Modern Man

“Like a record that’s skipping
I’m a Modern man.
Feel all right and the clock keeps ticking,
I’m a modern man.”
Arcade Fire

Returned home alone for Marianne Brush’s end-of-the-summer party. She loved the Arcade Fire CD I gave her in lieu of bringing a dish and played it over a loud speaker after retrieving it from Missy, who had gone off with boyfriend Tyler to listen to it in the basement recreation room. I especially recommended song #3, “Modern Man.” Inside I watched part of the Notre Dame – Purdue game (an Irish victory in Coach Brian Kelly’s debut). Came across a Voodoo Chili photo album with pictures of Tim in various wild outfits and several shots of me singing with the band or dancing. Shed a tear conjuring up all the good memories. Couldn’t get anyone to toss beanbags and wished Dave were with me. Last year he played and sang for a couple hours with old Voodoo Chili band mate John Shearer on drums. Had a nice chat with John’s wife Lorraine, whose daughter Ashley was showing off her engagement ring. I pigged out on guacamole and chips. Back at the condo I battled a persistent fly until mellowing out and adopting a “live and let live “ attitude toward the pest. The latest On Demand “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode featured a rapper named Crazy Eyes Killer who gets engaged to Cheryl’s best friend until she learns about his philandering as a result of his bragging to Larry about liking all colors when it comes to cunnilingus. The funniest moments involve Larry having a pubic hair stuck in his throat.

Ray and Trish Arredondo mailed me press releases for “Maria’s Journey” plus a copy of Viva Magazine whose cover story was my article about the book. One side was in English, and the flip side was in Spanish (“El recorrido de Maria: Libro profundiza sobre la vida de la mission de una mujer decidida a proporcionarle una vida major a su familia en los Estados Unidos”). Very cool. The publication used all three Times photos, including the cover shot of Maria and mother Rita, from whom she inherited her iron resolve.

Diamond, who came down with the Michiganders, greeted my arrival back in South Bend at noon Sunday. Like two weeks ago there were 12 Lanes and 12 Okomskis only instead of the Jerseyites Sonny and Mary were up from Florida and Toni’s nephew Kyle brought girlfriend Laura. Tom discovered Oliver, Nickolas, and Chloe under a tree by the seventh tee selling golf balls. My sons beat Sonny and me two out of three in pinochle; my revenge came in Texas hold ’em. After finishing second to Dave in the first game, I staged a miraculous comeback in the nightcap. To begin with, I barely escaped elimination when Lisa went all in against me with aces and queens. Dealt an ace five and with a second five in the flop along with a deuce and three I needed a four or five on the final card and got the latter, beating Lisa’s two pair with trip fives. After Dave knocked out Fritz, only the two of us remained. Phil was long gone, having had lousy cards. Dave had 80 percent of the chips until the key hand of the night, one he insisted I misplayed though I beg to differ. Starting with a king five of diamonds, I bumped the first bet. After a flop of two aces and a queen, Dave made a hefty raise. I called, guessing from his previous check that he didn’t hold an ace and was trying to bully me into folding (the same thing I’d have done in his shoes). If he held a king, the worst I could do was a tie. The only cards that could beat me were a queen or a pair. He went all in because he had a queen. I threw in my remaining chips and learned to my dismay that only a king could save me. Sure enough, the last card was a king. Suddenly others who had been knocked out started to take notice. After another big hand went my way thanks to two threes in the flop, Dave was on the defensive, sensing that I was on a hot streak. Taking a chance, he went all in with two face cards. Able to absorb a loss, I took a chance with an eight and nine of clubs and got two more eights on the flop. He couldn’t believe it. We both ended up with full boats, only his was six high and mine eights over sixes. Game over. First place money was worth fifty bucks.

On Labor Day morning Dave cooked “dirty” scrambled eggs (with ham and onions) and Polish sausage slices. Sitting around a table out back, Mary texted Garrett in New Jersey at my request, asking if he liked Arcade Fire, and explained her version of why grandson Sean “defriended” her and, adding insult to injury, told her, “That’s why Facebook isn’t for old folks.” She had defended Sean after someone had teased him, but he thought she over-reacted. He recently made Florida State’s track team as a long distance runner. Sonny joked about his brushes with death (his heart stopped for 20 minutes once, and on another occasion he was in a coma for 32 days) and his seven attempts to join the army despite a withered arm from having polio as a child. We all gathered on the front lawn, and neighbor Mr. Smith interrupted his lawn mowing to snap pictures from three different cameras. One might be our Christmas photo. Grace, with “Okomski eyes” just like her mother and grandfather, latched onto Kyle’s leg not wanting him to leave, then showed off for his benefit by tousling with her dad. Kyle and Laura followed us to the condo, and we had dinner at Appleby’s. Afterwards, at Porter Beach I pointed out Chicago’s Loop on the horizon and steel mills to the right and left. A Chicago suburbanite who grew up two blocks from the beach and returns every Labor Day promised to let the Archives make a copy of her childhood diary. Our first adult overnight guests, Kyle and Laura did some exploring and returned with a six-pack of Blue Moon from Wise Way, which Kyle drank with orange slices.

