Great Adventure

“When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.” Amelia Earhart

 

Growing up in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia Earhart earned the reputation of being a daredevil and tomboy who believed girls should have the opportunity to do anything a boy could do.  Her first plane ride in 1920 changed Amelia’s life; becoming an aviatrix became her passion. By the following year, she had saved enough money to pay for flying lessons from highly-regarded instructor Anita Snook. Within a few years she was a seasoned pilot.  In 1928, in what was a well-planned publicity stunt, Earhart was a passenger in a transatlantic flight piloted by Wilmer Stultz, admitting, “I was just baggage.” Upon returning to America she and the two-person crew received a ticker tape parade in New York City and a reception with President Calvin Coolidge. Due to her resemblance in appearance to Charles Lindbergh, she was dubbed by the press “Lady Lindy.”  Determined to prove her mettle on her own, in 1932 Earhart completed a 14-hour solo flight across the Atlantic, battling strong winds, icy conditions, and mechanical problems.  Her celebrity status led to frequent appearances and commercial endorsements. In 1935, I learned from historian Ray Boomhower, Purdue University hired Earhart to be a counselor to female students and established a Fund for Aeronautical Research in her name that helped in purchasing a twin-motored Lockheed Electra for Amelia’s next great adventure.

By 1938 Earhart had decided to attempt an around-the-world flight and have an account of it be the penultimate chapter in a memoir that would raise money for further aeronautical research and exploration.  After a false start, the ill-fated flight began June 1, 1938, in Miami, Florida. Flying to South America and then east to Africa and Southeast Asia, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan had completed 22,000 miles in a month and had just 7,000 miles to go, across the Pacific.  From Lae, New Guinea, the next leg was 2,570 miles to Howland Island.  She never made it; the plane went missing and a radio frequency snafu caused a waiting naval vessel to lose contact with her plane.  Her last message was that the Lockheed Electra was running out of fuel.  Despite an intensive search, no trace of her or the plane was ever found.

 

Earhart’s disappearance has been the source of speculation and conspiracy theories that exist to this day.  Indeed, it is the primary reason people remember her.  Because America would soon be at war with Japan, some claimed her plane had been shot down and Earhart captured, accused of being on an intelligence mission, and executed.  Romantics wondered wishfully if she and Noonan had escaped to a deserted Pacific island; more likely, they landed on a coral reef that eventually submerged.  Most experts believe the plane simply ran out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific, and sank to the bottom of the sea.

 

My great adventure was leaving law school and traveling to Hawaii to commence working on becoming a History professor. For as long as I could remember, I’d planned to become a lawyer, and for three summers I’d worked at distinguished Philadelphia law firms as a mail room messenger. I observed young associates working 60-80 hours a week hoping to make partner, an outcome that seemed to depend on whether they could generate business for the firm.  In other words, not as glamorous a situation as on the “Perry Mason” series.

 

My senior year at Bucknell, I took Education courses and student taught, which I thoroughly enjoyed. At Virginia Law School many students were undecided over careers or had been pressured into being there. After a dorm mate committed suicide, I started contemplating whether, much as I enjoyed most law school classes, the legal profession was for me.  On a whim I looked into the University of Hawaii’s graduate program and discovered the History chair, Herbert Margulies, was someone whose work on the Progressive Era I admired.  I wrote Margulies a letter, and he urged me to apply and indicated I could receive an assistantship that would cover tuition and pay me a couple thousand dollars.  After meeting with Bucknell mentor, Dr. William H. Harbaugh in Lewisburg, PA, (hitchhiking part of the way) who warned me I’d never be rich and have at least a half dozen years of schooling yet but told me to go for it if that’s what I really wanted, I took the plunge with Toni’s consent. I’ve never looked back and marvel at how well it worked out and that I had the nerve to do it.

