Educated

“I believe, finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing,” John Dewey

At bridge in Valpo Vickie Voller and I finished in a tie for first with Dee Browne and Sharon Snyder.  Opponent Jim Bell sometimes bangs on the table when he’s uncertain what to bid.  Vickie jokingly asked if he was signaling to partner Fred Green.  On the final hand Fred opened 4 Diamonds; after two passes I bid 4 Hearts.  Jim raised to 5 Diamonds and I doubled.  We set them 2 vulnerable for 500 points and high board.

 Tara Westover at Cambridge U., 2018

Lila Cohen loaned me Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” a 2016 best-seller that she had reported on at her AAUW book club. It’s a harrowing coming-of-age account of breaking away from Mormon survivalists in southeastern Idaho and, specifically, a paranoid, despotic father preparing for the end of the world, who kept Tara from attending school or seeking medical help when needed.  New York Times reviewer Alec MacGillis wrote:

    She learned to read from the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the speeches of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The only science book in the house was for young children, full of glossy illustrations. The bulk of her time was spent helping her parents at work. Barely into her teens, Westover graduated from helping her mom mix remedies and birth babies to sorting scrap with her dad, who had the unnerving habit of inadvertently hitting her with pieces he’d tossed.

In the Prologue Westover introduces herself:

    I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.  The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.  The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling.  On the highway below, the school bus rolls past without stopping.  I am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.  We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse. We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

Emboldened by the example of a brother, who read whatever books he could lay his hands on and left for college, Tara did well enough on an ACT test to be admitted to Brigham Young at age 16.  MacGillis wrote:

    There, she is shocked by the profane habits of her classmates, like the roommate who wears pink plush pajamas with “Juicy” emblazoned on the rear, and in turn shocks her classmates with her ignorance, never more so than when she asks blithely in art history class what the Holocaust was. (Other new discoveries for her: Napoleon, Martin Luther King Jr., the fact that Europe is not a country.) Such excruciating moments do not keep professors from recognizing her talent and voracious hunger to learn; soon enough, she’s off to a fellowship at Cambridge University, where a renowned professor — a Holocaust expert, no less — can’t help exclaiming when he meets her: “How marvelous. It’s as if I’ve stepped into Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion.’”

 The 1913 George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion was the inspiration for My Fair Lady. 

Miller's Sullivan St. lakefront illustrating beach erosion and mild winter, by Paul Kaczocha

Bob Seeger’s “Roll Me Away” came on the car radio and I just had to turn the volume way up and sing along.  On the surface it’s such a celebratory “on the road” anthem that the wistful final verse, not unusual in Seeger compositions, always comes as a sobering reality:

I'm gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin', gotta keep ridin'
Keep searchin' till I find what's right
And as the sunset faded I spoke
To the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We'll get it right

I attended Valparaiso University professor Allison Schuette’s interactive workshop at IUN sponsored by the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) and titled “Flight Paths: Mapping our Changing Neighborhoods.”  Allison acknowledged my participation in the Indiana Humanities project and since the featured interactive map was on Gary’s Tolleston neighborhood, she passed out a brief history of Tolleston that I had written for Flight Paths. Allison played excerpts of interviews with three people who grew up in Tolleston.  One man described the ethnic mix prior to the 1960s as a blend of Slovak, Polish, Czech, and German.  His father had black friends; when he drafted Jimmy Scott, a black kid, for his Little League team, people phoned to complain and called him a “nigger lover.”  He recalled:

    Realtors would come into a neighborhood, say to the whites, “Better move now while your property is still worth something because when this neighborhood starts changing, property values will decrease and you’ll lose out on a lot of money.” And that eventually became illegal, but for quite a while these white folks just felt, “Well, I’d better do as they say and turn my house over to the realtor and get rid of it while I move elsewhere.”

    So many people just heard about these problems or these issues; they didn’t really experience them. They were watching television, seeing all kinds of marches and rebellions across the country, and they just got the impression that the black culture was antisocial, and they were a people that just didn’t understand the needs of the white person.

    When we watched on television the funeral of Martin Luther King, my uncles in particular would say, “Oh, man, we can’t have this, what is going on here? What’s happening to our society?” All they saw was the violence. They did not see the peace. They did not see the change. And the violence, they thought, was going to be widespread. It was going to come into Gary.

And I guess the whole idea of being in the same neighborhood, in the same church, in the same organization with black people was just something that they could not understand or tolerate.

