Searching for Sugarman

“Woke up this morning with an ache in my head

Splashed on my clothes as I spilled out of bed
Opened the window to listen to the news
But all I heard was the Establishment's Blues”

  Sixto Rodriguez 

One highlight of the Julian Samora Research Institute thirtieth anniversary conference at Michigan State was the film “Searching for Sugarman” (2012), about an obscure Detroit folksinger, Sixto Rodriguez, who bounced around various small venues such as the Sewer Bar and Lounge.   He recorded a Dylanesque single titled “I’ll Slip Away” (“You can keep your symbols of success, then I’ll pursue my own happiness”)  and two subsequent albums. “Cold Fact” (1970) and “Coming from Reality” (1971) before being dropped by his label.  An Australian company, Blue Goose Music, acquired the rights to release a compilation album that enjoyed modest success in that country, and pirated copies made their way to South Africa.  By the 1990s, unbeknownst to Rodriguez, his music was reaching a huge anti-apartheid fan base, including activist Steve Biko. Because virtually nothing was known about the “Mexican Bob Dylan,” nicknamed “Sugarman,” bizarre rumors circulated, such as that he had shot himself at the conclusion of a poorly received performance. Meanwhile, at a government auction Rodriguez had purchased for $50 a dilapidated house (where he still resides), earned a degree in Philosophy at Wayne State, and began working heavy labor for a demolition company.  An enterprising reporter finally tracked him down after one of Rodriguez’s daughters came across an internet post.  In 1998 he made a triumphant South African tour, playing before thousands of adoring South Africans.  Here are two verses of “Establishment Blues”:

Garbage ain't collected, women ain't protected
Politicians using people, they've been abusing
The mafia's getting bigger, like pollution in the river
And you tell me that this is where it's at

. . . .

Gun sales are soaring, housewives find life boring
Divorce the only answer smoking causes cancer
This system's gonna fall soon, to an angry young tune
And that's a concrete cold fact

After the critical success of “Waiting for Sugarman,” Rodriguez appeared on Dave Letterman, performing Crucify Your Mind” that contains these lyrics:

Were you tortured by your own thirst
In those pleasures that you seek
That made you Tom the curious
That makes you James the weak?

Having driven 160 miles through rain and snow flurries to the East Lansing Marriott at Michigan State, the conference site, I found my seventh-floor room to have a splendid view of the autumn foliage. Though I registered midway through the plenary luncheon, an accommodating waitress brought me the chicken entrée and fresh rolls.  Keynote speaker Suzanne Oboler repeatedly used the trendy word Latinx (pronounced in three syllables), which I refuse to adapt, in a speech about transforming American democracy but, on a positive note, employed the clever Mark Twain line about history not repeating itself but often rhyming.  After sitting through three power point, statistic-driven talks on demographic shifts, it was refreshing to hear Communication professor Diana Rios critique the HBO “Westworld” series depiction of futuristic Mexican bandits.  It reminded me of protests a half-century ago to the Frito Bandito.  I noted that Mexicans regard outlaws such as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata among their greatest heroes. For that reason perhaps, Rios’s indictment of “Westworld” was rather mild.

Thursday’s final event was the viewing of “Searching for Sugarman,” which contained many songs by Rodriguez, someone previously unknown to me.  Born in 1942, the sixth son to Mexican immigrants (hence the name Sixto), Rodriguez were amazed upon arriving in Capetown at being met by a limo and a flock of reporters. At his first concert shows ecstatic fans were weeping, igniting lighters and candles, and singing along to lyrics familiar to them.  Rodriguez was in excellent voice, backed by the South African band Big Sky.  I was relaxing afterwards at the hotel’s Bistro Bar when an MSU grad named Tony, back with three friends for a weekend of bar-hopping, struck up a conversation.  He seemed genuinely interested in why I was in town.  We got to talking about music, and I learned that many East Lansing bars feature live bands.  After receiving a degree in Criminal Justice, he was working as a court officer in Boston with duties similar to bailiffs in Indiana.   

Maria becomes U.S. citizen, 1978

Arriving early  for my Friday session, “Globalization, Migration, and Democracy,” I found Marriott’s Capitol Room to be dark and empty, but within minutes the room filled up.  My account of Maria Arredondo’s three journeys from Mexico seemed to have the audience’s full attention, with several Mexican-Americans nodding in agreement at my account of all that Maria Arredondo endured. Here are my concluding three paragraphs:

    Though unique, Maria’s life exemplifies the resilience strangers in a new land needed to confront successfully life’s vicissitudes. Indeed, she represents women in all stations and situations in life who have provided the determination, courage, and persistence needed to hold their families together. Maria emerged strong as the steel forged in the mills that provided employment for Miguel and several of their children.  Demanding but devoted, she nurtured a large brood on the tenets of hard work and discipline.  They spoke Spanish at home (at Maria’s insistence, though she learned English better than she let on) and pulled their weight once out of school or even before.  Her children’s remarkable accomplishments included athletic achievement, high union and political office, business success, and academic distinction.  Whenever any left town, they’d solicit Maria’s blessing for a safe trip.  Ramon recalled, “We’d kneel before my mom and she’d say some prayers and bless us.” The second youngest, Ramon was a keen observer of family dynamics, as was wife Trisha, welcomed without reservation into the family circle.  With rare candor, they have recorded for posterity the life journey of an unflappable Mexican American.