 

Toni agreed to move up our wedding date six months, after which we drove her Volkswagen Beetle across the country (a Southern route since it was mid-January 1965, a time when Yankees were viewed with suspicion), shipped the VW from California on to Honolulu, and boarded a plane.  I began work on a Master’s degree, and Toni obtained a job at a downtown law firm. We found a small apartment on Poki Street (why we later named a cat Poki) about a mile from the Manoa campus and close to a bus stop for Toni to commute to work while I walked to classes.  Some evenings we’d hang out on Waikiki Beach near nightclubs with live Hawaiian music and once splurged at Duke Kahanamoku’s for dinner and a show featuring Don Ho of “Tiny Bubbles” fame. I did research at Iolani Palace and we spent a glorious week on the then-barely developed island of Kauai (below, left).  Since phone calls were prohibitively expensive, we’d send and receive audio tapes from our families. I retain many other fond memories of our 18 months on Oahu and have been back to the islands several times since.                 Graduation, 1966

My adventure pales in comparison with the millions of immigrants to America, including Toni’s grandparents.  John Petalas posted a 1922 photo (below) of charter members of AHERA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, founded to counter bigoty emanating from hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan  Anne Koehler, who emigrated from Germany many years ago, wrote about spending a delightful evening with friend Dorothy: “We were sitting in the car at Weko Beach in Bridgman, Michigan where they play taps at sunset during the summer. A car pulled up halfway. Dorothy talked to the driver and found out that he was from Germany. We started to talk from car to car and I found out that this spry gentleman is 92 years old. He hails from Stuttgart in southern Germany and came to this county in the 1950s. He remembers growing up under Hitler and barely missed being drafted toward the end of the war. I was happy to find out that he shared my dislike of our president.”

Dominguez family and George Van Til

My “Great Adventure” post received close to 50 replies, many from former students, including Jim Reha and Sarah McColly, collaborators Roy Dominguez and George Van Til, niece Cristin and nephew Bobby, with whom I’ve shared some adventures.  In the New York Review of Books “Personals” section was this message titled “In the Time of Corona”: “Chinese-Russian grandmother, youthful 60s, seeks a kind, self-supporting, healthy single man 60-70s with whom to share some life - enjoying career tai chi, theater, War on Drugs, Buddhist meditation, and more.” War on Drugs must refer to my favorite band that nephew Bob Lane and I saw perform at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, CA.

Old Man

“I miss my old man tonight

And I wish he was here with me.”

  Steve Goodman, “My Old Man”

 

Phil and Jimbo Father's Day, 2020

Dave and Jimbo, Finland, 2018

I spent a memorable Father’s Day at the condo with great food, a loving family, and games of Telestration (seven of us) and Space Base with sons Phil and Dave and namesake James.  In a note Dave called me his best friend and the wisest man he knows – pretty special.  As my stepfather Howie used to say, I’m a lucky man.  Several Facebook friends posted photos of their late fathers, including Linda Lawson, Hammond’s first female cop and a former legislator running for lieutenant governor, and Kay Westhues (with her dad’s friend Tom Walter), who recalled white water rafting in Colorado with her “old man.”  Roy Dominguez wrote: “My Pa was Jesus Abelardo Dominguez, his father, my paternal grandfather, Abelardo Saenz Dominguez, and my maternal grandfather Hinijio Mata were all great men who put family first.” When we were writing a book together, Roy told me that his father’s family had lived in four different countries – Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, and the U.S. – without ever moving. 

 

“My old man, I know one day we'll meet again as he's looking down
My old man, I hope he's proud of who I am, I'm trying to fill the boot of my old.”

    Zac Brown Band

 

My old man, Victor Cowan Lane, died in 1966 at age 50 of a massive heart attack.  When I decided to leave Virginia Law School, despite having received a full scholarship, to attend grad school in History at the University of Hawaii, I didn’t tell him beforehand, knowing he’d try to talk me out of it; and he was very disappointed.  One of the last things he said to me, however, was that it would be good to have a doctor in the family, his way of validating my decision. Two years later, he knew Toni was pregnant (with Phil) and had bought property in the Poconos on which to build a retirement home that hopefully grandchildren would enjoy.  Alas, it was not to be.  Though we frequently had political arguments (he was a rock-ribbed Republican who idolized Ike) and competed no holds barred in ping pong and card games, he was someone whose love and support I could count on. I still miss him.