When Karen Freeman-Wilson’s parents moved to Tolleston, it was rapidly becoming a black neighborhood, due to white flight.  Her father was a steelworker and her mother worked for Neighborhood Settlement House, which became Gary Neighborhood Services.  The building housed recent migrants from the South and helped integrate them into the community.  It also offered child day care and activities for teenagers and seniors. Freeman-Wilson recalled:

  I was a 4-H member there. We had a very vibrant program. I learned how to cook and to sew.  I can probably still do a pretty good hem with a sewing machine, and I still slipstitch.  We skated on a floor that was really wobbly, but it made you a good skater.  When you went to a real nice rink, you were a pro because if you could make it through the wobbles and the buckles in the floor at the neighborhood House, you could skate anywhere.

Councilwoman Mary Brown praised the resilience of Tolleston residents:

Just look around at people in my community. Retired doctors, retired teachers, retired professionals who have stayed. They’ve continued to pay taxes and pay into the city because they still believe that we can come back. They believe in the city and believe that it can work.

To illustrate Tolleston’s rapid racial transformation, Allison opened a section on St. John’s Lutheran Church, which predated the Gary’s founding by a half-century.  In 1962 Reverend Norman Brandt became pastor and visited the homes of new African-American residents, urging them to come to St. John’s.  A succession of church confirmation photos dramatically illustrated the rapid transition from all-white to all-black.  Reverend Brandt founded an alternative school in Glen Park that Phil and Dave attended for six years.  Rebecca Brandt was a classmate, as were good friends Clark and Gloria Metz’s girls.

(left; below, confirmation classes: 1962, 1964 & 1974) 

The large crowd included IUN colleagues Joseph Gomeztagle, Kathy Arfken, Lanette Mullin-Gonzales, Chris Young (with son Robert), Ellen Szarleta, Suzanne Green, Sue Zinner (with students from her Ethics class, including Munster clerk/treasurer Wendy Mis), Kay Westhues (from IU South Bend), and people from the community.  Allison posed questions that prompted small group discussions.  When the entire group shared insights, I remained quiet except to note the redlining by banks and government agencies not only prevented minorities from owning homes but also discriminated against black entrepreneurs.  African Americans in the audience shared experiences of growing up in segregated neighborhoods and encountering institutional racism.

Seeking more information about St. John’s Lutheran Church on Google led me to Michelle McGill-Vargas’s website, where I was cited in an article about Gary during the Prohibition era.  McGill-Vargas wrote:

    James Lane’s City of the Century led me to real-life gangster Gasperi (or Gaspari) Monti who ruled the city’s Little Italy section until his violent death in 1923. According to local newspaper reports, Monti is best known as the government’s star witness in a corruption case against more than sixty judges, prosecutors, policemen, and even then-Gary mayor Roswell Johnson, all for violating Prohibition laws. At the time, the Gary Police Department had a special enforcement arm called the Sponge Squad that arrested bootleggers, and then would sell liquor confiscated in the arrests to line their pockets and the pockets of everyone else up the law enforcement chain in Lake County. Monti made a deal with federal prosecutors to expose the corruption, but was gunned down in broad daylight by two unknown assailants on March 13, 1923, just days before he was scheduled to testify.

    Monti was no stranger to violence and attempts on his life. In 1922, he’d been shot through the mouth by a man who’d shot him a year prior. He owned and operated the Black and Tan Club in the 1700 block of Adams Street where shooting deaths were commonplace. Even Monti’s wife, Mary, was into the rackets. After her husband was killed, police found illegal liquor and several pounds of explosives in her home.

So-called “Black and Tan” establishments were saloons where African-American and Caucasian clientele intermingled. Scandalous to blue-blood Northsiders, the Gary “dive” was known for “debauched” activities such as interracial dancing and prostitution.

