Old Days

Drive-in movies, comic books and blue jeans
Howdy Doody, baseball cards and birthdays

Take me back to the world gone away
Memories seem like yesterday

         “Old Days,” Chicago

WXRT’s Saturday morning focus was on the year 1975, and in the car I heard “Old Days” by Chicago, “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John, “Lady” by Styx, and “Stand By Me” by John Lennon, which appeared on the “Rock ‘n’ Roll” album featuring such Fifties hits as “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Peggy Sue,” and “Bony Moronie.”  Two of my 1975 favorites are “Fame” by David Bowie and “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.

 Lanes and Horns at El Capitan, Oct. 2018; Kaiden on right with parents

Kay English

At Inman’s James’s teammate Kaiden Horn bowled a 259, his best ever.  After a strike and spare, he rolled seven strikes in a row before leaving a ten-pin in the final frame, converting it and ending with a strike.  Andrew English’s grandmother Kay was visiting from downstate, and I recalled that 30 years ago IUN student Annette Mendosa interviewed her about being a Girl Scout troop leader for nine years. She started as a volunteer, then was a den mother in Brownies for her daughter Janet’s age group.  Son John, a classmate of Phil’s, would help out with newspaper drives so he got to on a trip with them to Frankenmuth, Michigan.  He was the only boy.  One time Kay took the Girl Scouts to Florida.  She told Annette Mendosa: 

 One year we camped all the way around Lake Michigan.  We had two rental vans with all our stuff on the top.  We spent a day on Mackinac Island and rode bicycles for two around the island.  In 1979 our group recycled enough newspapers and had enough fundraisers that we were able to spend a week on a Dude Ranch south of Denver.  Over half the girls had never been on an airplane.  Only two or three had ever been in Colorado.  None had been white water rafting.  We were eight in a raft with an oarsman.  I’ve seen some of these kids become doctors and nurses, teachers and therapists.  Some have gotten in trouble; but you’re not raising them, you’re only working with them in Girl Scouting.

I spent much of the weekend reading Kate Morton’s former number 1 bestseller  “The Secret Keeper” (2012).  Much of it takes place in London during World War II.  It kept my interest for many hours of binge reading.  I should have anticipated the surprise ending from various clues along the way.  Once I realized Vivien wasn’t just a tangential character, I reread the beginning of Part Three, which described her childhood in Tamborine Mountain, Queensland, Australia, where the author grew up and attended a small country school.  In the novel Vivien is made to stay home as punishment for fighting a bully while her family attended the annual Cedar Getters’ picnic in Southport.  On the way home her parents and siblings perished when their car went over a cliff in the fog.  Vivien later heard her Aunt Ada (whose voice “shrilled like a fiddle string wound too tight”) irrationally blame her for the accident before shipping her off to an uncle, a headmaster in Oxford, rather than keep her. Vivien carried that guilt with her, which helps explains her later acceptance of ill-treatment from an abusive husband.

Ray Smock’s new book, “American Demagogue: Critical Essays on the Trump Presidency,” arrived in the mail.  Dedicated to public servants in the military and federal government  for “maintaining and defending this great republic,” my old friend from U. of Maryland days opens with this quote by Dionysius of Halicarnassus from 20 BC found in the sixth volume of “Antiquities of Rome”: “The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demagogues.” In the acknowledgments Smock thanked a dozen of us for our encouragement and critiques, most of all wife Phyllis, “who has supported my writing and research for almost 60 years.  I am a lucky guy.”  Leafing through the chapter titles, some recognizable from Facebook posts, I turned to one called “My Friend, George Will.”  A conservative columnist who formally left the Republican Party in the summer of 2016 after candidate Trump made disparaging comments about a judge of Mexican ancestry reared in East Chicago, Indiana, Will considers the President’s views a perversion of traditional principles.  In March of 2018 after Trump appointed warhawk John Bolton to replace H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser, Will claimed he would soon be “the second most dangerous man in America.” Smock wrote:

 Will sees the latest shake-up in the White House staff as marking the end of a delusion that many of us have had about the Trump administration, that if we just got some sensible adults to surround our childish president, he could be “cocooned with layers of adult supervision.”  The bubble has burst.  The president now has an all-Fox News team surrounding him on TV and in the White House.

 One single question in Will’s column particularly grabbed my attention.  The question, and his answer to it, is a brilliant insight, perfectly stated: “How can the president square his convictions with Bolton’s?  Let’s say this one more time: Trump has. No convictions.”

