Entertainers

“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act,” Truman Capote

John Cain, NWI Times photo by Kyle Telechan

NWI Times ran an interesting profile on John Cain, executive director of Munster’s Center for Visual and Performing Arts, who has an annual Christmas reading, often something by Jean Shepherd or Truman Capote (whom Cain resembles and has portrayed in a one-man show).  A Gary native whose parents were 1946 Horace Mann graduates and encouraged John’s interest in theater, Cain is a marvelous storyteller and is a Miller Beach Arts and Creative District board member.  Growing up, Cain said, he played his mothers albums and sang along to Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, and Lena Horne.  Cain told reporter Denise DeClue that his Uncle Rob “was a Noel Coward sort of figure, witty, urbane, threw his head back with rollicking laughter, and threw fabulous parties.  He and his ‘friend,’ as we called him back then, traveled extensively.”  Cain chose to attend a college in Ohio in order to be close to Uncle Rob and is candid about himself being gay.  Asked why he liked Truman Capote, he replied: “Seriously?  Do I have to spell it out for you?  Let’s see . . . he was odd looking, he liked rich people, he was bitchy, he was a brilliant artist, he came from a semi-dysfunctional family (I know, who doesn’t), he drank too much . . . have I forgotten anything?  Oh yes, he was gay!  Do you see any similarities here?”  What a great guy!  He’s also a good friend of IU Northwest and always affable when I converse with him even though he probably doesn’t know who I am.

When Pam Broadaway and Kristina Kuzma learned that I was planning to attend John Ban’s talk on popular music during the WW II years, they invited me for breakfast, scrumptious cheesy hash browns, blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, and a slice of orange.  John’s wife Doris spotted me and introduced me to a Korean War vet named Frank, her brother I think.  John had attended my previous talks at Reiner Center, but I had never seen my old colleague in action except as chair of IUN’s Faculty Org.  He was very entertaining - witty, relaxed, andknowledgeable.  He interacted well with the 40 or so folks in the audience, several of whom had served in the war.  Mostly he introduced YouTube clips, often taken from movies of that era. My favorite were the McGuire Sisters performing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and Jimmy Durante doing “Inky Dinky Doo.” Growing up, I was fascinated by Jimmy Durante’s ability to convey such a range of emotions with his expressive face and gestures.  He asked Kristina, assisting with the visuals, to jitterbug with him, but she declined.  At one point John slow-danced with Doris, and they seemed truly in love.  What good people they are.  They organize excursions both for Reiner Center seniors and members of their church.

I was familiar with most of the band leaders of that time, Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Artie Shaw, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Harry James, and the like; but some singers who performed with them were new to me, including Vera Lynn, most famous for “We’ll Meet Again” and “The White Cliffs of Dover.”  Ban discussed reasons for the decline of Big Bands, including wartime travel restrictions, the 1942-44 musicians strike, and losing performers to the military. John noted segregated practices the military, and the contributions of Black units such as the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion.

Vera Lynn

Retired English professor Bill Buckley, who has a library carrel, was complaining that his ten year-old computer keeps malfunctioning.  I showed him the new Emeritus Faculty space near my cage, with what looks to be a new computer, and he’s going to try to move there.  It even has a phone, unlike his carrel.

Jimmy Reed

Preparing for my talk to Steve McShane’s Indiana History class on the dual topics of postwar anxiety and Vee-Jay Records, I found You Tube clips of bluesman Jimmy Reed performing in Houston in 1975, Betty Everett lip-synching the “Shoop Shoop Song” on “American Bandstand,” the Beatles at Shea Stadium joking that when first released (on Vee-Jay) “Please Please Me” didn’t sell many records, and John Lee Hooker singing “Boom Boom” backed by ZZ Top.  Steve put out a display of my books and gave me a flattering intro.