On a mute TV screen at Hobart Lanes was an ad for Lawless Auto Repair in Valpo.  Love the name.  Terry Kegebein will be attending a sixth family funeral within a year.  Since the price of obits in local newspapers has skyrocketed, many only use funeral home websites.  My great-aunt Ida Gordon, who lived with us when I was growing up, subscribed to the Easton (PA) Express for the obits about people she may have known.  I scan obits for personages of local significance or that illustrate Gary’s former ethnic diversity.  For example, from February 20 obits in the NWI Times I learned that Alice Geraldine Kiefer, 82, worked at USS Gary Sheet and Tin, met husband Carl at the Midway Ballroom, and the two were married at Holy Angels.  Robert Joseph, 96, played tackle for Gary Emerson and at IU, was a member of the 1945 Big Ten champions, and met wife Mabel at Calumet High School, where he taught for many years and founded its football team.  Here’s an excerpt from the obit for Mihailo Kostur, 77, like Robert Joseph a Gary Emerson grad:

    Mihailo was born in Vrlika Dalmatia Croatia.  He immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15.  He worked as an operator for Arcelor Mittal for37 years. Mihailo enjoyed being outdoors, gardening playing bocce ball, many different card games, making homemade wine following Serbian traditions, and spending time with his grandchildren. Mihailo was a member of St. Elijah Cathedral in Merrillville as well as the Chetnik organization.  He was preceded in death by parents Bozo and Andja Kostur.

Historian Jerry Pierce found a humorous cartoon on Facebook, and Ray Gapinski posted photos of an abandoned asylum near Terre Haute. Larry Bean, who like wife Cindy pseeks out historic ruins, responded, “Looks like it’s worth the trip.”

Jim Crow

“Three-fourths of the 900,000 African-American veterans who served during World War II were coming home to communities in the old Confederacy.  This was the world of Jim Crow, where black citizens were relegated to the margins of American democracy and expected to be the bootblacks and mudsills of the nation’s economy.” Richard Gergel, “Unexampled Courage”

A recent Washington Post Sunday magazine carried a lengthy article adapted from Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation” titled” The North, the South, and the Origins of Jim Crow.”  During the 1830s numerous white entertainers donned black face and sang in a parody of what they claimed was black dialect.  The most famous, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, dressed in mismatched shoes and threadbare gold pants and billed himself as the “Original Jim Crow.”  “Daddy” Rice performed a ludicrous off-balance jig during a ditty called “Jump Jim Crow” that contained the lines,“Weel about and turn about and do jis so/Eb’ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.” By the end of the decade “jumping Jim Crow” became a synonym for compromising one’s principles and Jim Crow a synonym for separate accommodations in public facilities, such as locomotives.  Historian Luxenberg found an October 12, 1838 notice in the Salem Gazettereferring to the “Jim Crow car at the end of the train.”  Even after the Civil War, in the North as well as Dixie, African Americans were often segregated on trains and steamships; as Luxenberg wrote, “the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling [was] written by a New England-born justice for a 7-1 majority dominated by Northerners.”

Prudence Crandall

In 1832 Canterbury, Connecticut schoolteacher Prudence Crandall, the wife of a minister, admitted 17 year-old African-American Sarah Harris to her private school for girls.  When white parents withdrew their daughters, Crandall, with the support of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, turned her institution into exclusively a boarding school for young women of color until retaliatory actions by townspeople, including nuisance lawsuits and the poisoning of the school’s well, forced the Crandalls to leave town.

Growing up in Fort Washington, PA, I was aware of a small cluster of homes three blocks from us inhabited by black folks who took in foster children from Philadelphia. Some went to my elementary school, and I’d see them wearing clothes my brother and I had outgrown that Midge had given to our cleaning lady Ada Jenkins. In fifth grade my safety patrol corner was a block from where they lived, and I knew many by name.  Bernard Johnson was a playmate. My first encounter with racism, I believe, was when the principal left Charlie Gaskins, the best player in our class, off the softball team.  In seventh grade at Upper Dublin were classmates from the black community of North Hills, and I became friends with Percy Herder and Bernell Nash and had fantasies about five-foot-ten, full-breasted Beatrice Addie Green (even the names seemed exotic, given my white bread suburban upbringing). In the gym locker room I gaped upon spying Percy’s silk, yellow briefs with tiger stripes.  My first epiphany regarding Jim Crow realities was a year later when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.  A neighbor from Alabama blamed outside agitators, but scenes on TV exposed that as a lie.

 C. Vann Woodward

In grad school at Maryland, C. Vann Woodward’s “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” (1955), based on lectures delivered at the University of Virginia, was must reading and led many of us to Woodward’s more substantial “Origins of the New South, 1877-1913” (1951). In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education(1954) Woodward traced the history of Jim Crow laws, which until the 1890s were more common in the North than in the South, where racial separation in public places was custom rather than law.  Then when Populists began looking to bring African Americans into their movement, conservative “Bourbon” Democrats passed legislation to create, in Woodward’s words, “legally prescribed, rigidly enforced, state-wide Jim Crowism.”

