Small Farms

“Do what you love to do, and be around things that make you smile.  The cows make me smile every day.” David Jackson, Bentwood (Texas) Dairy

 David Jackson family at Bentwood Dairy

When I was growing up in the rural suburb of Fort Washington, PA, Wentz turkey farm was a mile from our house as well as the Van Sant farm, where seasonal work opportunities were available for teenagers. Living in Gary during the early 1970s, one could drive south on Broadway and come across farms later replaced by suburban sprawl.  In October we’d visit one to buy Halloween pumpkins; others sold Christmas trees. As teenagers during the 1980s Phil and Dave picked up spending money de-tasseling seed corn in rural Porter County.

Due in part to the expansion of agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland, the number of family farms in America continues to shrink by more than 100,000 since 2013, according to Time magazine.  Farm debt has rose close to $500 billion, and more than half of all farms lost money each of the past seven years.  According to the Department of Agriculture in 2017 the average farm size was 434 acres, and the number of small farms of less than 10 acres had shrunk to 273,000.  Farms of more than 2,000 acres accounted for 60 percent of total agricultural production.

 Mike Certa (3rd from left) in 2007 IUN retirement photo with Leroy Gray, Patti Lundberg, Florence Sawicki

Mike Certa wrote a piece titled “Two Treat Day” about visiting a dairy farm in Merrillville, Indiana, when he was a kid.

    When I was at Edison Elementary School in Gary, we were told that our class of “city kids” was going to have an outing to the “country” to see the Tony Smith Dairy Farm out in the wilds of Merrillville.  In addition to the farm, the Smith family ran a store as an outlet for their dairy products.  When I told my Mom where my class was going, she said, “Did you know that we’re related to Tony Smith?”  Of course, I didn’t.  Mom continued, “My grandma was Clara Schmit, and she was Tony Smith’s brother.  She was married to my Grandfather Michael Boesen.  Clara was my mother Anna’s mother.”

    I was confused and full of questions, “How come her name was Schmit and her brother’s name was Smith?  Who was Clara again?” Mom explained that the family came from Germany and that their name was originally Schmit.  Mathias Schmit and wife Catherin were granted possession of land in what is now Merrillville in 1852.  Their Grandaughter, Mom’s Grandma, Clara Schmit married Michael Boesen  in 1894. At that time, the entire family was known as Schmit.  During World War I (1914-1918), when Germany and America fought one another, many Germans living in American changed their names to more American sounding ones.  Schmit was changed to Smith.  When Tony (Schmit) Smith started his farm, he used his American name.

    Later I discovered what an amazing woman Clara (Schmit) Boesen was.  Widowed at an early age with four small children (Margaret, Francis, Raymond, and Anna), she began teaching school in Merrillville.  She later became the Griffith Postmistress, a post in which she served for decades.  Because of her job, she owned one of the first automobiles in Lake County.  Since she didn’t drive, she was chauffeured around by her youngest son, Raymond (also known in the family as Scotty).

    Mom remembered visiting her Uncle Tony’s farm with her mother and grandmother.  She told me to let them know that I was related to the owner.  She said, “Tell them that Tony Smith is your Great-Uncle.  Say that your mother is Cecelia Mae Govert from Griffith.”  The day of the school field trip she made sure that I took a piece of paper with me with that information on it.

    The bus picked us up in Brunswick.  As we got close to the farm, we could see cows in the fields and some barns.  The actual field trip is a bit of a blur.  They showed us the milking barn and some cows.  I was waiting for the visit to the dairy store for two reasons:  that’s where Mom told me to let them know who I was, and rumor had it there might be some sort of treat.

    Sure enough, once we got to the dairy store we were told we could get either a fudgesicle or a creamsicle.  When I got to the lady passing out the goodies, I said, “Tony Smith is my Great-Uncle.  My Mom is Cecelia Mae Govert from Griffith.”  The lady said, “What?  Who?”  I repeated my speech.  Still, the lady looked confused.  I pulled my piece of paper out of my pocket and handed it to her.  She took it and went into the back room, calling out to someone.  I don’t know who was back there, but when she came out she was smiling.  She said, “Well, since you’re a relative, you get a special treat.”  Then she gave me two treats: a fudgesicle AND a creamsicle!!!!!!!!!!  I was the envy of the entire class.

