Squeeze Inn

“The hourglass has no more grains of sand 

Little red grains of sand

My watch has stopped no more turning hands

Little green neon hands”

    “Hourglass,” Squeeze

Steve Spicer posted a photo of a century-old cottage at Miller Beach known as Squeeze Inn that Chicagoans used in the summer. “When the original Squeeze Inn was cobbled together is unknown,” Spicer wrote, “but it was located somewhere between the mouth of the Grand Calumet, quite possibly where the Aquatorium is today.” When the City of Gary began developing Marquette Park, the building was ordered razed, but a sorority purchased a lot further east for 500 dollars and a New Squeeze Inn opened on July 4, 1921. Spicer found a hundred-year-old article by Edith Heilman in the Forest Park Review, written upon returning from chaperoning sorority sisters for two weeks during the final summer of the original shack’s existence.  Here is an excerpt, thanks to Miller historian Spicer:

 “Squeeze Inn,” in cold, geographical terms, is a shack-and-porch a mile from Millers Beach, Millers, Ind.

Practically speaking, it’s a little bit of heaven dropped from out the skies. Sunny days and star dotted nights and the lake breeze make it so. Sand flies and a giant species of mosquito are the rift in the lute. But let us dismiss them!

As before stated, they call this place “Squeeze Inn.” But whoever presided over the christening rites missed his guess. It should have been called “Squeeze Out!” We are heaps more out than in, and some of us bubble over even from off the porch and sleep on the sand with the stars for our canopy.

Picture if you can a shack 18 by 10 feet with a complement of a porch 18 by 18 feet; porch bigger than the house, you will note. The house proper holds cooking utensils and clothing and at present is so crammed with both that a human being hasn’t room to more than wiggle into and out of her bathing suit.

The cooking is done out of doors on an improvised stove, and I want to say right here that if you are finicky or “set” in your ways, stay away from the “Squeeze Inn!” Sand and charcoal is the basis of most of the menus, but what cares youth for such trifles?

And the girls themselves! Tall, short, black heads and blond – with a charming red head thrown in for spice! And when they all line up in their gayly colored bathing suits they’re a sight for sore eyes.

Fifty weeks out of the year they are stenographers, bookkeepers and general office girls. Out here for two carefree weeks that are Dryads of the Woods and Belles of the Beach!

Spicer discovered that the origin of the unofficial sorority Tau Omega Tau Sigma (TOTS) was an organization the young women joined during World War I, the Girls Patriotic Service League and that Edith Heilman had been their sponsor. The TOTS girls, as they called themselves, and their families used the second Squeeze Inn until the 1950s.

 

Growing up in a Philadelphia suburb, the main places to vacation were the Jersey shore and the Poconos. My parents preferred the Poconos; and after two bad experiences using a tent began renting a cabin at Lake Minneola along with the Jenkins family. It wasn’t a shack, but it was not very luxurious either. What I recall most vividly was the open porch where we’d play cards and flypaper hanging up to which were attached its victims. Most of our excursions to the shore were day trips, but after my freshman year at Bucknell, my fraternity rented a place for a week that became as crowded as Squeeze Inn. I recall sleeping on a couch with a coed I had met earlier in the day. We were both pretty drunk and didn’t do any heavy petting. I saw her once after that but otherwise we went our separate ways.

 

In “Rabbit at Rest” Harry drove by his childhood neighborhood (something Terry Jenkins and I did the last time we were together) and recalled his bedroom, with tinker toys, rubber soldiers, lead airplanes, and stuffed teddy bears lined up on a shelf. I shared a bedroom with my younger brother and recall that on one shelf were adventure books on cowboys and the wild west by someone with the strange name of Holling C. Holling. We also had numerous board games, including Parcheesi and Chutes and Ladders, and sometimes we’d combine them so you’d have to have your tokens go onto the second one after completing the route on the first.  Updike wrote:

 On the radio Harry hears that Mike Schmidt, who exactly two years ago, on April 18, 1987, slugged his five hundredth home rum against the Pittsburgh Pirates, is closing in on Richie Ashburn’s total of 2,217 hits to become the hittingest Phillie ever. Rabbit remembers Ashburn.  One of the 1950 Whiz Kids who beat the Dodgers the fall Rabbit became a high school senior.  Curt Simmons, Del Ennis, Dick Sisler, Andy Seminick behind the plate.  Beat the Dodgers the last game of the season, then lost to the Yankees four straight.

