Lovesick

"Making out is one thing that won't change even if civilization fizzles and humanity is reduced to two people." Caroline George, "The Vestige"


In a New York Review of Books essay titled “Lovesick,” 86-year-old Janet Malcolm, who emigrated to the U.S. at age 5, discussed a 1942 best-selling young adult romance novel dealing with a girl’s first crush, Maureen Daly’s “Seventeenth Summer,” a tale of careful love that, to Janet Malcolm, symbolized the repressiveness of mid-twentieth-century America. Malcolm labeled the book “a tract for the sexual ideology of the time, whereby nice girls didn’t ‘go all the way’ and nice boys hardly expected or wanted them to, given their own nervous-making sexual experience.  It encouraged uninformed teenaged girls like myself in our longings for sexless romance.”  Despite the drastically changed sexual practices among young people, “Seventeenth Summer” remains in print, causing one Amazon reviewer to write: “For an 11-year-old girl that daydreams about kissing boys, she’d probably like it.  For an 11-year-old girl that’s already had sex, the book may seem lame.”

 

Janet Malcolm

Former 1990s student Rachel Stevens wrote about being a shy sixth grader at Yost Elementary in Porter when she developed a crush on Mike, “an adorable boy who was in choir with me.” One day they took a walk to a swing set in the park.  Rachel wrote:

  I gave him a hug and he kissed me on the lips.  It was my first one.  I was so shocked and amazed I just stood there weak in the knees from puppy love.  Later I sat in my room in a complete daze.  But soon enough he broke up with me.  I was doubly devastated because he started “going out” with my close friend Christina.  My other friends and I began plotting against her.

 

In 1993 former student Sandra Avila was an eighth grader at Hammond Eggers.  Her closest friend was Amelia, “like me Mexican.” In February she began dating Daniel and Amelia started dating Phil. Sandra wrote (Steel Shavings, volume 31, 2001):

    We were constantly getting in trouble because of them.  One time I turned off all the ringers in my house and my dad called the phone company.  Another time I was at Amelia’s house when Phil came over on his scooter and her mom came out.  We told her he was the paper boy.  On Valentine’s Day Daniel bought me a dozen roses and some balloons.  I had to pop all the balloons and squeeze the flowers in my back pack to avoid getting into trouble.  Daniel was my first love and Phil Amelia’s first love.

 

A Gary teenager during the 1990s, Esther Lewis wrote that her first love, Michael, was her best friend’s brother.  She recalled:

    He’d ask my advice about girls.  We’d talk for hours.  One day I swallowed my pride and told him I liked him.  He told me he didn’t want to cheat on his girl.  He stopped calling me but then out of the blue we started going together.  My friends thought I was above him, but I was most definitely in love; and he and I were sprung.

 

While living in the small town of Roselawn Elizabeth Grzych’s classmates began calling her a “wigger” when she befriended Mackenzie, one of the few black kids in the school.  Elizabeth wrote:

    We’d dance together at school dances and it was no big thing, but kissing was a whole different story.  The first time, we were slow dancing to the Guns N Roses song “November Rain.”  He put his hands in my back pockets and kissed me.  Although only 13, I knew he’d be someone very special in my life.  At first me family didn’t take it very well; but all through the subsequent bullshit, they stuck by me.

 

Candice Bigott met her first love, Chris, at a party; he called the following day after getting her phone number.  Before long, they seemed inseparable. Candice wrote: “We spent the next few weeks in complete bliss.  Then, all of a sudden, Chris had less time for me.  On Valentine’s Day we broke up.  For the next six months, I cried every day.”

 

Interviewed by Jason Hasha, Sam Barnett reveled that his first date occurred when he was in tenth grade at Merrillville High School and she was a senior.  He met her at a dance and recalled:

    I was just standing around the stag line talking and asked this girl if she wanted to dance.  They were playing a crappy song by Journey, but we danced and the whole way home we talked.  I got her phone number.  Next time we got together we just rented a movie, stayed at my house, and made out.  That’s the best because there’s no guilt or responsibility; with sex, you gotta call the next day.  You gotta worry about kids and diseases and what they will think of you.

 

Sexual habits and attitudes have certainly changed since my teen years when “making out” rather than “going all the way” consumed most guys’ desires and fantasies. As a former student wrote in an early Steel Shavings on relationships between the sexes during the 1950s, petting involved simulating sex with one’s clothes on (“dry humping”) and striving to “touch the bases” with little hope of reaching home but hoping to steal a feel at second and third.  Jennifer Long recalled: “Terms like heavy petting and copping a feel were in vogue.”  Brian Gerike wrote: “Virginity was the norm at Gary Emerson, and people gossiped about girls suspected of having sex.”  Frank wrote about parking with a girl at Miller Beach: “After some preliminaries I managed to begin touching the girl’s breasts.  She seemed not to mind, so I took it as a green light and tried to touch her private parts below the belt line.  The next thing I knew, I was getting slapped across the face.”