    In the Afterword to “Maria’s Journey” Ramon and Trisha Arredondo wrote: “At the age of 70 Maria became a naturalized citizen, and at the age of 83 she received Indiana’s highest award, the Sagamore of the Wabash.  To the end of Maria’s days, her home on the Harbor’s Euclid Avenue remained the gathering place for holiday get-togethers and Saturday lunches.  No matter how far her children strayed to pursue their education or careers, they returned home whenever possible.  Her “boys” remained the center of her universe, and she continued to cater to them, somehow managing to convey that each was her favorite.”

    Finally, I’d like to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Julian Samora whose 1967 book about East Chicago, Indiana, Mexican-Americans in a Midwest Metropolis (with Richard Lamanna) was the starting point for my journey into learning about this subject and proclaimed that family was the bulwark of Mexican tradition.  Maria would have agreed.

trailblazer Martha Bernal 

Following my presentation Kee Warner Carrillo on global communities (he first heard Credence Clearwater Revival in Mexico and is a huge Los Lobos fan) and psychologist Roberto Velasquez on mentors whose pioneering studies in acculturated stress influenced his intellectual growth.  He cited Martha Bernal, the first Latina to receive a PhD in Psychology in America (at Indiana University in 1962), whose clinical research revealed that schools frequently used culturally biased intelligence and aptitude tests that disparaged Spanish-speaking students and discouraged them from pursuing an academic curriculum.

 Jaime Sanchez

Consul Saiffe addressing conference participants; Jimbo, back, left, in vest, next to Mu Garcia

At lunch Fernanda Gonzalez Saiffe from the Mexican Consulate in Detroit spoke on misconceptions about Mexico and ties binding the two neighbors.  Seated next to me, Margarito (Mu) Garcia said he enjoyed my talk and that he taught briefly in IUN’s bilingual program and remains friends with John Attinasi.  Jaime Sanchez from Princeton was presented with the graduate student paper award for an analysis of Latinos and the 1988 Chicago mayoral election.  Attending his afternoon talk, I learned that garment workers union leader Rudy Lozano led a multi-racial coalition that supported African-American Harold Washington in the Democratic primary against incumbent Jane Byrne and Richard M. Daley, son of the five-time mayor and last of the big city bosses. While Washington received only 19% of the Latino primary vote (I stayed up most of the night until Washington was declared the winner), he received close to 70% of the Latino vote in the general election.

 Joe Campos Torres

Following Sanchez were Arturo Vega (who explained that while Latinos have triumphed politically in San Antonio, Texas, for many years, like in Gary Indiana, it hasn’t led to economic prosperity for constituents) and Texas Southern law professor Lupe Salinas (who discussed the flawed administration of justice toward Latinos in Texas).  Salinas, an affable lunch companion, cited the case of Houston police officers who murdered Joe Campos Torres.  A Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD, Torres was brutally beaten after being arrested for disorderly conduct, then thrown in a creek wearing heavy combat boots.  Beforehand, one of his tormentors allegedly said, “Let’s see if the wetback can swim.”  Two days later the body was discovered floating in the creek. The arresting officers were charged with murder, but an all-white jury found them guilty only of negligent homicide.  They received no jail time, only one year of probation and a dollar fine.

OHA mainstay Juan Coronado, who had persuaded me to participate in the Julian Samora conference, gave a fascinating presentation titled “Envidia: Beyond the Latina/o Crab Mentality.” The concept of resentment toward someone successful stems from the tale of a fisherman with a bucket of crabs unconcerned about any escaping because as one neared the top, others would pull the crab back down.  Mexican-American merchants Juan interviewed often cited envidia as an obstacle within their community.  Other presenters being no-shows, there was ample time for the feedback Coronado sought prior to publishing his findings. Providing input were Mu Garcia and young Aaron Arredondo, no relation to Maria so far as he knew. Amplifying on Juan’s colonial analysis, I noted  that suspicion of those collaborating with colonial or capitalist oppressors is often justified. Ethnic solidarity seems strongest during the first generation when essential for survival. George Krstovich recalled his father Jovo, a pioneer Serbian grocer in Gary, being infuriated when customers who’d been extended credit during the Depression shopped elsewhere afterwards and then wanted refunds on bottles purchased at chain stores.

 above, Guillermo Martinez; below, Richard Cruz Davilla

Because Juan Coronado’s session ended early, I attended one on Texas-Mexican music in time to hear guitar-playing Guillermo Martinez sing the haunting farmworker lament “Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun,” originally recorded by Daniel Valdez.  Martinez added verses pertaining to Michigan migrant experiences.  Moderator Richard Cruz Davilla, who recently published a book on Chicano punk bands such as The Brat, later presented the Michigan Heritage Award to the family of Tejano music pioneer Martin H. Solis, Jr., who performed with Conjunto Los Primos for over 25 years, bringing Texas-Mexican music to the Wolverine State. Solis passed away just two months ago at age 90.  Also on the agenda were several poets including Guillermo Martinez sans guitar.  His composition described Michigan migrant experiences, including witnessing his father hanging from a tree branch after a ladder collapsed under him. Martinez works with a Michigan summer migrant education program and plays accordion in the Karizma Band.

Martin H. Solis, Jr. and Conjunto Primos Band 

Tejano Sound Band performed a rousing blend of tradition Mexican numbers and rock and roll, with the country classic “Tennessee Whiskey” (“You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, you’re as sweet a strawberry wine”) thrown in for good measure.  An elderly couple at the Martin Solis family table danced impeccably – I couldn’t take my eyes off them.  I conversed with Lebaanese-American Nabih Haddad, formerly with the Julian Samora Research Institute (JSRI) and now at the University of Michigan. At Juan Coronado’s urging I joined him on the dance floor for an upbeat number and intermingled with Latina grad students.  What a perfect climax to a memorable two days.

