Anniversaries

“If you want to know what aspect of the moon landing was discussed most in the bullpen, it was the sex lives of the astronauts.  We thought it a terrible arrangement that they should go three weeks or more without any sex life.” Jim Bouton, “Ball Four” (1970)

 hatless Jim Bouton in 1964 World Series; with his baseball diary

Former New York Yankee relief pitcher Jim Bouton, author of a sensational insider look at major league baseball players, died at age 80.  Sportswriter Peter King called “Ball Four,” which sold over 5 million copies and discussed players cheating on their wives and carousing in fleshpots, the greatest sports book of all time.  Bouton had won 39 games in 1963-64 as a Yankee starter, but a sore arm turned him into a knuckleballer. Written candidly in the form of a season-long diary, “Ball Four,” according to Washington Postwriter Matt Schudel, “captured the humor, profanity and pathos of amajor league clubhouse.”  Bouton revealed that superstar centerfielder Mickey Mantle sometimes nursed a hangover on the field and that he once closed a bus window on kids hoping for an autograph. Ostracized by many former friends, Bouton was allegedly blackballed by major league owners after refusing to agree to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s demand that he repudiate his own book. During the 1970s Bouton pitched for several minor league teams before briefly catching on with the Atlanta Braves in 1978, compiling a record of one win and three losses. Schudel wrote:

   He continued to throw his knuckleball for another 20 years, competing against players less than half his age in semipro leagues until he was in his late 50s.

  “You see,”he wrote in “Ball Four,” “you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

 

















Neil Armstrong; Perry Bothers

In Sports Illustrated S.L. Price wrote about brothers Gaylord and Jim Perry winning three games on the day of the moon landing fifty years ago. San Francisco Giant Gaylord Perry not only hurled a complete game victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, he hit the first home run of his long career in his 485th time at the plate. In Seattle, meanwhile, older brother Jim of the Minnesota Twins pitched 11 shutout innings, the final two of a suspended game against the expansion Pilots (who would move to Milwaukee after a single year in the Emerald City) and a nine-inning complete game gem in the regularly scheduled contest. He told reporters, “I’d have liked to have seen the guy set down on the moon, but I’ll see it tonight on the news.”  Six years later, when Jim Perry’s son got married, he ran into astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and a childhood friend of the bride’s father. 

Walt and Loei Reiner; Walt later in life

The Neighbors Project in Valparaiso is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary.  Originally named the Valparaiso Builders Association, the citizens group formed in response to pleas from African-American families living in Chicago to obtain affordable housing in a community that provided families a safe, healthy environment.  Working with VU faculty and Lutheran church members, co-founders Walt and Loie Reiner encountered opposition from residents anxious about a handful of black families moving into their community and fearful that this was just the vanguard of a larger influx, resulting in the lowering of property values.  “We were not very popular in the early days,” Loie Reiner recently told Post-Tribcolumnist Jerry Davich, who added: “Building homes in lily-white Valpo for black families from Chicago was viewed as an intrusion, at its best, and an invasion, at its worst, by fearful townspeople.”Nonetheless, Valparaiso Builders Association ultimately prevailed.  One young family member, Robert Cotton, is presently a city councilman. 

 NWI Times photo by Rob Earnshaw

Walt Reiner passed away in 2006, but Loie at age 90 is still active in the organization, renamed Neighbors Project in 1984.   I met Loie at VU historian Heath Carter’s house; both Heath and his wife, who have an African-American son, became active in various Neighbors Project endeavors.  Under the direction of longtime member and current chairman Paul Schreiner the organization has built affordable houses, using for the most part volunteer labor. In addition, in the Hilltop neighborhood the organization has established a child care center, an after-school enrichment program aptly named Walt’s Place, as well as a health care facility and an adult education program.

Valparaiso U. grad Loie Reiner and James Schreiner receive 2016 honorary degrees 

On This Day website mentions these past July 12 events: 1804, Alexander Hamilton succumbed to a gunshot wound at the hands of duelist Aaron Burr; 1959, Surgeon General Leroy Burney warned that cigarette smoking may lead to lung cancer; 1976, “Family Feud” debuted on ABC; 2013, Malala Yousafzai addresses the U.N. on the need for women to have access to education; 2017, a giant iceberg broke away from the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica.  On the day, 2019, a tropical storm caused massive flooding along the Gulf coast, and Trump’s Labor secretary Alex Acosta resigned under pressure for having let billionaire child molester Jason Epstein off with a slap on the wrist 11 years ago while U.S. Attorney.  Smarmy Special Persecutor Ken Starr was one of Epstein’s high-powered mouthpieces.

