The Old Man

“The old man had his high point every Wednesday at George’s Bowling Alley, where he once bowled a historic game in which he got three consecutive strikes.” Jean Shepherd, “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

Jean Shepherd

The old man of Jean Shepherd’s best sellers was a cranky but somewhat endearing middle-aged curmudgeon, while his real father felt trapped in a drudge existence and deserted the family when Shep’s younger brother turned 18. From such experiences came the bard’s sardonic humor, what he labeled not nostalgia but anti-nostalgia.  In 1995, thanks largely to IUN archivist Steve McShane’s efforts, Shepherd received an IU honorary degree at age 74.  At a banquet beforehand, Shep had unsuspecting invitees rolling in the aisles as he described returning to the Region from Korea and taking an aptitude test at IU’s East Chicago extension center. Prior to his enrolling for classes, administrators revealed that the tests indicated that he should go into dentistry.  With a twinkle in his eye, Shep concluded his 20-minute bit by saying, “I walked out of that building and never looked back.”  What a tribute to a Region university, making it the butt of a brilliant comedy bit.  It was his way of acknowledging how honored he was to be receiving an honorary doctorate.  Four years later, Shep was dead, estranged from all blood relatives, unable to excise ghosts from the past or forgive old hurts.

In “A Fistful of Fig Newtons,” a unique blend of fiction and memoir, Jean Shepherd writes from the point of view of an urban sophisticate born in Northwest Indiana.  From a high-rise apartment, Shepherd wrote, he ripped the cover off New York magazine and “with smooth, adept, practiced skill quickly folded the cover into a paper airplane, an art not used in many years, perfected grade after grade at the Warren G. Harding School.”  He described the Midwestern public university he attended on the G.I. Bill as the result of a “charitable outpouring of public monies which has led to the psychic downfall of multitudes of erstwhile worthy garage mechanics and plumbers helpers.” Shepherd wrote of returning to Hammond and passing by his old high school:

       It was all there, even the weedy athletic field with its paint-peeling goal posts where I had once played the role of an intrepid defensive lineman and I had irrevocably shattered the ligaments of my left knee, which now began to throb sympathetically as we passed the old battlefield. Ghostly voices of my teachers of that golden time moaned in my subconscious: Miss Bryfogel, her high, thin bleat intoning facts about Bull Run and Appomattox, Miss McCullough’s birdlike chip squeaking something about gerunds or whatever they were, old red-faced Huffine, our coach, barking, “I don’t want to kick no asses but . . .”

        The long winters I had spent in this red brick mausoleum, its echoing halls, clanging lockers, its aromatic gym and cafeteria, scented forever with the aroma of salmon loaf and canned peas.  The roar of thousands of students surging up and down the stairways.

In my 1990s Steel Shavings, “Shards and Midden Heaps” (volume 31, 2001) I eulogize Jean Shepherd and reflect on in my 50s celebrating a twentieth-fifth wedding anniversary with my first grandchild (Alissa) and seeing sons Phil and Dave graduate from IU, commence productive careers as TV producer/director and teacher, and marry (in Dave’s case during the Blizzard of ’98).  I bragged about softball and bowling feats and winning tennis trophies in father-son and Senior tournaments. I still had a full had of hair, but it was turned grey.  Twenty years ago, a vicious home invader kept calling me an old man.  Now at age 78 I feel my age in my right knee, rotator cup, left ankle and need for frequent bathroom trips and nine hours of sleep.  Homebound during the pandemic, my main exercise comes from getting the mail and picking dandelions from the front garden in 10-minute intervals, stopping when the knee starts aching.

In this time of social distancing, when millions of young people are missing out on commencement ceremonies, Jean Shepherd wrote this account of graduating from Warren G. Harding School in Hammond:

      The despised glee club sang the Warren G. Harding fight song, accompanied by Miss Bundy, her crinkly straw-colored hair bobbing up and down, her huge bottom enveloping the piano stool. Then an undertaker and Chevrolet dealer delivered a mind-numbing oration on how his generation was passing the torch of civilization from its faltering hands into our youthful energetic and idealistic hands.

