“I know I said I’d never cross the border
I know I promised to return to you
But I lost my job in the maquiladora
What’s a simple man to do?”
Steve Earle
Put on Steve Earle’s Jerusalem CD, the one containing “John Walker’s Blues,” and really dug song number six, also about someone in jail, an immigrant to got arrested in San Diego doing something to earn needed money. Looked up maquiladora and first got definitions for make-up artist but then discovered that it is a factory in Mexico where workers make products for the American market. Also put on a Jayhawks CD. The Minneapolis band is together again and will be performing their 1992 album “Hollywood Town Hall” in its entirety at Chicago’s Vic Theater (where I saw Graham Parker years ago).
Jonathyne Briggs was at the lunch table with Anne Balay and Chuck Gallmeier, also a big Steve Earle fan. Jonathyne’s delivering a paper in London during semester break and received a Summer Faculty Fellowship. He hopes to take his daughter Ragen to Paris next summer when he goes there to do research on the Seventies French punk music scene. He usually rents a flat from someone who is usually elsewhere. I’ll look into staying there, too, if I take my granddaughters to Prague and Paris like I’ve talked about. He wants his Historiography students to use the Archives next semester. I suggested an assignment using the Post-Tribunes, and maybe he can have them keep journals and make use of journals in the Archives, such as the diaries of Stanley Stanish and Katherine Hyndman.
Spoke to Steve McShane’s class about Gary’s First Hundred Years and had them read from Age of Anxiety like when I appeared before the Ogden Dunes Historical Society. Steve read this charming excerpt from Sthe Stanish’s diary: “My army buddy Stanley Sprecher visited with his wife, who was really into sterilizing all their glasses and dishes.” It was an age when diseases such as polio and scarlet fever made some people paranoid. And later: “We bought a movie camera and projector and took pictures at Grandpa and Grandma Rybicki’s golden anniversary celebration in Hessville. I got one of Ronnie’s temper tantrums on film.” When I was a kid, my dad took 16 milimeter silent movies that lasted about four minutes.
Reading Katherine Hyndman’s reaction upon hearing of Willa Mae’s death almost left me in tears. The prostitute and dope addict had befriended Katherine when she was in a Crown Point jail cellblock after passing out antiwar literature during the Korean War. Katherine wrote: “Willa Mae’s family had been evicted for nonpayment of rent. They had no place to go. Their father disappeared, and her mother and two younger children found relatives to live with until they got relief. It was then that she turned to prostitution. Taking dope made it easier for her to live the life thrust upon her. Willa Mae was one of the nicest persons I met in jail. She was intelligent, had human sympathy for people, was generous and hardworking, and was class-conscious in the way she spoke and rich and poor. We both wept when she left for Indianapolis. Dear Willa Mae, I wish you could somehow know that I will never forget you. Rest in peace, dear child, you knew so little of it in life.”
Student questions are a highlight of my class visits. Asked my favorite Gary research topic, I mentioned the 1967 election where Richard Hatcher triumphed over the corrupt Democratic machine. In fact, I treasure the many hours I spent interviewing the former mayor. Doing oral histories is a little like participating in a scavenger hunt. The most fun is when you discover something unexpected. Paulino Monterrubio patiently answered my inquiries about times he’d been discriminated against what he really wanted to talk about were his accomplishments. He showed me prized possessions – citizenship papers, a union card, a World War II warden’s hardhat. He made me realize that the way to write about immigrants is not as passive victims but as active agents developing strategies to survive and adapt to new surroundings.
I talked to the students about interviewing the Reverend L.K. Jackson – “The Old Prophet,” as he called himself. I knew that he had participated in efforts to desegregate Gary’s Marquette Park and had invited Paul Robeson to sing in his church after the school board refused to allow him to perform at Roosevelt School. That was only the tip of the iceberg so far as his civil rights activities were concerned. During the 1940s he threatened to organize a bus boycott if the transit company didn’t hire black drivers. Similar threats against downtown department stores resulted in black clerks being hired. He persuaded the Post-Trib to hire a black reporter and the Gary National Bank to employ black tellers. I interviewed him at his home and recall that he had an entire closet full of hats. He was convinced the ob burned down his church – St. paul Baptist – because he was an outspoken critic of the vice and gambling establishments that the city government tolerated. What a character.
