Veterans Day

“In war there are no unwounded soldiers.” José Narosky 

Veterans Day panel, photo by James Wallace; checking out MREs, Post-Trib photo by Hannah Reed

Veterans Day activities at Indiana University Northwest included demonstrations of military equipment, MRE (meals ready to eat) tasting, and a symposium moderated by NWI Times correspondent Joseph Pete, who served in Iraq.  Panelists included student Dan Riordan, a former marine and Iraq war veteran, IUN alumnus Dee Dotson, whose son is in the army reserves and “deployable,” and Business professor Charlie Hobson, who served tours both in the 70s and 80s and was quoted as saying, “I don’t like to take orders from morons.”  Riordon noted that “the family serves along with soldiers.”

above, veteran Dave Seibold; below, Pete Buttigieg

On Veterans Day Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg pledged, if elected, to appoint a woman to head the Department of Veterans Affairs.  He went on to say that his choice will be sensitive to the issue of sexual harassment and guarantee access to mental health care.  The Trump administration’s emphasis has been on referring vets to private physicians who may or may not have experience treating symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd).

Liz Wuerffel posted this Welcome Initiative transcript from an interview with John Metz (above) titled “Defining Moment”:

    At the time that 9/11 kicked off, I was working as a civilian police officer. Like the rest of the country, that impacted me greatly. Just getting my mind wrapped around that, “Wow, we’ve been attacked.” And it hurt. It was a physical pain inside. “Now three thousand people are, are gone.” It was a sobering moment, and I really felt emboldened about doing something. I didn’t know exactly what form that was going to take, but I knew that there was something that I could give. And it happened the way that it happened. I joined the Air Force and became a Ground Combat Specialist and went to Iraq.

    When I realized that I was on the list to go—I had been called up—as you can imagine, there was every form of emotion running through my body. I was married and we had four kids. “What do I do here? I feel this obligation to go. I feel compelled to go.” And my rational brain, my emotional heart, my loving father and husband was saying, “Don’t do anything like that.” But once I got to the Middle East, you’re totally focused on everything that’s in front of you because it’s an enormous task. You’re in a combat environment, you’ve got people and millions of dollars worth of hardware that you’re responsible for, you know? All these things are all coming into play subtly, but yet they’re there. And that was my second time in combat, which was quite a bit different. I was in charge of a thirteen-man crew. And I had a mother tell me, “Bring my boy home safe.” And if that has never occurred or happened to you, that is a defining moment in your life, when a mother tells you that. For me, it was a physical weight. And I even have a physical reaction now—got goosebumps kicking out. I took it seriously, you know? I mean, these are young men. These are husbands, and sons, and fathers. And no, I wasn’t sure of myself; it was the first time I had been in a situation like that. Everybody was fine. I took some damage. I didn’t get out of there unscathed.

    I miss the camaraderie. I miss that—look at that, I’m starting to get goosebumps again. I miss that connection with my guys. No, I don’t miss being shot at. I don’t miss being a hundred and twenty degrees outside. I don’t miss the sand in every part of my body and everything that I own probably still 14 years, 15 years later.  What I miss is looking over at the guy next to me and going, “Well, he’s sucking as bad as I am, and he’s still here, so I can’t leave.” I miss that. I miss knowing that if I was to fall down, there’s going to be twenty hands reaching for me to get back up, ’cause that’s what you do. And that’s why you’re there.

Toni and I hosted bridge after dining at Craft House in Chesterton.  Noticing that I was reading Elizabeth Strout’s “Olive, Again,” Naomi Goodman said she had loved “Olive Kitteridge.”  I told her that the format of “Olive, Again” is similar, as in some chapters Olive makes only a brief, albeit meaningful, appearance.  In “Exiles,” about Jim and Bob Burgess (subject of Strout’s 2013 novel “The Burgess Boys”), she runs into the brothers’ wives, Helen and Margaret, on the main street of Crosby, Maine, where booths displayed paintings, and declares to second husband Jack, “God, have I seen enough of this crap!” This just after Helen, from New York City, has purchased one. Later, drunk, Helen tells Jim, “Look, I bought a piece of crap.” When the brothers learn who put that idea into her head, Bob says, “Olive thinks everything is crap.  That’s just who she is.”

In “The Poet” 82-year-old Olive strikes up a conversation with former student Andrea L’Rieux, now a famous poet back visiting her dying father. Later Olive discovered in her mailbox a copy of a journal that contained these lines from a poem called “Accosted”:

Who taught me math thirty-four years ago

Terrified me and is now terrified herself

Sat before me at the breakfast counter

White whiskered

Told me I had always been lonely

No idea she was speaking of herself

Olive’s first reaction was to toss the magazine in the garbage. Later she realized the profundity of those lines, looked up Andrea’s Facebook page, and wrote: “Saw your new work.  Good for you.”