       But I got my diploma.  Clasping the sacred scroll there on the stage I felt myself growing wise and dignified, a person of substance, well equipped to carry torches, best foes, to identify the parts of speech, including gerunds, to draw from memory the sinister confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates.  And that Bolivia exports tin.

      At last we were free.  Warren G. Harding and its warm embrace, its easy ways, stood forever behind us.  On the way home the old man, his clean shirt cracklng with starch, said: “Whaddaya say we celebrate by pickin’ up some ice cream at the Igloo.  Ecstatic, I sat in the back seat of the Olds with my kid brother, clutching the precious document on which my name had been misspelled, in Old English lettering.

Casey King passed his IU Northwest senior review with flying colors, exhibiting drawing having to do with a long abandoned Miller drive-in, the Frank-N-Stein.  I’m pretty certain I’d convinced him to attend his commencement ceremony that won’t happen due to the pandemic.

The coronavirus outbreak is wreaking havoc at Westville prison, as well as Porter County jail and other area correctional facilities.  The Chesterton Tribune published the transcript of a phone call from a Westville inmate provided by Indiana Prison Advocates.  It stated:

      The inmates here, including myself, man, are very sick.  A lot of people have tried to get medical attention but are refused.  Things are getting worse, there was a riot.  If my 56-year-old roommate doesn’t get medical attention, then he’s probably not going to live.  Staff are coming in sick and inmates have been asked to keep an eye on these guys the minute they quit breathing to let somebody know. I don’t know how to describe the misery that has taken place here.  People are moaning in pain and some are hoping to die to relieve the suffering.  Commissary’s been taken away.  Governor Holcomb claims there’s a strike team here at Westville, but I haven’t seen anyone offering to help anyone do anything.

Archives

    "University archives are spots of wonder filled with artifacts that are mesmerizing, quirky, priceless and surprising.” Sherri Kimmel

   When archivist/curator Steve McShane is unable to answer his phone, his taped message includes the remark that he is likely out of the office collecting more treasures for the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA). Among the “treasures” already housed on the third floor of the IU Northwest library are diaries, minute books, land records, photographs, collections of environmental groups and labor unions, dunes posters, political buttons and fliers, an extensive collection of books about Northwest Indiana, and much, much more – including artifacts that are mesmerizing, quirky, priceless, and surprising, to reinforce the statement of Sherri Kimmel.

                           George Washington Carver, 1906, by Francis Benjamin Johnston

   In Bucknell magazine Sherri Kimmel wrote about a collection of 80 letters written between 1927 and 1942 that Bucknell YMCA secretary Forrest D. Brown exchanged with African-American scientist George Washington Carver, who developed over 300 products derived from peanuts. Similar to scenes from “Green Book,” Brown sometimes chauffeured Carver to appearances at Southern white universities and arranged for Carver to speak at Bucknell in November 1930 on the subject “The Inside of a Peanut.”  Brown’s daughter Carolyn Brown Chaapel, who donated the letters at my alma mater in Lewisburg, PA, told Kimmel: “Our home was an open door; Dad had so many people of color and nationalities from all over the world come to our house.” Brown retired in 1966, so he would have been on campus during my years at Bucknell, but I have no recollection of him. I do recall Bucknell-Burma Week, which he had a hand in arranging.

   George Washington Carver’s accomplishments became widely known in part because to the white establishment he, like Booker T. Washington and Crispus Attucks (killed during the Boston Massacre), represented a non-threatening Negro role model.  Segregated schools throughout the nation were named for them while, on the other hand, the accomplishments of freedom fighters such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Ida B. Wells received less publicity and acclaim.  Unfortunately, the recent backlash against this practice has sometimes resulted in Carver and Washington unfairly branded as “Uncle Toms.”