I’ve been asked to make an Art in Focus presentation next season in Munster.  Three years ago, I spoke on Vee-Jay do-founder Vivian Carter.  The following year the title of my talk was “Rock and Roll in 1958: A Dance Party.”  Though they were well-received, I wasn’t invited back last year.  The reason, I found out later, was that program director Jillian Van Volkenburgh had left to pursue a career as an artist in New York City and her replacement was unfamiliar with me.  Since next year is the fiftieth anniversary of graduating from high school, I’ll talk about “The State of Rock and Roll in 1960: A Dance Party.” I’m super-excited.

I’ve been reminiscing with childhood friend Judy Jenkins and Sammy Corey’s name came up.  He, Judy’s brotherTerry, and I were really close growing up.  When we moved to Fort Washington in 1950, the Coreys were next door neighbors.  Midge joked that she’d sometimes find Sammy in my bedroom reading comic books, when I wasn’t even there.  We spent many days in a clearing we made in the woods across the street from your place. Summers during junior high we’d play penny ante poker games for hours.  His dad once took us to Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, which first opened in the nineteenth century, and I almost lost my lunch on a ride nicknamed “The Whip.”  In high school Sammy would take his grandparents’ Chrysler to a race track (without them knowing it) and enter drag races.  He was a dare devil.  Once he drove the Chrysler onto an ice-covered field near Upper Dublin, floored it, and then turned the wheel so the car would squeal and then slide and slide.   He went to Susquehanna College just down the way from Bucknell, and one weekend I double-dated with a friend of his girlfriend up to visit.  We ended up making out in twin beds of the girls’ hotel room.  After college we had dinner, and he spent most of the time trying to sell me life insurance.  I didn’t see him much after that, but about 30 years ago my brother Rich and I played cards with Sam at Terry and Gayle’s Doylestown house and shared a joint that someone had brought. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve seen him since. Judging from a decade-old photo I found, I wouldn’t recognize him.

Sam Corey, Jr.

Terry Jenkins

My oldest and dearest friend, Terry Jenkins, died after a long, brave struggle with cancer.  Not long after my family relocated to the rural Philadelphia suburb Fort Washington when I was eight, the Jenkins family moved to a century-old house a block away. We became fast friends – inseparable if I’d have had my way – and often played inside his house and old-fashioned garage, on his badminton court, or at a clearing we’d made in the woods across the street.  We started a mail route together for neighbors, picking up their letters from trusting postal workers.  We sang a duet in a Fort Washington elementary school Christmas program directed by fifth grade teacher Mrs. Bytheway (no kidding, that was her name). Our parents were best friends, and I had a boyhood crush on sister Judy.  The two families shared a cabin three summers at Lake Minneola in the Poconos. In high school Terry transferred to Penn Charter Academy, but we frequently got together to shoot hoops and talk.  Summers featured marathon card games with Sammy Corey and Paul Curry. 

Terry and Gayle at Voodoo Chili alley dance, circa 2000; Terry observes air guitain'

After we got married, we’d party with mutual friends whenever I came to town. One time in my mid-20s I tried to buy a six-pack at a taproom on the way to Terry and Gayle’s but got turned away because I didn’t possess a Pennsylvania State Liquor Control Board card. After Toni and I moved to Indiana, we vacationed together at the Jersey shore and Saugatuck, Michigan.  In Miller they attended a memorable alley dance where Dave performed with the band Voodoo Chili. Staying at their place during the Eighties, I’d bring albums as presents, and we’d all dance to the Romantics or Men at Work.  Once I got Terry to play Leonard Cohen songs on his acoustic guitar.  As recently as four years ago, we repeated our ritual of touring Fort Washington to revisit familiar houses (on different occasions we got invited inside both our childhood homes), landmarks, sledding hills, and sites of long gone Mom and Pop stores. Terry appears in my latest Steel Shavingsseveral times, including telling him about meeting Joe and Susan McGrath’s daughter Maria at a history conference, recalling with him when the 76ers won the 1983 NBA championship with Julius Erving and Moses Malone, and burying a bottle in his side yard with information about ourselves that someone might unearth years later.

Over the years Terry and I talked on the phone every week or two, discussing the Phillies or Eagles, joking about this or that, and concluding always with one of us saying, “And regards to the family”– an inside joke repeating what old Trinity Lutheran Church softball coach Lee Beers always said. He was unfailingly upbeat despite disheartening developments regarding his declining health.  Once, when he was resisting wearing suspenders at his New Hope store, I told them they were cool and promised the next time he saw me, I’d be wearing a pair.  We were planning to attend a Cubs-Phillies game in August with son Dave and mutual friend Joe McGrath.   Alas, it was not to be. Last week Gayle told me his health was failing, but he came to the phone and we bantered.  Just a few days later, he was on his deathbed and could no longer speak, but daughter Melissa assured me he could hear and put the phone to his ear.  I told him I loved him and repeated one of our many, many fond memories – the day at Lake Minneola when hiking in the woods we came upon a cute girl, Cookie, whom we both fell for.  A couple weeks later, the post office showed us a letter addressed to Jimmy and Terry, Fort Washington, PA.” No last names, no street addresses. R.I.P. good buddy.

