Women's Place

“When the working day is done

Oh, girls they wanna have fun”

         Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 lesbian gets tattoo during World War II

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

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

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

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

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

 Barbara Wisdom

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

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

Leslie Mann and Megan Fox

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

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

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

James Wallace

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

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

left, Eric Degas; below, Chuck Degas

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

Called It a Day

The moon went down stars were gone
But the sun didn't rise with the dawn
There wasn't a thing left to say
The night we called it a day

         Bob Dylan, “The Night We Called It a Day”

David Letterman’s final show three years ago began with the late Gerald Ford uttering the statement about Watergate: “Our long national nightmare is over.”  Then the line was repeated by Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, with the latter adding, “David Letterman is retiring.” In the monologue Dave said, “I’m going to be honest with you.  It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get ‘The Tonight Show.’”  Earlier in the week, Bob Dylan sang “The Night We Called It a Day.” When Letterman thanked him afterwards, Dylan replied, “It’s an honor.”  In 1985 punk rocker Billy Idol, a guest on “Late Night,” bragged that his songs were so popular, drug dealers were naming products after them, Letterman replied, straight-faced: “You must be a very proud young man.”  The final show concluded with David Grohl and Foo Fighters performing “Everlong” while shots of past highlights flashed on the screen, including pro wrestler Jerry Lawler knocking comedian Andy Kaufman to the ground and Drew Barrymore jumping onto Dave’s desk and flashing him. Here’s the final verse of “Everlong”:

And I wonder
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again
The only thing I'll ever ask of you
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when

Good buddy Louis Vasquez, 94, passed away, leaving four children, nine grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, and many other friends, relatives and admirers.  Louis worked at Inland Steel’s Hot Strip mill for 36 years and was looking forward to continuing his role as assistant basketball coach at St. Stanislaus parish.  Until a couple years ago, he helped out with his son’s Little League team.  A fixture at East Chicago Central basketball games for decades, where he sat in the front row with his scorebook, Louis allowed me to publish his autobiography, “Weasal,” as a special issue of Steel Shavings (volume 24, 1995).  I wrote this in the Editor’s Note:

  The central focus of “Weasal” is family bonds; but for Vasquez the concept of family conjures up not only blood relatives but “buddies” in the neighborhood, in the service, in the mill, and in church and civic organizations.  Louis is, above all, a family man.  He calls many people compadre to designate close friends, not only of Mexican ancestry, he is quick to point out, but of all ethnic groups.  He is representative of the children of immigrants who came of age during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency and whose assertive personalities and unapologetic patriotism were much influenced by their wartime military service.  They had paid their dues and weren’t going to be pushed around by employers, realtors, or fellow workers.  Many Harbor vets from his “Block and Pennsy” neighborhood got involved in union and city politics; Louis explored both these paths but put most of his energies into volunteer organizations such as sports teams and the Latin American Vets.  As its social chairman and then its president for three terms during the mid-1950s, he drew into the club not only World War II vets but younger guys like Jesse Villalpando, who had known him from CYO programs Louis had organized at Our Lady of Guadalupe church. For many, the LAV club was like a second home; Jesse recalls spending all night there, finally falling asleep on the shuffleboard court.  He also remembers when for a fundraiser the LAVs brought in a famous exotic dancer named Tongolele as headliner of a Latin musical review.  She had appeared in several movies and had graced numerous covers of Spanish-language magazines on sale at Harbor newsstands.  In the midst of the show, Father Mitchell strode on stage threatening to expel choir members who wouldn’t leave.  Few did.

Archibald McKinlay’s “Reejin Archetypes” (1996) contained a portrait of Louis Vasquez entitled “The Lamented Lover” gleaned from his autobiography that described his wartime experiences in England and France, concentrating on liaisons with a LeMans hairdresser named Renee and other French damsels.  My initial reaction was dismay and consternation, but Louie apparently loved being dubbed a “Latin lover.” At Oleska-Pastrick funeral home in East Chicago I gave Louie’s grandson my signed copy inscribed “To a Reejin guru.”  Louie’s remains in the open casket appeared peaceful in repose, but I told his grandson, a state trooper, that what I recall most about him is his expressive voice and gestures, his literally being full of life.