Tejano Sound Band vocalists; below, Jimbo and Nabih Haddad, Mu Garcia in background

At Saturday’s farewell continental breakfast I chatted with historian Julie Leininger Pycior, author of books on Chicanos in South Bend and LBJ and Mexican-Americans, who knew of Ed Escobar and my “Forging a Community.”  Delivering the closing plenary address, “Transcending the Walls of Hate” was Baldemar Velasquez, founder of FLOC (Farm Labor Organizing Committee) and leader of a successful 1980s boycott against Campbell Soup Company.  

Baldemar Velasquez

Julie Leininger Pycior

Back in Indiana in time to catch the second half of the IUN Lady Redhawks Homecoming contest against Kentucky Christian.  Standing by the home bleachers were Chancellor Bill Lowe and former longtime Redhawk announcer Chuck Gallmeier.  “You’re all dressed up,” Lowe exclaimed, so explained where I’d been. The game was close until the final minutes, when the freshman-dominated Redhawks pulled away, sparked by the floor play of guard Da’Lesha Davis, timely rebounds from Michaela Schmidt and Ashley O’Malley, and graceful drives to the basket by 6’4”” Breanna Boles, an Indiana State transfer from tiny Hoosier town of Lapel. I was impressed with the large crowd, in contrast to past years, with more streaming in for the men’s game.

Toni and Becca

Dave and T. Wade

With Toni, Angie, and Becca on a college visit to Nashville and Dave with Tom Wade in Bloomington for an IU gridiron win against Northwestern to clinch a rare bowl bid, grandfatherly duties awaited. I picked up grandson James at VU and took him to Liam’s overnight party attended by friends from bowling and Portage H.S. Thespian Club.  Picking him up the next morning, I noticed that girls had slept over and told him of being impressed that parents were cool with such arrangement.  Well, not all, he replied.  Some kids were ordered to come home.  The scene reminded me of a high school party at Bob Elliott’s where the father of an eleventh-grader stormed in to rescue his daughter Fern from the presumed den of iniquity.

Oral History Conference

  “A’a i ka hula, waiho i ka maka’u i ka hale”  (Dare to dance, leave shame at home). Hawaiian proverb

 Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette on hike near Salt Lake City, Utah

Utah bound, I was up at 3 a.m. to catch a 7:45 flight to Salt Lake City for the 53rd annual Oral History Association (OHA) conference.  At the Welcome reception Diné (Navaho) women demonstrated how to make fry bread, a symbol of hope and survival, as tribes pushed west often were given only lard and wheat during the journey.  I chatted with old friends from past conferences Kristine McCuster, Ruth Hill, Alphine Jefferson, and Don Ritchie, the latter a fellow Sam Merrill student at Maryland who is presently completing a book on outspoken American columnist Drew Pearson.  When I mentioned that Seinfeld co-creator Larry David graduated in 1970 with a major in History, the year I received my PhD, Ritchie said that the department contacted him and discovered that he often cut classes and only recalled one professor Keith Olson. At a lunch with Larry David, Olson admitted he didn’t own a TV and knew nothing about Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm.  One of my favorite professors, Olson put together a special seminar to prepare grad students like myself for our comprehensive American history exam.

The Sheraton’s only breakfast choices being an over-priced Starbucks or room service, I spotted a MacDonald’s a block away and ordered an egg McMuffin meal with o.j. and milk after making myself admittedly good Starbucks coffee in my room.  A young man on a cellphone nearby appeared to be explaining that he needed $38 for epilepsy medicine before his young son could board a plane for get medical attention.  As he started to leave, a man gave him the money.  In all likelihood, it was a scam, but, if so, the guy was a great actor.

I went to a session to hear Kate Scott, a former protégé of Dan Ritchie at the Senate Historical Office, who offered common sense advice on setting aside one’s political beliefs and getting subjects to open up.  Also on the program was Pitt professor Kathleen Blee, who had interviewed white supremacists but worried about giving them a platform for their hateful beliefs.  She belonged to the Tree of Life synagogue where a neo-Nazi massacred 11 people, one of whom was Kathleen’s friend.  I met three women from UNLV, who contributed oral histories to a book about a Healing Garden dedicated to the concertgoers gunned down in seconds two years ago from a hotel room.  Barbara Tabach used the word Latinx, gender-neutral academic jargon for Latinos and Latinas that I refuse to adopt.  I also learned that Mormons prefer the term Latter Day Saints.

Tanya Pearson

Juan Coronado, whom I met last year in Montreal, took part in a plenary session titled “Potholes in the Path” about oral historians’ mishaps. I could have added a few of my own.  At a session entitled “Rock and Roll Will Never Die,” tattooed Tanya Pearson recounted interviewing “Women of Rock,” including Fifties child star Brenda Lee, Exene Cervenka from the L.A. punk pioneers X, Tanya Donelly from Belly (one of my favorite alternative bands), and Liz Phair, whose image appeared on her arm (also Judy Garland). I asked whether young punk bands admire 70s forerunners such as The Ramones; all panelists emphatically answered in the affirmative.     