    Nowadays, when I drive past the intersection of Old Merrillville Road and 59th Avenue, and see the Smith Dairy Store (that is now across from Saints Peter and Paul Church), I think of that old location as part of my family’s history, enough to get me TWO ice cream treats. 

In 2018 NWI Times correspondent Jane Ammeson interviewed Merrillville/Ross Township Historical Society president Roy Foreman, who recalled: “Smith's Dairy Farm on the north side of Merrillville gave tours to groups of school children and to Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.”

Small Farms Apartments

Gary’s Small Farms on the west side near the Little Calumet River dates at least as far back as the 1930s.  Most homesteads are gone now, but Small Farms Apartments along 24th Avenue was constructed during the late 1970s, federally subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  It is one of the neighborhoods included in a Flight Paths initiative I’m involved with as an oral historian. I ran into fellow participants Kay Westhues and Allison Schuette at a Gary Public Library reception organized by the Calumet Heritage Partnership titled “Calumet: The Land of Opportunity.” It included Calumet Regional Archives photographs and other items Steve McShane loaned them, including a Jackson 5 concert poster that caught my eye when I first arrived.  I chatted with colleague Ken Schoon, former IUN campus cop Ron Jones, labor activist David Klein, Gary librarians Maria Strimbu and David Hess, library board member Robert Buggs,former Gary council member Rebecca Wyatt, and Cedar Lake Historical Association director Julie Zasada, whose organization contributed a century-old sign advertising Bartlett cottages and who was one of the exhibit organizers. The buffet included chicken wings that thankfully weren’t so spicy as they appeared as well as miniature chocolate eclairs among the desert selections.

Robert Buggs, Kay Westhues, and Jimbo 

 ethnic kids at Gary's Bailly Branch library, 15th and Madison, 1922

Ron Cohen found a copy of Jean Shepherd’s “A Fistful of Fig Newtons” (1981) that contains a chapter titled “Ellsworth Leggett and the Great Ice Cream War” that begins with the author returning for a funeral to his hometown of Hammond, Indiana, which “stood craggy and sharp against the grayish multi-colored skies of the Region [and] resembled a vast, endless lakeside junkyard that had been created by that mysterious wrecking ball known as Time. . . An adult theater was on the very site on which the proud Parthenon theater had reposed, named after the Parthenon itself of ancient Athens.  It had been famous for its elegant lobby and its graceful Fred Astaire movies.  Now, TOPLESS MUD WRESTLING and dealers in greasy film cartridges shot in the cellars of Caracas.  Where Clark Gable was once the king, Linda Lovelace now reigned.” Shepherd contrasted his nondescript rental car with the old man’s Pontiac Silver Streak 8: 

    With its three yards of gracefully tapering obsidian black hood, its glorious Italian marble steering wheel with gleaming spidery chromium spokes – a steering wheel that could well hang on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art – its low, menacing purring classic Straight 8 engine, it bore as much resemblance to this 85-dollar-a-day tin can as the Queen Mary does to a plastic Boston whaler. 

    A giant dump truck roared past me, flinging bits of gravel and what appeared to be molten tar over my windshield.  Heavy diesel fumes rolled on my window.  I frantically tried to crank it up, but naturally the handle came off in my hand.  I flung it under the seat with a snarl, there to join the handle from the other door and the empty Pabst Blue Ribbon can thoughtfully left for me by the previous renter.

On the evening of the “war” between The Igloo’s owner Mr. Leggett and an ice cream franchise that had opened across the street from his ice cream emporium, the old man had taken the family out to “watch the mill”:  Shepherd wrote:

  “Watching the mill” was a special treat known only to the residents of the Region.  On hot nights people would drive to the lakefront and park in the velvet blackness near the shore to watch the flickering Vesuvius fireworks of the blast furnace and the rolling mills across the dark water.  Cherry-red ingots and sepia-shaded orange glowing sprays of sparks flung high in the air by the Bessemer converters made a truly beautiful and even spectacular sight as the hissing colors were reflected in the black waters of Lake Michigan.