Photographer of urban ruins Cindy C. “Cupcake” Bean, whose shot of a Lake Michigan sunset with steel mills in the background appears in “Gary: A Pictorial History,” wrote: “Crouching in the darkness of an abandoned house, I sat in the middle of a room filled with toys. The sun was sinking casting ominous shadows in the room. I sat next to the horse on springs and looked at it…it sadly stared into nothingness as I photographed it. I felt lost…lost in a room full of toys.”  At first glance the horse on springs appears quite lifelike.

abandoned Glen Park church; photo by Cindy Cupcake

In the Jeopardy category “the 1870s,” I knew four of five answers, including Boss William Marcy Tweed and cartoonist Thomas Nest as the first to  draw images of a donkey for Democrats, but fanned on one about a botanist who developed the russet potato, so-named due to its reddish-brown color.  It was Luther Burbank, but I guessed George Washington Carver.  Known as the “Peanut Man,” Carver also did research on sweet potatoes at Tuskegee Institute but not russet potatoes.  One contestant guessed “Russet.”  Along with Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks and educator Booker T. Washington, Carver was extolledduring the Jim Crow era as a nonthreatening Negro, but that should not detract from his remarkable discoveries.

At Chesterton library Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate” was in the New Books section, but I opted for Richard Gergel’s “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sergeant Isaak Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.”  On February 12, 1946 (“The Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln’s birthday), Sergeant Isaak Woodard, wearing his army uniform, was returning on a Greyhound bus to his home in Augusta, Georgia upon receiving an honorable discharge after three years of military service as a longshoreman in the Pacific and came under intense fire in New Guinea.  Sitting with a white G.I., passing a bottle back and forth, and talking too loudly to suit a passenger nearby, he was removed by the driver and arrested by Batesburg, South Carolina police chief Lynwood Shull.  While having him in custody, Shull and other police beat Woodard severely with nightsticks, and later Shull jabbed him in the eyes with a billy club for answering “Yes” rather than “Yes sir.” The beating permanently blinded Woodard.    

Isaac Woodard after beating; below, Julian Bond

The outrage mobilized black veterans and led to President Truman desegregating the military by executive order.  After an all-white jury acquitted Shull, conscience-stricken Federal Judge Waring began issuing landmark decisions that challenged Jim Crow laws.  His dissent in a 1951 case pertaining to segregated schools became the model for the unanimousBrown v. Board of EducationSupreme Court judgment overturning the Plessy “separate but equal” precedent  and ordering the Topeka, Kansas school board to desegregate its schools.  The role of the NAACP was crucial in publicizing and litigating the Woodard case.  In “We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal team That Dismantled Jim Crow” (2018) Margaret Edds highlights the role of two NAACP attorneys who developed a legal strategy that found a receptive audience in federal judges in key civil rights cases.

Similar atrocities against returning World War I veterans occurred without such dramatic repercussions.  Woodard’s blinding was not an isolated incident.  In a chapter titled “Reign of Terror” Gergel documents horrendous occurrences in Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee. In the course of his research Gergel came across a statement by Julian Bond that the Isaac Woodard incident triggered the modern civil rights movement. Interviewing the civil rights icon and University of Virginia History professor, Gergel wrote:

 Bond recalled from memory the story of Woodard’s blinding and described a photograph he remembered from his childhood. As Bond described the image, he began to weep openly.  Composing himself, he apologized for the tears but stated that after all the years, “I still weep for this blinded soldier.”

A decade later, a photo of Emmett Till’s mutilated body would shame the nation and provide propaganda for the Soviet Union.

Gergel’s use of the word mudsills, meaning those at the lowest social level, led me to this quotation by Abraham Lincoln, whose background was not far removed from those whom he described:

 By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be -- all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all.

Before being inducted into the army Woodard had laid railroad tracks, delivered milk, took construction jobs for two dollars a day, and got hired at a sawmill, Doolittle’s Lumber.  Gergel wrote: "He worked as a 'log turner,' a backbreaking and dangerous job that earned him but $10 a week.  Because they faced such dismal employment options, it is not surprising that despite the perils of service in the armed forces, Woodard and many other African Americans residing in the rural South viewed military service as a promising alternative."