Beloved Cubs broadcaster Ron Santo died at age 70 of complications from bladder cancer. A former player on the 1969 team that blew a mid-August nine and a half lead over the “Miracle Mets,” he struggled with the effects of juvenile diabetes and had both his legs amputated but still continued as the team’s color commentator on WGN. He never had anything good to say about New York, and there’s a famous photo of a black cat at Shea Stadium walking past him while he is in the batting circle during a crucial September game. He bled Cubbie Blue, as the saying went, and was famous for yelling when Cubs players did something right and groaning when things went bad. My favorite was when leftfielder Brant Brown dropped a ball against Milwaukee in 1998, turning a 5-3 lead into a sudden loss. Ronnie kept repeating “Oh, Noooooooo!!!!” as if his heart was breaking. Tied with the Mets with three games to go in the Wild Card race, the Cubs did manage to make the playoffs, so Brown does not have the notoriety of Steve Bartman, the fan who prevented Moises Alou from catching a foul ball in game six of the 2003 playoffs against Florida. Ten years later when Carlos Zambrano no-hit the Astros in a game played in Milwaukee because of Hurricane Ike, Ron was beside himself, shouting “Yesssssss!!!!!” and using some of his favorite expressions, like “Unbelievable” and “Oh, man.” On the SCORE Cubs President Tom Ricketts said that “Ronnie will forever be the heart and soul of Cubs fans.”
With encouragement from elementary school girlfriend Judy Jenkins (hope she doesn’t have second thoughts) worked on the next chapter for the tiara mystery, having to do with planning a U.D. Class of 1960 rendezvous at Wendy’s plantation. Here’s my first paragraph, which I sent to LeeLee to see if it’s too over the top: “Judy promised Jimmy that she’d think about going to Wendy’s bash. At the one reunion she attended 20 years before, she had felt out of place – like she didn’t remember anybody - but since then had been in touch with several old friends, including LeeLee and Wendy, and from their descriptions of the fiftieth reunion regretted not having gone. Jimmy remained close friends with her brother and emailed or called her from time to time. Their parents - Midge, Vic, Gussie, and Ted - had been best friends, and the families had vacationed together in the Poconos several summers in the early 1950s. Midge and Gussie would thoroughly scour the cabin when they arrived and then again the day before they left. The bugs were thick in August at the Poconos, and bats consumed thousands each day or it would have been unbearable. One evening Jimmy and Judy were out in a rowboat on Lake Mineola at dusk when a bat seemed headed right for them. Judy ducked, and her head went into Jimmy’s lap. He leaned over and hugged her with his body against her back for a few seconds to protect her.
“Wow,” he said.
“How exciting,” she replied.
“Want to go in?”
“No, that was fun.”
Bats bombarded the boat a dozen more times before Judy’s dad called from the shore for them to come in for the night.
One rainy day they were playing cards and both had on shorts. Judy’s legs were a deep tan, and Jimmy found it hard not to stare. The summer Judy turned 13 she visited relatives and came back bragging that she knew how to French kiss. She offered an explanation but not, to Jimmy’s regret, a demonstration. They never dated in high school – she had plenty of admirers, and Jimmy was too timid to ask her out. But they loved to fast-dance together at sock hops after basketball games to anything by Chuck Berry or Fats Domino’s “My Blue Heaven.” One New Year’s Eve during a party at Ricky’s house, at the stroke of midnight Judy gave LeeLee’s brother a long kiss and then turned and looked Jimmy in the eye. He hugged her, pecked her cheek, and hated himself afterwards for being such a wuss.”
An Asian man – probably Chinese – is often on campus with a toddler. They are so cute, and the man, most likely the grandparent, lets the kid walk wherever he wants. At noon he followed me into Tamarack Hall. He loves the rocks that the geology department put down near Marram Hall. I said something to the gentleman but he didn’t appear to speak English. His son or daughter probably is a medical student; many live in nearby apartments. After lunch the man was by himself, having given the child to one of the parents in all likelihood. SPEA professor George Assibey-Mensah reminded me about the Holiday Party or I’d have missed it. Chris Young talked about visiting his dad in Sarasota over the holidays – just him and his brothers. Chris has three kids and is a great dad but probably can use the break from parenting.
Was virtually alone in the Portage theater watching Cher and Christina Aguilera in “Burlesque,” a glitzy but less than exciting flick that didn’t even get an R rating. Stanley Tucci was very good as Cher’s gay buddy, but I have never been a big fan of Aguilera’s caterwauling, or Cher either, who looks like an aging transvestite.