Arriving at Nicole Anslover’s class just as Biology professor Spencer Cortwright was leaving, he quipped, who are you, Benjamin Button, morphing back to student days?  He was referring to a character played by Brad Pitt who ages in reverse.  I told him I always learned something new in Nicole’s class, and she told him I was a valuable contributor.  Students talked about World War II movies they’d viewed such as “Saving Private Ryan,” “Dunkirk,” and “Valkyrie” (2008), with Tom Cruise as German officer Claus von Stauffenberg, who plotted to assassinate Hitler in 1944.  Someone had seen “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946), which dramatized problems soldiers had readjusting to civilian life.  I mentioned “A League of Their Own” (1992), about a women’s baseball league formed when war threatened to dry up many minor leagues by a candy magnate modeled after Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley.  During the war chewing gum magnate Wrigley provided packs of Spearmint, Double mint, and Juicy Fruit to G.I.s and marketed his product as relieving thirst in foxholes.

When Nicole spoke about women wartime workers, not only in heavy industry but for other areas where there was a shortage, I brought up the double-edged meaning of the slogan “For the Duration,” both a pledge hoisted on women that they’d keep working until the war was won and an assurance to men that they’d get their old jobs back afterwards.  

Speaking about contributions by the WACs, WAVEs and SPARs, Nicole used the phrase “the tooth and the tail”referring to the distinction between front line troops and those in a supply role, which often far outnumber the former. After class I told Nicole about Lillian Federman’s assertion in her history of lesbian life in the twentieth century, “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers” (1991), that a women’s corps was an ideal option and breeding ground for lesbians – although, in my opinion, the term bisexual might have been more appropriate, since probably a majority later returned to civilian life and got married.  Federman quoted WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps responding to a request by General Dwight Eisenhower that she ferret out lesbians in her battalion:

 Yessir, if the general pleases, I will be happy to do this investigation.  But sir, it would be unfair of me not to tell you, my name in going to head the list.  You should be aware that you’re going to have to replace All the file clerks, the section heads, most of the commanders, and the motor pool.  I think you should also take into consideration that there have been no illegal pregnancies, no cases of venereal disease, and the general himself has been the one to award good conduct commendations and service commendations to these members of the WAC detachment.

Ike replied: Forget the order.  Phelps, who had joined the WACs to escape an unhappy marriage, went on to become active in the National Organization of Women and California Lesbian Task Force.

 Johnnie Phelps

I told Nicole about an article in Harper’sdiscussing Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, now part of a traveling exhibit, inspired by FDR’s Four Freedoms speech of January 6, 1941.   According toSmithsonianmagazine’s Abigail Tucker, the speech initially fell flat: “Congress barely applauded.  The next day most newspapers did not even mention the Four Freedoms.”  When Rockwell first pitched using the illustrations in war bond drives, the Office of War Information (OWI) rejected it until overruled by the President and new appointees to the OWI, setting off a near revolt among the staff.  Tremendously popular with the general public, the four representations of freedom of speech and religion and from want and fear of aggression appeared on 4 million sets of posters and ultimately their own postage stamps.   Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech poster, first appearing as a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover, greets visitors to  Portage Public Library.

I told Minority Studies chair Earl Jones that Chancellor Lowe had written about the origins of IUN’s Black Studies program in a Post-Tribunecolumn and included Black Caucus leader Gerry Samuels by name.  Here is part of the article, titled “Striving for educational excellence and equity”:  

  Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of working to achieve civic harmony and educational equity lives on both throughout our region and certainly on the Indiana University Northwest campus, where we are proud to be Indiana University’s most diverse campus.  Our commitment to diversity and inclusion took shape early, when, in 1969, the IU Northwest Black Caucus was formed, led by student Gerry Samuel and faculty advisor Dr. F C Richardson. Through the student group’s bold and formative actions, they urged the campus to engage with and reflect on Dr. King’s words, “to think critically”and inclusively by establishing a Black Studies program.

  This year, IU Northwest proudly celebrates the 50th anniversary of the African American and African Diaspora program, one of the first programs of its kind established in the United States.  Over the years, the trailblazing IU Northwest program has evolved, continuing to engage the history of African Americans and Africans, while challenging prevailing paradigms affecting race and inclusion.

M.G.M.T.