Chris Stanley and Valerie Yow

Waiting for the bus to the Presidential reception at The Leonardo, a modernistic museum, I struck up a conversation with Ponaganset (R.I.) High School teacher (and volunteer fireman) Chris Stanley, winner of a teaching award named after an OHA founder, Martha Ross, who was responsible for my getting involved in the organization.  Stanley’s students produced oral history documentaries on clambakes (he described the procedure) and Vietnam vets.  They invited several distinguished authors to visit their class, included Tim O’Brien (“The Things They Carried”); all came, accepting no speakers fee, only air fare. On the ride back to the Sheraton I chatted with OHA veteran Valerie Yow, who interviewed three generations of North Carolina women mill workers and whose primer “Recording Oral History” has gone through several editions.

Our session “Do You Hear Race?: The Ethics of Interweaving Black and White Oral Histories in Audio Documentary” went exceptionally well, despite a fire alarm went off about 30 minutes into it.  We all trooped outside until receiving word that it was just a water leak.  Nearly everyone returned, and several African-Americans familiar with such practices as redlining and block busting had particularly interesting things to say about growing up in neighborhoods similar to Gary’s Central District. Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel wisely passed out typescripts of three audio clips that blended various narrators’ testimony. Here is a sample from the “Neighborhood Chorus”:

  In those days, everyone was Mr. or Mrs. or Grandma This and grandpa That.  They were just neighbors, but we presented ourselves and talked to them with respect. I got to see doctors, dentists, architects in my neighborhood.  So I knew that if I grew up and this is what I wanted to be, I saw an example of it.

  Most of the fathers were steelworkers.  It was very working class; everybody’s parents made about the same amount of money.  Lots of home cooked food.  We didn’t go out that much.  We didn’t have a refrigerator back then.  You had an icebox, and I can remember eating beans three days in a row.

  Five kids, two adults, two-bedroom house, one bathroom.  

  There were four families in my household, so I know what it’s like to sleep seven deep.  Mom and dad slept in the living room on a pull-out couch, my grandparents stayed in one of the bedrooms and the four of us girls stayed in the other bedroom.

  During the summer we got up, ate breakfast, went outside, ran the streets till we were hungry, came home, had lunch, went back out.

  We rode or bike miles away from the neighborhood.  We’d go to the back of the school and play in the dunes and come back with our socks full of sand.

  If my parents weren’t there, the next-door neighbors were like my surrogate parents or my surrogate grandparents.  It was a time when the neighbor’s mother wasn’t shy about telling you if you did something wrong. 

In the "Flight Paths Chorus," one person concluded, “It is easy to pinpoint the reasons for the fall of Gary on a race or a person, and the fact of the matter is, there were many factors, and in 1967 it was a perfect storm.”

Alexis Ching second from left

A wonderful session titled “Voices from Hawaii” took me back to starting married life in the Aloha State.  Chaired by Tamara Halliwell-Verhault from the University of Hawaii, Hilo, it began with all four participants, plus Micah Mizukami from the U. of Hawaii Center for Oral History, performing an Oli or chant, after which Tamara explained the various uses of chants, including when visiting friends and neighbors.  Lynne Wolforth’s fascinating talk on Hawaiian cowboys, “Stories of the Paniolo,” made me think of Chang Apana, the inspiration for fictional detective Charlie Chan.  Apana started out as a paniolo on the Parker Ranch, once the country’s second largest cattle ranch.  Alexis Ching described outrigger canoe making and recounted a myth about boat harnesses originally designed by a jealous chief as a chastity belt for his Polynesian princess.  

At an LGBTQ session, “Silent No More,” I heard stories about Wendelinus Hamutenya, who called himself Mr. Gay Namibia, and a trans Vietnam vet who’d been gang raped by fellow sailors.  Commentator Estelle Freedman of Stanford did an excellent job of putting the case studies in historical context, mentioning, for example, gay soldiers during World War II. I brought up Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets” documenting homoerotic horseplay by macho steelworkers, who didn’t regard getting blow jobs at work as queer behavior.

The International Oral History Association reception was pretty tame compared to last year’s gathering at an Irish pub in Montreal.  One highlight: Kerry Taylor from The Citadel introduced himself as a 1995 IUN Labor Studies graduate familiar with Steel Shavings and a friend of Ron Cohen and Ruth Needleman.  At the time he lived in East Chicago, and we had many Miller friends in common. After receiving a PhD from the University of North Carolina, Taylor published “Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below during the Long Seventies” (2010). At present he is interviewing Latino workers in the Charleston (SC) area.

 Ball State filmmakers; Elizabeth Agnew and Ren Halter Rainey in back, right

Bibi Bahrami, first woman Islamic Center President with Ball State Pres. Geoffrey Mearns

Saturday I attended a session devoted to Muslim oral histories plus a screening of the award-winning documentary “Muslims in Muncie” produced by students at Ball State who received 15 credit hours for working on that one project for an entire semester.  The narrators were from many different countries and included several African Americans and an Irish-American skeptic welcomed by members of the mosque. Al and Liz mentioned having interviewed several Valparaiso University Muslim students for the Welcome Project.  Undergraduate Ren Halter Rainey spoke about the importance of pre-interviews, something I’ve shied away from for fear the retelling would lack freshness.  He and Religious Studies professor Elizabeth Agnew had attended our session, and we all promised to stay in touch.  