I was in third grade when the Phillies played the Yankees in the 1950 World Series. The games took place in the afternoon, and Miss Worthington let us listen to them on the radio.  My dad had tickets for game 5, which never took place because the Yankees swept all four games.  I watched the final one on a Saturday at the Jenkins house; we didn’t have a TV until a year later.

 

Final Jeopardy in one of the college tournament semi-final rounds was impossibly hard.  The category was Presidential geography and the clue was, birth place of a nineteenth-century president named for another president.  All three contestants wrote Lincoln, Nebraska, but the answer was Cleveland, where James Garfield is buried.  The two leading players bet almost everything, enabling someone far behind them to win.  An IU student also made the finals.

 

Chancellor Bill Lowe announced that there would be no annual “Years of Service” luncheon due to the university being closed due to Covid-19.  Even though my name was not on the list of honorees, I emailed that I had planned to attend since I’d been associated with IUN for 50 years (having been hired, along with Ron Cohen in 1970) and that I had hoped to congratulate my friends Kathy Malone, Suzanne Green, and Tim Johnson, on their 40 years of service. Bill emailed back, congratulating me on 50 years of service and lamenting all the campus events that faculty and students are missing.

Facebook

    “Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd

Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s protestations that the company’s mission is benign -  to make the world more connected and build community across boundaries, his creation has become intrusive, a threat to privacy, and a polarizing force politically.  Aside from those criticisms, Facebook accounts inevitably become littered with advertisements and other annoying messages.  Today’s crop, for instance, included MLB, art.com, Humana Pharmacy, Bob Rohrman Auto Group, and Empire: World War 3. Even so, for me it continues to provide illustrated links to friends, relatives, former students (i.e., Jonathan Rix, George Sladic, Chris Daly, Bob Fulton, Amanda Board) and old acquaintances that I find invaluable. For example, here is a sample of what I found when opening my account this morning:

Miller Town Hall, built in 1910, used a firehouse after annexation

This from Gary historian Steve Spicer: “On February 17, 1919, the Gary Common Council passed ordinance No. 754 annexing the Town of Miller. One hundred years ago today. Approved by the mayor three days later.”  Spicer also posted a photo taken from his house on Miller Ave. of a full moon at 4 a.m. Steve was one of many area residents who expressed satisfaction that, thanks to efforts by Congressman Peter Visclosky and many others, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is now one of 61 national parks. 

Dave Lane, E'twain Moore, Dee Atta Wright; below, Miranda 

Son Dave posted photos while at Purdue University with students invited as guests of former East Chicago Central basketball star  E’Twaun Moore to celebrate aday in his honor in Lafayette and enjoy a Boilermakers game against Penn State. Dave wrote that Moore “epitomizes class and it was a great honor to be there to celebrate with him. He continues to make his hometown proud!”  Other new family photos included James visiting Valpo U. for an overnight experience and Miranda vacationing in Florida.

Professional photographer Ray Gapinski attended the same play, “Shrek: The Musical” that we enjoyed on Sunday and took numerous photos of the performance that will surely become collectors’ items for cast members. Photographer and community organizer Samuel Love documented a tour of sites in Gary to collect sights and sounds for a genealogy podcast.  Betty Villareal got together with “girlfriends” from Lew Wallace’s Class of 1967, while my 1960 Upper Dublin classmate Bettie Erhardt posted photos of a gathering at Giuseppe’s, a local steak sandwich and pizza joint, when Thelma Joy Van Sant visited.  Replying to one of Thelma and Eddie Piszek, Alice Ottinger employed the title of a 1956 Chordettes doo wop hit: “Eddie My Love.” Whenever I return to Fort Washington, I alert Bettie and she arranges for a similar mini-reunion.

Ray Smock announced the publication on President’s Day of his new book on the Trump presidency, “American Demagogue,” which drew many positive comments and a sarcastic photo from follower Katherine Ryan Walsh. Anne Balay shared this article by Brooke Nagler that appeared in the University of Chicago magazine:

 Anne Balay, AB’86, AM’88, PhD’94, has worked as a mechanic and a trucker. “I love the mental state long drives put me in; they’re pretty much the only time I feel relaxed,”she writes in Semi Queer. “I love that feeling, and almost every trucker I’ve talked to does too. That’s what we mean when we say trucking is addictive—it’s not just a job but a lifestyle.” 