I called granddaughter Victoria, attending Grand Valley State, to wish her a happy birthday, telling her she was the most mature 19 year-old I knew.  She had recently replied to something I put on Facebook about my musical tastes by writing,“Why is my grandpa so cool?”  Nice. We talked about concerts we’d attended together in Grand Rapids by Cracker and the Head and the Heart.  I told her I’d check on upcoming shows at 20 Monroe.  One that looks promising is indie rock band M.G.M.T. in mid-May.  The group's most successful CD, which I own, was “Oracular Spectacular” (2007), which contains the hits “Electric Feel” and “Kids.”

Dean Bottorff found a photo from my China trip some 25 years ago when I was staying with them in Hong Kong.  We had visited Macau, then a Portuguese colony, and crossed into a village where I took photos with Red Army teens and friendly women who may have been sex workers. I teased Dean about how he’d warned me not to give money to kids begging and then he did so himself, resulting in them following us around hoping for more. Our former Maple Place neighbors, they were great hosts prior to my lecturing for several weeks at Chinese University.  They taught me how to navigate Hon Kong’s always crowded min-busses by slowly making your way toward the rear exit.

Fat Tuesday is Paczki Day in the Region, and stores have been well-stocked with doughnuts filled with various jams and topped with powdered sugar, icing or glaze. Back when Vickie Milenkovski was secretary of History and Philosophy, adjunct Ed Kenar would bring in a box of Paczkis every year from a bakery in Hammond.  They were huge but delicious and must have contained close to a thousand calories.

 above, Judy Tarpo; below, Terry Bauer, Mary Kocevar, Carol Miller, Chuck Tomes

Barbara Walczak’s first March Newsletter contained a great shot of four bridge friends who ranked in Unit 154’s top 100, plus a “Welcome” shout-out to new player Judy Tarpo, a retired microbiologist at St. Mary Medical Center.  For 27 years she has been in the Northwest Indiana Symphony Chorus, so Dick Hagelberg probably knows her.

Hoosier Pride

“I don’t know what it is about Hoosiers, but wherever I go there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there.” Kurt Vonnegut

 Vonnegut self-portrait

In a 1999 speech to the Indiana Humanities Council titled “To be a Native Middle-Westerner” Kurt Vonnegut told about being a product of Indianapolis public schools:

  To grow up in such a city, as I did, was to find cultural institutions as ordinary as police stations or fire houses. So it was reasonable for a young person to daydream of becoming some sort of artist or intellectual, if not a policeman or fireman. So I did. So did many like me. 

  I studied clarinet under the first chair clarinetist of our orchestra. I remember the orchestra's performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture,in which the cannons' roars were supplied by a policeman firing blank cartridges into an empty garbage can. I knew the policeman. He sometimes guarded street crossings used by students on their way to or from School 43, my school, the James Whitcomb Riley School. 

  It is unsurprising, then, that the Middle West has produced so many artists of such different sorts, from world-class to merely competent, as provincial cities and towns in Europe used to do. 

Vonnegut noted that two Hoosiers who profoundly influenced his way of thinking were Abraham Lincoln and Eugene V. Debs, who believed, “While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

In “Cat’s Cradle” the protagonist meets businessman’s spouse Hazel Crosby on a plane who, sensing a familiar accent, starts this conversation:

“My God, are you a Hoosier?”

 I admitted I was.

  “I’m a Hoosier, too.  Nobody has to be ashamed of being a Hoosier.”

   “I’m not.  I never knew anybody who was.”

In “Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State,” edited by Linda C. Gugin and James St. Clair, Traces editor Ray Boomhower wrote the essay on Hoosier bard Kurt Vonnegut (1922- 2007), whose wealthy parents were forced by economic setbacks during the Great Depression to withdraw Kurt from a private academy and send him to public school. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy family, committed suicide in 1944.  His father an architect, recommended he major in something more practical in college, such as the biosciences, which he did at Cornell, site of nuclear scientist Felix Hoenikker’s lab in “Cat’s Cradle.”  Boomhower wrote:

 Along with instilling Vonnegut with a strong sense of ideals and pacifism, his time in Indianapolis’s public schools started him toward a writing career.  Attending Shortridge High School from 1936 to 1940, Vonnegut during his junior and senior years edited the Tuesday edition of the school’s newspaper, the Daily Echo.  His duties offered Vonnegut a unique opportunity to write for a large audience, in this case his fellow students.  Vonnegut developed a simple writing style, emphasizing clear, short sentences and paragraphs with strong verbs and using little or no adverbs and adjectives.