Toni’s dad Tony, whom we all called Pop, was a tool and die maker by trade who helped make molds in the manufacture of containers and boxes for companies such as Tasty Kake.  When his company moved from Philadelphia to Doylestown, PA, he commuted 90 minutes each way to provide for his family of seven.  His namesakes, Toni and grandson Philip Anthony, share endearing aspects of his personality: patience and the ability to fix things and stay calm during times of adversity.  Pop was great with kids and I always enjoyed being in his company. Here are a couple of my most cherished memories: He and I were paired in pinochle against brothers-in-law Steve and Sonny. They won three games in a row and Steve kept crowing while Sonny knew not to push his good fortune.  Sure enough, we won the next four as every bid worked perfectly. After each such hand, Tony gave me a wink and a smile.  The first time Tony and Blanche drove to see us in Indiana, Pop got off the tollway a stop late but, knowing our address was 53rd and Maryland, followed street signs from 3rd to 53rd and, realizing the streets east were named for states, found our house before dawn.  Blanche insisted they go back onto the tollway and take the correct exit.  An hour later, they pulled up at the exact same house, ours.  He never complained or rubbed it in.

 

Carter G. Woodson

In the wake of the furor over statues of Confederate generals and military bases bearing the name of rebel leaders, IU’s President McRobbie announced that the university is reviewing the names of all its buildings.  One scheduled for change is currently named for former IU president David Starr Jordon, a believer in eugenics and that “inferior” races were breeding too rapidly and might be candidates for sterilization. The intramural center previously named for segregationist trustee Ora Wildermuth has already been renamed in honor of Bill Garrett, the first African-American Big Ten basketball player.  The library in Miller was once named for Wildermuth, credited with being Gary’s first librarian, until it came out that he opposed African Americans living in Bloomington’s dorms.  For a short time it became the Wildermuth-Woodson branch, with Ora’s name paired with the “Father of Negro History.”  I loved it.  Now it is simply the Woodson branch.

The Beths

left, War on Drugs

Someone challenged me to list 5 decent songs recorded in the past 5 years, so here goes: “Pain” by The War on Drugs (which nephew Bobby and I saw at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown, California); “Missed Connection” by the Head and the Heart (Bob, Dave, and I saw The Head and the Heart there, too, at a midnight show after the Michigan Lanes and I caught them in Grand Rapids); “Future Me Hates Me” by The Beths; “Gloria” by The Lumineers; “Hey, Ma” by Bon Iver.  Also, anything by Tame Impala.

 

Daimaruya Miyuki on left

I've been trading emails with Daimaruya Miyuki, whom I met in Salt Lake City at an oral history conference.  She teaches at Yamaguchi University, located near Hiroshima, and is researching Japanese-American Nisei who fought in the Korean War. Two haikus, translated from the Japanese and courtesy of Don Coffin, fitting considering the current heat wave:

 

A huge ant crawling

Across the reed mat

Slowly, in the heat

 

Oppressive heat,

My mind in disarray,

Thunder in the distance

Judy Blue Eyes

    “Fear is the lock and laughter the key.” Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” Crosby, Stills and Nash

Close to 50 years ago, after finishing three sets of tennis with Paul Kern, Nick Kanellos, and Bob Wilszynski at Woodlake Village Apartments, I was getting into my car when I smelled reefer emanating from one of the units and heard the mellow sounds of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from the 1969 self-titled Crosby, Still and Nash album that also contains “Marrakesh Express” and “Wooden Ships.”  I waved, flashed the PEACE sign, and from an open sliding glass door a long-haired hippie waved back.  Had he beckoned, I’d have gladly joined them.  Hearing “Judy Blue Eyes,” on WXRT en route to IU Northwest, I could still recall many verses, including: “Chesnut-brown canary, Ruby-throated sparrow, Sing a song, don’t be long, Thrill me to the marrow.”  One I never understood in Spanish: “Me la traiga a Cuba, La reina de la Mar Caribe, Quiero solo visitaria alli, Y que triste que no puedo!”: Translated it appears to mean:  “I'd bring her to Cuba, The queen of the Caribbean Sea, I only want to visit her there, And how sad that I can't.”