 Balay herself worked as a trucker after being denied tenure, a decision she believes was motivated by homophobic discrimination. Jobless and panicking, she entered trucking school because she’d always liked driving. There she found that sitting in the cab of a truck was transformative. “Suddenly all of the anger and bitterness just flowed away. I felt like this is something I could do that would be meaningful and productive,” she says. (Balay has since returned to academia and now teaches at Haverford College.)

 Her experience was not uncommon. Mastering an 80,000-pound piece of machinery offered many of Balay’s interviewees a sense of power. As one driver told her, “the fact that people hate me ’cause I’m trans, well then they’ll hate me, but say hello to my truck.”

 With its constant motion and cycles of departure and arrival, Balay writes, the everyday life of a trucker is well suited to individuals whose gender identities are also in flux. Trucking offers a way for these individuals to express their shifting identities more openly. “Out here on the road I live authentically,” explained Alix, who is trans. “I am kind of leading a double life because when I go home, I’m kind of mom to the kids. … So when I get back into the truck, it’s liberating, because I don’t have anyone’s expectations to live up to.”

 But the profession has drawbacks. Nonwhite truckers experience racism from the carriers that employ them, other truckers, and customers. For all drivers, “trucking is incredibly dangerous,”Balay says. Apart from the risk of accidents, drivers are frequently alone in remote areas or at truck stops, which can be magnets for illegal activity. Sexual assault was common among the women she interviewed, both cisgender (those whose gender identity matches the sex on their birth certificates) and transgender. Nearly every trucker Balay interviewed carried a gun.

 Then there are the looming existential threats. Technology has transformed trucking, adding new forms of employer surveillance, such as cameras and speed sensors, that many drivers feel are needless micromanagement. The most dramatic change awaits as self-driving vehicles threaten to upend the industry. Balay worries for the marginalized truckers for whom “there are no other decent jobs available.”

 But until autonomous trucks hit the interstate, truckers will remain essential, linking even the most remote parts of the country to the web of American industrialism. That sense of connection to how things are made is one of the reasons Balay found satisfaction in driving a truck. Her work took her to the mills where toilet paper is made, the Nabisco factories where Oreos emerge from conveyer belts, the fields where fruit is grown and picked. She saw it all, and took it where it needed to go next.

Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer

Vice

“Vice president – it has such a nice ring to it.” Geraldine Ferraro, 1984 Vice Presidential candidate“

After reading four-star reviews of “Vice,” starring Christian Bale and Amy Adams as Dick and Lynne Cheney, I decided to go see it.  When I arrived at Portage 16, I noticed to my surprise that “Green Book,” which had previously come and gone after just one week, was also playing.  It started ten minutes after “Vice,” so figured that I could always change theaters after a few minutes if I decided to but soon discovered the theater no longer posts where the films are playing. Evidently a theater-hopper recently got detained and turned over to police, but as a soon-to-be 77-year-old, I’m sure I could weasel out of any difficulty claiming confusion upon realizing “Vice” was not an update of Miami Vice,my favorite Eighties TV show.

The acting was spot-on, with Sam Rockwell and Steve Carell stunning as George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, but I was somewhat disappointed that “Vice” provided few insights about the most powerful and dangerous vice president in American history. It glossed over the fact that Cheney made millions as CEO of Halliburton and that the company made obscene profits from governmental contracts during the Iraq War, which Cheney pushed the country into.  I already knew about director Adam McKay employing such unorthodox gimmicks as rolling the credits prematurely and including a surrealistic bedroom scene where Dick and Lynne recite lines from Shakespeare.  It begins showing Cheney as a 22 year-old Yale dropout with a drinking problem and concludes with daughter Liz becoming Wyoming’s lone House member after denouncing gay marriage despite her lesbian sister Mary being wed to a woman. 