 Jimbo and Juan Coronado at Sunday Send-off

The Southwest Oral History Association awards reception guest of honor was Ignacio M. Garcia, who grew up in a poor Texas border community and heard tales of Mexican Revolutionary heroes Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata from a gardener.  A medic in Vietnam, PhD graduate from Arizona, and professor at Brigham Young, Garcia has written such award-winning books as Viva Kennedy, When Mexican Could Play Ball, and a forthcoming memoir Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War, and Keeping the Faith.  At the Sunday Send-Off Juan Coronado, who had introduced Ignacio, said that they were from the same hometown.  We’ll see each other in two weeks at an MSU conference in East Lansing honoring Julian Samara, as Juan convinced me to submit a proposal on “Maria’s Journey.”  At my table was Miyuki Daimaruya from Yamaguchi, Japan, who is researching Japanese-American Korean War veterans, a subject unfamiliar to me.  Many, interned during World War II, were inspired by the example of the decorated Nisei 442nd Infantry Regiment that had fought in Italy.  Topaz internment camp in Utah was about 100 miles from Salt Lake City. The OHA organized a tour but it was for an entire day, so I reluctantly declined. 

On the ride to the airport I noticed that the Wasatch Mountains were snow-covered unlike five days earlier.  Fellow Sheraton bus passenger Stephen Sloan mentioned attending an unscheduled tribute to Tom Charlton, an OHA mainstay who had launched Baylor’s prestigious oral history program.   Charlton was a class act. In the airport I watched the futile Bears struggle against a New Orleans team competing without future Hall of Fame QB Drew Brees and stud running back Alvin Kamara. The plane ride was uneventful, but I noticed that United flight attendants no longer parroted the half-century old slogan “Fly the Friendly Skies.”  Home by 10 p.m., I described a few conference highlights to a weary wife, popped a beer, and put on Weezer’s Blue album.  The six-pack purchased at a Salt Lake City gas station food mart turned out to be 3.2 beer, I learned later, so it was nice to savor a Yuengling and ruminate over a productive five days.  

While gone, the family celebrated Angie’ 49th birthday. Jonathyne Briggs reported that Hanif Abdurraqib gave a stirring campus talk, reading one of my favorite essays, “It Rained in Ohio the Night Allen Iverson Hit Michael Jordon with a Crossover,” from “They Can’t Kill us Until They Kill Us”   Corey Hagelberg dropped by with a copy of his latest project, an ecology-minded coloring book.  On a sad note Philosophy professor Gianluca Di Muzio informed me that longtime colleague Ed Kenar fell off the roof of his house in Hammond and died.  He was a gentle soul who went out of his way to tutor students struggling with the material.  I called Paul Kern in Florida to pass on the grim news, skipping over the usual lamentations over the Bears.  Ed started at IUN in 1983.  Here is an excerpt from the obit:

    Edmund was one of those core people who quietly went about his life’s work. He was devoted to the care of his family, especially his mother. He was passionate about teaching and his students and poured himself into every course and class. He loved working with his students and colleagues. He carried his burdens with stoic grace and dignity and maintained the family property, built by his grandfather, with skill.   Edmund was a devout member of the Carmelite Monastery and took comfort and solace in his community of fellow members there. He was a true Eagle Scout. He was a graduate of St. Stanislaus School, Bishop Noll Institute, and Fairfield University, and attended Notre Dame University, and St. Louis University.

Ed Kenar 

OHA Conference

“When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name.”

The Doors, “People Are Strange”

When I was in college, a professor used a book dealing with the theology of Charles M. Schultz’s cartoon characters.  On WXRT Lin Bremer quoted Charlie Brown from Schultz’s “Peanuts” column saying, “I love mankind . . . it’s people I can’t stand.”  Then he played the Doors number “People Are Strange” from the album “Strange Days.” Jim Morrison evidently came up with the lyrics while battling depression and viewing a sunset from Laurel Canyon with Doors guitarist Robby Krieger.  The song had only two verses repeated several times.  The final lines go:

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

Attending my first Oral History Conference 30 years ago, I knew virtually nobody and felt strange and out of place at the opening reception.  By the final day, I was more comfortable since people were generally friendly. Now, at ease attending such gatherings I try to talk to those who look to be feeling what I did back then.

I was delighted when Anne Balay asked me to participate in a session at the 52nd annual Oral History Association (OHA) conference in Montreal, titled “Oral History in our Challenging Times,” about motivating and guiding undergraduates doing oral history projects. My main contribution toward its planning was getting longtime friend from University of Maryland days Don Ritchie, author of “Doing Oral History,” to be its chair.  Once a regular attendee, I hadn’t gone to an OHA conference since 1999 in Anchorage: my main memories are touring a gold mining camp, going on a glacier cruise, and watching Red Sox shortstop Normar Garciaparra at a sports bar starring in a losing cause against the Yankees in the AL championship.  I had begun to switch loyalties to Labor History conferences because of the dearth of such sessions at the OHA but continued to attend IOHA meetings in such locales as Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Pietermaritzberg, South Africa.

Even though my nonstop flight from Chicago to Montreal on American Airlines went smoothly, getting through customs was a royal hassle both at O’Hare and Trudeau International Airport.  The Hotel Europa was only a six-block walk to the conference site, Concordia University, and had a cool bistro bar, Addie’s, where I watched an Eagles victory over the hated New York Giants. I talked with three Canadian fishermen from Nova Scotia about the disappearance of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald,which sank in Lake Superior during a 1975 storm with 29 crew members aboard. I bragged about seeing Canadian Gordon Lightfoot live on three occasions.  Addie, the owner, told me after they departed that the guy next to me owned a large fish and lobster business. The weather was cold and rainy for 4 of the 5 days, so I didn’t do much touring, not that I had planned to after learning from a travel guide that the main attractions were museums and cathedrals.