Perhaps influenced by Nicole Anslover’s teaching methods and inspired by John Ban’s sterling performance earlier in the day, I made the class very interactive.  Several “Age of Anxiety” Shavings readings drew big laughs, in particular the descriptions of a 300-pound Calumet City stripper, Hampton Hinton’s 15 year-old bride’s cooking deficiencies, and the temper eruptions of Louise Manna’s boss Mr. Hippensteel.  One student thought he knew Marcella, who when 15 went to Chicago to celebrate V-E Day without telling her parents.  Carlton Davis knew one of The Dells, who recorded the classic “Oh What a Night.”  James Mlechick had fun as Bill Figueroa describing a maternal grandmother who, Bill recalled, “came to live with us when she was in her 80’s.  My father thought she came to die.  She stayed for 20 years.  She smoked homegrown marijuana every morning and had a daily shot of wine.  She made a lot of money crocheting initials and designs on handkerchiefs.”

On the cover of the December 2013 Journal of American History is a 1903 Harvard Lampoon cartoon of squirrels begging for food with the caption, “Hi mister!  Scramble a nut?”  It mocks young Irish street panhandlers known to solicit students, using the phrase, “Scramble a cent?”  It goes with an article by Etienne Benson entitled about “The Urbanization of the Eastern Gray Squirrel in the United States.”  Though some saw gray squirrels as a nuisance and threat to songbirds, urban planners in the mid-nineteenth century sometimes provided food and nest boxes to help the transplanted newcomers survive and multiply, which they did, especially after the urban parks movement got underway.  Once people were encouraged to feed squirrels, but with the emergence of an ecological vision, such a practice began to be discouraged.

Nicole Anslover’s students discussed readings having to do with Nixon’s foreign policies toward China and the Soviet Union. I pointed out that at a time when the world was becoming multi-polar, Nixon paid too little attention to lesser powers other than to recklessly intervene to overthrow leaders such as Salvador Allende who seem to threaten American business interests abroad.  Nicole added that the CIA-supported coup against Allende resulted in the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Returning to her office after attending a Grand Valley State Study Abroad function, Alissa discovered that somebody had broken in and stole some money.  She called the authorities and had to stay late to file a police report.  They apparently caught the culprit the next day.  I’m relieved the person wasn’t inside the offices when she arrived.

Bowling against the Legends I had a 507 series and 204 in the third game, my first 200 game in some time.  I started with four strikes in a row and then had a double in the eighth and ninth.  Good-natured opponents Ruben and Walter were giving me high fives.  I drove home through a heavy rain, but at least it wasn’t freezing.  Plugging “The Hunger Games” sequel “Catching Fire” on Letterman was 23 year-old Jennifer Lawrence, a woman of many different looks.

Take Me Back

“Take me back

To the hills of Indiana

Take me back

To when I was a kid.”

   Lonnie Mack, “Hills of Indiana”

Due to encroaching glaciers having leveled everything in their path, we don’t have hills in northern Indiana save for sand dunes, but south of Indy lies beautiful hill country.  Neighbor Dave Elliott burned me a CD of Lonnie Mack’s 1971 album “Hills of Indiana.”  Six months older than I, the Hoosier blues legend from Spencer County near the Ohio border recorded “Memphis” in 1963, an instrumental that expanded the role of the electric guitar in rock music.  I saw him at a “House Rockin’ Blues” night at the Holiday Star, the only white guy on a bill that included Buddy Guy, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Lonnie Mack, Albert King, and B.B. King.  The show lasted until 3 a.m.

My “Roaring Twenties in the Region” talk went very well, although I shortened the readings somewhat as we approached the 60-minute mark. Isabelle Vargo recalled playing Post Office and Spin the Bottle as a teenager.  Bethel Mattingly remembered gypsy girls tumbling about on her front lawn in long dresses but no underwear. Several guys talked about skinny-dipping at the Lake George clay banks. 