Cheney’s main vice, according to the movie, was a total absence of humility or self-doubt. He seemed to feel no need to apologize for anything, whether shooting a friend while hunting or ordering the incarceration and torture of Muslims in some cases only indirectly connected to those who carried out the 9/11/01 attacks.  In the movie’s final scene Cheney, facing a reporter’s camera, utters a statement eerily similar to a line in Shakespeare’s Richard III: “I can feel your incriminations and your judgment, and I am fine with that.”  Washington Postmovie critic Ann Hornaday wrote:

  Structurally, “Vice” is a mess, zigging here and zagging there, never knowing quite when to end, and when it finally does, leaving few penetrating or genuinely illuminating ideas to ponder. . . . The historical long game, with all its ambiguities and unforeseen consequences, isn’t as compelling to director Adam McKay as delivering as many kitschy, cartoonish parting shots as he can to someone who even today seems both pathologically self-serving and supremely indifferent to being liked.

 George and Ruth Leach with cousin

Electrical Engineers swept three games from Pin Chasers, the first place team that two weeks before had skunked us during position round. I rolled a 481, well above my 143 average, without many strikes, but I picked up most spares, including the 3-9 twice, usually a tough one for me.  On a 6-7-10 split I threw my 40-year-old “spare” ball exactly as needed but the 6-pin stopped within an inch of the 7.  Mel Nelson pulled something in his upper arm at the beginning of game two, so we had to bowl the last two games with a ten-pin penalty.  Opponent George Leach’s name was on a list of recent 300 bowlers.  He told me that he had a perfect game 30 years ago and again last month with the same ball. Marie Roscoe’s granddaughter’s boyfriend, a bowler, came to give her tips.  She tended to leave the seven-pin on pocket hits.  

Dave’s family was at the condo playing a dice bowling game, having helped Toni put away the Christmas tree and decorations. After calling captain Frank Shufran to report bowling highlights, I joined them for a Piglet dice game. I finished dead last, prematurely “pigging out” too many times.  For dinner Toni served spaghetti, meatballs, angel hair, salad, garlic bread and scallops.  A feast! 

Rolling Stone’s “Year in Music” issue arrived with Travis Scott (above) on the cover.  I asked Tamiya what she thought of Scott Travis, our private joke ever since I mistakenly referred to Kendrick Lamar as Lamar Kendrick.  She told me to check out J-Cole.  The year’s top five albums were all by females led by Carli B and followed by Kacey Musgrave, Camila Cabello, Adriana Grande, and Pistol Annies (Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe, and Angaleena Presley).  Overkill for past slights, perhaps?  Beginning with Scott and Drake, rappers by far outnumbered rockers although Kurt Vile’s “Bottle It In” was #9.  Also making the top 25 were worthy albums by John Prine, Paul McCartney, and Beach House.

As Philadelphia and Chicago faced off on the gridiron, I was rooting for the Eagles but wouldn’t have been too disappointed had the Bears advanced in the NFL playoffs. It all came down to a 43-yard field goal attempt by Cody Parkey, who had endured a mediocre season, missing eight 3-point attempts and three extra points.  Against Detroit he had hit the goal post upright several times.  Unbelievably, he did it again, not only plunking the upright but then dropping down to the crossbar and bouncing back into the end zone. On TV Chris Collingworth called it a “Double doink.”  A Philadelphia newspaper headline read, “Clanks for the Memory.” Parkey said afterwards, “You can’t make this up.  I feel terrible.  I let the team down.  That’s on me. I have to own it.  I have to be a man.  Unfortunately, that’s the way it went today.”  The fickle finger of fate, as Sixties comedian Dick Martin would say on “Laugh-In.” Eagle Treyvon Hester evidently got a couple fingers on the ball, but pundits were making comparisons to such infamous Chicago sports moments as Leon Durham’s miscue in the final game of 1984 NL playoffs and Cub fan Steve Bartman interfering with a catchable foul ball in 2003.  It reminded me of Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood missing a 47-yard attempt (“Wide right!”the announcer famously exclaimed) on the final play of Super Bowl XXV against the Giants in 1991.

Last week Becca’s Chesterton choral group sang the National Anthem at Valparaiso University’s Missouri Valley Conference opener against Illinois State.  At the game Allison Schuette (above) was honored for winning VU's Faculty Research award. The following morning on the CBS morning news was a clip of a miracle buzzer-beating half-court shot by VU’s Markus Golder, which won the game for the Crusaders, 58-56.