“Friend,” finds Olive living at Maple Tree Apartments, an assisted living facility, where she befriends Isabelle Daignault, whom Strout featured in her debut novel “Isabelle and Amy” (1998).  They exchange keys, and each morning at 8 Olive checks on Isabelle and vice versa 12 hours later.  Olive worries about going “dopey-dope” and being moved “over the bridge” to the Alzheimer’s ward.

Nelson Algren by David Levine 

A recent New York Review contained essays on new books about Chicago novelist Nelson Algren and his longtime lover, French feminist Simone de Beauvoir, “Never a Lonely So Real” by Colin Asher and “Becoming Beauvoir” by Kate Kirkpatrick.  Like with Elizabeth Stroud, loneliness was a dominant theme in Algren’s literary output as well as his life. Kurt Vonnegut called him “the loneliest man I ever knew.”  Andrew O’Hagan wrote:

  [Algren] never really forgave Simone de Beauvoir for spilling the beans on their sex life in her novel The Mandarins (1954), which is dedicated to him (and provides details of the summer together in his Miller beach cabin).  He was always liable to suffer for the depth and constancy of his identification with the deprived, just as F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered from too much identification with the swells.

On Veterans Day a storm engulfed the Midwest; nearby La Porte County was especially hard hit with lake effect snow, and Chesterton received several inches.  Several outdoor Veterans Day events got cancelled. I made it to Dr. Sikora for a teeth cleaning but opted to forego book club at Gino’s.  Olive Kitteridge only drives in the morning after totaling two cars in a parking lot when she stepped down on the accelerator rather than the brake.

Health-wise, the Electrical Engineers are falling apart.  Former member Bill Batalis is dead and Mel Nelson and Dick Maloney permanently sidelined. Frank Shufran, 87, will miss six weeks due to a knee giving out as he walked the dog, and Ron Smith has been having heart problems.  Terry Kegebein, a regular before moving to Georgia, is back because wife Charlotte needs hospital care. Bridge buddy Don Geidemann, 82, filled in admirably with a 680 series, 200 pins better than any of us regulars.  In the army after college, Don got shipped to Germany combat-ready during the 1961 Berlin Crisis.  While most guys went out drinking on weekend leaves, he and a friend found an alley and went bowling.   

 Emily Post

An article in the Vanity Fair anthology “Women on Women” on Emily Post attracted my attention.  The first edition of her best-seller “Etiquette” appeared in 1922, the year Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt topped the fiction list.  Growing up, I blamed Emily Post for my mother’s admonishments to keep elbows off the table, not to slurp soup, and to respond “How do you do?” when introduced to someone rather than the much more natural, “Pleased to meet you.”  Not the snob that I imagined, Emily Post outlined standards of common-sense behavior for a growing middle class.  Prior to writing about manners, Emily Post produced novels, travel books, and articles on architecture and interior design.  “Etiquette” contained colorful anecdotes featuring such archetypical couples as the Kindharts, the Gildings, the Eminents, the Toploftys, and the Richan Vulgars. One admirer wrote that there were three factors in American civilization: parcel post, the Saturday Evening Post, and Emily Post.

scenes from Chinese University in Hong Kong

Protests in Hong Kong have reached Chinese University, where, a quarter-century ago,  I taught for several weeks.  At bridge I told Terry Bauer, whose daughter works in Hong Kong, that I never encountered students who paid such close attention to my every word.  I speculated that the reason was that due to the language barrier, but Terry countered that Chinese students valued education more than Americans.  Joel Charpentier and I finished third out of 12 couples, our highlight coming when I made 5 Clubs doubled and re-doubled (by Joel).  As Chuck Tomes said, you’ll either have high or low board.  Next day, Chuck joked that my hands were trembling during the play.

Diamond in the Rough

“Gary remains a diamond in the rough.  Some will say ‘very rough.’  That may be, but the best response is to keep polishing that diamond until it sparkles.” Calvin Bellamy

Civic leader Cal Bellamy wrote the NWI Times to take issue with its publicizing an obscure Business Insiderwebsite article written by two people who’ve never set foot in Gary labeling Gary America’s “most miserable” city – more mischief, in all likelihood, from editor Marc Chase, who has turned his dislike of Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson into a vendetta.  Bellamy cited Gary’s advantages of location and infrastructure and impressive recent developments, including Miller’s South Shore expansion and double-track project and IUN’s new Arts and Sciences Building.  He concluded: “Many fine people make their homes there.  Several neighborhoods show impressive vitality.”  Accompanying the column was a photo by John J. Watkins of Ryne Wellman kite surfing at Marquette Park.