 

Drive-in theaters, called “passion pits,” were a popular place for making out.  Ray Ballestero told Amy Powers that working at a drive-in, he knew couple were going hot and heavy if the windows started steaming up and the car started shaking slightly.  Linda told John Gibbs that her date at the drive-in tried to get his hand under her blouse and when she rebuffed his advances was such a jerk about it that on their next date she feigned passion and told him to take his pants off and three friends took a picture of his bare ass.

 

Most so-called good girls didn’t engage in heavy petting until they were “going steady.” John Broelman wrote: “Monogamy was the rule; and if sex was occurring, marriage should not be far behind.  Before Helen lost here virginity, she and her boyfriend talked about it for weeks. She was deflowered in a park near their homes.  Six months later they decided to get married.”  Girls who went all the way worried about late periods and unwanted pregnancies that could lead to “shotgun weddings.”  Tim Trzeciak wrote: “Barbara’s older sister got pregnant and married soon after.  Her father’s initial reaction was, ‘Boys will be boys but a girl is damn stupid if she lets him.’ He wasn’t happy about the solution but didn’t make his daughter an outcast.” On the other and, Alice McIlree recalled that a girl at Brunswick Baptist Church was forced to apologize to the entire congregation for becoming pregnant.  It was so humiliating Alice felt ashamed to belong to such a church.

 

Looking back on my generation’s Fifties teen experiences, for the most part, I don’t think we were sexually repressed.  We had access to Playboy magazines and “Peyton Place” and took parental admonitions with a grain of salt.  If many of us remained “technical virgins,” as the saying went, throughout high school and beyond, that didn’t mean we didn’t find as much pleasure in practices short of intercourse as I suspect the present generation of teens and tweens might get exchanging graphic selfies or receiving oral sex. I learned about the latter in eleventh grade from a deck of cards a friend showed me and at Bucknell when a freshman in the communal dorm bathroom showed off bite marks on his dick and joked that his date got carried away.  It took the Monica Lewinsky scandal to familiarize the nation about what my brother-in-law, a long-distance trucker, referred to as lube jobs.

Shapeless Shadows

"The difficulty to think at the end of the day

When the shapeless shadow covers the sun.”
  Wallace Stevens, "A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts"

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) wrote the above lines, quoted by John Updike in “Rabbit Is Rich,” shortly before he died. Born in Reading PA, near where Updike’s novel takes place, Stevens told the publisher of Poetry Magazine that one morning he spotting a rabbit outside his bedroom window digging at bulbs and since then wake up worrying about the rabbit and wondering what it was having for breakfast.  The poem contains these lines:

      And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light

      In which everything is meant for you

     And nothing need to be explained

     Then there is nothing to think of

When the days run together, it’s difficult to know what day of the week it is. I used to conclude my day watching CNN or MSNBC but it is hard to have it on more than a few minutes, with news of the virus worsening daily.  Chris Cuomo, CNN host, has tested positive and reports on his deteriorating health from his home.







CNN and other networks told folks not to do April Fools day pranks, that they would be in poor taste given the pandemic.  Agreed.  I have stopped doing them even since I told Alissa when she was a kid that I had chopped a tree down that she liked and she started crying.  She got more than even with me in years to come.  Post-Tribune columnist Jerry Davich once wrote a column claiming he was running for mayor and many people took him seriously. Dave once claimed to be resigning from teaching, and it backfired as many students were very upset. Sam Love posted a clipping of an article he wrote 22 years ago for the IUN student newspaper about a mysterious odor coming from the Raintree Hall men’s room, even purporting to quote a student claiming that he goes over to Hawthorn to relieve himself rather then go in there.

I received an email from Chris Sakelaris, a 1960 Froebel grad, who once lived at Eleventh and Harrison prior to construction of the Slovak Club and recalled Gary Aldering Settlement and Dixie Dairy.  His family attended St. Anthony’s near Fifteenth and Van Buren, which, he said had a dozen or more pool tables in the basement and an elderly gent nicknamed Pops collected ten cents a rack for from players.