Before leaving for IUN I stocked the downstairs fridge with beer and grabbed my satchel, an empty Yuengling bottle, and a pair of slacks on a hanger.  Halfway up the stairs I somehow stepped on the slacks, stopped to rearrange them, and grabbed the bannister as I began to lose my balance and possibly fall backward.  Close call! Near my library carrel three students were at a table where I normally put down my stuff to unlock the door.  A young coed confirmed it was her first day of the semester but didn’t seem very excited.  I asked if she had any History courses; she was taking Western Civilization with David Parnell.  I raved about him, but sadly its online, so she won't see him in action in the classroom.

I thought I had cleaned out my Archives cage, but Steve found a few interesting items, including some ancient floppy disks and steelworker W.P. Cottingham’s 1943 work diary (quite fascinating, including weather reports and time left for home) that Steve returned to its rightful collection.

Joe Louis and Ann Gregory 

Traces editor Ray Boomhower is interested in publishing my article on Joe Louis in Gary and wants photos for it.  I sent him of the heavyweight champ at a Gary Par-Makers golf tournament and another of Louis with Gary golf great Ann Gregory, who supposedly said as she paid her whites-only South Gleason green fee: “I want to play the big course.  My tax money helps pay for this course. If you don’t like it, send the police out to get me.”  She got some angry stares, but nobody stopped her.  The Archives also had one of North Gleason Park pavilion in 1953, where the nine-hole course was located, and another of the North Gleason clubhouse at present, which Indiana Landmarks is attempting to save.  

I got a phone call from Douglas Dixon, author of a Traces article about the Campos family that settled in southern Indiana, which I wrote about on my blog.  He pointed out that I misspelled the Spanish word for road or route - “La Via” as La Vie.” I promised to correct it, and we went on to talk for 20 minutes.  He praised my book (with Edward Escobar) “Forging a Community” and upon learning I was co-director of the Calumet Regional Archives recognized it as the source for several photos used to illustrate his article. The former IU student asked me to review a manuscript about IU diplomatic historian Robert Ferrell. I told him about my friend David Malham being in his class and pronouncing Valparaiso, Chili like the Indiana city (with the third syllable like an “a” rather than an “i”), causing Ferrell to ridicule him. 

A Facebook post by Steve Spicer began: “Did you know that Miller Beach was the site of the first ‘Miss Indiana’ pageant? Or had the first radio station in the region? Or the St Mary of the Lake congregation got its start in a ballroom?”  His website contained information on Gay-Mills (short for Gary and Miller) ballroom, founded in 1922 by Frances Kennedy, a vaudeville comedienne, and husband Thomas, and for a decade the venue for dance bands, prize fights, beauty contests, and the Region’s first radio station, WJKS (“Where Joy Kills Sorrow”). One person recalled that a host watched to make sure couples weren’t dancing too close together and forbade anyone from doing “The Shimmy.”

At bridge I learned that former partner Dee VanBebber passed away over the weekend at age 89.  Daughter Lissa informed the Times: 

She loved her family dearly and rallied for one last, great gathering at the home of her sister Nanette (Jerry) Rushton where she delighted in the company of her other siblings Michael (Gloria) Davis and Daneeta (Arvin) Phelps. Also present were her children Lissa (Tom) Yogan, Bill (Tina) VanBebber and Jim VanBebber. She was the loving grandmother of Justin VanBebber, Billy Yogan, Rylee Yogan, and Maria Yogan who were also present at the Christmas gathering. Dee was a high school teacher and girls' golf coach in Greenville, OH and was known affectionately as 'mom' by many of her students. She continued teaching after moving to Crystal River, FL when her husband sold his jewelry store. She loved playing bridge and golf and excelled at both.

Dee was a class act and great conversationalist as well as a very skilled bridge player who never faulted partners for low boards. A Tampa Bay fan, she harbored a grudge against manager Joe Madden for abandoning the Devil Rays in favor of the Cubs.  Either Chuck and Marcy Tomes or Tom and Lori Rea brought her to games, and she had 70 percent scores with several of us.  Her ashes will be spread at her favorite golf courses in Ohio and Florida.