    Until the pandemic, thanks in part to the persistence of co-directors Ron Cohen and me, procedures were in place and pretty much on schedule for the hiring of a replacement for Calumet Regional Archives mainstay Steve McShane (above), our archivist since operations opened in what’s now IUN’s John Will Anderson Library, who will soon retire after four decades of service. Librarian Latrice Booker, Vice Chancellor Vickie Lagunas, and Chancellor William Lowe were all on board for a search to commence. Two distinguished archivists whom Steve knew personally had expressed interest in applying for the position.  Then the proverbial shit hit the fan. With the university closed, hiring frozen, IU President McRobbie mandating five percent budget cuts for regional campuses, and Lowe retiring in two months, it appears clear that nobody will be hired before Steve leaves and uncertainty looms on how soon we can get the process moving again.

   After posting the above paragraph, I received a dozen comments on Facebook from friends of Steve, students who took his Indiana History course, researchers, and former colleagues.  Sculptor Neil Goodman wrote: “Steve has always been a treasure to the campus.  I hope that his position will be replaced, as history is long and memory short.”  Feminist author Anne Balay added: “Steve was such a vital resource when I wrote ‘Steel Closets’ and a good friend.  The Archives is his legacy and should be continued and supported.”  Connie Mack-Ward said it would be a disgrace not to staff the Archives, and community activist Lois Reiner mentioned that Steve helped rescue “troves of history including the minutes from our little Valparaiso Builders Association.”

Laborers

“Unions were created to make living conditions just a little better than they were before they were created, and the union that does not manifest that kind of interest in human beings cannot endure, it cannot live.”  USWA President Philip Murray

 Philip Murray in 1936

Scottish-born Philip Murray (1886-1952) came to America in 1904 with his father, a coal miner. Young Philip also went to work in a mine, first in Scotland and then in the Pittsburgh area but was fired in 1904 for punching a manager who tried to cheat him by altering the weight of the coal he had mined.  He went on to become the president of a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local and in time a close associate of UMWA president John L. Lewis.  When Lewis formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), he tapped Murray to head up the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC).  He went on to succeed Lewis as CIO President and in 1942 transformed SWOC into the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), serving as its first president. 

 Lowell Labor Day parade photo by Post-Tribune's Suzanne Tennant

Becca as Mary Poppins; below, Dunes National Park site by George Sladic

The town of Lowell held its hundredth annual Labor Day parade, with Teamster Local 142 president Ted Bilski (also a Lake County Councilman) one of the planners.  Phil came in for the Labor Day weekend to attend a fantasy football draft at Robert Blaskiewicz’s. Toni hosted a sixty-ninth birthday party for Angie’s dad John Teague, who arrived with a cooler of beer left over from James’s graduation party. Beth, up from Carmel, contributed a rhubarb pie.  Toni served ribs, corn of the cob, and rice, plus special meals for Angie (a vegan) and Charles, who doesn’t eat pork.  Becca borrowed my umbrella for an upcoming benefit at which she’ll sing a number from “Mary Poppins.”  In the Hoosier Star vocal competition in LaPorte, next week, she’ll perform “At Last,” made famous by Etta James and covered by Beyonce. Sunday would have been a perfect beach day only I opted to watch the Cubs get shut out for the second day in a row.  Dave stopped in after dropping Phil off, and we got in Acquire and pinochle games – first time in quite a while.

steelworkers on strike in 1949 (above) and 1952 (below)

left, shooting pool at union hall

Philip Murray Building

John and Diane Trafny’s “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel” contains photos of Gary Works employees picketing during the 1949 and 1952 steel strikes, as well as two of Philip Murray union hall (exterior and interior) at Fifth and Massachusetts, headquarters for Local 1014 until the 1970s when replaced by McBride Hall on Texas Street near I-65.  In 1959 a 116-day strike ended after President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. While those three job actions yielded beneficial resulted for workers, by the time of the 1986-87 USX lockout, the longest in steel industry history, union workers were on the defensive.  