    The smell of the lake was part of it, of course, Lake Michigan, that great, sullen, dangerous, beautiful body of water, is, in midsummer, like a primitive reptilian animal in heat.  For miles inland on such nights,  the natives can “smell the lake.”

    Not until I left the Region as a semi-adult did I realize that not everywhere was the northern sky a flickering line of orange and crimson, a perpetual man-made sunset.

Bridge opponent Lila Cohen recommended Tara Westover’s “Educated: A Memoir,” about the daughter of Mormon survivalists in Idaho home-schooled until she was 17, who, remarkably, earned a PhD from Cambridge University.  Lila had reviewed it for an AAUW publication.  Fred Green mentioned suffering a career-ending football injury at Indianapolis Brebeuf in eleventh grade. A linebacker and pulling guard, he’d been recruited by Notre Dame and West Point.  In “A Fistful of Fig Newtons” Jean Shepherd recalled being an intrepid defensive lineman at Hammond High where he “irrevocably shattered the ligaments of my left knee.” At a table with feisty 89-year-old partner Dottie Hart playing against two equally feisty octogenarians, we started the three hands late because our opponents had to use the bathroom. When we finished before the four other tables, one said, “Well, I guess we had time to use the restroom.”  I replied, “Yes, you’d even have had time to go number 2.”  She said, “TMI” – standing for too much information, a criticism she frequently gets from her grandchildren.  We all had a good laugh.

In Banta Center’s library I found Bob Greene’s “When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams,” about the author’s unlikely 15-year gig as a backup singer at Oldies concerts for surf duo Jan and Dean.  “Surf City,” Jan and Dean’s first Number One hit, contains the line, “Surf City, where it’s 2 for 1, two girls for every boy.” Another couplet goes: “When we get to Surf City, we’ll be shootin’ the curl and checkin’ out the parties for a surfer girl.”  Greene compares his experience at middle-age to a kid’s fantasy of running away from home and joining the circus. Invited up on stage for the first time, he spotted headliner Chuck Berry waiting in the wings, mouthing the words to “Help Me Rhonda,” the Beach Boys hit Jan and Dean were covering.

Ray Smock 

Ray Smock shared an open letter constitutional scholar Richard Bernstein wrote to his former law professor Alan Dershowitz, which reads in part:

     I never thought that you would stoop so low as to embrace the pseudo-monarchical conception of the presidency treasured by President No. 45 and by those who enable him and do his bidding. Today, sad to say, those of us who are constitutional historians, who remember Watergate, and who know that a president of the United States is not a king of any kind are consumed with disgust, contempt, and revulsion by your embrace of the idea that a president can define the national interest by reference to his desire to win re-election, and that nothing but a violation of criminal law resulting in indictable felony can be an impeachable offense.

    You disgrace the legal profession, you disgrace this country, and you disgrace yourself by what you are saying in seeking to argue that No. 45 cannot be impeached except for an indictable felony.

At Cressmoor Lanes the impeachment trial was on TV but mute, no doubt a rehash of arguments repeated ad nauseum.  Instead of real cross-examination, the Democrats questioning the House managers and the Republicans tossing softball questions to Trump’s lawyers. I rolled a 450 series, slightly above my average.  My only double came in the final frame and helped the Engineers eke out series over Frank’s Gang.  Mark Garzella, disgusted with the Cubs, is switching loyalties to the White Sox.  I’m considering doing it, too, and told him I had been a Sox fan when former Philadelphia Phillies great Dick Allen was with the team. Jim Rennhack, a tall lefty, said he met Allen when invited to the Phillies’ spring training camp in Clearwater, Florida, right out of high school 50-some years ago. He was not offered a contract but received a check for $5,000.

Paul and Julie Kern, on the final leg of a 2500-mile road trip to visit their son in California, noticed a church sign near my favorite watering hole when I’d visit Midge, Pappy and Harriet’s, a haven for old hippies and the young at heart.