“Judy Blue Eyes” always reminds me of grade school pal Judy Jenkins, whose brother Terry was my grade school best friend and whom I reconnected with in ninth grade after living in Michigan for over a year.  By then Judy was blond, quite beautiful, and popular; though at her and Terry’s house quite often, I was too diffident to ask her out, afraid of jeopardizing a close relationship, so settled for being a friend and confidant.

About 20 years ago, coming back from Wells Street Beach to our house on Maple Place, I heard the mellow sounds of Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” from the 1971 album “What’s Going On?” emanating from folks enjoying a cookout in front of Miller Village Apartments.  I joined them, the vibes were friendly, and I was invited to a Labor Day party in one of the fourth-floor units.  I showed up but noticed a certain tenseness among some guests, who seemed to suspect I might be a narc.  After a short time, I departed.  Carolyn McCrady lived on the same floor but soon moved out after unsavory renters moved nearby.  Five months later, home invaders broke into Dave and Angie’s cabin a block away from us and across County Line Road from Miller Village Apartments.  The three of us were playing the board game Shark.  The bastards held us captive and terrorized us for over an hour.  Though they were never caught, an FBI bloodhound traced their scent to the fourth floor of Miller Village Apartments.

Sunday after making blueberry pancakes and kaibasa and watching Sunday news shows, I found two movies OnDemand, the depressing “Blue Valentine” (2010) starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling (about a marriage falling apart) and the silly but funny “What about Bob?” (1991) with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss as a mental patient and his self-absorbed shrink. I caught the first two hours of the Oscars and learned next day that the South Korean film “Parasite” not only won both for Best Director but Best Picture as well, beating out such favorites as “Joker,” “The Irishman,” “1917,” and “Little Women.”
Maurice Sendak
At Munster Center for the Arts I told Art in Focus program director Micah Bornstein what I needed for my speaking engagement next month (sound system, stools, and dance floor), then watched a documentary about Maurice Sendak (1928-2012), most famous for the children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are,” whose upcoming Memorial Exhibition will be at the Center’s gallery for two months. Interviewed at age 80, Sendak talked about being traumatized from learning about aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby having been kidnapped and killed (it inspired “Outside Over There”) and seeing a childhood friend in Brooklyn fatally struck by a vehicle on a street trying to retrieve a ball Sendak had tossed him.  “In the Night Garden” (1970) caused a furor because of a drawing of a child’s penis.  Some librarians censored the book; others actually drew diapers on him.  Asked if he’d purposely drawn the offending member, Sendak responded, “That dick didn’t get there by itself.”

George Van Til asked me to keep my book club introduction of him brief when he spoke about his forthcoming autobiography; beforehand I wrote out these remarks:

    As George Van Til once told me in an interview, his political career both began and ended on Route 41.  It began when he took a Political Science class at Indiana University Northwest and joined the IUN Young Democrats, where he met political officeholders and aspirants, some of whom are still active in county government.  The Young Democrats served as a springboard for a career in Highland town government and as Lake County surveyor, with Van Til ultimately winning a total of 16 elections.  During that time, I would frequently see him at events in Gary and of concern to workers and environmentalists.  His efforts on behalf of those people earned him the enmity of powerful economic interests who, when they could not defeat him at the polls, turned to the Justice Department, which ultimately charged him with practices involving his staff that were common, nay, near universal among elected officials. 

    Two years ago, Post-Trib columnist Jeff Manes wrote a column about George Van Til.  He began with the Biblical quote: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone.”  He ended by saying that prison taught him humility – something he admitted he needed and this quote from Van Til: “When I drive by the government center, where I worked for so many years, I avert my eyes.  It’s difficult to look.  Government service is what defined me.  That’s who I was.  What am I now?  It’s a struggle.”  Then Manes added: “As for me, I suppose I needed to talk man to man with the tall, bearded Dutchman for 90 minutes.  My conclusion? No stones cast here.”