Betty LaDuke

On the way to Valparaiso University’s College of Arts building to speak to Liz Wuerffel’s podcast class, I ran into Brauer Museum director Gregg Hertlieb and had time to check out the current gallery exhibit, entitled “Social Justice Revisited” and featuring the impressive work of Betty LaDuke.  The 86-year-old Oregon artist has traveled to 19 African nations and many other so-called Third World countries to learn about and portray regarding food production and migration.  

The podcast class met in a graphic design lab, and the 18 students had their own work stations. I introduced myself and asked each their name and where they from.  One said Peru – Indiana, not South America, I found out later. I discussed oral history as a vital tool for researching workers, immigrants, minority groups, and seniors.  The students’ first assignment is to interview someone from the Calumet Region, so I suggested talking to Regal Beloit workers who had been on strike since late-June or perhaps seniors who go to Banta Center.  I stressed not going into the interview with a long set of questions but rather engaging the subject in a conversation and being flexible and open to the unexpected. I cited mistakes I’d made such as failing to check my equipment and not asking my subject to turn off his TV.

Questioned about doing oral history and other matters, one student who had read the portions of Steel Shavings magazine I had assigned asked if I wrote persuasively.  I said that as a historian, I sought the truth but didn’t try to disguise my point of view.  As Alessandro Portelli put it, oral history must have as one purpose the advancement of social justice; otherwise, what’s the point?  A Korean-born student wondered what, if anything, scholars would find relevant about our present age.  I noted the climate change crisis, the changing nature of work, and ever-increasing advances in technology.  Asked if I thought Trump would get us into a war with Russia or China.  I declined to discuss Trump other than predict that if he thought he needed a war to get re-elected, he’d pick on a nearby weak country (like Reagan invading Grenada) rather than a superpower. I made several references to the VU Flight Paths Project, whose co-directors are Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette.

from left, Liz Wuerffel, Rebekah Arevalo, Christina Crawley, Allison Schuette

I showed a short clip from my interview of Martha Azcona, whose parents were migrant workers who moved to Gary in the early 1950s when she was a pre-schooler. The eldest of seven, Martha talked about hours spent cleaning her sisters’ cloth diapers, insisting on diaper service for her own children, and using disposables for the next generation.  Now that’s social history at its essence! Next came the main reason I brought the DVD.  Suddenly, Martha said, “I don’t know if I should say this but when I was 15, my parents split up because of another woman.” She explained that the “nice Jewish grocers”her dad worked for told him, who had relatives who perished in Nazi “Death Camps” and believed in family above everything, that they’d have to let him go if he didn’t reconcile with his wife.  He refused, and as a consequence, Martha had to delay graduating from Horace Mann high school to join her mother as a migrant worker.

I noticed a German-born student wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket.  He had enjoyed the section in Steel Shavings,volume 48, about the Eagles, led by QB Nick Foles, defeating Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to win the Superbowl and the raucous celebration afterwards.  I included this paragraph from a Sports Illustratedarticle:

  The Crisco that state police had lathered onto street poles two weeks earlier had been replaced by hydraulic fluid – so fans simply uprooted the poles from the ground and carried them down the streets on their shoulders.  Others climbed atop traffic lights and surveyed the unprecedented scene unfolding beneath them. Some 2,000 college students marched from Walnut to 30th Street and, en masse, chanted “Fuck Tom Brady” and “Big Dick Nick.”  Other revelers stood atop cars and threw dollar bills into the air.  One man dressed as Santa – a costume that evokes the most ignominious moment in franchise history – crowd-surfed down the road, not too far from where a Christmas tree was set afire. A police horse was stolen and trotted through the city.

I told the student that my fantasy football draft was that evening, and he nodded with approval. I stuck pretty close to what the experts recommended but consulted with Dave and took a couple personal favorites such as QB Carson Wentz and Bears running back Terik Cohen).  Nephew Garrett tried to persuade me to trade Wentz to him, but I replied, “No dice.”