Received emails from Trish and Ray (needing jpegs for a “Maria’s Journey” website), a neighbor (complaining about how ugly the new trees look), Suzanna (thanking me for being there for her when she was a “grumpy old bear), and filmmaker David Gore (wanting to interview me for a documentary on Gary native Michael Jackson). I sent out a “Maria’s Journey” article to ‘O” (the Oprah magazine) and fellow Maryland grad student David Goldfield, editor of the Journal of Urban History. In Sweden, he recently mentioned me in the acknowledgements of his Civil War book, “America Aflame,” and looked forward to reading what I sent him when he returned to Charlotte (he teaches at UNCC). Toni, Kyle and Laura weren’t at the old house but located them with my cell phone (which I almost never use) at a fireworks warehouse. Flamingo’s wouldn’t let us in for lunch because Laura is only 19. Indiana has absurd liquor laws (why Flamingo’s restaurant area is different from Appleby’s is beyond me). We ended up at Wing Wah, where I ordered the Mongolian beef dinner.

We checked out an exhibit about shipwrecks at the Indiana Dunes State Park, located not far from our condo. I’d only ever been to the park a handful of times, mainly to visit people camping there, such as Herb and Evelyn Passo and Bob and Judy Selund. Of the 3,000 Lake Michigan sinking, about one-tenth occurred in its southern basin, including the J. D. Marshall in 1911. It had over 500 tons of sand on board when its hull sprang a leak while anchored a half-mile off shore east of Michigan City. We viewed some of its remains, including a huge cast iron propeller and a huge wrench. A sudden squall capsized the ship, and four crewmembers drowned. The nature center had other exhibits of interest, including one documenting how the park was created in 1925. Outside one window were bird feeders that attracted yellow finches, hummingbirds, mourning doves, nuthatches, and other varieties. There were models of predators, including a huge turkey buzzard similar to a pair I saw land in a tree near our Maple Place house. In a reading room I found “City of the Century” but no sign of my Shavings issue on “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands.” We drove to the old bathhouse and gawked at the large white cap waves, but with wind gusts reaching 45 miles per hour the sand was blowing around and stinging our exposed skin. Back home while Laura rested in preparation for her driving the first leg of the drive back to Philadelphia, we taught Kyle the dice game Shooters. He caught on right away. What a sweet guy. Toni’s youngest sister Donna died of cancer when he was a year old. His girlfriend Laura Schmitt did well in a situation that could have overwhelmed many 19 year-olds.

In the news: Terry Jones, a dimwit pastor of Dove World Outreach Church near Gainesville, Florida, is threatening to burn copies of the Quran unless he gets a message from God or President Obama ordering him not to do it. He has less than 50 parishioners but has received worldwide attention, and Muslims abroad have burned his likeness in effigy along with the American flag. General David Petraeus has warned that his action will put our troops in Afghanistan at risk, but the loony reverend appears to be relishing the attention.

Labor Day Begins

"That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door."

Starting with a Bob Dylan quote from “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Jeff Manes wrote a great SALT column about Chris Christian, a cook, rock musician for the band Pegasus, and old hippie whose father, Chris Hristodoulou came from Greece in 1904. Growing up in Gary’s Horace Mann district, Chris told Manes, “When I was in seventh grade, we were the first school to be one-third white, one-third black, and one-third Latin. By ’72 there were only about five white kids left at Horace Mann.” Fired from Inland Steel in 1980 after caught playing poker, he moved to Seattle and then Alaska. He recalled, “I was climbing Mount Si when Mount Saint Helens blew; I watched the Northern Lights, man. And I got to do stuff like that when I was young and could really enjoy it, man, not as a tired-out, hunched-over retiree.”

Reached Fritz and Lisa Teuscher’s impressive house in Granger IN near South Bend in under an hour with a trunk full of pillows and blow-up mattresses plus rye bread and a pot of golumpkis (stuffed cabbage rolls). It being cool and windy, Toni’s sister Mary, up from Florida, had a sweater on and was shivering. Eight year-old Grace offered me what she described as a mint Oreo cookie only she had replaced the insides with toothpaste. Living right next to a golf course, younger brother Oliver had scrounged hundreds of golf balls from the rough and sells them for a quarter or half dollar, depending on the condition. Sonny was watching a replay of yesterday’s 12-11 Phillies victory on MLB.com, featuring a nine-run inning climaxed by Chase Utley’s grand salami. Afterwards, looking for the news, he came across “Sonny With a Chance” on Disney Channel. “They stole my name,” he quipped. The Dietz family poodle Chloe did lots of barking, which did not bother the Teuscher’s mellow dog Jack. Nickolas and Sophia found a climbing tree to their liking and were near the top in a flash. While others visited Notre Dame’s football stadium tunnel, Fritz and I went to his country club links. He hit some great shots on a very windy day. I mainly rode around in the cart but did try a few pitch shots (nothing to write home about) and putts (most went past the hole, but I sank two fairly long ones). Told Fritz about the time in the Bahamas when ten year-old Dave accompanied Ivan Jasper on a round of golf. He let my son drive the cart and he overturned it but was unscathed. Ivan warned him not to tell us under threat of death, and we didn’t learn about the incident until 25 years layer. At the seventh hole Tom, back from the Notre Dame tunnel, replaced me and played the final 11 holes with Fritz.

Looked over Laura Ingraham’s “Obama Diaries,” which Mary was reading, and found it patronizing and prejudiced (Stephen Colbert slammed its “hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes”). Ingraham’s main criticisms of the President are that he doesn’t wear his religion or patriotism on his sleeve and that he’s too full of himself (takes one to know one). She portrays Vice President Biden as a vain lecher who, after ogling Columbian pop singer Shakira, writes in his diary, “Honestly, if they all looked like this hot tamale, I’d tear down the border fence myself.” Washington Post reviewer Steven Levingston notes that Laura can’t decide between satire and polemics and by flip-flopping from one to the other “only leaves a ruinous imbalance” and “causes her to squander her literary deadeye on vapid hyperbole” such as her concluding statement that “this is freedom’s last stand.” Pu-leeze! Freedom for the rich to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.