Times correspondent Joseph Pete, who addressed me as sir when he phoned for background information about the 1919 steel strike, wrote an impressive feature article about the important and traumatic event in Gary’s past, which split the city along class and racial lines. On my advice Pete consulted “Black Freedom Fighters for Steel” author Ruth Needleman,  who asserted that during the work stoppage almost all of the 3,000 black workers hired during the war refused to break ranks with their comrades, mostly unskilled foreign-born laborers. “US Steel Board Chairman Elbert Gary’s strategy to divide the workforce along racial lines,” Needleman concluded,  “did not work.  Strong inter-racial solidarity built intentionally to avoid the conflicts developing elsewhere [in Eastern mills] prevented trouble.”

 union march down Broadway

Pete obtained four photos from Steve McShane to go with the piece, but the paper neglected to cite the Calumet Regional Archives as the source and instead simply wrote “Provided.”  After 4,000 army troops rounded up and jailed strike leaders branded as “Reds” and forbade public assemblies, skilled workers gradually broke with the rank-and-file, crippling the effort for an 8-hour-day and decent wages and working conditions.  Pete quoted extensively from “The Autobiography of Mother Jones,” written by a participant in the struggle.  She described World War I veterans marching in solidarity with the workers:

  Some 200 soldiers who had come back from Europe where they had fought to make America safe from tyrants, marched.  They were steelworkers.  They had on their faded uniforms and the steel hats which protected them from German bombs.  In the line of march, I saw young fellows with arms gone, with crutches, with deep scars across the face – heroes they were!  Workers in the cheap cotton clothes of the working class fell in behind them.  Silently the thousands walked through the streets and alleys of Gary.  Saying no word.  With no martial music such as sent the boys into the fight with the Kaiser across the water.  Marching in silence.  Disbanding in silence.

  The I saw another parade.  Into Gary marched U.S. soldiers under General Leonard Wood.  They brought their bayonets, their long-range guns, trucks with mounted machine guns, field artillery.  Then came violence.  The soldiers broke up the picket line.  Worse than that, they broke the ideal in the hearts of thousands of foreigners, their ideal of America.  Into the blast furnace along with steel went their dreams that America was a government for the people – the poor, the oppressed.

I interviewed Patrick O’Rourke about his 50—year union career representing teachers in Hammond and at the state and national level.  A born storyteller, O’Rourke had interesting anecdotes about such personages as American Federation of Teachers president Albert Shanker, Bechtel Corporation CEO Riley P. Bechtel, and conservative Indiana governor Mitch Daniel. Appointed to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on Shanker’s recommendation, O’Rourke solicited a significant contribution from Bechtel, the nation’s largest construction and engineering company, and so impressed its executives that they offered him a position in public relations that would have made him a millionaire.  He turned it down since as a lifelong Democrat he foresaw irreconcilable conflicts between his philosophy and theirs.  Appointed to the Indiana Governors Education Roundtable by Democrat Joe E. Kernan, O’Rourke expected to be replaced when Mitch Daniels succeeded him but so impressed the governor-elect with his candor and wit that he was re-appointed.  “Daniels and I disagreed on almost all aspects of public education,” he recalled, but added that they respected one another’s intelligence and integrity. At O’Rourke’s recent retirement celebration, Daniels, now Purdue’s president, honored him, as did Cal Bellamy, Mayor Tom McDermott, AFT president Randi Weingarten, and State Representative Vernon Smith, a close friend.

Several  “Country Music” episodes document the long, remarkable career of “diamond in the rough” Johnny Cash, known as the “Man in Black” whose deep baritone voice embraced rockabilly, blues, gospel, and folk music.  His signature song ”Folsom Prison Blues” inspired Merle Haggard, a prisoner at San Quentin when he witnessed Cash perform it, to change the direction of his life.  Embracing an outlaw image, Cash once explained that his decision to wear black was “for the poor and the beaten down, living in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times.”  Banned from performing at the Grand Old Opry when dependent of pills and booze, Cash cleaned up his life and went on to host a network TV show featuring such controversial guests as Bob Dylan (they performed “Girl from North Country” together) and Pete Seeger (despite threats of censorship).  Seeger sang the antiwar ballad “Osceola’s Last Words” by Floridian Will Mclean, about a Seminole chief imprisoned in a dungeon who declares: “I shall not live among such evil men, who mock the sign of truce, this flag of white.”   Invited by Nixon to perform at the White House in March 1970, Cash refused a Presidential request to sing “Welfare Cadillac” or “Okie from Muskogee” and ended the show with “What Is Truth.”  Here are the final verses:

A little boy of three sittin’ on the floor
Looks up and says, “Daddy, what is war?”
“son, that's when people fight and die”
The little boy of three says “Daddy, why?”
A young man of seventeen in Sunday school
Being taught the golden rule
And by the time another year has gone around
It may be his turn to lay his life down
Can you blame the voice of youth for asking
“What is truth?”

A young man sittin’ on the witness stand
The man with the book says “Raise your hand”
“Repeat after me, I solemnly swear”
The man looked down at his long hair
And although the young man solemnly swore
Nobody seems to hear anymore
And it didn't really matter if the truth was there
It was the cut of his clothes and the length of his hair
And the lonely voice of youth cries
“What is truth?”