Bill Hudnut

In the Winter 2019 Traces Editor’s Note, Ray Boomhower described his 28-year association with the magazine, including playing a role in soliciting reader opinion on what to call it, finally settling on a name similar to Steel Shavings.  Pictured are numerous past covers, almost half of which contain articles of mine, including my one cover story on Gary pugilist Tony Zale.  My most recent pays tribute to Gary civil rights pioneer Reverend L.K. Jackson, the self-styled “Hell-raiser from the East,” “Servant of the Lord’s Servant,” and “Old Prophet.”  A current article describes the civil rights contributions of Republican Bill Hudnut, who served as mayor of Indianapolis for 16 years, beginning in 1976. At a time when most downstate politicians shunned Gary mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher Hudnut embraced him as a valuable ally and in 1980 supported Hatcher’s successful bid to become president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Several African Americans compete in Unit 154 duplicate bridge events, though not commonly in Chesterton, including Richard Hatcher’s wife Ruthellyn, and the Gary game has far more tables than ours.  In 1932 blacks formed the American Bridge Association (ABA) due to being barred from American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) events, especially in the South. In 1967 the ABCL included in its by-laws a rule stating that nobody could be denied membership on the basis of race, color or creed.  The ABA still exists and holds biannual tournaments.

At Chesterton YMCA I played duplicate for the first time in over a month, partnering with Charlie Halberstadt.  Director Alan Yngve said, “Welcome back,”and sassy Dottie Hart quipped, “Where have you been?”  When I commented on Sally Will’s green outfit being early for St. Patrick’s Day, she said she decided to wear green all week and pointed to her earrings shaped like leprechauns.  In the hand I wish I could play over, Dottie Hart opened a Heart, Charlie overcalled to 2 Clubs, and Terry Bauer and I passed.  Dottie bid 2 Hearts, and both Charlie and Terry passed.  I held 8 high card points, Queen, spot, spot of Clubs, and King, Jack, spot, spot of Spades.  Aware that Charlie sometimes overcalls light, I took Terry’s pass as a sign that my partner either had a strong Club suit or opening count and figured that even going down one would produce a better score than if Dottie made 2 Hearts.  I bid 3 Clubs and Charlie went down three. Result: low board.

photos by George Sladic, above, and Paul Kaczocha

George Sladic and Paul Kaczocha posted photos of the Lake Michigan lakefront, reminding me that visitors still don’t have free access to Mount Baldy due to possible sinkholes and that this is a dangerous season for intrepid or naïve visitors wandering onto ice formations that often break off from the shoreline.  In fact Paul’s dog had to swim to shore when trapped that way.

Old Mill

John Constable, "Parham Mill, Gillingham," circa 1823

“The sound of water escaping from mill dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.” English landscape artist John Constable
Old Mill in 1936 and  2007 (by Samuel Love)

From Samuel A. Love:“Farewell Old Mill, 1851-2018. More Merrillville landmarks disappearing. Originally a distillery, then a grist mill, a tavern, a restaurant, a dance hall, a school, a candy store, and finally a pizzeria. We rarely dined here, we were Palace Pizza devotees, but I remember being fascinated with the little rapids of Turkey Creek ‘roaring’ under the deck.”

I am disappointed in Merrillville’s leaders for not bothering to save historic Old Mill, located at 73rd and Madison and boarded up since 2010.  73rd Avenue has roots dating back to the Sauk Trail, used first by Native Americans and then by settlers traveling west.  Once, Potawatomi tribes gathered in a nearby clearing for religious ceremonies. A century ago, the road was paved and became part of Lincoln Highway.  Merrillville went through several name changes once the Potawatomi were forcibly removed: McGwinn Village, Wiggins Point, Centerville, Merrillville, and Ross Township, prior to Merrillville becoming a town in 1971 out of fear of annexation by Gary.

At lunch with Mike Olszanski and Chris Young at Little Redhawk Café.  I mentioned Young’s article about the infamous 1979 “Disco Demolition Night” at White Sox Park organized by WLUP’s “shock jock” Steve Dahl, when a crate of disco records was blown up between games of a twi-night doubleheader as the crowd chanted “Disco Sucks,” then stormed the field, causing game 2 to be forfeited.  Chris noted that, his area of specialty being early American history, it was the only time he made use of oral interviews for a scholarly publication. Library assistant Clyde Robinson walked by; I finally addressed him by his correct name after calling him Wayne for months and, before that, Rob a couple times. Once, I called Bettie Wilson, whom I see every day, Barbara.