In “Rabbit Is Rich” Harry turns on the radio on the ride home from the Toyota dealership and hears “Stayin’ Alive.” Updike wrote:

    The Bee Gees are white men who have done this wonderful thing of making themselves sound like black women. It’s the John Travolta theme song.  Rabbit still thinks of him as one of the Sweathogs from Mr. Kotter’s class but for a while back there last summer the U.S.A. was one hundred percent his, every twat under 15 wanting to be humped by a former Sweathog in the back seat of a car parked in Brooklyn.

The news, circa 1979, comes on with stories about Skylab, Three Mile Island, long gas lines, and then this:

   A Baltimore physician was charged with murdering a Canadian goose with a golf club.  The defendant claims, the disinterested female voice twangs on, that he had accidentally struck the goose with a golf ball and then had dispatched the wounded creature with a club to end its misery. The voice concludes, “A mercy killing, or murder most foul.”

At the country club Harry brought up President Jimmy Carter’s so-called malaise speech, where he talked about the country’s crisis of confidence and that most people fear things are going to get worse, not better, in their lives.  As Harry concluded, “Nobody is going to the moon much these days.”

Permalink

I watched “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” on HBO.  The theater where I first saw it is closed down until further notice. It takes place in the fall of 1969, a time like 1979 and today when it seemed like an era was ending and shapeless shadows were covering the sun. The Age of Aquarius had given way to crazed hippies following the likes of Charles Manson. The Brad Pitt stuntman character picks up one of them, an underage teenager who calls herself Sunshine, labels cops pigs and believes the system beyond redemption and that all but her tribe are blind.

A dog across Sand Creek Drive barks every time a jogger goes by, even sometimes when I open the garage door, as far away as we are.  We don’t hear him when inside but it must be annoying to neighbors.  When we lived at Maple Place, a young woman who lived alone across the street from us sometimes left her dog out all night when she wasn’t home – to keep away burglars, I guess.  That damn dog would bark incessantly, every time a racoon or some other wild animal came within sight.  We’d complain and she’d not do it for a while but then fall back into doing it again.

I’ve enjoyed posting high school memories on Facebook and getting replies from former classmates.  Unlike college, we came from many different backgrounds; and although there were cliques, we ad friendships beyond them.  One of the most unique guys was self-proclaimed atheist Charles Thomas, who threatened to write an expose about the rest of us.  He lived in a farmhouse near Susquehanna Avenue and had goats or sheep, can’t recall which. Vince Curll and I would visit him.  His mother was really cool, and he had a younger brother who, I believe, had gotten a girl pregnant.  Charlie, as we called him, never dated, or socialized with any other student, so far as we could tell. His mother was naturally delighted to see us. Charlie never attended any reunions, but after he died a hospice care nurse who’d met him came to one, saying what a nice man he was and that she wanted to meet some of his friends.  Since Vince never attended reunions either, she ended up talking to me. I was vert tactful, said he’d been quite a character who loved getting a rise out of people, and gave her directions to the farmhouse where he’d lived.

The navy has relieved Captain Brett Crozier, captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, of command after he warned that the corona virus was spreading aboard his ship. Rather than wait for his warning to make its way up the chain of command, he distributed numerous copies, and the press got ahold of the story. A hero to his men, Crozier paid the price for ensuring that the navy would take action as soon as possible.

Knock on Wood

“Thirteen-month-old baby, broke the lookin' glass
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past
When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer, superstition ain't the way”

         “Superstition,” Quincy Jones

Recorded by Stevie Wonder, “Superstition” also references fear of walking under ladders.  Karen Russell’s article in New York TimesSunday magazine mentions her father’s nasty habit of throwing salt over his shoulder in restaurants to ward off bad luck.  The derivation of knock on wood comes from ancient Greeks believing that summoning dryads or wood nymphs residing in oak trees would lead to good luck. Amii Stewart had a 1979 hit titled “Knock on Wood” that contained the lyric, “I’m not superstitious about ya, but I can’t take no chance.”   Though I claim not to be superstitious, I sometimes knock on wood when I say something that I don’t want contradicted by subsequent events.  I used to avoid sidewalk cracks and still tend to eat things in multiples of two, whether banana slices on cereal or the number of carrots and small tomatoes I pack for lunch.  Athletes tend to be superstitious in terms of repeating little rituals: witness Serena Williams bouncing a tennis ball exactly 5 times before she serves or Tiger Wood wearing a red shirt on the final round of golf tournaments.