The young girl dancing to the latest beat
Has found new ways to move her feet
The young man speaking in the city square
Is trying to tell somebody that he cares
Yeah, the ones that you're calling wild
Are going to be the leaders in a little while
This old world's wakin’ to a new born day
And I solemnly swear that it'll be their way
You better help the voice of youth find
"What is truth?"

At the song’s conclusion, Cash said: “We pray, Mr. President, that you can end this war in Vietnam sooner than you hope or think it can be done, and we hope and pray that our boys will be back home and there will soon be peace in our mountains and valleys.”

The earliest literary reference to “diamond in the rough” is in John Fletcher’s “A Wife for a Month” (1624): “She is very honest and will be as hard to cut as a rough diamond.”  The expression came to mean a good-hearted person of exceptional character somewhat rough around the edges and lacking in refinement. Literally, before diamonds are polished, they lack glitter and sparkle.  In Disney movie Aladdin Jafar addresses the title character in the song “Diamond in the Rough” by declaring that beneath the dirt and patches and under the filth and the fleas, “you’re a diamond in the rough”:

And though you might need finesse,
and perhaps some sniffs disinfecting
You'll be the one who succeeds 

when the lamp of their needs collecting

I met Ron Cohen at an IUN gallery reception for Willie Baronet’s exhibit “This Is Awkward For Me Too,” featuring signs used by homeless victims begging for money, work, or food.  Ron gave me the September 2019 issue of Journal of American History, whose cover features a rally for whistleblower Philip Agee, a former CIA caseworker whose memoir “Inside the Company” (1975) exposed U.S. support for authoritarian Latin American leaders that led to grievous atrocities.  The British government subsequently expelled Agee despite protests from students and Labor Party MPs.  At the gallery I ran into bridge buddy Barb Mort with husband Ascher Yates and Marianita Porterfield, coming from an aquatic exercise class.  Marianita recalled her son J.J. and Phil being in the same class at Marquette School taught by Willa Simmons.

In Fantasy Football I am undefeated since a week one tie with Pittsburgh Dave and in first place a half-game ahead of Phil, whose record is 4-1.  The primary reason is that Carolina running back Christian McCaffrey (above) is having an MVP season.  Last week against Jacksonville he gained 237 yards rushing and receiving and scored 3 TDs. Meanwhile, the overall number one pick, Saquon Barkley has been out since week 3 with a high ankle sprain. Injuries are a crucial factor, so knock on wood that my guys stay healthy.

Embrace the Mess

“The messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.” Daniel J. Boorstin

Joe Madden and Don Ritchie; "c'est du vent" means "it's all hot air"

“Embrace the mess”sounds like a gimmicky motto thought up by Chicago Cubs manager Joe Madden, whose motivational sayings include “Try not to suck”and “Do simple better.” Two articles on pedagogy in the current Oral History Review (OHR)are titled “Embracing the Mess,” one about “Conflict Studies Classrooms” and the other on “Untidy Oral History.”  Both take a postmodernist approach, regard uncertainty of validation as a given, and discuss such concepts as deconstruction, dialogic relationships, indeterminacy, and intersubjectivity. Methinks these scholars created an unnecessary messiness themselves. I’m so grateful for fellow Marylander Don Ritchie’s “Doing Oral History,” which advocates plunging in armed only with a few practical words of advice and leaving the analysis until later.“

I am one of countless oral historians who have benefitted from Alessandro Portelli’s sage insights and example.  In “Biography of an Industrial Town: Terni, Italy, 1831-2014” (2017), now available in English, he distinguishes between memory and imagination and regards his craft as a creative endeavor.  His “symphony” of working-class voices (in the words of OHRcontributor William Burns) weaves a narrative similar to many post-industrial towns and cities. In “They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History” (2011) Portelli wrote:

  I have always admired the way in which people fight back under great odds and survive, especially in the United States, where one is not supposed to be up against impossible odds.  Harlan County [KY] does not display much pursuit of happiness.  But you see there the persistence of life in the face of danger and death.

  The handling of poisonous snakes in church is a test of faith and grace, just as catching them in one’s yard is a test of prowess and courage.  The deathly presence of the snake parallels the daily danger of the mines, and the culture takes a sort of ironic pride in its ability to handle it.  The snake is both something radically other and a household presence.

The most interesting article in the special OHR section on pedagogics, Leyla Neyzi’s “National Education Meets Critical Pedagogy: Teaching Oral History in Turkey,” views oral history as an alternative to “methodologically conservative nationalist history.”Neyzi’s mentor was folklorist and historian Arzu Öztürkmen of Bogazici University, who at the 1998 International Oral History Association (IOHA) conference in Rio de Janeiro presented a splendid paper entitled “The Irresistible Charm of the Interview.”  Phil and I danced with Öztürkmen at the U.S. Consulate’s gala for IOHA members.  I learned that the Turkish belly dance is similar to the Hawaiian hula except for the arm motion. 