In “Hobart Memories” is this passage by Franklin Rhoades, whose widow was in the audience, that reminded me of a stunt Sammy Corey pulled with Terry Jenkins, Paul Curry, and me holding our breath: “Another sport on the frozen Lake George was a very crazy thing we did, but we were in a reckless age.  We drove a car on the lake, filling it with anyone wanting to ride.  Then after tying a large rope behind the car, a bunch of nuts would hang onto it while the car gathered speed and started pulling the skaters behind it.  The driver would make sudden stops and sharp turns, causing a whiplash effect on the skaters trying to loosen their hold so they would go flying.  One time my brother Bob was run over by the Model T Ford.  He wasn’t hurt because he was between the wheels.  A car at that time only weighed about 750 pounds, so weight-wise the ice could sustain it.”

Carl Krausse told Bee Stafford about the time in 1920 when the limousine of opera star Ernestine Schumann-Heink got stuck during a snow storm in front of Stommel’s store on Third Street. Several merchants helped dig the vehicle out while the diva was cursing at the chauffeur in German, assuming they wouldn’t understand.  After they finished freeing the limo, much to her surprise they called out in perfect German: “It was a pleasure to serve you, Madame.”

Among the 40 or so attendees were archives volunteer Dave Mergl, Doris and John Ban (Education Professor emeritus), Kay who bowls with Dave and Angie, and Beverly Wright, who recently donated a splendid collection of Calumet Community Congress records to the archives.  Her late husband Jim was a leader in the early-70s Saul Alinsky-style activist group. Kristina Kuzma, who parleyed an internship last year into a full-time job at Reiner Senior Center, helped play my short videos, brought me a hefty bowl of fresh fruit, and invited me back.  I might give my Vivian Carter talk and play Vee-Jay ditties in the spring.

At Hobart Dairy Queen I consumed a chili cheese dog and vanilla shake.  On Sunday mornings Dave, Tom Wade, Bruce Sawochka, and I often stopped there after three sets of tennis nearby at Fred Rose Park.  Imagining how playing such songs as “Hey Little Girl” would go over with Hobart seniors, I thought of Dee Clark’s description of a coed in a high school sweater, black silk stockings, and “that crazy skin-tight skirt” and recalled Mary Bub, who (as we crudely put it in the Fifties) had the finest ass at Upper Dublin.  Two years younger than I, at a party my senior year she asked for a ride home and we smooched in her driveway.  She had just broken up with a long-time boyfriend, but I was content (or too shy) to go beyond “necking.”   I visited her a few days later, but nothing more came of it.  When yearbooks came out near the end of the school year, she asked me to sign hers and I realized what an opportunity I’d missed.  Mary Bub, where are you now, I wonder.

Classmates LeeLee Minehart Devenney and Bob Wolf liked my pro-Obama Facebook comments.  LeeLee’s father, when Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, claimed to be one of just two Republicans in Fort Washington, the other being the pastor of his Reformed Church.

At IU Northwest’s fall convocation historian Eric Foner lectured on the topic Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.  From ages 7 to 21 our sixteenth President lived in Spencer County, Indiana, just across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky.  He later described himself as “a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy.”  A Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial is located about five miles from Santa Claus, Indiana, Bears QB Jay Cutler’s hometown. In September 1859 Lincoln spoke at Masonic Hall in Indianapolis. In the audience was Hugh McCulloch, who wrote: “Careless of his attire, ungraceful in his movements, I thought as he came forward to address the audience that his was the most ungainly figure I had ever seen upon a platform. Could this be Abraham Lincoln whose speeches I had read with so much interest and admiration — this plain, dull-looking man one of the most gifted speakers of his time? The question was speedily answered by the speech. The subject was slavery — its character, its incompatibility with Republican institutions, its demoralizing influences upon society, its aggressiveness, its rights as limited by the Constitution; all of which were discussed with such clearness, simplicity, earnestness, and force as to carry me with him to the conclusion that the country could not long continue part slave and part free — that freedom must prevail throughout the length and breadth of the land, or that the great Republic, instead of being the home of the free and the hope of the oppressed, would become a by-word and a reproach among the nations.”