 Jimbo and George in Terre Haute, 2016

A large group was on hand for Van Til’s talk, including former Lake County sheriff Roy Dominguez and longtime East Chicago wheeler-dealer Bob Cantrell, who starred on East Chicago Washington’s 1960 state championship basketball team that defeated Muncie Central 75-59. Much of what Van Til revealed about his career as a public servant was familiar to me from interviewing him for several hours, but he added some spicy anecdotes so as (his words) not to bore his audience.  Years ago, Lake County politicians were known to visit sporting houses at the State Capital when the legislature was in session, with the understanding that what goes on in Indianapolis stays in Indianapolis.  One well-known politician, now deceased, was undressing when the lady of the evening asked where he was from and ticked off the names of Region clients.  The man quickly put his clothes back on and was never tempted to return.  One conservative downstate Republican legislator suggested that he and his wife stay overnight and swap mates.  George didn’t take him up on the offer. 

George read off some prospective chapter titles, including one covering the feds vendetta against him, “I didn’t do it.” I teared up when he told of Mayor Richard Hatcher arranging a luncheon at Beach Café for black elected officials to express their appreciation for his services on behalf of the people of Gary.  Before starting his prison sentence in Terre Haute, George spoke with others, including former Calumet Township Trustee Dozier T. Allen, who’d been incarcerated on what to expect. When he realized that most prison guards and white prisoners were Trump supporters, he was careful not to bring up politics.  Playing the piano at Sunday church services was something to look forward to and offered needed solace.  When told by those attending that they’d been praying for a piano player, George thought, “I hope that’s not why I ended up here, as an answer to their prayers.” One holiday Archbishop Tobin conducted services at the chapel and told the prisoners, “I am your brother, Joseph.”  Van Til was impressed.  His prison nickname became “piano man.”

I’m debating how spicy to make my September Saturday Evening Club presentation on “Novelists as Social Historians.”  Before discussing such personal favorites as “Rabbit Run,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Jungle,” “Babbitt,” “Grapes of Wrath,” and recent works by Elizabeth Stroud and Richard Russo, I may start with the first novel I recall reading, the controversial potboiler Peyton Place (1956).  Kids usually read for adventure, fantasy, or to be educated – in this case, it was about sex.  Its themes of hypocrisy, social inequities, class privilege, and sexism in a small, conservative town were especially relevant in postwar America. “Peyton Place” entered the lexicon; after several high school classmates became pregnant involuntarily, gossips clucked, “This town is a regular Peyton Place.”  The book spawned several sequels, two movies, and even a prime-time soap opera starring Mia Farrow as Allison and Ryan O’Neal as Rodney.  Author Grace Metalious was a rebel who often eschewed bras and dressed in men’s clothes prior to becoming famous (some would say notorious) and drinking herself to death within a decade.  I was shocked to find a copy of “Peyton Place” hidden in the bookcase of my maiden great-aunt Grace.  It opened to pages containing juicy passages that she must have read several times.  Here’s one:

    Her finger tips traced a pattern down the side of his face, and with her mouth almost against his, she whispered, “I didn’t know it could be like this.”

    She could not lie still under his hands.

    “Anything,” she said. “Anything.  Anything.”

    “I love this fire in you.  I love it when you have to move.”

    “Don’t stop.”

    “Her? And here? And here?”

    “Yes. Oh, yes.  Yes.”

This car scene featured teenagers Rodney and Betty, who had a “fast” reputation:

    Her whole body twisted and moved when he kissed her, and when hos hands found their way to her breast, she writhed on the seat, jackknifed her knees, pushed Rodney away from her, clicked the lock on the door, and was outside of the car.

    “Now go do it to Allison MacKenzie,” she screamed at him.  “Go get the girl you brought to the dance and do it to her.”

  Before Rodney could catch his breath to utter a word, she had whirled and was on her way back to the gym. He tried to run after her, but his legs were like sawdust under him.  He hung on to the open car door and retched helplessly, the sweat poured down his face.