. Laura Jones wedding picture with husband and parents, 1938

Steve McShane collected materials for the Archives at boarded up Wirt/Emerson School and from Miller centenarian Laura Jones, whom Judy Ayers frequently takes to lunch.  Steve suggested I interview her.  She’s evidently hard of hearing but still sharp mentally.  In an Ayers Realtors Newslettercolumn Judy Ayers wrote about trick-or-treating in Miller:

   I can still remember the best houses to go to on Halloween. Clarice and George Wilson on Henry Street always handed out Hershey Bars. Snack size or miniature candy bars hadn’t been invented yet so you got a full-sized Hershey Bar. Then there was Mrs. Teiche on the corner of Hancock and 3rd Avenue, who spoke with a heavy accent and always wore grandma dresses and thick stockings. A kid would stand on her porch and wait for what seemed like forever for her to reach down in a big burlap bag and bring out one apple at a time and drop it in their trick or treat bag. She was a nice old lady; but once we figured out time spent wasn’t relative to end result, we often bypassed Mrs. Teiche’s house. 

  Sometimes I’d skip math teacher Mrs. Hokanson’s house, too. She’d put kids through their paces. She’d conduct a little question and answer session with each kid before she’d relinquish one of her popcorn balls. She could make up a story problem about 7 little ghosts and 43 Tootsie Rolls and darn near ruin a kid’s Halloween by making them do math. 

    Then there was the Erlandson house. If Mrs. Erlandson knew you were a neighborhood kid, you got invited onto her porch for donut holes and hot apple cider. Moms and Dads on escort duty always liked this stop but a kid could waste a lot of valuable trick or treating time there. Mrs. Erlandson always had to get a good look at everyone’s costume even if it was cold and rainy and you were all bundled up in your winter coat. Mrs. Erlandson didn’t hear very well either and the year I borrowed one of Mrs. Ellman’s white poodles and dressed as Little Bo Peep, Mrs. Erlandson thought I said I was wearing something old and cheap. She told me “Oh, honey, it’s only Halloween – you look just fine. Isn’t that Mrs. Ellman’s poodle?” 

    These days Mrs. Teiche would have to pull something other than apples out of her bag on Halloween lest she be suspected of wrongdoing. Gene and I both have to be careful to not carry on too much about how cute the Spiderman and Little Mermaids look when we answer the door. We’ve learned from experience. Growing up in the same neighborhood, we have vowed to never come to the door dressed in costumes ourselves because we can still remember the Halloween Evelyn Mosegard came to the door dressed like the tooth fairy and we never did figure out what husband Elmer was wearing in the background. Maybe it’s best for our little kid psyches we didn’t know. 

    We also know to move quickly. Forget trying to give little goblins lessons in manners by trying to coax them into saying “thank you.” One year I forgot to tell Mrs. Lindstrom thank you and she kept saying “Now, what do you say when a nice lady gives you trick or treat candy”and I’d say back to her “Trick or Treat?”Then she kind of got a tone in her voice when she asked me the same question again. This time I said, “Happy Halloween?”while other trick or treaters were stacking up behind me. The crowd was getting rowdy and I was about to take my tiara and dig down in my trick or treat bag to retrieve the piece of petrified bubble gum I was jumping through hoops for when she gave up on me. It wasn’t a pretty sight. I nearly lost my princess composure. Being dressed for a northeaster to blow through the area at any given moment, I had perspiration on my upper lip and still had to turn around and make my way through the raging crowd of my peers. 

    Gene and I pretty much adhere to the Clarice and George Wilson theory of candy giving. We keep the porch light on, come to the door in respectable garb, distribute treats in an orderly and time efficient manner, remembering good trick or treat candy makes good leftovers. Hopefully, that’s how kids in our neighborhood will remember us – the place where you can get hassle free, express treats – not the home of Zena, Princess Warrior and Dr. Spock. 

At bowling Mel Nelson asked if we had many Halloweeners. Living in Gary’s Glen Ryan subdivision, he saw almost none. So many folks showed up at the condo that Toni feared we might run out of candy, though not James and Becca, unfortunately (James had play practice, and Becca couldn’t talk her friends into going out). I bowled miserably for 26 frames, then converted three straight spares and turkeyed in the tenth, as the Engineers won two out of three games and series to remain in first place. Afterwards, Dick Maloney reminded me of the time at Cressmoor Lanes when an opponent ended with three strikes, then collapsed and died.  Too bad it didn’t happen a frame earlier, I quipped, tastelessly.  At the time it wasn’t funny.  I saw him keel over.  Terry Kegebein returned from a three-week road trip to California.  On an icy road in the Colorado Rockies, he witnessed some idiot driver losing control of his vehicle and almost going over a cliff. As it was, he careened off both the retaining wall and the mountain, messing up both sides of his car.