Karen Freeman-Wilson (r) with Joe Buscaino, Kathy Maness, 
and NLC predecessor Mark Stodola, Mayor of Little Rock

IU Northwest hosted a three-day National League of Cities meeting of mayors, as Gary’s Karen Freeman-Wilson is finishing out her one-year term as president of the organization.  I saw nothing about it in either local paper.  In fact, The NWI Times, which opposed her bid for a third term, egregiously claimed it was a distraction from her mayoral duties. 

At Banta Center for duplicate bridge a guy with a guitar setting up to entertain seniors at lunch told me he mainly played upbeat 60s and 70s numbers.  Bridge opponent Ric Friedman recalled some good local bands back then.  I brought up Styx, and Ric claimed he bought a car previously owned by one of the band members with all sorts of special gadgets, including remote control for music. Dottie Hart and I each earned half a master point, finishing with 54% despite a couple hands I wish I could bid or play over.  When opponent Ed Hollander got set and said, “I was screwed,”Dottie replied “And you weren’t even kissed.”  I’d never heard that expression before.  Chuck Tomes mentioned a LaSalle College basketball player, and I noted that NBA great Tom Gola starred for the Philadelphia school when I was a kid and went on to lead the Philadelphia Warriors to a championship in 1956, six years before the franchise moved to San Francisco.

Learning that bridge opponent Don Giedemann was a bowler and that his partner, Judy Selund, was vacationing in Poland, I talked him into subbing for the Electrical Engineers since we were in desperate need for a fifth bowler.  He already knew many Mel Guth Seniors league bowlers. He started slowly but rolled a 230 second game and finished with a 198 average.  Don once carried a 210 average but took several years off when his wife became critically ill.  A 1955 Bishop Noll graduate, he recalled Noll’s basketball team barely losing to Indianapolis Attucks in front of 5,000 fans at Hammond Civic Center.  Led by Oscar Robertson, Attucks would go on to become state champion by defeating Gary Roosevelt, 97-74.  When he heard I’d spoken in a Valparaiso University class, Don said that for seven years he participated in one on public speaking for an exercise of one-on-one disputation.  The Purdue graduate was a manager at LTV and retired in 2001 after 44 years.

Jim Spicer, elated over Green Bay’s NFL victory, 10-3, over the pathetic Bears, posted his joke of the week:

    Doug lived all his life in the Florida Keys and while on his deathbed, knowing his life’s end was near, spoke to his wife, his daughter, two sons, and his doctor. He asked for two witnesses to be present and a lawyer so that he could place in record his last wishes.

    “My son, Andy, you take the Ocean Reef houses. My daughter, Sybil, take the apartments between mile markers 100 and the Tavernier. My son, Jamie, I want you to take the offices over in the Marathon Government Center. Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the bayside on Blackwater Sound.”
    The lawyer and witnesses were blown away as they didn’t realize his extensive holdings. Doug slipped away and the lawyer said, “Mrs. Pender your husband must have been such a hard-working man to have accumulated all this property.”
    The wife replied, “No, the jerk had a paper route.”

Ron Cohen and I sent the following memo to Vicki Roman-Lagunas, IUN Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, and Latrice Rosana Booker, dean of the Library

  In the summer of 2020 IU Northwest Archivist Steve McShane will be retiring.  As co-founders and co-directors of the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA), we feel it is imperative to guarantee that he will be replaced by a full time, professional archivist in order to maintain the CRA’s excellence and importance as the most extensive professional Archive in Northwest Indiana, as well as implement plans to establish an IUN campus administrative archive. In order to make sure that Steve (right) will be on hand to acclimate his successor to the job, we are writing to urge that authorization for the position be made as soon as possible in order for a search to commence.        

   Note: Professor James Lane and Ronald Cohen (on left) joined the IUN History Dept. in September 1970. They soon began doing research on Gary and the Calumet Region’s history, which led to collecting historical materials that were initially stored in their offices. When the university began planning the new Library/Conference Center the administration agreed to include a space for the newly created Calumet Regional Archives (CRA). In 1982 the CRA was officially launched with the hiring of Stephen McShane as the full-time archivist. Lane and Cohen have long remained the CRA’s Co-Directors.  Over these last almost forty years the CRA has grown into a massive collection that has been used by countless historians, genealogists, and others from around the world in researching local history, as well as students and faculty. During this time the CRA also expanded its space on the 3rd floor to accommodate the always increasing number of collections.