Heavy Fuel

“If you wanna run cool

You got to run on heavy fuel.”

    Dire Straits, “Heavy Fuel”

 Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits

Heavy Fuel” is a track on the 1991 Dire Straits album “On Every Street,” the band’s final studio effort.  I frequently play “Brothers in Arms” (1985) and the greatest hits CD “Money for Nothing,” but rarely listen to “On Every Street,” so it was a pleasant surprise discovering unfamiliar tracks. One “Heavy Fuel” couplet (“When my ugly big car won’t climb this hill/ I’ll write a suicide note on a hundred-dollar bill”) could have been the epitaph for self-destructive gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  Mark Knopfler wrote several topical numbers for Dire Straits.  One with relevance for Gary steelworkers, “Industrial Disease,” is from “Love Over Gold” (1982)  Here is the first verse:

Warning lights are flashing down at Quality Control
Somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in the hole
There's rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
There's a meeting in the boardroom they're trying to trace the smell
There's leaking in the washroom there's a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
'goodness me could this be Industrial Disease?

When IUN Business and economic History professor threw a farewell party before moving to Indy, I gave him mark Knopfler’s solo album “Sailing to Philadelphia” (2000), on which he sand duets with James Taylor and Van Morrison.

On Jeopardy, in the category “Second largest cities,” with the help of clues I came up with Baton Rouge (LA), New Haven (CT), and Jacksonville (FL) but not Worcester (MA) even though the hint indicated it was pronounced differently than spelled.  A famous blunder occurred two years ago in Final Jeopardy of the IBM Challenge when the supercomputer Watson answered Toronto in the category “U.S. Cities” to this clue: “Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest for a World War II battle.”  The answer, of course, is Chicago, with O’Hare and Midway airports.   The computer still prevailed.  Current champion Jennifer Quail’s 8-day winnings are well over $200,000.  On Final Jeopardy only she knew what “Woman Author” testified before Congress that “Song of Russia” (1944), directed by Gregory Ratoff and starring Robert Taylor, was allegedly Soviet propaganda.  Answer: ultra-conservative fanatic Ayn Rand.

In 1824 Revolutionary War general Lafayette (Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette) commenced a grand tour of America as guest of the nation.  Congress paid Lafayette’s expenses for two years and sent a ship to France to bring him to New York, where 50,000 well-wishers, a magnificent flotilla, and the West Point band greeted him at Castle Garden. The hero of Yorktown, according to Holly Jackson’s “American Radicals,” was a robust 67 and an unabashed womanizer The French writer Stendhal described the Marquis as “solely occupied in spite of his age in fumbling at pretty girls’ plackets, not occasionally but constantly, not much caring who saw.”  He carried on an intimate relationship with notorious freethinker Fanny Wright, his frequent grand tour companion.  At Monticello Wright’s mannish attire and comportment scandalized former President Thomas Jefferson’s cousin Jane Cary.  Nonetheless, Lafayette remains enshrined in the pantheon of War for Independence heroes.  Named in his honor are cities (i.e., Lafayette, IN, Fayetteville, NC), townships (more than 50), parks (Washington, DC), and Lafayette College in my hometown of Easton.  We lived literally across the street from campus, and I recall homecoming parades passing by our house on the corner of High and McCartney.

Bette Roberts passed away at age 73, George Van Til informed me.  The daughter of Ann and Joe Domagalski, Bette was active in several IU Northwest campus organizations during the turbulent 1960s, including the Humanist Society.  She married Political Science professor George Roberts 52 years ago and became active in the Crown Point Historical Society. For an event celebrating the fortieth anniversary of IUN’s move to Glen Park, I persuaded Bette to be a panelist. In a retirement tirade Dr. Roberts had vowed never again to set foot on campus but relented then and when former student Congressman Pete Visclosky presented him with the Sagamore of the Wabash Award. Few present faculty knew George and Bette, but I called former colleagues Fred Chary, Paul Kern, and Ron Cohen to report the sad news.  The obit read in part:

    Bette and George worked tirelessly to elect Rep. Peter Visclosky, as well as candidate George McGovern when he ran for President.  One of the highlights of Bette’s life was serving dinner to Mr. McGovern in her home.