Living for the City

“I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel, nowhere could be much colder
If we don't change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, just enough for the city”

         Stevie Wonder, “Living for the City”

 Martayveus Carter

I became heartsick when I saw a Times front page headline, “NFL hopeful critical after deadly shootout in E.C.,” caught my eye.  The gunshot victim, at a gas station shortly before midnight Saturday, was Martayveus Carter.  Dead at the scene was 30-year-old Hammond resident Brian Thomas, apparently an innocent bystander, whom Dave remembered fondly when he taught him at East Chicago Central.  In 2013 Martayveus Carter led East Chicago Central to an unforgettable upset victory in the football Regionals against number 3 ranked New Prairie.  I was in the press box with Dave, who was announcing the game, when Martayveus scored the game winning TD on a fourth down plunge. In addition to his considerable offensive skills (he scored on several kickoff returns), he was The Timesdefensive player of 2013, registering a record 505 tackles and several “pick six” interceptions. Carter went on to become the leading rusher in Grand Valley State University’s history, plus scored 28 touchdowns during a stellar career.  When GVSU Coach Matt Mitchell heard he’d been shot, he was devastated and said, “He was a good person at heart.  He had some highs and lows.  My heart goes out to his family and what they’re going through right now.”  According to Times reporter Joseph Pete, Carter had two children and recently attended a Kansas City Chiefs workout. Pete wrote:

  His mother Sharon Carter was hit on the streets of East Chicago and dragged for a block while pregnant, an accident that put her in a wheelchair.  Her brother Percy Long, a star football player in California in the late 1980s, was shot dead by a skinhead. “It’s like I’m reliving his life,”Martayveus said in 2013.  “I never had a chance to meet him, I know he wishes he could be in my shoes.  Instead it’s me.  That’s why I sent him a kiss.  Now I’m doing what he would want me to do if he were still on the Earth.”

Tragically, no more, in all likelihood.

A SundayTimes editorial, taking issue Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s characterization of a recent rash of homicides as an “aberration,”preferred the word “epidemic” to describe the 30 shooting fatalities since the beginning of the year, a 16 percent increase from 2017.  Victims included 55-year-old Terrence Conley, shot in the face near the Miller South Shore station, and East Glen Park resident Pamela Hunter, 28, killed at her home, the assassin also wounding an 8-year-old daughter.  One possible cause: she was a witness in an upcoming murder trial. 

I spent much of the weekend in Gary.  At IUN’s emeritus luncheon Chancellor Lowe announced that a recent poll listed the university as among the safest urban campuses in America.  Campus police patrol the surrounding area east of Broadway to Martin Luther King Drive and south to Ridge Road.  Recent incidents have been minor crimes of opportunity, thefts, and almost always, Lowe claimed, the stolen items were recovered.  The City of Gary is attempting to purchase Franklin School and adjoining property near Thirty-Fifth and Georgia as part of its University Corridor plan, envisioning the site being converted to affordable housing.  Lowe noted that the area is comparable in size to our campus.  Unfortunately, the state-appointed emergence manager who runs the Gary schools wants more than a million dollars for the property.  She is also cavalierly auctioning off valuable school possessions, including a bust of educator William A. Wirt that should rightly be in a safe place, such as the Calumet Regional Archives, rather than, in all probability, melted down for financial gain.

At Gardner Center in Miller a retrospective art exhibit featured dunes scenes by Jim Wilson, Della Schaller, and Dale Fleming. A gentle soul, Wilson and Toni were active in the Gary Artist League.  Fleming, our Edgewater neighbor, composed several dozen drawings for an issue of Steel Shavings(volume 28, 1998) on “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands” for a mere $200.  Among his drawings I spotted a familiar one showing dunes artists boarding a South Shore train that originally appeared in “Tales of Lake Michigan.”  Most of those prints are presently in the Archives, but Jack Tonk had purchased the one in question at a 1998 Lake Street Gallery reception.  Dale subsequently moved to Bloomington to live with son Carl.  His present whereabouts are unknown. Corey Hagelberg introduced me to Sierra Club staff member Ashley Williams, Northwest Indiana Organizing Representative for a Beyond Coal Campaign.  They invited me to a community conversation at Gary’s Progressive Community Church featuring “Ecopolis Southshore,” a presentation written and performed by community activists Sam Love and Walter Jones, and two artists in residence, Krystal Wilson, and Jeff Biggers.  I decided to attend.