 "The Dryad" by Evelyn De Morgan

Eddie Mush

On TV over the weekend I watched “The Wife” with Glenn Close, about a woman who wrote novels that her Nobel Prize winning husband took credit for, and “A Bronx Tale,” about a kid torn between being attracted to neighborhood Mafia Sonny (Chazz Palminteri) and his straight-arrow dad.  The splendid supporting cast includes Joe Pesci as Carmine and “goodfellas” with such nicknames as Jimmy Whispers, Tony Toupee, Frankie Coffeecake, JoJo the Whale, and Eddie Mush.  The latter, played by Eddie Montanaro, is so unlucky that he gets exiled to the bathroom during a craps game.  When he is found to have bet on Sonny’s horse, Sonny tears up his ticket even though his horse is in the lead but then inevitably fades.  Catholics all, they’d make the sign of the cross for luck and go to confession believing they could wipe the slate clean of past sins.  

Current Jeopardychamp James Holzhauer won a 23rd straight contest and has accumulated winnings totaling close to 2 million dollars.  It took the current record holder more than 3 times that many games to earn such a sum. His exploits have become national headlines. Holzhauer feasts on daily doubles and usually has such a lead by Final Jeopardy that he can wager tens of thousands without fear of being dethroned. and Sports Illustratedeven did a feature on how the sports gambler handicaps events. I knew the answer to the most recent one on the French author who wrote these words: “I am making myself liable to articles 30 and 31 of the law of 29 July 1881 regarding the press, which make libel a punishable offense.”  Answer Emile Zola in “J’accuse,” defending Jewish army officer Alfred Dreyfus, who had been falsely accused of passing on military secrets to the Germans.

The final “Game of Thrones” episode was painful and shocking but upon reflection somewhat predictable in retrospect considering what had transpired the week before, when Dany took out her revenge on King’s Landing.  It was filled with symbolism, from the fair-haired leader betrayed with a kiss (like Judas identifying Jesus to his enemies) to Jon and Arya departing in search of new worlds.  While many people, granddaughter Alissa included, hated the ending, I loved the role that Tyrion the Imp (Peter Drinklage) played in determining who would sit on the Iron Throne, or what was left of it after Drogon poured out his wrath.  The funniest moment was when Samwell Tarly proposed letting the people decide everyone scoffed at the absurdity of the idea; might as well let horses decide, one said.

I’ve been reminiscing with Dave Seibold about our both playing on a junior high football team where you couldn’t weigh more than 105 pounds. Though I barely tipped the scales at 70 pounds, I played center and linebacker on a team coached by an emotional Armenian nicknamed Mr. Bek, whose facial expressions usually conveyed various degrees of disappointment or downright disgust.  We weren’t very good. Playing arch-rival Ambler, I swear the lineman opposite me had a mustache.   In a 6-0 losing effort halfback Dickie Cottom was on his way to score a touchdown only to stop at the five-year-line because he thought he’d crossed in the end zone.  I’ll never forget Bek’s reaction.  On the bus back to Upper Dublin Cottom was inconsolable.  Seibold recalled that Bill McAfee had his teeth knocked out at practice because he was not wearing his mouthguard. On the first day this bully went down the bench punching newcomers and calling them pussies.  I put up an arm to block him and somehow bloodied his nose.  He went running into the locker room, and I scampered after him, not to continue the fight but to apologize and convince him I hadn’t meant it.  It worked; inadvertently and undeservedly, I had gained others’ respect. Playing without glasses, once in punt formation, I snapped the ball to Percy Herder instead of kicker Jimmy Coombs.  Percy quickly flipped it at Coombs, who got off a good punt.  “What was that?”A furious Mr. Bek demanded to know on the sidelines, glaring at me. “Just a trick play we dreamed up,”Coombs replied nonchalantly.

Miller Woods by Samuel A. Love

Cat's Cradle

“Cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little girl blue and the man on the moon
So when you're coming home?
Hey yo, I don't know when
We'll get together then.”

         Harry Chapin, “Cat’s in the Cradle

Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle” being one of my favorite songs, whenever Dave gets out the acoustic guitar, I press him to sing it.  Chapin’s point is that parents can become so busy that they don’t have time for their children.  Fortunately, that cautionary tale didn’t apply to me.  Born in 1942 (same year as me), Chapin died at age 39 after his Volkswagen collided with a truck, setting it aflame; five years later he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his work combatting world hunger.  Chapin also recorded “Taxi,” “Mail Order Annie,” and “Sunday Morning Sunshine.”