Saw “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the Memorial Opera House in Valpo, built in 1893 by a chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic (there’s a ancient framed picture in the lobby of local members) to honor Civil War vets and renovated during the 1990s. Grandkids James and Rebecca played the main characters kids and had a few lines and sang some of the songs. At the last minute the director asked Angie to fill in for someone whose main job had been to move scenery on stage in full view of the audience. In addition to participating in many, many set changes, Angie and two others also did a dance number with mops. They were all great.
Fred McColly stopped in to my office for a chat and later wrote this comment on the above blog: “I found my Carpatho-Russian granny's citizenship papers at my mom's not that long ago. She arrived in 1912 and became a citizen in 1943: three decades of wavering. Her sister had returned to Europe a few years after their arrival leaving her virtually without family until my mom and her siblings came along. Lonely, always with her husband's family, she never quite fit in and always talked about "going home". The folks from "the old country" that I knew all seemed a bit unsettled and insecure. Not their kids though. The first generation became American to the extent that they abandoned their parents’ culture and traditions. Sad. I only know because granny lived with us until I was a teenager and I caught bits and pieces of the culture by chance (I must have been the only fourth grader at George Earle elementary school that got a small glass of beer with a bologna sandwich at lunchtime..."peeva...good for you, drink!") and the only thing left that my kids know about is the traditional pyrohy (pierogi) on good Friday and Christmas eve. She adapted as far as she could...any success had to wait for her children's generation.” Fred probably has 200 credit hours by now but still needs a Math course to graduate. I told him (half joking) that I’d go to his graduation in full regalia and try to be on stage to hand him his diploma personally.
Showing posts with label Paulino Monterrubio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paulino Monterrubio. Show all posts
Friday, December 3, 2010
Friday, November 13, 2009
AREA Calumet
Sam Barnett dropped by the other day with copies of the latest AREA Chicago, called “Peripheral Vision.” The idea was to include articles on surrounding communities, and in a section called AREA Calumet is excerpts from the interview Sam did with me a few weeks ago. Actually the editors credit me as the author “as told to” Sam, who did an excellent job introducing and editing it. Sam had with him a young street artist from England, Sarah Smith, whom came to Chicago after hearing about AREA Chicago. Sam gave her a tour of Gary, and I gave her a copy of volume 40 and my Nineties issue “Shards and Midden Heaps” with Sam on the cover, along with Sara McColly. I showed Sam photos from the Autograph Party, including one of Fred McColly and Sam mentioned that he regularly reads Fred’s blog.
Found some interesting articles in the magazine, including one about possible ways to use the 573-acre site where U.S. Steel South Works once provided work for thousands. A high school art teacher, Bert Stabler, in an article called “Relative Freedom,” lamented the restrictions of the classroom and how it tends to strangle creativity. Anthony Rayson produced a long, angry poem called “Shut This Authoritarian Nightmare Down!” which mentioned his protesting the building of a metropolitan airport near his home in Monee. He writes:
“We marched in solidarity with city folks being forced out of their homes,
As Daley and his plotters decided to destroy the miserable high rises.”
A teenager when Mayor Daley’s father had the police tear gas protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention and Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down the following year, Rayson writes:
“We had an Iranian exchange student, who we invited into our gang.
He was the son of a two-star general in the Shah’s army no less!
His name was Bahram Salimi, but everyone called him Sirhan Sirhan.
He got a helluva “education” because everything was such a mess!”
Here’s what the article in AREA Chicago looks like:
Steel Shavings
by James Lane, Samuel Barnett
Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you’re not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It’s not just a possibility. It is a certainty!
—Jean Shepherd, 1975.
Or perhaps not, thanks to the life’s work of another great Calumet Region writer and raconteur, James Lane, Indiana University Northwest Professor Emeritus of History. In 1975 Lane co-founded Steel Shavings, a magazine dedicated to the social history of Northwest Indiana. Since then he has edited (or co-edited) all 40 volumes, using oral histories, journals and diaries, newspaper clippings, photographs and more to create an invaluable people’s history of the area.
Shortly before the autumn 2009 release of Volume 40: “Out to Pasture but Still Kickin’” (the “retirement journal”), I asked Jim Lane to reflect on his approach to history, the future of Steel Shavings, and a certain topic he feels is regrettably lacking in local histories.—Samuel Barnett
Steel Shavings started out to publish people’s family histories, which were done as projects in history classes. From the very beginning we believed if people knew about their own families that would be the microcosm which would contain a lot of the themes of the larger local as well as national history.