 Ashley Williams

Progressive Community Church is located at 656 Carolina Street, across from abandoned Emerson School, founded in 1908 and the first institution to implement progressive educator William A. Wirt’s work-study-play platoon system. When I arrived, I noticed were a half-dozen huge hoop houses in use.  Cars were parked all around the block, and the chapel was nearly filled to capacity. The dramatic reading, “Ecopolis Southshore,” envisioned a time in the near future when the Emerson district had been transformed into urban gardens and small-scale enterprises emanating from a refurbished Emerson School, with coal no longer needed as an energy source.  The Billy Foster Trio provided musical interludes.  Here are notable excerpts:

  Walter: People heated their homes with coal when I was a kid.  The strong scent of hydrocarbons stinging the cold night air. Gary, Indiana, was built on two things, sand and steel.  The maw of the beast, the steel industry, takes up 9 miles of lakefront, keeping that beautiful asset away from the view of its citizens.

  Krystal:The pollution, all of it, causing heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, birth defects, and impaired bone growth in children. Cancer.  You live near an unlined coal ash pond, you may have as much as 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from drinking cancer-contaminated water.

  Samuel: I heard the voice of Curtis Whitaker, the great environmental activist in our town.  He stood up, rang a bell, silenced the table, and said: “It’s time for Gary to rethink our ways in an age of climate change, to rethink ways that regenerate our energy, our food, our land, our ways of getting around – beyond sustainability, we must heal our damage to this land.  We must heal ourselves.  We need to go back to our roots as a laboratory of democracy on the south shore.”  Pastor Whitaker launched Faith farms, starting with three raised beds, then 4 hoop houses, and then a community orchard. What started at a single intersection soon grew to encompass ’      Walter:It began with a vision.  That’s why I came back.  The Region gave us so much, has so much to offer.  But mainly it reminds us that hope dies last, that hope resists. Tough, resilient, steely.  You wind up being people who make it work, because that’s all you’ve got.

Sam: Sure, we’re polluted, poisoned, and there’s nowhere to run.  But this is home.  We want to do the immediate planting of tiny acorns that yield mighty oaks for generations to enjoy, rather than blathering beneath a decaying tree about all the good things that could be done. Just do it.

  Krystal: We’re doing work that our grandkids’ generation will still be doing.

  Walter: And we love it.

Rev. Curtis Whitaker; Times photos by John Luke

Visitors to Progressive Community Church were treated to fruit smoothies, which will be sold at a neighborhood juice bar in containers processed from fruit products.  During a tour of Faith Farms, Pastor Curtis Whitaker pointed out produce being grown in hoop houses that eventually will operate year round.  He noted that solar panels on the church were purchased with the help of a grant.  Nearby was a fancy chicken coop (the hip Reverend labeled it “dope”) that will not only house poultry but a bee hive to provide honey and discourage predators. Listening to this inspirational man, dressed simply with no trace of false piety, gave me a sense that common people just might be able to overcome a harsh environment that most former residents were eager to flee. With proper leadership in place and help from Sierra Club members, who turned out in force for the four-hour program, one can dare hope.

Millerite George McGuan hosted a ten-player Texas Hold ’em game.  He and Al Renslow, who sat on my right after we drew cards to determine seat position, were memorable Seventies IUN students. Toni and I attended Al’s wedding (“my first,” he quipped) at Club SAR, founded by benevolent Gary machine boss George Chacharis.  Al was active in the IUN Young Democrats, as was mutual friend George Van Til.  First out was Jack Tonk, seemingly inexperienced at Texas Hold ’em. Renslow, a little too reckless, followed soon afterwards. McGuan was almost out of chips but rebounded with a brilliant bluff.  One hand I was started with an Ace-10 of Hearts.  I called an all-in bet by a player who held 2 Kings.  The flop yielded two more Hearts bit no Kings.  The next card was no help to either of us, so I needed an Ace or a Heart to beat him.  The final card was a Heart. I was holding my own until I lost a big pot to a flush, which beat my high straight.  Then George McGuan, Jr., almost bankrupt, went all in prior to the flop. I held the King-Queen of Hearts and called.  We revealed our cards, and he had the worst possible hand, a deuce and a three.  He was bluffing.  Wouldn’t you know, up came a 2 and a 3, and he claimed the pot with two pair to my two Queens.