Leyla Neyzi and Arzu Ozturkmen

In 2000, thanks in part to Öztürkmen, Bogazici University hosted the IOHA conference.  I was there when grandson James was born. In Istanbul I gave a talk about Inland Steel’s “Red Local” 1010 and the Steelworker’s Fight Back 1977 USWA election. One conference session was on the Armenian genocide during and after World war I resulted in the Turks extermination of approximately a million people.  When governmental officials threatened to prevent it, the IOHA threatened to hold the conference elsewhere.  An overflow audience included many people who were not IOHA members.  Neyzi wrote that this neglected episode in Turkish history illustrates “the silences and contradictions of public history”:

  When mentioned in history textbooks, Armenians tend to be referred to as “traitors” who were “relocated” during wartime for raison d’etat.  The prevalent view is that the (“so-called”) Armenian genocide is a myth Turkey’s internal and external “enemies” fabricated. Given that young people are raised with this public narrative (which masks an “open secret” only discussed in private), what are the implications of introducing the Armenian genocide as a historical event in the classroom, along with the memories of survivors as recorded by oral historians?”  

Neyzi broached this controversial subject in “’Wish They Hadn’t Left’: The Burden of Armenian Memory in Turkey,” a chapter in the 2010 book “Speaking to One Another: Personal Memories of the Past in Armenia and Turkey.”

Regal Beloit’s threat to move its Valpo operations to a plant in Monticello, Indiana, is shameful blackmail. All striking workers demand is a 75-cent hourly wage increase and health insurance not to exceed $15,000 a year. NWI Timescorrespondent Joseph S. Pete wrote: “The bearings manufacturing operation has a long history in Valparaiso and is even older than U.S. Steel's Gary Works. Regal Beloit, a multinational electric motors manufacturer, has only owned the former McGill Manufacturing Co. for five years.” Mayor Jon Costas released this statement:

  This decision would impact approximately 110 union workers and another 50-60 nonunion management positions. As a community, we are disappointed that Regal is considering shutting down this productive facility and urge them to reconsider this unfortunate option. 

Employees agreed to return to work while negotiations continue regarding the dispute and the company’s heartless position.

Anne Balay wrote:

Memories. Ten years ago today, at a faculty meet and greet, James Lane suggested to me that I do oral histories of gay steelworkers. I was telling him about my interest in blue collar queers, and he said this was an interesting and fun opportunity. I was an English professor with no background in ethnography or interviewing. I was an introvert. I never looked back and the people I know now because of that work are the greatest gift anyone could have.

Last October, in Montreal for an OHA conference session Anne Balay organized, I teared up at lunch with one of Anne’s Haverford students, Phil Reid, describing my suggestion that she interview LGBT steelworkers and how her department chair held that against her, preferring that Anne keep churning out largely unread children’s lit articles.

Ray Smock photographed the Milky Way near Spray, Oregon and wrote:

   The Milky Way this time of year dominates the sky from horizon to horizon. We had two nights of crystal-clear sky with stars so bright it was easy to see in total darkness. Spray, Oregon a town of 150 was six miles from our viewing site and blocked by a mountain. No light pollution!  We got lucky in the high desert with beautiful days and star filled nights. We went to a country store where we were the only ones not wearing camouflage. It was opening day for elk hunting for bow hunters.

On the second week of bowling I rolled a 473 (148-152-173) as the Electrical Engineers took two games and series by a mere 12 pins.  In the tenth frame of game three Ron Smith doubled, I struck and spared, setting the stage for 87-year-old Frank Shufran, our clean-up man, who needed to pick up a ten-pin, normally his nemesis, in order for us to prevail.  He nailed it and flashed four fingers, signifying the number of times he had converted it.  On an adjacent alley, 82-year-old Gene Clifford, a former Valpo H.S. bowling coach, rolled a 236 despite missing a couple spares.

Steve and Wanda Trafny

Historian John C. Trafny gave me a copy of his latest Arcadia “Images of America” volume, “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel,” co-authored by his sister Diane F. Trafny.  On the cover is a Calumet Regional Archives photo of a parade float provided by Gary Works passing the Lake Superior Court Building during the 1931 Gary Silver Jubilee celebration.The book includes several photos of the Trafny's parents, Steve, who saw action in the Pacific during World War II, and Wanda, a refugee from Poland.  In the introduction they paint a vivid picture of Gary’s downtown commercial district during its 30-year heyday beginning in the 1920s, which drew shoppers and pleasure seekers from throughout the Calumet Region despite stores being closed on Sundays prior to the 1950s except for gas stations and pharmacies:

 Shoppers were offered a host of stores. Large national chains like Sears, J.C. Penney, Florsheim, and S.S. Kresge Co., and Chicago-based stores like Goldblatt Bros. became popular with blue-collar families, especially those who wanted a good deal on furniture or appliances.  H. Gordon and Sons, which opened on Broadway in the early 1920s, became one of the area’s premier clothing stores.  Others included Pearson, a women’s clothing store, and Henry C. Lytton and Sons, menswear.  Baby boomers may recall Comay’s Jewelers with its record shop, Tom Olesker’s, W.T. Grant, and Robert Hall clothing on East Fifth Avenue.  No matter the store, sales associates asked shoppers, “May I help you?” 