In the City

I was born here in the city
With my back against the wall
Nothing grows, and life ain't very pretty
No one's there to catch you when you fall

“In the City,” Eagles

Canned Heat at Woodstock; below, Hanif Abdurraqib

When the Eagles formed in 1971 in Los Angeles, the counter-culture back-to-the-land fantasy of independent rural communes still was potent. At Woodstock two years before Canned Heat performed their iconic “Going Up the County,” which contains these lines:

I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
All this fussin' and fightin' man, you know I sure can't stay
So baby pack your leavin' trunk
You know we've got to leave today
Just exactly where we're goin' I cannot say
But we might even leave the U.S.A.

“In the City” by the Eagles follows in a long antiurban American tradition, glorifying rural life and, more recently, what historian Kenneth T. Jackson called the “Crabgrass Frontier” of suburbia, whose allure was the promise of home ownership with garage and ample yards in a safe community with good schools.  Ibn “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” Black essayist Hanif Abdurraqib captured the misleading image as seen by a teenage interloper:

  The sidewalks were more even underneath our bike tires, and the silence was a gift to a group of reckless and noisy boys, spilling in from a place where everything rattled with the bass kicking out of some car’s trunk.  We would ride our bikes with our dirty and torn jeans and look at the manicured lawns and grand entrances and the playgrounds with no broken glass stretched across the landscape. . . . It allowed me to fantasize, imagine a world where everyone was happy and no one ever hurt.

Thomas Hart Benton, "America Today" city and steelmaking panels

Anti-urbanism, in part was a reaction to rapid industrialization and the subsequent influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants to our shores, demonized cities as centers of sin and crime, corruption and radicalism, poverty and wage slavery.  Thomas Hart Benton’s century-old 10-panel mural “America Today,” for example, depicts burlesque dancers, subway muggers, and bloodthirsty fans at a prizefight as well as muscular, overworked steelworkers tending ladles of molten steel and guiding red hot ingots along an assembly line.   

Allison Schuette wrote this poem based on 1907 stereographs depicting the construction of Gary Works and found in “Gary: A Pictorial History”:

    The scale of the enterprise is immense. 

I fear it cannot be communicated; it must be experienced. 

The historians’ illustrated history introduces the scope: 

the ragged landscape of dunes and the marshy swamps not yet dredged;

the size of the labor force, the conditions under which they labored 

(snakes, yellow jackets, hornets and dune fleas); 

the clearing of the land, grading of the land, 

digging of the land, constructing upon the land; 

the relocation of the Grand Calumet River 1000 miles south of its original bed; 

the immensity of the machines and the scaffolding, 

dwarfing the size of any labor force, exposing us for the ants we are. 

But scope is to scale as smell is to taste, 

a whiff of what is to come if you are allowed to eat at the table. 

Which makes the stereographs all the more tantalizing. 

Printed on the historians’ page, they tease but refuse to do their job. 

The unified, three-dimensional world split, duplicated, flattened. 

Not one set of foundations for the traveling cranes, but two. 

Not one array of the great blast furnaces, but two.

Not one crew of workers unloading the long steel beams for the open hearth mill, but two. 

Not one length of the machine shop interior under construction, but two. 

Duplication draws the mind to the surface, to comparison and contrast, right and left. 

The stereographs confirm the eagerness of the industrial age, 

the enthusiastic ego, multiplying the moment to drive the point home. 

Look, look. Look at what we’ve done. But all I can do is look.

I cannot see, as Oliver Wendell Holmes did, the “scraggy branches of a tree”

running out at me “as if they would scratch our eyes out.”

The present refuses me complete access to the past. 

When I ask, it says, the stereoscope has been packed away

     and no one remembers where to find it. 