    Bette and George travelled extensively, but her true love was Paris, where they visited annually for over 30 years.  Bette was a generous, witty, loving soul who cared deeply about her family, friends, and animals.  She was a tried and true liberal, who always said “If George even thinks about a Republican, he’ll find a pair of socks and underwear on the front lawn.”

I started re-watching the seven 30-minute episodes of “Mrs. Fletcher,” concentrating on Eve’s college-bound son Brenden.  While she struggles to pack his things, he is on his cell phone making plans for the evening.  He cuts short Eve’s farewell dinner, skipping the special dessert, to attend a wild party.  Spotting Julian, whom he has bullied throughout high school, he tosses candy at him, pretends to apologize, then sticks Julian’s phone in a drink. With keen insight Julian accurately predicts that at college Brenden will by seen for what he is, a jerk.  Back home, he sends a nude photo to an ex-girlfriend, who arrives next morning to give him a blow job send-off. At the bedroom door Eve hears him moaning and calling the girl a filthy slut, a scene that will repeat itself in college with humiliating consequences. In his dorm room, as Eve makes the bed and unpacks for him, Brenden is back on his phone and impatient for her to leave.

No Billy Foster piano stylings nor choir performance enlivened IUN’s annual Holiday celebration; hence no group singing of “12 Days of Christmas.”  I spoke with Zoran Kilibarda (Geosciences), Joe Gomeztagle and Suzanne Green (SPEA), historian Chris Young (whose oldest son will start at Bloomington next year), and former Health Information Technology chair Margaret Skurka, so far as I could tell the only other emeritus faculty present.  Health and Human Services dean Pat Bankston, whose Christmas sweater lit up, thanked me for DVDs of our interview that Samantha Gauer had prepared. I also brought along free ten copies of Steel Shavings, volume 48, which were gone by the time I left with a plate of delicious buffet fare for Toni.

From nephew Beamer Pickert:  

    So, while making pierogi, I can't help but wonder what my Grandma Blanche would think of the adaptions I've made to the process. I think she'd like most of them. She did introduce me to Star Trek after all. But I use the pasta roller attachment to my kitchen-aid for rolling out my rounds, I use the mixer for making the dough, I color code my dough to indicate what filling is inside. I like to think she'd think these were good improvements.

Liz Wuerffel, Allison Schuette, and I met to discuss the VU Flight Paths interactive website grant project. When we arrived at Hunter’s Brewery in Chesterton around 4 p.m., it was inexplicably closed.  Liz Googled Hunter’s website and discovered that they’d open at 5:30, so we checked out Chesterton Brewery, owned and operated by veterans and located in a century-old former glass factory. After ordering craft beers and fried pickles, we got down to business.  One of eight scholars selected to document Gary neighborhoods and interview former and present residents, I was assigned Brunswick on the far northwest side, south of the Gary airport and bordering Hammond and East Chicago.  It was a mostly white ethnic community until 50 years ago, when massive flight transformed the district.  According to the 2000 census, the Brunswick population of 4,400 was 84.6% African American and the rest white or Hispanic.  Longtime IUN stalwart Ruth Nelson grew up in Brunswick.  In “Gary’s First Hundred Years” I wrote:

In 1928 Carl and Lydia Nelson sought to escape Indiana Harbor’s noxious pollution.  They bought a lot just north of the 5200 block of West Fifth Avenue, across from an Italian neighborhood and in a sandy new settlement populated mainly by Swedes, Irish, and Poles.  Selecting their house from a Sears catalogue, they paid 1,800 hundred dollars for a model that contained an attic, a basement, a front and back porch, and six rooms.