After I posted the above remarks on Facebook, I heard from Terry’s sister Judy, who shared it with friends, and a half-dozen old classmates.  Sammy Corey’s brother Jim, who I haven’t seen since he was a kid, wrote: “Thanks for the Fort memories and fond remembrance of our friend.” The obit read in part: “Terry will be remembered for his infectious humor and wit, unfaltering stoicism, intelligence, unpretentious demeanor, and extreme loyalty.”  How true.

Rivers and Roads

“Been talkin' 'bout the way things change

And my family lives in a different state

If you don't know what to make of this

Then we will not relate

            “Rivers and Roads,” The Head and the Heart

I’m fortunate that Dave’s family lives close to us and Phil’s just two hours away in Michigan, although during the winter lake effect snow can make the roads between us hazardous. The Head and the Heart is performing in Grand Rapids next month, and Phil’s working on securing a half-dozen tickets as a way of celebrating my seventy-fifth birthday.

 Where Alissa will be on January21

Better day: Ray Smock at Bill Clinton Inaugural, Jan. 20, 1993

There’s dangerous flooding in Texas and elsewhere in the South.  Twice while I attended Bucknell in the early 60s the Susquehanna River overflowed its banks with dire results.  My junior year, I and four fraternity brothers were living in a private residence in Lewisburg. I had just returned from washing lunch dishes at Women’s Cafeteria when I heard about the assassination of JFK. I thought of that event when a shot of Kennedy appeared in the movie “Forgotten Figures.”  If I force myself to watch Inauguration events on the evening news, I’ll flash back to what an eloquent speech JFK gave 56 years ago.  Ray Smock called Trump’s address “a dark and defiant speech, a gloomy vision of drug-addled and rusted-out crippled America.”

A Bucknell fraternity brother, Jack “The Hawk” Nesbitt, lived not far from my hometown of Fort Washington.  I gave him the nickname because of his prominent nose, and it stuck.  In fact, he liked the appellation.  His family had a swimming pool that I took Toni to on one of our early dates. One time I was on my way to Jack’s place, and the fog was so thick I could barely see.  At some point, I sensed trouble and put on the brakes.  The country road had curved, and the car stopped not a foot away from a tree.  Whew!  Close call.  Jack and I both attended Virginia Law School, and Toni and his fiancée visited one weekend.  We booked a single motel room and worked out details so we’d each have some private time there.

Reporter Joyce Russell from the NWI Times interviewed Ron Cohen and me for a feature on the Calumet Region Archives, which the two of us founded over 40 years ago.  We gave credit to Steve McShane, who was on hand, for guiding its growth with professionalism and discussed its variety of holdings and that it has been used by scholars from all over the world. While in the Archives, Russell perused my history of Gary, “City of the Century,” for an article she’s working on about the Calumet Region during World War I a hundred years ago.

Terry Jenkins’ daughters Melissa and Lorraine sent an email about my good friend’s operation entitled “Day one with a new bladder.”  They wrote: “He said he would pay a thousand dollars for a 24-ounce diet coke, as he is incredibly thirsty. He is not permitted to drink anything for some days, as they don’t want to tax the new system yet. Also, diet coke is no longer on his dietary list. We may see a leaner and meaner Terry after all this!  He hopes to break out of the ICU Friday or Saturday. They had him stand up and sit in a recliner for most of today, which is better for his lungs. The nurses claim he is funny, so his wit and humor has clearly survived the procedure.”

 Terry Jenkins and Sam Corey

Terry, Sam Corey, and I had a “secret” fort in a clearing in the woods across from the Jenkins house between Fort Washington Avenue and Bethlehem Pike.  I had my first puff of a cigarette there.  Because it wasn’t far from a gas station, we built up a collection of oil cans (don’t ask me why?).  One time Mrs. Woodward, the mother of a friend, took us to an amusement park and on the way stopped for gas.  I spotted some “empty” oil cans and, thinking they’d be a nice addition to our collection, hid a couple on the rear self.  What a dumb move.  Wouldn’t you know, drops of oil leaked out of them.   Was I embarrassed when I had to fess up to putting them there.

photos by Spencer Cortwright

Botanist Spencer Cortwright wrote:

  Happy mid-winter!  How do animals around here survive our lengthy winters when all seems so lifeless as in the prairie picture below?  There are a myriad of ways, but I want to share the "coolest" strategy.  Some frog species around here use cryogenics!  They pack their vital organs with glucose so those organs won't freeze, while lots of other parts of the body do freeze!  Then when spring comes around, they thaw, regain their color, and hop around looking for a mate!