Almost everybody in The Region can trace the immigrants in their family to the last generation or two or three. That immigrant experience, when not told from the bottom up, misses a lot of the humanity. For a long time, the traditional studies just showed immigrants as victims, but the family histories showed people combating the harsh environment with different strategies. Sticking together, forming clubs. So the immigration experience has been humanized through family and oral history.
This is a blue-collar area, but the story of steelworkers is usually told studying institutions, like the union or the corporation. As a starting point I’ve used folklorist Richard Dorson’s interviews with steelworkers, published in the book Land of the Millrats, but Dorson researched the subject when there weren’t many women working there. Now we have a whole body of sexism stories. My latest article in the Spring 2009 issue of Traces magazine talks about members of a women’s caucus, most of whom started out as radicals, and moved to Gary to work in the mills because they thought they could start a social revolution through the working class. As women steelworkers, they used their organizational skills to start women’s groups and demand fair treatment.
Race is the third theme that exists throughout Shavings. Race relations, the interaction or lack of it, is so important in this area. You can study the Richard Hatcher grassroots mayoral campaign as I have, as a very important movement. But I’ve also wanted to get the daily life of people living in Gary, especially before neighborhoods were open to all.
One of the first interviews I did when I wrote City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana (1978) was with Paulino Monterrubio. All I wanted to talk to him about was the ways he was discriminated against when he came here, which he was and that’s certainly part of the story. But he wanted to talk about being a neighborhood warden during World War II, and he wanted to show me his citizenship papers, his union card, pictures of his family. He put up with the bullshit, the discrimination, but the reality of his life—the way he wanted to be remembered—was not just as somebody who was kicked around but somebody who had this, did this, and left a mark through his relatives and his kids.
I have never told my students they should have a list of “30 questions,” or that these are the questions we should ask all the people we interview. I tell them the best oral historian is a person who is a good listener; you want to establish a rapport and have that person realize that the final product is as much theirs as it is the interviewers’.
The great thing about oral history is that I think anyone can do it. Some of my worst students have done the best jobs. You know—real screw-ups who half the time didn’t come to class, but just knew how to get stuff out of folks. It’s been interesting to see how some people are natural interviewers and other people can’t shut up. [Laughs]
One oral historian thought there is maybe a 10- or at most a 15-year window of opportunity where people have vivid memory, and after that forget it. An oral historian has to be skeptical; human memory is frail. Oftentimes I think people form or recall an anecdote, and then they have the anecdote in their mind all set, so what they’re remembering is more than the event itself. In the formation of that story or anecdote, certain things are left out that are too painful or too embarrassing or whatever.
I wish there was more sexuality in Steel Shavings. I think in the future people will want to know more about that. In the journals, people were so candid about drug use, about their parents being abusive; they were so candid about so many things. But shy when dealing with sex. Or maybe that’s not the word, maybe they don’t want to put it in writing, but I wish there was more. That’s something I’ve tried to get, but haven’t succeeded as well as I’d like.
At one point I’d hoped that I could do an issue on Gay and Lesbian life in the Calumet Region. I had my students go out, and most of the interviews were disappointments. They just stayed away from certain questions. One student was interviewing his aunt, and every time she talked about what she actually enjoyed doing, he said, “I don’t want to hear about it!” Some people did a great job but there wasn’t enough for an issue. I have, however, put some of that material in Volume 40.
A lot of Shavings is contemporary history. I went from having students write about their families to students writing about themselves. Because so many of our students are adolescents it is a contemporary history of growing up, becoming an adult. Coping with school, girlfriends, work, living at home. I’ve never expected this to be a scientific analysis, a good statistical sample, but it’s filling in the gaps.
Jean Shepherd, my favorite writer, used the phrase “shards and midden heaps,” which I used for the subtitle of the 1990s issue. My concept is that 200 years from now somebody’s going to find these things, these magazines, and they will literally be shards and midden heaps, little scraps of history, little pieces that add to the general story that people remember about the time.