Searching for Registration, I ran into David Caruso, editor of Oral History Review (OHR), who was delighted to learn that I had received the latest issue just two days before.  It contained Alessandro Portelli’s “Living Voices” that begins with dialogue from Arthur Penn’s “Little Big Man” (1979) between an anthropologist and an old frontiersman, Mr. Crabb, supposedly the sole white survivor of Custer’s Last Stand, talking past each other. Portelli’s purpose: to demonstrate a botched inter/view.  When Mr. Crabb is told to talk about tribal lifestyles, not tall tales, this exchange ensues:

  Mr. Crabb: Tall tales?  Are you calling me a liar?

  Interviewer: No, It’s just that I’m interested  in the life of the Indian rather than shall we say – adventures.

  Mr. Crabbe: You think the Battle of Little Bighorn was an adventure?

  Interviewer: Little Bighorn was not representative of encounters between white and Indian, Mr. Crabb.

I started to tell Caruso about souring on the OHA after a folk music proposal I put together that got rejected despite having two acclaimed historians, including Ron Cohen, as speakers.  What I didn’t get to tell Caruso was that I had recruited, after much persuasion, OHA founder Martha Ross and her husband to recite from an oral history about Broadsideeditors Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen. The planning committee probable had never heard of Martha Ross.  Martha’s husband, Don Ritchie later told me, is still alive.  Phyllis Smock took a course with Martha and told me about the OHA. “You do oral history, you should join,” she urged.  That October the Queen Maryin Long Beach provided the setting for my maiden conference.

Middle Tennessee State professor Kristine McCusker, in charge of Registration, noticed I was from IU Northwest and identified herself as an IU grad who had studied under John Bodnar.  I told her how influential Bodnar’s “The Transplanted” had been on my way of viewing immigrant history.  I knew of Bodnar’s prize-winning work on American monuments but not about his recent interest in American pop culture.  “I teach about Elvis in my American survey courses because of his influence,”Kristina said.  Ron later emailed me: “Kristine is afriend of mine from the International Country Music conferences I often attend in Nashville.”

A Kanien’Keha:ka elder, accompanied by drummers and the Medicine Bear singers, delivered the opening innovation and welcome, a practice handled for years by storyteller Brother Blue.  I hugged 92-year-old Ruth Hill, Brother Blue’s widow, who still works 20 hours a week at Radcliffe College, now affiliated with Harvard.  Toni, granddaughter Alissa (then a pre-schooler), and I spent a lovely morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico touring a Native American museum with them. I chatted with Paul Thompson, who 30 years ago hosted my first overseas conference in Oxford, England.  Back then, I was feeling strange and out of place until he greeted me warmly.      

                            
Nearby was Linda Shopes, formerly historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, who had persuaded me to write an article on industrial heritage museums for the prestigious Journal of American History.  After it was published, I was invited to be a consultant for a museum housing first-generation supercomputers in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.  I agreed on the condition that they also hire Steve McShane. Retired Williams College archivist Paul Anderson asked me to give Steve McShane, whom he knew from MAC (Midwest Archives Conferende), his regards.  I told him about Steve and my road trip to Chippewa Falls, where we toured Leinenkugel Brewery and sampled 3-ounce, fruit flavored shots of beer.

above, Maria; below, Sasha

Perusing Wednesday’s conference agenda, I was amazed to discover that Maria McGrath,  daughter of close high school friend Susan Floyd, was chairing and speaking at an 8:30 session titled, “Queer Stories, Queer Lives.”  I knew that Maria taught at Bucks County Community College and that she was a food historian but had no idea that she came to OHA conferences (in fact, this was her first). Her recently completed book contains a chapter on Bloodroot Restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded by lesbians Noel Furie and Selma Miriam, formerly married with children, almost a half-century ago as a collective and still in existence. Virtually a who’s-who of second wave feminist leaders spoke at Bloodroot’s Wednesday evening rap sessions.  Maria discussed concepts the founders tried to live by, such as “right livelihood,” “relational commerce,”and “nature idealism.”  Asked if the food was good, Maria was noncommittal, except noting that the menu is vegan. One assertion that left me intrigued was the Selma and Noel, as typical of hippies, sought downward mobility.  Maria was composed and confident.  At one point after stressing Selma’s self-image as a radical feminist, Maria said, “Let me modify that.  Selma wished to be known, above all, as a chef.”

Two of the four presenters were absent, a fortuitous development that left more time for discussion of Maria’s paper and one by Sasha Goldberg, titled “Tending the Bulldagger Archive: Identificatory Practices, Negotiations and Iterations of Lesbian Masculinities in a Post-Trans Temporality.”  Despite the obscure title, it was not bogged down in theory or jargon, and Sasha’s demeanor and delivery were self-confident and quite fetching. Just as I recognized Maria immediately due to the striking resemblance to her mother, Sasha was easily identifiable with old-fashioned butch haircut and tattooed, muscular arms.  Both gave brilliant papers and were very approachable once the session ended.  Maria was delighted to meet me (“my parents won’t believe it,”she exclaimed).  Sasha was an IU grad student whose grandparents live in Miller Beach and whose aunt, lo and behold, was IUN’s former CFO Marianne Milich, a friend and onetime star History student. Small world. During the lively Q and A I learned that “lesbian” was out of fashion compared to “queer” and a new word, terf, standing for trans exclusive radical feminists and usually intended as an insult.  Transvestites are now referred to as cds, for cross-dressers.  Cd sex workers plied the outskirts of IUN’s campus after dark until Chancellor Peggy Elliott cracked down on them. After books on LGBT steelworkers and long-haul truckers, Anne Balay’s next effort will be on sex workers.