James is reading Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” for an English class assignment. I recall Toni’s father, Anthony Trojecki, demonstrating how to take string and form a pattern known as Cat’s Cradle.  Editor Sidney Offit called “Cat’s cradle” “an icy black comedy”and Vonnegut “an acidly funny Midwestern fabulist whose anger and sorrow at the way things are is equaled only by his love for the best we can be.” In Vonnegut’s novel, Felix Hoenikker, one of the scientists who worked on developing the atom bomb, was playing with a loop of string and creating that formation while Hiroshima was being bombed, incinerating close to 100,000 Japanese.  His son Newt recalled:

  He went down on his knees on the carpet next to me, and he showed me his teeth, and he waved that tangle of string in my face.  “See?  See?” he asked.  “Cat’s cradle.  See the cat’s cradle.  See where the nice pussycat sleeps?  Meow.  Meow.”  And then he sang, “Rockabye catsy, in the tree top, when the wind blows, the cray-dull will fall.  Down will come cray-dull, catsy and all.”

Like in the Harry Chapin song, Hoenikker’s three children are badly neglected, and their attempts to gain his attention have tragic consequences. Elsewhere in “Cat’s Cradle” Vonnegut wrote this dialogue:

  “No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . .”
  “And?”
  “No damn cat, and no damn cradle.” 

When I went to check out “Cat’s Cradle,” a Chesterton library staff member informed me that they were holding Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House” for me.  When I first requested it months ago, I was eighth on the list.  It opens with this quote from The Donald: “Real power is – I don’t even want to use the word – fear.” Spineless Republican legislators certainly fear crossing him and possible losing the 30% or so of the electorate who apparently believe he can do no wrong. In the opening scene of “Fear” presidential adviser Gary Cohn removes a letter from Trump’s Oval Office desk that would have set in motion U.S. withdrawal from a trade agreement with South Korea that would have risked interrupting sensitive spy operations on North Korean missile capabilities and thus jeopardized national security. Woodward wrote: “In the anarchy and disorder in the White House and Trump’s mind, the president never noticed the missing letter.”   

Mike Olszanski was a guest speaker in Philosophy professor Anja Matwijkix’s Business Ethics class.  At lunch Oz told me he enjoys the opportunity to get on his soap box and represent the perspective of organized labor’s rank-and-file.  I know the feeling and in two weeks will be talking about the Gary Homefront in Nicole Anslover’s World War II course.  She’s currently discussing wartime propaganda.  I told her how the government made use of African Americans, including heavyweight champ Joe Louis and naval hero Dorrie Miller, for propaganda purposes – ironic in view of their treatment in the segregated military.  Despite Louis raising millions in war bonds, the IRS unfairly claimed he owed more back taxes than he could ever hope to pay.  Dorrie Miller was a mess attendant working in the laundry on board the USS West Virginia anchored in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941.  Miller rushed on deck, shot down two planes with a machine gun, and rescued a wounded officer.  The War Department was reluctant to honor Miller until the black press publicized his actions.  Miller died in 1943 on board the USS Lissome Bay when a Japanese torpedo struck the escort carrier near the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific.  A Gary housing project was named in Miller’s honor.

Since Nicole told me to visit her class whenever I could, I decided to sit in on one on propaganda.  After she showed brief excerpts from the German film “Triumph of the Will” and a Frank Capra produced episode of “Why We Fight,” she led a lively discussion comparing and contrasting them.  The latter included a quote by Vice President Henry Wallace depicting World War II as a battle between the free world and slave world. When she elicited opinion on what affect propaganda had on Americans, I commented that it spurred civil rights leaders to demand an end to racist practices on military bases, at defense plants, in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere and led to the Double V campaign for victory against tyranny both abroad and at home.  One student mentioned Japanese-Americans being put in internment camps, and Nicole pointed out how anti-Japanese propaganda was blatantly racist.  Nicole’s next class will deal with comic books and Disney cartoons.

Larry David and pregnant mother

On an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Larry’s lunch companions are congratulating a women on becoming pregnant with her tenth child.  Larry pipes in, “Isn’t that a little selfish?” Later at her father-in-law’s barbershop, Larry learns she’s had a miscarriage and makes a quip about her already having nine kids, causing the barber to start beating him with a towel.

According to WXRT’s Mary Dixon, February 13 is Galentine’s Day where women celebrate intimate friendships with other women.  The sun finally came out after many days but the wind chill is still around zero. In the past few weeks ice mounds along the lake have expanded rapidly, as demonstrated in a photo by Samuel A. Love, taken during a Douglas Center Sacred Wanderings tour.

The sun finally came out after many days but the wind chill is still around zero. In the past few weeks ice mounds along the lake have expanded rapidly, as demonstrated in photos by Samuel A. Love, taken during a Douglas Center Sacred Wanderings tour.

Old Mill

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

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

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

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

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

. Laura Jones wedding picture with husband and parents, 1938

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

Art Hoyle, Gary jazzman