I don’t know if Steel Shavings will have a future after Volume 40, but I hope it does. There are possible funding problems, as there always are, but that could probably be overcome. I wouldn’t mind passing the baton or being an occasional co-editor. I consider Steel Shavings the best thing I’ve done as a historian. ◊
(note: here is the link to AREA Chicago http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/peripheral-vision/steel-shavings/
Found some interesting articles in the magazine, including one about possible ways to use the 573-acre site where U.S. Steel South Works once provided work for thousands. A high school art teacher, Bert Stabler, in an article called “Relative Freedom,” lamented the restrictions of the classroom and how it tends to strangle creativity. Anthony Rayson produced a long, angry poem called “Shut This Authoritarian Nightmare Down!” which mentioned his protesting the building of a metropolitan airport near his home in Monee. He writes:
“We marched in solidarity with city folks being forced out of their homes,
As Daley and his plotters decided to destroy the miserable high rises.”
A teenager when Mayor Daley’s father had the police tear gas protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention and Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down the following year, Rayson writes:
“We had an Iranian exchange student, who we invited into our gang.
He was the son of a two-star general in the Shah’s army no less!
His name was Bahram Salimi, but everyone called him Sirhan Sirhan.
He got a helluva “education” because everything was such a mess!”
Here’s what the article in AREA Chicago looks like:
Steel Shavings
by James Lane, Samuel Barnett
Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you’re not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It’s not just a possibility. It is a certainty!
—Jean Shepherd, 1975.
Or perhaps not, thanks to the life’s work of another great Calumet Region writer and raconteur, James Lane, Indiana University Northwest Professor Emeritus of History. In 1975 Lane co-founded Steel Shavings, a magazine dedicated to the social history of Northwest Indiana. Since then he has edited (or co-edited) all 40 volumes, using oral histories, journals and diaries, newspaper clippings, photographs and more to create an invaluable people’s history of the area.
Shortly before the autumn 2009 release of Volume 40: “Out to Pasture but Still Kickin’” (the “retirement journal”), I asked Jim Lane to reflect on his approach to history, the future of Steel Shavings, and a certain topic he feels is regrettably lacking in local histories.—Samuel Barnett
Steel Shavings started out to publish people’s family histories, which were done as projects in history classes. From the very beginning we believed if people knew about their own families that would be the microcosm which would contain a lot of the themes of the larger local as well as national history.
Almost everybody in The Region can trace the immigrants in their family to the last generation or two or three. That immigrant experience, when not told from the bottom up, misses a lot of the humanity. For a long time, the traditional studies just showed immigrants as victims, but the family histories showed people combating the harsh environment with different strategies. Sticking together, forming clubs. So the immigration experience has been humanized through family and oral history.
This is a blue-collar area, but the story of steelworkers is usually told studying institutions, like the union or the corporation. As a starting point I’ve used folklorist Richard Dorson’s interviews with steelworkers, published in the book Land of the Millrats, but Dorson researched the subject when there weren’t many women working there. Now we have a whole body of sexism stories. My latest article in the Spring 2009 issue of Traces magazine talks about members of a women’s caucus, most of whom started out as radicals, and moved to Gary to work in the mills because they thought they could start a social revolution through the working class. As women steelworkers, they used their organizational skills to start women’s groups and demand fair treatment.
Race is the third theme that exists throughout Shavings. Race relations, the interaction or lack of it, is so important in this area. You can study the Richard Hatcher grassroots mayoral campaign as I have, as a very important movement. But I’ve also wanted to get the daily life of people living in Gary, especially before neighborhoods were open to all.
One of the first interviews I did when I wrote City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana (1978) was with Paulino Monterrubio. All I wanted to talk to him about was the ways he was discriminated against when he came here, which he was and that’s certainly part of the story. But he wanted to talk about being a neighborhood warden during World War II, and he wanted to show me his citizenship papers, his union card, pictures of his family. He put up with the bullshit, the discrimination, but the reality of his life—the way he wanted to be remembered—was not just as somebody who was kicked around but somebody who had this, did this, and left a mark through his relatives and his kids.
I have never told my students they should have a list of “30 questions,” or that these are the questions we should ask all the people we interview. I tell them the best oral historian is a person who is a good listener; you want to establish a rapport and have that person realize that the final product is as much theirs as it is the interviewers’.
The great thing about oral history is that I think anyone can do it. Some of my worst students have done the best jobs. You know—real screw-ups who half the time didn’t come to class, but just knew how to get stuff out of folks. It’s been interesting to see how some people are natural interviewers and other people can’t shut up. [Laughs]
One oral historian thought there is maybe a 10- or at most a 15-year window of opportunity where people have vivid memory, and after that forget it. An oral historian has to be skeptical; human memory is frail. Oftentimes I think people form or recall an anecdote, and then they have the anecdote in their mind all set, so what they’re remembering is more than the event itself. In the formation of that story or anecdote, certain things are left out that are too painful or too embarrassing or whatever.