 Nisa Remigio

At the next scheduled session, “An Empty Chair Is Not Really Empty,” only two people were in the large room, a Concordia University volunteer and Ruth Hill aka Lady Blue.  Unbeknownst to us, the program had been cancelled. As we chatted, a Concordia grad student, Nisa Remigio, wandered in and then stayed for an hour of intense conversation.  From the Azores, Nisa had come from a session where objects were on display and attendees asked to select one they could identify with and talk about it.  Nisa chose a piece of blue paper like her Portuguese grandmother used to wrap white hand-woven garments dear to her that otherwise would have turned yellow due to the island climate.  Several are still in Nisa’s possession, triggering otherwise forgotten memories.   

 Stephen High on right holding son

At a noon reception hosted by Concordia’s Center for Oral History, director Stephen High spoke passionately about his work.  Obviously popular with both students and faculty, High emphasized the Center’s collaborative projects dealing with various Montreal changing neighborhoods. University of Akron professor Greg Wilson, who teaches public history and published an oral history of the 1970 Kent State massacre, introduced himself.  He knew of former IUN chancellor Peggy Elliott’s brief unhappy tenure at Akron but had not been there then. At the “Oral History Jukebox Workshop” session one track featured a Stephen High interview showed to his students to point out how he had interrupted the narrator too much.  I did a similar self-criticism in Steve McShane’s Indiana History class with a videotaped interview with bridge player Joe Chin.

Having conversed the day before with affable Juan Coronado (above), head of Michigan State’s Oral History of Latinos Project, I attended his session dealing with Mexican-American farm workers in Michigan, Latino legislators in New Mexico, and female United Farm Worker leaders in California.  In Michigan, beginning in the nineteenth century, seasonal workers from Mexico harvested sugar beets, cherries, and blueberries. Coronado identified three stages of Latino permanent settlement, which he labeled Settling Out, Settling Down, and Settling In (joining unions, churches, and organizations such as the GI Forum).   Afterwards, Juan thanked me for asking about the current relationship between year-round residents and farm workers and describing  Abe Morales’ volunteer work with Region farm workers in teaching English and American citizenship preparation.  I promised to send Coronado a copy of “Maria’s Journey,” by Ramon and Trisha Arredondo, which I edited and obtained an Introduction by John Bodnar.

 Alphine Jefferson

The Presidential reception took place in Concordia’s Grey Nuns Building, named for a Sisters of Charity order that wore grey habits, worked at the college, and managed Montreal’s Catholic hospital. As I was talking to Alphine Jefferson of Randolph-Macon College, Anne Balay and Don Ritchie greeted me almost simultaneously.  To my disappointment there was no sign of Maria McGrath or Sasha Goldberg.  I told Stephen High how impressed I was with his student guides, and when I mentioned having chatted with grad student Nisa Remigio, he and two Concordia grad students with him agreed that she was quite remarkable.

Anne Balay and Haverford student Phil Reid had joined me for Juan Coronado’s session, and while Anne went off to a lunch meeting, Phil and I found a Chinese joint at a food court in the tunnel connecting the J.W. McConnell and John Molson buildings.  Phil’s independent study project involved interviewing passersby in a Philadelphia neighborhood containing numerous graffiti works of art.  He’d heard I’d helped Anne get into oral interviewing of gay and lesbian steelworkers.  I frequently teared up describing how her department chair held that against her. He had wanted her to stick to producing largely unread children’s lit articles.  I urged her to go slow, but, as Anne says, that’s not how her genes are programmed.  Because of my staunch defense of her, IUN’s A and S Dean informed me that the university was disassociation itself from the magazine that I had edited for over 40 years. Comforting me when I teared up, he said, “You’re the conscience of the university.”  As Anne would say, WTF?

Jimbo and Maria McGrath; photo by Anne Balay

At Friday’s Diversity reception I introduced Anne and Phil to Alphine Jefferson, who like Anne had studied at the University of Chicago and roomed in the same building. He was with a woman who headed up a Puerto Rican studies program. U.S. Steel’s Gary Works recruited Puerto Ricans beginning in 1948 and initially housed them in Pullman Palace cars.  I told her I bowled with daughter-in-law Delia’s Puerto Rican uncles Phil Vera, Larry Ramirez, Eddie Lopez, and Pete Caudio.  To my surprise, Maria McGrath joined us. We all got along famously and, after Alphine left, continued the conversation for another 90 minutes, well after the reception ended.  Maria and Anne were both meeting people later at the same function, what Anne called a lesbian dinner.  “I didn’t know that,” Maria said, adding that she wasn’t gay (22-year-old Phil went, too). Dick Clark’s name came up, and I bragged about attending a Willow Grove Amusement Park record hop featuring the “American Bandstand” host and dancing with 50s “one hit wonder” (“Love Could Be Like This”) Mary Swan until someone cut in on me 20 seconds later.   I mentioned the huge 1974 parade in Philadelphia after the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup.  “I was at it with my dad,” Maria declared. Hope to get to know her better.

Fred Burrill

Stephen High’s Saturday session on deindustrialization featured community organizer Fred Burrill speaking about violent protests over the rapid gentrifying of Montreal’s St.-Henri neighborhood, whose new high rise condos blocked the sun and overpriced shops and restaurants held little appeal for longtime residents. Bearded Burrill referred to workers bouncing from job to job with no security nor benefits as “global benchwarmers.”  Presenter Lachlan MacKinnon castigated short-sighted Chamber of Commerce types on the Cape Breton Island city of Sydney in Nova Scotia for quashing efforts to convert an abandoned steel plant into an industrial heritage museum.  The “Solid Citizens” (as Sinclair Lewis labeled those types a century before) deemed it too distant from the tourist area, opting instead for a lame display and commemorative rock labeled “good-bye to all of that.”  MacKinnon characterized the decision as “working-class erasure.”  Maddening.  I told a representative from the impressive Lehigh Valley Industrial Museum that Anne Balay has brought Haverford students there with a retired steelworker conducting the tour.

