hunter’s produces a farmhouse ale called Steel Town Girl.  John English told me that the owner started making beer as a hobby and still works at the mill to keep his benefits.  As I was leaving a guitar player named Rufus was setting up to perform and displaying record albums – actual LPs.  Wish I could remember his first name or had time to hear him perform. 

 Miranda (right) selfie with Kathy, Sean, and Jimbo

An hour later Toni arrived home with Joy Wok carry-out accompanied by Miranda, Jean, and their friend Kathy, en route next day to Lollapalooza, featuring The Head and the Heart, the XX, Alt-J, Chance the Rapper, and others.  It was good to have Toni home after seven days, during which time she helped Alissa and Josh move.  We called Dave to wish him a Happy Birthday number 48.

Dave with James and Becca (photo by Angela Lane)

At the Community Bridge Club game Saturday, I met Martha Harris, who worked with Ruth Taylor in IUN’s Education Division 40 years ago and for Charlotte Reed in IUN’s Urban Teacher program during the 1990s when Dave was in that program.  She also knew Dave because of work she did with the East Chicago school system.  She agreed to be a volunteer in the IUN bridge oral history project, as did director Alan Yngve with this caveat:

I need you to hook me up with students with special interests.  A student interested in business or entrepreneurial topics would be good.  Also, I have played bridge in many countries in the world, including three years in the tense middle east during the Arab spring, perhaps of interest to a student of political science, government, international relations, or intercultural topics?

Can do.

I donated a dozen Steel Shavings magazines for “A Celebration of Gary’s History: Its People, Organizations, and Churches,” to distribute at a Gary Historical and Cultural Society event at the Gary Land Company building.  Organized by Naomi Millender and held on a day when a Gary Walking Tour was taking place, it featured a traditional dress fashion show and entertainment.  At an IU Northwest table was James Wallace, Director of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Multicultural Affairs. When I arrived, a woman on stage was teaching several the wobble dance to IUN’s Patricia Hicks, Gary Council member Rebecca Wyatt, and others.  Sitting at the IUN booth eating a burrito, I followed along with hand motions.  Samuel A. Love and Raymar Brunson were photographing the event.

photos by Raymar Brunson; below, Jimbo, Fred Hiller, Samuel A. Love

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Fred Hiller, excited to receive a copy of Steel Shavings, showed me had a 1928 Post-Tribune clipping about an uncle whose stab wound had been treated at St. Antonio’s Hospital.  He couldn’t find any information about St. Antonio’s and asked if I had ever heard of it. Voila!  I told him it was founded by Italian-born Antonio Giorgi at a time when African American patients were barred from Gary’s two main hospitals, Mercy and Methodist.  People of all races were welcome at St. Antonio’s.  In “Gary’s First Hundred Years,” in a section called “Poor People’s Physician,” I wrote:

  In 1915 Dr. Giorgi built a three-story brick clinic in the 1800 block of Jefferson christened St. Antonio’s after his patron saint.  From the outside, it resembled a boardinghouse with bright potted plants along the front railing.  On a screen porch, convalescents lounged, gossiped, played cards or read.  Inside, multicolored curtains were used as partitions, and ethnic dishes were served to those patients whose constitutions would permit such a diet.

  A resident later described Dr. Giorgi as a serious, dedicated man who never undertook an operation he could not handle. He was especially adept at appendectomies, Caesarian deliveries, and stitching up victims of barroom brawls and industrial accidents who arrived at the makeshift emergency room at all hours of the day and night.

  Once a 325-pound saloonkeeper known for his sadistic ways checked into St. Antonio’s with knife wounds.  Somebody murdered him during the night.  Dr. Giorgi’s attorney recalled that the horrified doctor feared he’d be held responsible, but the police told him: “Somebody should have killed the s.o.b. a long time ago.” There was no investigation.

Blues Project members

Vintage Postcard

At a “Rock the House” block party near Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso, Franklin Middle School kids in Blues Project were performing.  Eleven years ago, U.S. history teacher Scott Cvelbar made the Mississippi Delta blues a component of his course and started teaching students to play Blues classics.  The kids really got into it, reminding me of when I saw House of Rock students from San Jose, California, performed a set of Cracker songs at Pappy and Harriet’s during Cracker Campout. 

Next up at “Rock the House”: a cool group called Vintage Postcard that played popular songs in a jazzy style.  I was sitting by the curb when a couple invited me to use an empty chair next to them.  They were the parents of the lead singer.  After Vintage Postcard did an upbeat version of “Stacy’s Mom,” I mentioned the risqué Fountains of Wayne YouTube video.  When the mother said she’d get her granddaughter to access it, I warned that it might be a bad idea.  I had hoped to see Liz Wuerffel’s Pop-Up Art Exhibit on display at the Porter County Museum next door to Memorial Opera House, but high winds had blown it down the night before.

POCO Pop-Up Art Exhibit; photo byAllison Schuette