I wish there was more sexuality in Steel Shavings. I think in the future people will want to know more about that. In the journals, people were so candid about drug use, about their parents being abusive; they were so candid about so many things. But shy when dealing with sex. Or maybe that’s not the word, maybe they don’t want to put it in writing, but I wish there was more. That’s something I’ve tried to get, but haven’t succeeded as well as I’d like.
At one point I’d hoped that I could do an issue on Gay and Lesbian life in the Calumet Region. I had my students go out, and most of the interviews were disappointments. They just stayed away from certain questions. One student was interviewing his aunt, and every time she talked about what she actually enjoyed doing, he said, “I don’t want to hear about it!” Some people did a great job but there wasn’t enough for an issue. I have, however, put some of that material in Volume 40.
A lot of Shavings is contemporary history. I went from having students write about their families to students writing about themselves. Because so many of our students are adolescents it is a contemporary history of growing up, becoming an adult. Coping with school, girlfriends, work, living at home. I’ve never expected this to be a scientific analysis, a good statistical sample, but it’s filling in the gaps.
Jean Shepherd, my favorite writer, used the phrase “shards and midden heaps,” which I used for the subtitle of the 1990s issue. My concept is that 200 years from now somebody’s going to find these things, these magazines, and they will literally be shards and midden heaps, little scraps of history, little pieces that add to the general story that people remember about the time.
I don’t know if Steel Shavings will have a future after Volume 40, but I hope it does. There are possible funding problems, as there always are, but that could probably be overcome. I wouldn’t mind passing the baton or being an occasional co-editor. I consider Steel Shavings the best thing I’ve done as a historian. ◊
(note: here is the link to AREA Chicago http://www.areachicago.org/p/issues/peripheral-vision/steel-shavings/
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Sam Barnett's interview
My blog is registering on the Internet - don't ask me how the process works, but I Googled Calumet Regional Archives volunteer Maurice Yancy, Red Scare political prisoner Kathryn Hyndman, and former student David Janott and found Blog references to them. I typed in the name of fellow grad student Ray Smock, who has a new book coming out on Booker T. Washington and finally found the blog cited in reference number 231. Obviously, he has been active in numerous endeavors in the service of Clio, and amazingly, the Internet has a record of many of them, from his work as Director of the Robert C. Byrd Center for Legislative Studies to books he put out while Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives.
A librarian from St. Sava's Serbian Church in Merrillville wanted some Steel Shavings issues for their library and gave the Archives some books on parish history in return. Former student Nick Tarailo, whose grandfather Nikola, a retired steelworker, I interviewed many years ago, put her up to it.
Got an email from Sam Barnett that contained an interview he did of me for a Chicago underground newspaper - it's great and very flattering. Here's what he wrote:
"Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty!" – Jean Shepherd, 1975. Or perhaps not, thanks to the life’s work of another great Calumet Region writer and raconteur, James Lane, Indiana University Northwest emeritus professor of history. In 1975 Lane co-founded Steel Shavings, a magazine dedicated to the social history of Northwest Indiana. Since then he has edited (or co-edited) all 39 volumes, using oral histories, journals and diaries, newspaper clippings, photographs and more to create an invaluable people’s history of the area.
On the eve of Volume 40 (the ‘Retirement Journal’) Jim Lane spoke about his approach to history, the future of Steel Shavings, and a certain topic he feels is regrettably lacking in local histories.
Steel Shavings started out to publish people’s family histories, which were done as projects in history classes. From the very beginning we believed if people knew about their own families that would be the microcosm which would contain a lot of the themes of the larger local as well as national history.
Almost everybody in The Region can trace the immigrants in their family to the last generation, or two, or three. That immigrant experience, when not told from the bottom up, misses a lot of the humanity. For a long time the traditional studies just showed immigrants as victims, but the family histories showed people combating the harsh environment with different strategies. Sticking together, forming clubs. So the immigration experience has been humanized through family and oral history.
This is a blue-collar area but the story of steelworkers is usually told studying institutions, like the union or the corporation. As a starting point I’ve used folklorist Richard Dorson’s interviews with steelworkers, published in the book "Land of the Millrats," but Dorson researched the subject when there weren’t many women working there. Now we have a whole body of sexism stories. My latest article talks about members of a women’s caucus, most of whom started out as radicals, and moved to Gary to work in the mills because they thought they could start a social revolution through the working class. As women steelworkers they used their organizational skills to start women’s groups and demand fair treatment.