Most famous for his seminal “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877,” Eric Foner is the nephew of the Marxist labor historian Philip S. Foner and the son of history professor Jack Foner, blacklisted during the Red Scare for championing radical visionaries such as Eugene V. Debs and W.E.B. DuBois.  Reviewing Eric Foner’s “The Story of American Freedom,” Theodore Draper concluded: “If the story is told largely from the perspective of blacks and women, especially the former, it is not going to be a pretty tale.” 

Before the lecture Chris Young arranged for a small group of us to meet with Foner in the Robin Hass Birky Women ‘s Studies Room.  Despite having just come from Young’s seminar on Lincoln, he was alert and affable.  Ron Cohen asked whether he’d ever seen his FBI file on him, and he replied that it was embarrassingly small.  When he was a kid, he went to a progressive summer camp, and on visiting day agents wrote down the license plate numbers of parents who showed up. George McGovern’s name came up since he, like Foner, had recently written about Lincoln.

In his address Foner compared Lincoln to President Obama in the sense that their political rise was a result of oratorical prowess – Abe’s eloquent debates with Stephen Douglas and Barack’s keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.  Lincoln’s views toward ending slavery evolved; where he once favored compensation and colonization, there is no mention of either in the Emancipation Proclamation.  To get the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed took great political skills. Foner deftly answered questions about Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass, diplomatic problems with Great Britain, and comparisons with Russia ending serfdom in 1861.  The entire History department was on hand, and during the reception I told Chancellor Lowe that it was a good day to be a historian.  Both he and Foner had spent time in Dublin, Ireland, researching reports informants filed about supposed Irish-American terrorist groups.  Both concluded that since their livelihood depended on producing a continuous flow of “evidence,” the dispatches were unreliable.

above, Eric Foner; below, Nicholas Kimmel

Prior to game two of the World Series in San Francisco one-armed veteran Nicholas Kimmel in full uniform made his way with great effort to the mound and threw out the first pitch, a perfect strike, as pitcher Barry Zito and Hall of Famer Willie Mays looked on, in awe of such a courageous hero.  In a 2-0 Giants victory the key play was when Prince Fielder tried to score from first on a double with no outs and was thrown out on a perfect relay.

With the presidential race so close, the key will be getting out the vote.  Democrats appear to have thwarted most attempts to disenfranchise poor people and Latinos, but these groups traditionally don’t vote with such frequency as more affluent whites.  To whip up crowds Obama has employed the word “Romnesia” as shorthand for his opponent’s flip-flopping on positions, now that he is pretending to be a moderate.

Indiana Historical Society offered to pay for hotel accommodations at the Mariott the night I receive the Dorothy Riker Award.  Key Fetters asked me to fact-check a press release; it was fine but I suggested mentioning “Valor” and adding that I was co-director of the Calumet Regional Archives.

In Fantasy Football I am playing nephew Dave’s team Jack Bauer’s Bruisers (he was a big “24 Hours” fan).  Colin Kern recently wrote: “I wonder if I can get my phone to say, "The following takes place between 2pm and 3pm. Events occur in real time" every hour (adjusting the times, of course) in Jack Bauer's voice.”  I forwarded the message to Pittsburgh Dave, and he replied that he actually has something similar on his phone.

Played two board games at Jef Halberstadt’s, finishing third in Seven Wonders and first in Revolution by capturing the apothecary on the final move, enabling me to poison an opponent and gain control of the Market.  Robin picked up pizza at Cappo’s, formerly Bronko’s when owned by former student Nick Tarailo, who went to Merrillville H.S. and IU with Jef and T. Wade.  Home in time to catch Diamond Rings, whose lead singer John O is a gay Billy Idol lookalike, on Letterman.