 Paul Thompson

Paul Thompson’s talk on “Oral History in its World Context” noted the expansion of oral history’s parameters since a half-century ago and reiterated that its central purpose should be to unearth hidden voices, in other words, record the unrepresented.  The planners should have made the distinguished Thompson a plenary speaker rather than put him with an otherwise undistinguished panel. Thompson held up the first and recently published seventh edition of his classic oral history anthology “The Voice of the Past,” which dwarfed the original. It brought to mind that volume 1 of Steel Shavingswas just 40 pages, compared to volume 47’s 320. I introduced myself to Daniel Garcia, a scholar from Georgia who studied under recently deceased labor historian Cliff Kuhn and promised to send him my latest Shavings,which eulogizes Kuhn. Garcia’s business card identified him as “the alternative history”but listed no university affiliation – ominous and tragic if the job market is that tight. 

PNW Dean Elaine Carey

The plenary session on “Remembering 1968: The Year that Shook the World” was disappointing save for Purdue Northwest Dean Elaine Carey’s talk, titled ‘Plaza of Sacrifices” (the title of her 2005 book) on the Mexico City student riots that broke out around the time of the Olympic games.  Unlike Carey’s paper, the others – on Vietnam Vets, the Black Panthers, and the Poor People’s Campaign – gave no evidence of benefitting from oral testimony. I told her she did Northwest Indiana proud.  She knew about me from PNW colleague Kenny Kincaid and vowed to visit the Archives. I told she should meet Heather Augustyn, a lecturer at her school who has written several books about Jamaican ska music, including “SKA: An Oral History.”

Last stop Saturday: an IOHA reception at McKibben’s Irish pub whose sumptuous buffet included fried calamari, corned beef sandwiches, yummy guacamole, and free lager on draft.  We found seats at a small table inhabited by a Texas middle school teacher who used Don Ritchie’s “Doing Oral History.” I told Anne and Phil, an English major, about favorite novelist Richard Russo’s best friend’s decision to undergo a sex transference into a woman.  Russo initially thought it selfish, as the person had a wife and children and buddies who liked to hang with him.  The operation almost proved fatal due to infection, but Russo and the wife remained by his side.

Scheduled for Sunday at 9 a.m., our session, “Talking to Strangers: Teaching Ethical Oral History Methods to Undergraduates,” drew a standing room only crowd of over 50, much to our surprise.  Nisa Remigio positioned herself in the first row, notebook in hand. The night before, inspired by Sasha Goldberg’s candor, I spruced up my prepared remarks with ribald anecdotes about bowling banquets and steelworker tales, drawing laughs.  So did this paragraph:

  In Jyväskylä, Finland, for the 2018 IOHA conference, I was conversing with scholars from Australia, Ireland, and South Africa who had interviewed victims of molestation and Rwandan genocide survivors.  “What are you working on?” one asked.  Senior bowlers and duplicate bridge players, I replied with just a hint of hesitation.   In my defense, there is considerable scholarly interest in the decline since World War II of volunteer associations as well as in the contemporary lifestyle of aging Baby Boomers. Students learned that romances, not surprisingly, have blossomed at the lane and card tables, both straight and gay, platonic and sexual (although students didn’t want to hear details about the latter). Virtually no college students play bridge nowadays, but since many subjects were retired teachers and gave lessons to their interviewers.  On my advice, students visited bridge games, where they were warmly welcomed.  Several lasting inter-generational friendships resulted. 

One motive for having my students meet active seniors is to counteract misconceptions and stereotypes about the elderly. Afterwards, an audience member applauded that goal, adding that young people often know just one or two seniors and generalize based on that small sample.

The other panelists, in addition to Anne Balay and Phil Reid, were Amanda Littauer and Christina Abreu from Northern Illinois University.  Christina’s parents live in Highland.  All of us, I thought, did well and stuck to our allotted time.  Phil announced he’d be reading his remarks since he was nervous and delivered them with breakneck speed but got a big round of applause.  Amanda and Christina examined privacy issues and worried about students coping with traumatic testimony by LGBT narrators and undocumented workers.  Christina noted that, despite advice against it due to poor quality, students often opt to use iPhones as recording devices. Don Ritchie was the consummate chair, as I knew he’d be, introducing me as a longtime friend, archives do-director, and Steel Shavingseditor, and handling the 30-minute audience participation flawlessly. My only regret was blowing an opportunity to draw the session to a close by repeating the translated title of Don Ritchie’s primer and saying, “Everybody should do oral history.” Bidding farewell to Nisa, I told her to keep a daily journal and she gave me a hug.

Homeward bound.  When I complimented American Eagle flight attendant on her ability to add ice cubes to drinks she’d poured, she smiled appreciatively and said that diet pop comes out half foam if she places the ice in the cup first.  Recalling the long lines passing through customs returning to O’Hare from Finland, I was delighted to find myself directed to baggage claim and then free to exit the terminal.  Limo driver Ron had me home within the hour.  He’d had experience as a record producer, so I told him and Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records.  As he pulled into our condo court, he said he’d be googling Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay as soon as he got home.