Gary Black Film Festival

“I believe in Gary.  I believe the people are holding on.”  Community organizer Syron Smith

I decided to talk without notes introducing Frederic Cousseau and Blandine Huk’s film “My Name Is Gary,” but wrote out these thoughts beforehand:

Last year I received an email from French filmmakers Frederic Cousseau and Blandine Huk.  They had come across my blog dealing with Gary history and told me of their intention to live in Gary for two months.  They had made documentaries about industrial cities in Poland and the Ukraine and wanted to do something comparable in the United States.  I helped them find a place to stay and, after they arrived, arranged for them to meet such people as Mayor Richard Hatcher, State Senator Earline Rogers, union leaders Alice Bush and Lorenzo Crowell, and people from IUN such as archivist Steve McShane and administration assistant Mary Lee.  I soon got the sense, however, that what they wanted most was to go off on their own and discover people and places for themselves.  Their goal was to have Gary residents talk candidly about their city and to record as many different viewpoints as possible.  Theirs became a labor of love and once, after spending a day in Chicago, they told me that, riding back on the South Shore, they felt like they were coming home.  One of their last interviews was with me, and at the end they asked me to say, “My Name is Gary.”  I thought it rather odd, but after they used that phrase as the title of their film, it made sense.  In fact, I believe that virtually everyone interviewed in the film is proud to say they’re from Gary.  Frederic and Blandine sensed that and through their interviews have captured that pride and the resilience of its people.  So I believe that it is not an exaggeration to call the film a loving a well-balanced tribute to the people of Gary.

above, Karen Toering; below, Erykah Badu

On Friday, day one of the Gary International Black Film Festival, IUN’s 33rd Avenue parking lot was swarming with police, and a Lake County Command Center trailer indicated they were doing another sweep.  I hope it is just an unfortunate coincidence, but if I am uncomfortable, I imagine other attendees will be, too.  Greeting me in Savannah Center were festival director Karen Toering, committee member Toni Simpson, and board chairman Walter Jones, whom Samuel A. Love introduced me to at the Stewart House community garden.  The opening reception was a big success, and I chatted with two others Sam introduced me to while Frederic and Blandine were in town, community organizers Alicia Nunn of ARISE and Kay Abraham of the New GRANT Theater, as well as former Labor Studies teacher Robert Buggs, dressed to the nines.  When Karen lined up to take a photo of us, I joked that Buggs should slouch since he was much taller than I.  A jazz trio, singer, keyboardist, and conga drummer were first-rate, as were the hors d’oevres.  The main event was screening of the Black western, “They Die at Night.” Appearing in the film is singer Erykah Badu, and by 7 pm a large crowd was on hand.

On Saturday I was back to see three short films.  The first, Eli’s Liquor Store, was so realistic I first thought the owner was playing himself.  The others were quite disturbing: “Finding Neptune” dealt with a guy whose compulsion to masturbate while watching porn undermined his relationship with a girlfriend.  “The Gift” was about a woman who caught AIDs from a man and got her revenge by picking up strangers and sleeping with them.  The actress, a 1987 Gary Wirt graduate named Timika now living in Texas, was quite beautiful, as was her mother, currently rehearsing as Lady MacBeth.

Sunday was the premiere of “My Name Is Gary,” and a crowd of more than 100 people was on hand, including Mayor Freeman-Wilson and two of Mayor Hatcher’s daughters.  After festival director Karen Toering made introductions and thanked her staff, I made some remarks about directors Frederick Couseau and Blandine Huk.   The film was awesome (as Georgre Van Til and others remarked), but about 25 minutes into the film the blue ray kept stopping and starting and then stopped entirely.  Once it stopped while showing Samuel Love and me putting Camilo Vergara’s Martin Luther King posters on the front of Four Brothers market, enabling Toni to photograph it.  After a few minutes, it started up again but only for about 15 minutes.  We never got to see the end, but people in the audience, including some who were in the film, shared reminiscences about growing up in Gary and appreciated how “My Name Is Gary” provided historical context.  I promised to obtain a clean copy and show it in its entirety, perhaps at IUN and the Gardner Center in Miller.