  Along Fifth Avenue visitors could patronize Olsen Cadillac, Baker Chevrolet, and Baruch Olds. Bakeries such as Cake Box and Sno-White provided delicious baked goods. Slicks Laundry, the Blackstone, the Lighthouse, Walts, and Gary Camera were other businesses located along the street. In addition, there were plenty of taverns in the area.They included Parkway, Cozy Corner, Trainor’s, the Spitfire Lounge, the Ingot Inn, and a host of others.  On payday Mondays, the saloons did good business as steelworkers cashed checks there instead of the banks.  It was, after all, a steel town.

Ron Cohen treated Steve McShane and me to lunch at Captain’s House in Miller.  The main order of business was doing whatever necessary to hire Steve’s replacement before he retires in a year.  As Archives co-directors, Ron and I agreed to write Library dean Latrice Booker and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Vicki Roman-Lagunas to urge authorization so a search can commence.   Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy had brought me a copy of the Gary Crusaderthat contained an article about the third edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History.”  Ron told me that the Katie Hall Educational Foundation has been selling them at a brisk pace.

Rolling Stone National Editor Matt Taibbi’s article “Trump 2020: Be Very Afraid” compares the President to a “mad king” whom “most people would not leave alone with a decent wristwatch, let alone their children.”  Here’s a description of him at a rally in Cincinnati: “His hair has visibly yellowed since 2016.  It’s an amazing, unnatural color, like he was electrocuted in French’s mustard.  His neckless physique is likewise a wonder. He looks like he ate Nancy Pelosi.” He scolds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being disrespectful to “Nancy.”  Taibbi writes: 

 Nancy!  The lascivious familiarity with which Trump dropped her name must have stung like a tongue in Pelosi’s ear.  The Speaker, from that moment, was cornered.  A step forward meant welcoming the boils-and-all embrace of Donald Trump. A step back meant bitter intramural surrender and a likely trip to intersectionality re-education camp.

If “race, class, and gender” was once the politically correct historians’ Holy Trinity, “intersectionality” has become its unitarian synthesis. Coined by black feminist scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, it’s the assertion that aspects of political and social discrimination overlap with gender.

 intersectionality

In “Chances Are” novelist Richard Russo introduced memorable minor characters such as closeted American History professor Tom Ford, who gave students the lone final exam question on the first day of class: “What caused the Civil War?” Michael, Sr., Mickey’s father, “like so many workingmen, always carried his money in a roll in his front pocket, no doubt comforted by the weight, the illusion of control you couldn’t get from a flimsy credit card.”A pipe fitter with a heart murmur that he neglected, one day he remained in the restaurant booth when his buddies got up to leave, his heart having beat for the final time.  When I told Gaard Logan that “Chances Are” was named for the 1957 Johnny Mathis song, she recalled that the brother of the African-American crooner (the secret heartthrob to many suburban young women I knew) was rumored to be a toll booth attendant in San Francisco when she moved there. 

Hot Hot Hot

“Me mind is on fire

Me soul is on fire

Feelin hot hot hot”

   “Hot Hot Hot,” Buster Poindexter 

David Johansen in middle

Written and first recorded in 1982 by Arrow (Alphonsus Celestine Edmund Cassell) from the Caribbean island of Monserrat as an upbeat calypso, “Hot Hot Hot” became a hit five years later for David Johansen, formerly with the New York Dolls, under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter. The music video caught on, and “Hot Hot Hot” became a karaoke favorite, with the word hot repeated a total of 137 times.  Toyota commercialized the tune (Toyota’s Hot Hot Hot”),and The Cure recorded a version with lyrics about being struck by lightning.  Jimmy Buffet opens most shows with “Hot Hot Hot,” which has been used in many TV and movie soundtracks, including “The Office” and “The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea” (2000).