Race is the third theme that exists throughout Shavings. Race relations, the interaction or lack of it, is so important in this area. You can study the Richard Hatcher grassroots movement as I have, as a very important movement. But I’ve also wanted to get the daily life of people living in Gary, especially before neighborhoods were open to all.
One of the first interviews I did when I wrote City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana (1978) was with Paulino Monterrubio. All I wanted to talk to him about were the ways he was discriminated when he came here, which he was and that’s certainly part of the story. But he wanted to talk about being a neighborhood warden during World War II and show me his citizenship papers, union card, and pictures of his family. He put up with the bullshit, the discrimination, but the reality of his life—the way he wanted to be
remembered—was not just as one who was kicked around but somebody who had this, did this, and left a mark through his relatives and kids.
I have never told my students they should have a list of “30 questions,” or that these are the questions we should ask. I tell them the best oral historians are good listeners; you want to establish a rapport, and have that person realize that the final product is as much theirs and it is the interviewers’.
The great thing about oral history is that anyone can do it. Some of my worst students have done the best jobs. You know—real screw-ups who half the time didn’t come to class, but just knew how to get stuff out of folks. It’s been interesting to see how some people are natural interviewers and others can’t shut up. (Laughs)
One oral historian pioneer thought there is maybe a ten- or at most a fifteen-year window of opportunity where people have vivid memory and after that forget it. An oral historian has to be skeptical; human memory is frail. Oftentimes I think people form or recall an anecdote, and then they have the anecdote in their mind all set, so what they’re remembering is more than the event itself. In the formation of that story or anecdote certain things are left out that are too painful, or too embarrassing, or whatever.
I wish there was more sexuality in Steel Shavings. In the future people will want to know more about that. In the journals, people were so candid about drug use, about their parents being abusive buy shy or circumspect when dealing with sex. That’s a subject I’ve tried to get into, but haven’t succeeded as well as I like. At one point I’d hoped to do an issue on Gay and Lesbian life in the Calumet Region. I had my students go out, and most of the interviews were disappointments. They just stayed away from certain questions. One student was interviewing his aunt, and every time she talked about what she actually enjoyed doing he said, “I don’t want to hear about it!” Some did a great job, but there wasn’t enough for an issue.
A lot of Shavings is contemporary history. I went from having students write about their families to students writing about themselves, through journals. Because so many of our students are adolescents, their reflections constitute a contemporary history of growing up, becoming an adult. Coping with school, girlfriends, work, living at home. I’ve never expected this to be a scientific analysis, a good statistical sample, but it’s filling in the gaps.
Jean Shepherd, my favorite writer, coined the phrase “shards and midden heaps,” which I used for the 1990s issue. My concept is that 200 years from now somebody’s going to find these things, these magazines, and they will literally be shards and midden heaps, little scraps of history, little pieces that add to the general story that people remember about the time.
I don’t know if Steel Shavings will have a future after Volume 40, but I hope it does. There are possible funding problems, but that could probably be overcome. I wouldn’t mind passing the baton or being an occasional co-editor. I consider Steel Shavings the best thing I’ve done as a historian.
Selected Steel Shavings titles are held in the Chicago Underground Library. Complete sets are in the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest (Gary, Indiana) and in libraries across Northwest Indiana. Online, visit http://www.iun.edu/~cra/steel_shavings/.
A librarian from St. Sava's Serbian Church in Merrillville wanted some Steel Shavings issues for their library and gave the Archives some books on parish history in return. Former student Nick Tarailo, whose grandfather Nikola, a retired steelworker, I interviewed many years ago, put her up to it.
Got an email from Sam Barnett that contained an interview he did of me for a Chicago underground newspaper - it's great and very flattering. Here's what he wrote:
"Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory? Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty!" – Jean Shepherd, 1975. Or perhaps not, thanks to the life’s work of another great Calumet Region writer and raconteur, James Lane, Indiana University Northwest emeritus professor of history. In 1975 Lane co-founded Steel Shavings, a magazine dedicated to the social history of Northwest Indiana. Since then he has edited (or co-edited) all 39 volumes, using oral histories, journals and diaries, newspaper clippings, photographs and more to create an invaluable people’s history of the area.
On the eve of Volume 40 (the ‘Retirement Journal’) Jim Lane spoke about his approach to history, the future of Steel Shavings, and a certain topic he feels is regrettably lacking in local histories.