Working on a NY TimesSunday puzzle, Toni inquired if I knew the rhyming nickname of a Cardinal great.  Easy: Stan “The Man” Musial, best natural hitter I ever saw, save for Red Sox Ted Williams, also a lefty.

At Gary Genesis Center people were lined up around the block for tickets to see Barack Obama Sunday campaigning for Senator Joe Donnelly, Congressman Pete Visclosky, and other Democrats.  Earlier, the former President stumped for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, as did Oprah Winfrey. Her opponent is a disgusting bigot who, as Secretary of State, is actively seeking to disenfranchise thousands of black voters.  Tom Wade snagged two tickets in Valpo, and Darcey is hoping to get in with a bottle of water and in a wheelchair.  She wrote: “It will be great, but I dread the standing in line and sitting on hard chairs, ouchie. Will try to take in a bottle of water, specifically not allowed, heavy security, metal detectors. When they try to confiscate my bottle of water I will play the cancer survivor card hard, doubt it will work. Rules are rules.”

Our out of control president now claims he can nullify the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of citizenship to those born in the United States by executive order.  Ray Smock wrote:

  He is anti-immigration unless the immigrant is white. That’s clear all right, clearly racist and xenophobic. We have been having a discussion about what it means to be an American for more than three centuries. Our literature and histories are filled with this discussion. The best elements of the American “creed” tend toward openness, diversity, tolerance, acceptance, and the “melting pot theory.” But we have never really melted even as peoples from many lands assimilated. Over the next century the issues of migration worldwide will have a vast impact on all nations. We will see vast movements of human populations fleeing from the ravages of climate change. There will be internal migrations in the US and other nations not unlike the Dust Bowl migrations of the 1930s. Wars will be fought over water and arable land. Trump style dictators and fascism are already on the rise. And in 100 years there will be another 4 to 5 billion people fighting over a rapidly changing planet that will be far less salubrious than it is now. Where shall this discussion begin? I won’t be around to see this. But I see all the moving parts lining up as I write this.

  

Prior to our book signing at Lake Street Gallery, Ron Cohen and I met at Miller Bakery with Toni, Nancy, Councilwoman Rebecca Wyatt, and Ken Schoon, who also has a new book out on Swedes settlers in Northwest Indiana.  Harry and Maryanita Porterfield were eating nearby and the Lowes and Gallmeiers were in the bar area waiting to be seated. Despite Lake Street being torn up and a competing Temple Israel service to honor Pittsburgh shooting victims, we sold more than a dozen copies of “Gary: a Pictorial History” and Schoon did almost as well.  Cindy C. “Cupcake” Bean showed up for a free copy since we used her photo, taken from Marquette Park, of Lake Michigan with steel mills in the background.   

John Attinasi, formerly an IUN  Education Professor, came by on his way to Temple Israel and told me that legendary jazz musician Art Hoyle from Gary recently celebrated his  89th birthday.  I’m hoping to interview him about nightclubs where the horn player performed. Hoyle was attending Roosevelt High School when Frank Sinatra performed at Memorial Auditorium during then Froebel School Strike. A session player at Chess records he became a fixture at Chicago’s Regal Theater beginning during the early 1960s. Seven years ago, he told an interviewer about going on a 1960-61 tour with Bo Diddley, Lloyd Price, and Vee-Jay Records artist Jimmy Reed:

  We did 67 one-nighters from New York to Los Angeles and back. Two busloads of people. We wound up in the 369th Armory in Harlem. It was supposed to accommodate 1,800 people and they had over 3,000 in there. Big Joe Turner was on that bill and he was singing let it roll like a big wheel. A girl was trying to marry one of the guys in the band got up on a table and started shaking. A guy in the balcony threw a bottle. It landed in front of the piano that was being played by (organ player) Big John Patton. The lead alto player turned around as the bottle broke. It hit him and blood streamed down. Fights broke out. And Joe is still singing. The fire department turned on hoses. Bo Diddley's drummer and I rescued this pregnant woman who was about to be trampled. We pulled her up on the bandstand with us.

Art Hoyle, Gary jazzman