I wrote my University of Hawaii master’s thesis on somebody named Poindexter, territorial governor Joseph Boyd Poindexter.  Appointed by FDR, Poindexter helped implement the New Deal in the Hawaiian islands and brought Asian-Americans into leadership roles in Hawaii’s Democratic Party.  Sadly, he is most remembered (and not fondly) for authorizing martial law during World War II, which lasted much longer than islanders thought necessary, even though the governor was ordered to do so by Franklin Roosevelt, leaving him no choice.  Had he refused the President’s direct order, Hawaii faced the prospect of a military takeover and loss of home rule. Nicknamed “Mahope Joe” for his rather plodding, uncharismatic personality, he nonetheless was notorious within Iolani Palace, I found out, for pinching women unfortunate to be behind him in the elevator.

A record heat wave is affecting most of the nation, including Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana.  At 8:30 the temperature was already 86 degrees with high humidity.  Yesterday was even hotter.  Numerous weekend outdoor events got cancelled but not the Porter County Fair. I used to work the IUN booth there in a building that at least had air conditioning.  A friend worked in a fried veggie truck that if still in operation must be insufferable in such weather. Midway through the Cibs game an huge cheer erupted even though nothing had transpired on the field.  The wind had shifted to the north, suddenly dropping the temperature ten to twenty degrees. With the wind blowing out the score had reached 6-5, Cubs, in the fifth.  No runs scored after that.

I’ve received several notices about my sixtieth high school reunion, scheduled for October 2020. Those less sentimental or still harboring traumatic memories from their teen years generally don’t come.  I’ve attended every one since my twentieth, enjoy the surprises they always provide, and retain vivid memories from each.  In 1980 I shared a smoke in the parking lot with Gaard and Chuck Logan and was surprised some people hardly recognized me because I’d grown a good six inches since high school; in 1990 Susan McGrath asked me to dance to “Proud Mary” by Ike and Tina Turner; in 1995 I got Wayne Wylie (who never dances, wife Fran warned) to boogie with me to the Ramones’ “I Wanna be Sedated.” Favorite math teacher Ed Taddei came to the fortieth, sexy Miss Polsky and Mr. Beck to the 45^th, and several first-timers to the fiftieth, including childhood pal Jay Bumm and Homecoming Queen Wendy Henry wearing, unbelievably, a tiara.  In 2015 traded baseball memories with old pal Eddie Piszak; classmate Fred Scott played hits from 1960, including “The Twist” by Chubby Checker, “Go Jimmy Go” by Jimmy Clanton, and “Save the Last Dance For Me” by the Drifters. Although I need the help of name tags for a few classmates, most I recognize almost immediately. One year, however I mistook Carolyn Aubel, who only attended Upper Dublin (U.D.) her senior year, for Carolyn Ott and blurted out that I’d had a crush on her in junior high.  Now I’m more careful.

In John Updike’s “Lunch Hour” first published in the New Yorker, David Kern attends his forty-fifth reunion in a small Pennsylvania community not unlike my home town of Fort Washington, PA, whose “underpopulated terrain,”Updike wrote, was now “filled with shopping centers, car lots, aluminum diners, and fast-food franchises.”The only such franchise I recall near us was a Dairy Queen (we called it a frozen custard stand) where Judy Jenkins and Alice Ottinger worked one summer.  Updike describes reunion attendees being greeted by displays of “photos from the happy days – duck tails, bobby sox, the smoke-filled luncheonette.”David observes that youthful personality traits were poor predictors of adult achievement:

 It was the comically tongue-tied yokel, invisible in class, who moved to Maryland and founded an empire of plant nurseries and parked a silver Jaguar in the lot of the reunion restaurant.  It was the forlorn, scorned daughter of a divorced mother – a monstrous thing in those days – who had become a glamorous merchandising executive out in Chicago.  The class cut-ups had become schoolteachers and policemen, solemn and ponderous with the responsibility of maintaining local order.   The prize for newest father – his bouncy fourth wife in a low-cut satin minidress, indistinguishable from his third, five years ago – went to a boy who had never, as far as anyone could recall, attended a dance or gone out on a date. The class wallflowers, an almost invisible backdrop of colorless femininity against which the star females had done their cheers and flaunted their charms, had acquired graceful manners and a pert suburban poise, while the queens of the class had succumbed to a lopsided overdevelopment of the qualities – bustiness, peppiness, recklessness, a cunning chiseled hardness – that had made them spectacular.

Updike’s last line is not true of U.D. stars Suzi Hummel, Susan Floyd, Judy Gradin, and Marianne Tambourino, all of whom aged gracefully.  Like David, I had grown up in a rural suburb where I was quite popular, moved away for a time, then returned to Upper Dublin school with former classmates.  We both felt insecure and initially didn’t fit into any one group until befriended by a girl, in David’s case Julia, in mine Mary Delp.  Mary taking a liking to me did wonders for my self-image. We first bonded her a school bus one afternoon when I was visiting Eddie Piszak; in David and Julia’s case, it was during their 55-minute lunch breaks when they jumped in a car with two others, drove around, and ended up at a burger joint. It was a time in our lives when, to paraphrase Updike, we were on the edge of those possibilities approaching to shape and limit our lives.