photos Toni Trojecka Lane took during the screening of "My Name Is Gary" of Sam and Jimbo

On the way out Wilton Crump of the Spaniels reported that Henry Farag’s second performance at Three Oaks, Michigan, last Friday was so successful the management wants them to work up a Christmas show.  Also in the audience was Jonathyne Briggs, clutching page proofs of his forthcoming book and back from Paris, where he spent two evenings with Frederic and Blandine.  We marveled at some of the symbolism in “My Name Is Gary,” the use of trains, for instance, whose comings and goings once meant good paying jobs for Gary residents but now were only the cause of stalled traffic and pollution.  One person told Blandine of his goal to make it to Chicago while the image of Chicago’s Loop could be seen clearly across Lake Michigan.  Some in the audience thought the film too bleak, but my view is the filmmakers came to Gary expecting to find a ghost town and instead met a whole slew of interesting, vital people proud to be from Gary.

After the show we had dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse with the Hagelbergs, where, having skipped lunch, I devoured a 7-ounce filet.  The day before we celebrated Angie’s birthday at Sage Restaurant, and I brought half my delicious pot roast home. The grandkids were at play practice in East Chicago, but earlier I had seen James bowl a decent series.  Chris Lugo’s grandson Charlie Jones rolled a 213, despite a split in the seventh, ending a string of strikes.

John and Andrew English, Dave and James Lane, Josh, Kevin and Kaden Horn; below, Sat. bowler K.K. with grandpa Kerry Smith and Duke Caminsky

Randy Mark Yager, formerly with a local chapter the Outlaws Motorcycle Gang, got arrested in Mexico and transferred to San Diego after 17 years on the lam.  Indicted in 1997 for robbery, drug trafficking, arson, and conspiring to commit murder, Yager, a Gary native who had lived in Crown Point, fled the country with girlfriend Margie Jelovic, whom he met at Milan’s 51st Tap at 5115 Broadway in Gary, owned by her mother Katie.  Margie, according to the NWI Times died in a car crash while fleeing authorities after Mark was arrested Ironically, it is doubtful she would have been charged with a crime.  The Outlaw Motorcycle Club started in 1935, adapted the skull and cross pistons as their official patch after Marlon Brando wore a similar insignia on his jacket on “The Wild One,” and spawned dozens of chapters in the U.S. and several other countries.  Forty years ago they went to war with the local chapter of the Hell’s Angels.

Yager then and now

Twenty years ago one of my students got involved with the Outlaws.   He and a friend were breaking into summer homes in Cedar Lake; among the things they stole were guns. Outlaw members said they’d help arrange for to sell them to the Black P Stone Nation.  It turned out to be a police bust, and he spent six weeks in jail and received a six-year suspended sentence and probation while two Outlaw gang members with him received the maximum sentence of ten years.

Elsewhere in the news, Governor Pence turned down $80 in federal money for pre-school programs after Tea Party zealots put pressure on him.  Even more horrendous, Darren Vann, a convicted sex offender from Gary, strangled a prostitute to death in a Motel 6 in Hammond and when apprehended, admitted to murdering six other women and led them to bodies located in abandoned homes, of which there are approximately 10,000 in Gary.

Dave had Monday off so he, Tom Wade and I played board games for the first time in ages.  I was two of four, winning Amun Re and Air Lords, barely edging out Dave, who usually wins it, when Tom failed to re-deploy his jumbo jets correctly.  On the final dice roll I needed an 8 or better and got 8 on the nose.

The Bears were so terrible losing to Miami that Jerry Davich wrote: “The game was like looking forward to a hot date and then she gets drunk, gets sick, violently vomits on you and you still have to take her home.”   Al Hamnik of The Times compared rooting for them to being in a bad marriage:

               “You stay together for the kids and because you have a lot invested in the family.

                But secretly, you’re drowning in apathy.

                This isn’t fun any more.

                There are no rewards, no future.

                The negativity is choking you like a harness.”