Nobel laureate in literature Toni Morrison died at age 88.  She once said, “If there is a book that you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.”  She was born in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio. At the age of two she was inside a house that the landlord set on fire because her family could not afford to pay the rent.  Her parents laughed at the fool and moved on. Thus, Morrison learned early that, in her words, “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”  Morrison was a 2016 recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her novel “Jazz” (1992), set in Harlem during the 1920s, deals with a married salesman, Joe Trace, murdering Dorcas, his young lover whose corpse Joe’s wife Violet (“Violent”) assaults with a knife at the funeral. Danger and excitement stimulation all the senses: that was Harlem during its Renaissance.

The topic in Steve McShane’s Senior College class on the history of the Calumet Region was “Steelmakers and Steeltowns.” It covered the founding and industrial growth of Gary and East Chicago with emphasis on the steel mills that dominated almost every aspect of life.  I distributedSteel Shavings, volume 46, with Vivian Carter on the cover and promised to be back in 10 days to talk about her launching Vee-Jay Records and to play doo wop and rock and roll hits produced and released by the record label.  In class was Beatrice Petties, whom Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette interviewed for the VU Flight Paths project. Here are some of Beatrice’s recollections about her Gary work experiences:  

   My mother said, “Always leave a job to where maybe you could go back to it.”And that was how I tried to leave. Any job I left I tried to leave that way. Gave them notice and let them know I was leaving. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do that.

   I went to the Gary National Bank, worked in there for about five years.  Mr. Horn, my supervisor, promised that once I learned the job they would promote me.  I went through the training and did the job for a year but never got the promotion. So I walked in the office and I said, “Mr. Horn, it’s been a year since I finished my training. When am I going to get a promotion?”He said, “Let me get back to you.”I said, okay. About a week later, I stood there in the door and said, “Mr. Horn, what did you promise me?”He said, “Well, we can’t do this right now.” I said, “Why?”And he gave me some long reason. I said, “Okay.”I never argue with anybody about a job. I went around the corner, and put in an application for Gary Housing Authority. About a month later, I went in and I told Mr. Horn, “Mr. Horn, I’m handing in my resignation.”And he said, “Don’t do that. Wait I’ll get back to you.” I said, “Okay.”He came back the next day, and said, “We’re going to promote you.”I said, “No, thank you, Mr. Horn. I’m taking the job, and I can leave today if you would like.”He did not like it at all. They were paying me almost $1,500 more than what I was getting at the bank, so I naturally was not going to turn that job down.

   I worked in the purchasing department at Gary Housing Authority, and the lady that was over the purchasing department left. When they put the job up on the board, I asked for it, but because I hadn’t been there very long, they put someone else in the position. Mr. Bosak, he said the wrong thing to me. He said, “Will you show her how to do the job?” And I said, “Okay. Fine.” I did not make it any better or any worse. I went and applied at Methodist Hospital. And I left not just because he didn’t give me that promotion, I left because there was some political shenanigans going on. They had a fund going, “Flower Fund,” for people who worked there, but I found out through talking to some other people that it was really a political fund for whomever was in office at the time. I said, “Don’t take any money out of my salary for that.” That’s when I said, “Thank you,” left, and  got to Methodist Hospital. I worked in the engineering department for almost 18 years. I was the only lady in the department, and the guys were great. I had a good time. We even see each other and talk to each other now. But that was a good time. A very good time.

Miller mainstay and retired Purdue Calumet professor of Electrical Engineering Rich Gonzales passed away.  I’d see him at Joe Petras’s annual Marquette Park playground fundraiser and other local functions, such as Ed Asner’s one-man show as FDR.  We both were guests at a dinner party Tom Eaton threw and a house party for Indiana gubernatorial candidate John Gregg. Rich was a good guy.