The father of “Cat’s Cradle character Mona Aamons Monzano, Vonnegut wrote, was Finnish architect, Nestor Aamons, whose implausible fictional background is consistent with historic possibility:

 Nestor was captured by the Russians, then liberated by the Germans during World War II. He was not returned home by his liberators but was forced to serve in a Wehrmacht engineer unit that was sent to fight the Yugoslav partisans.  He was captured by the Chetniks, royalist Serbian partisans and then by communist partisans who attacked the Chetniks.  He was liberated by Italian parachutists and shipped to Italy.  The Italians put him to work designing fortifications for Sicily.  He stole a fishing boat and reached neutral Portugal.

 Wanda and Bob Fox

Teammate Frank Shufran came down with the flu, but I was able to get bowler Bob Fox to sub for us, and his 600+ series helped the Engineers capture two games from Just Friends.  Bob related that in a more competitive league a bowler needed just four pins on his final ball after converting a spare for his team to win the game.  He picked up just one and was promptly kicked off the team. I thought that rather cruel, but another, less-compassionate bowler reacted in astonishment by saying, “All he had to do was throw the ball down the middle of the alley!”  Some years ago at Cressmoor Lanes, an excellent bowler needed just nine pins in his final frame to beat us.  He left the 4-7, threw the second ball exactly how he always did in those situations, but instead of veering left into the 4-7, it went straight as an arrow and missed both. Victory, engineers.

I’ve read the first ten pages of Kate Morton’s “The Secret Keeper” recommended by Gaard Murphy Logan and enjoyed the references to British teen culture in the early 1960s, including a band playing skiffle music, the sounds of rock and roll emanating from Radio Luxembourg, the BBC show “Juke Box Jury” (that both the Beatles and Rolling Stones appeared on), the Harold Pinter play “The Birthday Party,” and Alan Sillitoe’s proletarian novel “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.” I’m debating plunging further into the 481-page mystery novel, given that it would be a big investment of time.  Morton is from Brisbane, Australia, where in the early 1990s I enjoyed four days at an oral history conference.  The two things I remember most were being in a men’s room when feminists, no doubt displeased at the bathroom situation, yelled, “We’re coming in.”  Secondly, a guy I befriended invited me to a party where drinks were plentiful and the national Australian football championship was on TV.  About five years ago, the guy emailed me out of the blue that he was in Michigan on his way to Chicago and ended up spending the night with us.

The New Yorker’sJeffrey Toobin profiled sleazy political operator Roger Stone, under indictment for allegedly lying to the House Intelligence Committee, calling him the expositor of Trump’s world view, which includes conspiracy theories about the “Deep State” and believing that Barack Obama was born, all evidence to the contrary, in Kenya. A self-styled libertine who has Richard Nixon’s face tattooed on his back, Stone described himself as “a trysexual – I’ve tried everything.” Toobin wrote:

 Stone once took me to his favorite sex club in Miami, to show me where he once talked to a prostitute who he said had information on Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York.

In 2008 Governor Spitzer resigned after the New York Times revealed that he had patronized a high-price escort service.

Jim Spicer’s weekly witticism:

  A doctor and a lawyer were talking at a party, but their conversation was constantly being interrupted by people describing their ailments and asking the doctor for free medical advice. After an hour of this, the exasperated doctor asked the lawyer, “What do you do to stop people from asking you for legal advice when you're out of the office?”
 “I give it to them,” replied the lawyer, “and then I send them a bill.”
The doctor was shocked, but agreed to give it a try. The next day, still feeling slightly guilty, the doctor prepared the bills. When he went to place them in his mailbox, he found a bill from the lawyer.

 George Sladic

Although we haven’t seen much of the sun lately, Northwest Indiana has great sunsets, in part because of chemicals released by the steel mills.  Former IU Northwest student, steelworker, and photographer George Sladic produced a great shot of Indiana Dunes National Park at dusk recently, taken at Kemil Street Beach in Beverly Shores.  Forty years ago, we often partied together at our house on Maple Place, which was within what was then called the National Lakeshore.  One time I visited his place (in Hammond, I believe), and we listened to an album by the German heavy metal bands the Scorpions, probably either ”Blackout” or “Love at First Sting.”  Their “Rock You Like a Hurricane” single has collected over 28 million YouTube hits.  After I posted the above paragraph on Facebook, George Sladic recalled having many fond memories of those days and that I introduced him to New Wave music. I responded: “I was especially into the Romantics, Specials, and Graham Parker but appreciated the music George introduced me to as well.”  “The Candyman,” as I called him then, was often with a cool dude of indeterminate sex and a young Latina with whom I often danced.