On the way to IUN I noticed that gasoline prices have dipped below three dollars a gallon.  I thought I’d never see that happen.  Leeann Wright of University Advancement sold me an IUN Homecoming ticket from her.  It comes with a nice Redhawk shirt.  Unfortunately they were out of extra larges, but Leeann said more would soon arrive.  She is very personable and told me she reads my blog.

In “The Judge” Special Prosecutor Dwight Dickham (Billy Bob Thornton) is from Gary while the small-town attorney supposedly received his law degree from Valparaiso.  Dickham has it in for attorney Hank Palmer (Robert Downey, Jr.) because of a previous case, where Palmer successfully represented a murderer.  The film got mediocre reviews, but I loved the interaction between Downy and Duvall.

Jonathyne Briggs spoke in Nicole Anslover’s WW II class about France under the Vichy regime and how the French have remembered the German occupation over time.  He mentioned that the American military hanged 29 soldiers, all but four African American for allegedly raping French women even though, in all likelihood, some of the cases were consensual.  Rather than employ a guillotine, the army brought over a hangman from Texas.  Jonathyne was relaxed but erudite (pointing out complexities and ironies).  He cited comparisons between the 1940s and today and occasionally employed slang expressions, such as “up the wazoo.”  Jon also worked in humorous references to his recent sojourn in Paris, including their celebration of its liberation 70 years ago and the fact that the French don’t like spicy food.  He had stayed in a mostly Vietnamese neighborhood, however, where he could enjoy spicy food to his heart’s content.

At VU professor Heath Carter’s for dinner (delicious vegetarian chili) I talked with students about their topics for papers on race-relations in Northwest Indiana, which ranged from the Gary schools to white reaction to Richard Hatcher’s election in 1967.  I suggested to several that they narrow their focus to such possibilities as Gary Roosevelt sports programs in the 1930s or the use of scare tactics in the drive to incorporate Portage as a city.  I enjoyed meeting Heath’s wife and three kids; the family moved to Valpo eight months ago from Chicago.  Also invited was community activist Loie Reiner, who knew Steve McShane and Ron Cohen, and had been active in the anti-nuke Bailly Alliance and the Valparaiso Builders Association, which helped provide housing for black families wishing to move to Valpo.  She and her late husband founded Hilltop Neighborhood House, and she is on its board of directors.  Last May VU awarded Loie an honorary degree.  She noted with pleasure the multi-colored “diversity” ribbon I was wearing.

Loie Reiner with Hilltop Neighborhood House kids

I sent this note to Heath:

“Thanks so much for inviting me to dinner.  I had a great time meeting your family, the legendary Loie Reiner, and seeing your students again.  Here are a couple alternative topic suggestions for, Pat, the Steeler fan who thought he wanted to interview Hatcher's enemies.  If he wants to employ oral history, why not interview the African American young women in his class.   She lives in the Tarrytown area of Gary right next to Black Oak,  where working class whites still live.  By having her tell her life story, they could get to know one another better, an example of race-relations at work.  Or, since he is into football, have him read Dawn Knight's 2007 biography of George Taliaferro ("Taliaferro: Breaking Barriers from the NFL Draft to the Ivory Tower").  An IU All-American and one of the first black pro football players, Taliaferro grew up in Gary.  He describes his neighborhood on the 2600 block of Madison as a melting pot but also observes that schools were segregated.  The student could use Gary city directories to examine the composition of the neighborhood and, by interviewing, if possible, old residents, assess how accurate were Taliaferro's memories were of his youth, and consider how a historian should deal with memory and nostalgia.

Taliaferro's biographer wrote of the working class neighborhood (p.5): ‘It may have been the socioeconomic equality of the people or the fact that those who weren't black were immigrants, sharing similar experiences, having come from Italy, Germany, Croatia, Poland, Serbia, and other mainly European countries.  They all got along.  Pig roasts, a part of Serbian culture, became a regular part of life for all of the neighborhood families.  A Serbian family would slowly roast a pig on a big spit, and the rest of the families would bring side dishes.  It didn't matter that the kids were of different races; they were friends.  The kids played together without incident while the adults cooked and talked, often about sports and local athletes.’  Taliaferro recalled that it was ‘the way all towns ought to be.’

Hope to see you soon, Jim”