Commission for Higher Education member Jon Costas

The Commission for Higher Education met at IUN, first time in eight years.  Since its creation in 1971, the state-mandated policy-making group, much ridiculed by a long line of administrators, has issued welcome, albeit sometimes ignored, mission statements stressing the need for Regional campuses to serve its local constituencies in terms of research, community service, and teaching goals and practices. When I arrived at the Arts and Sciences Building, the adjacent parking lots were blocked off for use by the university’s guests.  Inside I spotted a bunch of white men in suits (actually, I discovered later, 3 of the 14 members are women and one African American).  The only person I knew was Valparaiso mayor Jon Costas, who grew up in Gary’s Horace Mann district during the 1960s.  I told Chancellor Lowe’s administrative assistant Kathy Malone that I was under-dressed, then thought better of it since I was wearing an IU polo shirt.  One is never under-dressed wearing IU apparel.

The Chesterton Tribune often has more (and better) news coverage than the two major Region papers.  For instance, a recent issue contained a lengthy analysis of Trump freezing all Venezuelan assets, which the Russians (correctly in my opinion) labeled economically motivated “international banditry.” The Tribuneis owned and edited by David Canright, who graduated from IU and was active in anti-Vietnam War protests and the antinuke Bailly Alliance.  The daily has a long tradition of support for the working man and ecology.  In fact, it was founded in 1882 as a Greenback Party weekly.  During the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was a force to be feared in Indiana small towns, the Tribune refused to print any articles about Klan activities.  It remains a vital source of community doings. 

 Kevin Nevers and Jeff Trout

I’ve long admired the work of Tribunereporter Kevin Nevers, who with Betty Canright also puts together “Echoes of the Past,” scouring files from 10, 15, 25, 50, and 75 years ago.  In August of 1944, for example, “two rattlesnakes were killed in Henry Grieger’s garden at Furnessville (an unincorporated community in Porter County along Route 20 near Beverly Shores).  One had four rattles and the other five and a half.” For the first time civilians were permitted to tour a few areas of the the Kingsbury Ordinance Plant. Also the Chesterton Merchants Association promised to build a band shell in the town park because passing New York Central trains made so much noise during concerts.  Presented with the Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award, Nevers credited David Canright with emphasizing that the Tribunewas a “newspaper of record.”  He said: “My editor doesn’t ask me what my lead is, he asks me how many stories I have and how much space I need. He winds me up and points me in the right direction."

On this date in 1974 Nixon resigned and in 1988 the Chicago Cubs turned on recently installed lights for the first ever Wrigley Field night game.  Exactly four year later, Metallica band member James Hetfield was badly burned due to a pyrotechnics explosion on stage at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.  In 1995 Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead breathed his last.

At Banta Center my bridge partner was feisty Dottie Hart.  Ten years my senior, she is moving in with her daughter, who joked that Dottie could have men over so long as they were gone when she got home for work. I quipped, “What time does she get home for work?”  Among the treats: Don Giedemann’s delicious cherry cobbler, resembling what once was my Thanksgiving specialty.  Norm and Mary Ann Filipiak offered blue bearded iris bulbs to any takers. I took several that Toni appreciated in view of the fact that I never followed through on promises to dig up iris bulbs from our Maple Place residence when our National Lakeshore leaseback expired.  Pam Missman, whose husband was playing ping pong nearby, has an endearing smile that reminds me of seventh grade girlfriend Pam Tucker, a great kisser who, years later, told me that when my family moved to Michigan, it nearly broke her heart.  Sigh! Puppy love.

Regal Beloit workers in Valpo 130 strong are in the sixth week of their strike.  I pass the pickets to and from bridge.  Journeyman carpenter Ryan Higgins toldTimescorrespondent Joseph Pete that medical insurance eats up a huge chunk of workers’ salaries and asserted:

  My dad has worked here for 42 years. Raised my sister and I on fair wages and benefits. I remember when I was a kid and McGills (the original owner) would have company picnics and would personally man the grill and drink beer with his employees! Those days are long gone! My dad makes less than he did 25 years ago. How is that fair? Stand up for what is right people!

Ryan Higgins

photo by Liz Wuerffel