Steel Shavings started out to publish people’s family histories, which were done as projects in history classes. From the very beginning we believed if people knew about their own families that would be the microcosm which would contain a lot of the themes of the larger local as well as national history.
Almost everybody in The Region can trace the immigrants in their family to the last generation, or two, or three. That immigrant experience, when not told from the bottom up, misses a lot of the humanity. For a long time the traditional studies just showed immigrants as victims, but the family histories showed people combating the harsh environment with different strategies. Sticking together, forming clubs. So the immigration experience has been humanized through family and oral history.
This is a blue-collar area but the story of steelworkers is usually told studying institutions, like the union or the corporation. As a starting point I’ve used folklorist Richard Dorson’s interviews with steelworkers, published in the book "Land of the Millrats," but Dorson researched the subject when there weren’t many women working there. Now we have a whole body of sexism stories. My latest article talks about members of a women’s caucus, most of whom started out as radicals, and moved to Gary to work in the mills because they thought they could start a social revolution through the working class. As women steelworkers they used their organizational skills to start women’s groups and demand fair treatment.
Race is the third theme that exists throughout Shavings. Race relations, the interaction or lack of it, is so important in this area. You can study the Richard Hatcher grassroots movement as I have, as a very important movement. But I’ve also wanted to get the daily life of people living in Gary, especially before neighborhoods were open to all.
One of the first interviews I did when I wrote City of the Century: A History of Gary, Indiana (1978) was with Paulino Monterrubio. All I wanted to talk to him about were the ways he was discriminated when he came here, which he was and that’s certainly part of the story. But he wanted to talk about being a neighborhood warden during World War II and show me his citizenship papers, union card, and pictures of his family. He put up with the bullshit, the discrimination, but the reality of his life—the way he wanted to be
remembered—was not just as one who was kicked around but somebody who had this, did this, and left a mark through his relatives and kids.
I have never told my students they should have a list of “30 questions,” or that these are the questions we should ask. I tell them the best oral historians are good listeners; you want to establish a rapport, and have that person realize that the final product is as much theirs and it is the interviewers’.
The great thing about oral history is that anyone can do it. Some of my worst students have done the best jobs. You know—real screw-ups who half the time didn’t come to class, but just knew how to get stuff out of folks. It’s been interesting to see how some people are natural interviewers and others can’t shut up. (Laughs)
One oral historian pioneer thought there is maybe a ten- or at most a fifteen-year window of opportunity where people have vivid memory and after that forget it. An oral historian has to be skeptical; human memory is frail. Oftentimes I think people form or recall an anecdote, and then they have the anecdote in their mind all set, so what they’re remembering is more than the event itself. In the formation of that story or anecdote certain things are left out that are too painful, or too embarrassing, or whatever.
I wish there was more sexuality in Steel Shavings. In the future people will want to know more about that. In the journals, people were so candid about drug use, about their parents being abusive buy shy or circumspect when dealing with sex. That’s a subject I’ve tried to get into, but haven’t succeeded as well as I like. At one point I’d hoped to do an issue on Gay and Lesbian life in the Calumet Region. I had my students go out, and most of the interviews were disappointments. They just stayed away from certain questions. One student was interviewing his aunt, and every time she talked about what she actually enjoyed doing he said, “I don’t want to hear about it!” Some did a great job, but there wasn’t enough for an issue.
A lot of Shavings is contemporary history. I went from having students write about their families to students writing about themselves, through journals. Because so many of our students are adolescents, their reflections constitute a contemporary history of growing up, becoming an adult. Coping with school, girlfriends, work, living at home. I’ve never expected this to be a scientific analysis, a good statistical sample, but it’s filling in the gaps.
Jean Shepherd, my favorite writer, coined the phrase “shards and midden heaps,” which I used for the 1990s issue. My concept is that 200 years from now somebody’s going to find these things, these magazines, and they will literally be shards and midden heaps, little scraps of history, little pieces that add to the general story that people remember about the time.
I don’t know if Steel Shavings will have a future after Volume 40, but I hope it does. There are possible funding problems, but that could probably be overcome. I wouldn’t mind passing the baton or being an occasional co-editor. I consider Steel Shavings the best thing I’ve done as a historian.
Selected Steel Shavings titles are held in the Chicago Underground Library. Complete sets are in the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest (Gary, Indiana) and in libraries across Northwest Indiana. Online, visit http://www.iun.edu/~cra/steel_shavings/.
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