 Samuel A. Love

City Methodist Church by Samuel A. Love

Samuel A. Love photographed Gary’s City Methodist Church and wrote: “Abandoned now but not forever.”  Gene Coleman replied: “Saw my very first Tamburitza concert there. . . was hooked and became an adopted ‘Hunky.’” Magdalena Gomez commented: “Pass this on my way home from work.  A true beauty, even in its current state.” April Cook wrote: “This place is freaking gorgeous.”  Indeed, it is, both outside and, even now, inside, too.

Gloria McMillan, a University of Arizona lecturer who grew up in East Chicago’s Indiana Harbor, is seeking contributors of short stories for a book entitled “Children of Steel.” McMillan, a science fiction devotee, wrote these clever paragraphs one night when she couldn’t sleep:

            The fateful story of Old Man Gary-ssippi opens in a travel agency at the main port dock of Gary, Indiana.   The walls hold brand new brightly-colored signs.  On display are Post-industrial Adventure Tourism signs such as “Visit the Cavernous US Steel plant and see the hanging Kudzu!” and “Admire the flooded limestone quarry with paddle boats!” and, best of all, “Watch the thousands of bats take roost in the old Memorial Auditorium.”  Mayor Esmeralda Green is flabbergasted at the growth of global tourism to Gary in recent years, especially luxury and adventure-minded tourists who fly thousands of miles to be “Urban Explorers” and bring back their prey—photos-- with a camera and not a gun. At least she hopes not a gun.  She’s had it with that kind of adventure tourism.

          The two robots who staff the phones are quiet now.  Priscilla Jones, the only human in the Styleways Riverboat Tours of Gary’s new Saint Broadway Seaway that connects to Lake Michigan awaits the flood of calls after a TV blitz on all the Chicago TV stations.  The Army Corps of Engineers has recently dug the greatest civil engineering project in Midwest history opening a deep-water canal on what used to be Broadway Boulevard in Gary, Indiana.

Valkyrie River Cruise Lines holds raffles on various upscale magazines in the east for this novelty, tours of the almost depopulated Midwest.  One of the highlights of the adventure cruise is drone-kebabs.  Drones carrying shish kebabs fly over the open deck of the flagship Dillinger.  (Daily re-enactments of the famous escape from the Crown Point jail and the gun fight at Chicago’s Biograph Theater are part of the educational package.)  After the Dillinger show the drones precision drop their meaty cargo into the waiting hands of the pleasantly surprised passengers.  The customers will be told that a “mystery” main course is coming as they munch their salads.  One wit wanted to call this entré Lamb Amerstan, alluding to Stanley Ellin’s ancient story about the gourmet London restaurant whose secret pièce de résistance turned out to be people, but that was voted down.  These are family cruises, Priscilla admonished Garth, her ad writer.

The Electrical Engineers took two games and series from the first-place Pin Spinners. After two mediocre games, I converted a difficult 1-2-8-10 spare in the first frame of game three and finished with a 168.  I used my 30-year old ball successfully in order to pick spares on the right side.  Garnering four straight strikes, opponent Pat Burnham rolled a 200 game despite a couple early splits. Once she moved two boards to the right, on teammate Bill Silver’s advice, her ball went into the pocket almost every time. She got so animates, we were all rooting for her.

Scott Bocock asked me to be a consultant on an Indiana Humanities Initiative grant for the town of Cedar Lake and requested a resumé.  I haven’t updated mine in ten years and would have to start from scratch since my old one disappeared when my last computer crashed.  Fortunately, Scott appears satisfied with the following statement:

Emeritus Professor of History James B. Lane received a PhD from the University of Maryland in 1970 and taught for 37 years at Indiana University Northwest.  The author of numerous books and articles about the Calumet Region, Lane is presently co-director of IU Northwest’s Calumet Regional Archives (which contains a significant Cedar Lake collection) and editor of Steel Shavings magazine, a yearly publication dealing with the social history of Northwest Indiana.  Volume 26 (1997) in the series is titled “A History of Cedar Lake.”

 Bri Wischman

I attended an IUN Lady Redhawks victory against Lincoln Christian to up their record to 17-3.  Star guard Nicki Monahan fell hard driving to the basket and had to be helped off the court but later returned to everyone’s relief. She and fellow senior Bernadette Grabowski have given fans many thrills and will certainly be missed. I learned that volunteer assistant Bri Wischman, who is rail thin and can’t be over five feet tall, played for four seasons beginning in 2010 and is the seventh all-time leader in career points.  Monahan is currently third on the list behind Sharon Houston and Juliette Keller.