 Gene Clifford and Lucy, April 2017

At Hobart Lanes Gene Clifford’s granddaughter Chelsea visited with a little girl, Lucy, who initially balked at being plucked onto his lap.  I quipped that I wouldn’t want to sit on his lap either.  Lucy quickly acclimated and smiled when Gene made several strikes in a row and then beamed at her.  The Engineers took 5 of 7 points from Fab Four, as Joe Piunti bowled well above his average. Opponent Marilyn Feczko has a unique way of taking several steps toward the foul line, coming to a complete stop, and then taking two more before releasing the ball.  At one point she had four splits in a row and finally converted the 6-10.  Next frame, when she missed the headpin but then converted the spare, I said, “That’s staying out of trouble.”

Visiting the refurbished downtown Gary Public Library to deliver Steel Shavings issues to David Hess in the Indiana Room, I was impressed with its Wi-Fi Café and computer rooms for both adults and kids.  Gary Hall of Fame plaques adorned a second-floor wall.  The list is top-heavy with ministers and politicians and bereft of historians.  I briefly served on the selection committee.  In 1990, other members wanted to honor chair Randall C. Morgan as a surprise.  I was in charge of the booklet, which Morgan demanded to inspect prior to the banquet.  I managed to foil his attempts, which so enraged him, he was still fuming after learning the reason. 

Longtime NWI Times reporter Bill Dolan called to find out when the County Courthouse across from Gary City Hall was built.  I was certain it was one of many Gary building constructed along Broadway during the prosperous 1920s, the city’s “Augustan Age.”  Sure enough, the WPA Guidebook to the Calumet Region confirmed that it opened in September 1929, nine months after City Hall.

from left, Julie Czoka Pass, Juanita McCabe, Effie Rork, Fay Keenan Price, unknown, Frances Arcuri, unknown

On the cover of Reminisce magazine is a 1951 photo of comely car hops who worked at Ted’s Drive-In in Gary.  Contributor Fay Keenan Price was 24 with two small children at the time owners George and Marge Pratt hired her.  She worked full-time for two years and then part-time after obtaining work at Illinois Bell Telephone Company.  Fay recalled:

    If I did well, I made $7 or $8 a day [in tips].  We also received a 1 percent commission on our sales. The biggest commission I ever made was $15 for one week.  Wow!  That was a lot back then.

    The menu offered a nonalcoholic drink called the Zombie, which was made with red soda pop.  A sign cautioned “Limit 2,” so teens sometimes thought the drinks contained alcohol and would start acting silly after drinking one.  What a show!

Teacher Chuck Halberstadt wrote:

You know you have a tough group of students when one of the two aides that watched them during your 30-minute lunch break had to go lay down in the nurse's office afterwards because her blood pressure spiked and she was worried she was going to have another heart attack.

Jesse Michaels responded: “Cops in my class today.  Feel your pain bro!”

Alyssa Black wrote:

Today a kid asked me to sing a song at the end of class. The chorus to The Vines' Get Free was the only thing I could think of. I think the class thought it was pretty funny; they like when I sing songs.  I was surprised when one of the students started singing Elton John's Crocodile Rock and a couple of kids started singing with him. It was a good moment.

I replied: “‘Crocodile Rock’ must be in a kids’ movie.”  She answered: “Maybe not.  The kid really likes Johnny Cash, too.”  Nonetheless, I found a rather creepy scene in “Barnyard” (2006) where Barnyard Ben the Cow sings “I Won’t Back Down.”  The chorus to “Get Free, on the Vines’ 2002 CD “Highly Evolved, goes: “I’m gonna be free, ride into the sky.”  I have it on heavy rotation with “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and Wings, plus CDs by Social Distortion, Chainsmokers, and Taylor Swift.

After a fight with wife Joy, Jack Griffin, the protagonist in Richard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic” admits to himself that he “should have swallowed his petulance.”  I’ve tried to follow that advice, not always successfully.