In “Valor: The American Odyssey of Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez” (2012) the former Lake County sheriff wrote about moving in 1962 from Mercedes, Texas, to a two-bedroom ranch house in the blue-collar Ivanhoe neighborhood of Brunswick that his father rented from a friend.  They arrived just as the weather turned cold and a couple months after school had started (Roy was in the third grade at Ivanhoe School), so, Dominguez wrote, “it was a difficult transition for all of us.” Three years later, the family moved to a three-bedroom Brunswick residence north of the Eighth Avenue railroad tracks. Dominguez recalled:

The girls had a bedroom and we five boys shared another.  Jesse and Eloy had bunk beds, and the other three of us slept in a single full-sized bed.  At the time we were the only Hispanics on the block, surrounded mostly by Southern whites. By the time we moved to Glen Park in the summer of 1970, we were still the only Hispanics on the block but had African-American neighbors. We didn’t understand the “white flight” mindset of those who did not want to live in an integrated neighborhood; but because gangs and drugs made our schools and neighborhood unsafe, we subsequently moved.

Morning fog was so thick I could barely see ten feet ahead.  Home from college 57 years ago, I visited Sig Ep fraternity brother Jack Nesbitt and came within inches of crashing into a tree on a winding country road.  In the Seventies Toni and I were on Ridge Road returning from a New Year’s Eve party at Ron and Liz Cohen’s in Valpo when I literally couldn’t see on a stretch near present-day Portage H.S.

The IUN Lady Redhawks coasted to victory against Judson University, located in Elgin, IL, thanks to deadly 3-point shooting by Michaela Schmidt and dominant inside play by six-footers Breanna Boles and Jocelyn Colburn.  In the bleachers I met Coach Ryan Shelton’s Uncle Bill Bednar, a 1963 Hammond Tech grad and, like me, a big “Hoosier Hysteria” basketball fan. We discovered that we’d both attended the 1975 and 1991 Regionals, first when Gary Emerson defeated a Hammond High squad with Rich Valavicius on a last-second shot by Emmet Lewis and 16 years later, when Glenn Robinson scored 40 points in a double overtime, one-point thriller over East Chicago Central, including a game-winning, 16-foot, turnaround jump shot.

Saturday Evening Club host Valpo doctor David Kenis, whose specialty in psychology, argued that the best film biographies, in addition to seeking to entertain and make money, strive for authenticity – what Terry Brendel called verisimilitude -  rather than complete factual accuracy as documentaries would be expected to do.  He cited complaints about “Green Book” (2018) exaggerating the degree that gay classical pianist Donald Shirley was estranged from his family and the current brouhaha over “Richard Jewell,” director Clint Eastwood’s depiction of the security guard who discovered a pipe bomb during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and went from being a hero to a suspect. The film implies that an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter got her scoop from an FBI agent whom she slept with. Even if that is not true, it is undeniable that the press unfairly tarnished Jewell’s reputation. Kenis noted that in “Hurricane” (1999), about Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a black pugilist framed for murder, the villain is a single racist cop rather than, more accurately, the entire law enforcement system.  The film also claimed inaccurately that Carter was robbed when judges ruled that Joey Giardello had won a 1964 middleweight title fight, which can be viewed on YouTube.

My remarks concentrated on sports flicks, which rarely match the authenticity of real events.  Kenis brought up “Rudy” (1993), an undersized Notre Dame practice squad senior who, with less than 30 seconds remaining, gets into the final home game and is carried off the field after supposedly sacking the quarterback.  For dramatic effect the directors invented a scene where players threaten to revolt if Rudy is not allowed to dress for the game. Coach Dan Devine, unfairly made the heavy, was not pleased.  In “42” (2013), about Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier, the film needlessly embellished events to add emotion when the truth is dramatic enough.  There is no evidence, for example, that Dodger shortstop Pee Wee Reese put his arm around Robinson in Cincinnati to quiet the crowd from shouting racial taunts.  The first movie 94-year-old Mel Bohlman could remember was “Steamboat Willie” (1928), the animated Walt Disney cartoon about Mickey and Minnie Mouse. His rural elementary school required those attending to get tuberculosis shots.  Mel also loved Charlie Chaplin movies, especially “Modern Times “ (1936), a critique of industrial capitalism.