2017 and 2018 New Yorker covers

New Yorker correspondent Margaret Talbot wrote:

    The theme of cruelty unfolding at the southern border last week was the purest distillation yet of what it means to be governed by a President with no moral center. The Trump administration, enacting its “zero tolerance” policy regarding migrants, forcibly separated children from their parents and detained them in a tent city and a repurposed Walmart in parched South Texas. Photographs showed children penned in large cages and sprawled on concrete floors under plastic blankets. Many were sent on to facilities thousands of miles away.  Those under the age of 12, including babies and toddlers, were discharged to “tender age” shelters, a concept for which the term “Orwellian” does not quite suffice.

 Staci Abrams

I wouldn’t mind living in Gary.  How nice not to have to commute on 80/94.  My fantasy is to win the MacArthur prize for Steel Shavings and with the money build a residence near campus that I’d bequeath to IUN as a dorm for foreign exchange students and possibly the Chancellor’s residence.  As I walked into IUN’s Anderson Library, a young man responded to my greeting as saying, “How’s it going?”  “OK,” I replied, then seconds later teared up, recalling Martayveus Carter lying in a hospital bed in critical condition.  I actually turned around and would have said,“Actually, I’m not OK”except he was gone.  

In the Archives were John Trafny, working on a Gary book, and Steve Spicer, researching the Wabash Railroad, whose tracks provided transportation for Aetna Powder Company products.  A 1912 explosion killed eight men and one in 1914 blew windows out two miles away on Broadway. Spicer has found the names of victims killed as a result of plant explosions, some of whom are buried in Miller’s ancient Swedish cemetery. On Spicer’s webpage is a section on Aetna Powder Works that contains this information from Powell A. Moore’s “The Calumet Region: Indiana’s Last Frontier” (1959):

    Aetna has long been considered part of Miller although it is a little separated from it. In 1881 the Miami Powder company began erection of the Aetna Powder works because it was in a fairly remote location although still close to the railroads and a source of labor. By 1888 the plant had 26 buildings and employed 45 men producing 60,000 pounds of powder a day. Powder was marketed to farmers to blow stumps, and by the onset of World War One the plant employed some 300 men. The plant flourished making gun cotton during the war. It employed some 1200 men, but at the end of the war, with the expansion of Gary and Miller, there was little justification of maintaining a plant in such close proximity to the growing population and the plant closed.

Spicer reprinted a Chesterton Tribunearticle from April 12, 1888, entitled “Terrible Explosion: 3,000 Pounds of Nitro-glycerin Accidentally Explodes at the Aetna Powder Works.  Three men Blown Into Atoms and Parts of Their Bodies Found a Mile Away”:

    This is the second explosion within the last two years, though the first was not so disastrous. The president of the company evidently expects the worst, and prefers his cozy Chicago office to the dangers of the works, for whenever business compels him to visit Miller the works are shut down and nothing is done until he gets away to a safe distance.

    Henry Scott, one of the men killed, was from Wheeler and had been employed in the powder factory about seven years. John A. Gill was from Boston, and Jansen from Denmark. All were single men.   Scott was the mixer, Gill his assistant, and Jansen the trucker, who wheeled the powder to another department.  Scott got $60 month, and Gill and H.L. Jansen $2 a day for their perilous work. Their funeral took place on Saturday, and the remains were buried in the cemetery at Millers.

Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City,” from the 1973 “Innervisions” album, provides background music for a dramatic crack house scene in Spike Lee’s 1991 film “Jungle Fever.”  I think of that scene often, given the country’s current opioid crisis.  A Timecover story about Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams mentioned that one of her brothers is a heroin addict and ex-convict.  Their college-educated father was, according to the cover story, “relegated by his race to working at a shipyard in southern Mississippi in the 1970s.”  Stacy’s mother had a graduate degree but earned less as a librarian than the building’s janitor.  The  family of seven shared a tiny house sometimewithout water and electricity.  One of Stacy’s siblings became a social worker, another a microbiologist.  Uncertain of the Stevie Wonder title, my Google search turned up the great Foghat number “Fool for the City,” about a country bumpkin moving to the big city. One verse goes:

Breathin' all the clean air, sittin' in the sun,
When I get my train fare, I'll get up and run.
I'm ready for the city, air pollution here I come!

Some thought the lyric was “evolution here I come,”not “air pollution.”  

 photo by Joseph Pete

On a lighter note: at Whiting’s Pierogi Fest Joseph Pete heard someone say, “I think you can gain weight just by breathing the air here.”