 Mary in 2015

Like Upper Dublin, David’s old school, “with its waxed oak hallways and wealth of hidden asbestos, had been razed” and at his next reunion “the door prizes had been yellow bricks salvaged from the rubble.”  In my case, it was an offer to tour the new facility, which I declined.  I preferred to remember the old junior-senior high building.  Shortly after graduating, Chuck Bahmueller, Vince Curll, and I, after consuming a few beers, paid a visit to “Old U.D.”  Stopping to see guidance counselor Mr. Dulfer, always good for a hall pass or excuse slip in a pinch, tactfully passed out mints after getting a whiff of us.  Dulfer’s advice to college-bound seniors never wavered: consider Muhlenberg College, his alma mater.  “Hot Hot Hot” French teacher Renee Polsky greeted us warmly and called me Jacques, which always got a rise out of me. Favorite teacher H.M. Jones was gone, however, summarily dismissed for indecent behavior toward a male student.

Jeanette Strong at Fair Housing rally

Archivist Steve McShane sent a researcher some photos of a Gary civil rights march that took place on September 9, 1963 organized by the Combined Citizens Committee on Open Occupancy (CCCOOO) to protest ghettoized housing conditions and rally support for an open housing ordinance. Thousands assembled at 25th and Broadway behind a coffin emblazoned with the words “Segregated Housing.”  Carrying banners and singing “We Shall Overcome,” the crowd paraded down Broadway to City Hall for a rousing rally.  

above, Gary Works in 1908; below, Allison Schuette

Allison Schuette has written numerous poems inspired by photos from Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History.” Accompanying “The Lakefront Changed from Sand to Steel” is a panoramic view of Gary Works, circa 1908, from the Calumet Regional Archives US Steel digital collection that one can access online.  Schuette wrote: 

Paul says as a younger man he believed racism would hold Gary 

back only a short while: close to Chicago, lots of infrastructure, 

national lakeshore. Liz and I drive up Indiana 49, 

exit on US 12, and drive west to Beverly Shores to avoid 

parking fees. At Kemil Beach, the shoreline sprawls northeast to Michigan, 

southwest to Burns Harbor then Gary: sand to steel. Industrialists

that first decade of the 20^thcentury hired men to dig 

into the dunes and drain the swamps. What did it feel like to jump in the 

lake at the end of a grimy day? How large did the labor leave one? 

What stature did one single worker inherit from the scope of the 

industrial imagination? Or did the lake have the power 

to minimize the enterprise, goading the entrepreneur to put in place

a black and white (and brown) world that Paul would have to witness far 

longer than he ever thought possible?

Al explained the concluding lines in this manner: “I was intending it to mean that the owners and management were creating and relying on segregation to keep workers opposed to seeing common cause. I also wanted to play on the concept of ‘black and white thinking’ and oversimplification in order to control outsized forces.”

 Kevin and Tina Horn

Juanita Mitchell

Tina Horn successfully pulled off a surprise fiftieth birthday party for hubby Kevin at AJ’s Pizza by pretending it was somebody else’s celebration.  “You got me,” Kevin admitted.  He’s a huge White Sox fan and a couple weeks earlier g Sox as his present.  As we were singing “Happy Birthday,” a Sox player hit a home run that was on the screen behind him, which Kevin didn’t fail to notice.  I talked Region politics with former newsman Robert Blaszkiewicz, who worked for the NWI Times and Chicago Tribune before landing a public-relation position with Franciscan Health.  He turned me on to an article in the Tribune about 107-year-old Juanita Mitchell, who remembered the 1919 Chicago Race Riot, which started when a black kid on a raft drifted close to the white beach, was struck by a rock, and drowned.  Juanita told the Tribune: “My uncle pulled out the biggest gun I’ve ever seen and stood at the window, and I heard him say ‘Here they come,’”Mitchell explained, “It meant the white folks was coming up 35th Street and that the riot was going to begin.”We both lamented the decline in quality of the Times’Sunday Forumsection since editor Doug Ross was bought out.  We agreed thatTimes reporter Joseph Pete is top notch.  Whenever he calls for information about a story, he calls me sir.  He’s that way with everyone, even me, Robert told me, a carryover from the military.Pete’s wife Meredith is an ace reporter for the Post-Tribune.

Meredith and Joseph Pete

 photos by Joseph Pete

For the past three weeks on the way to and from Banta Center for bridge I’ve passed striking machinists picketing the Regal Beloit plant in Valpo.  When I first waved, someone held up a sign asking me to honk if supportive, so that’s what I’ve been doing.  International Association of Machinists Local 2016 Business Representative David Gault, representing the 130 striking employees, told Joseph Pete that health insurance increases over the life of the past two contracts have eaten up workers’ wages.  Regal, which produces aerospace bearings, including parts for military helicopters, has been stonewalling rather than bargaining in good faith.