Runs in the Family

Edith Bunker: “Mike is family”

Archie: “Gloria is family.  What’s standing behind me is an accident of marriage.”

            “All in the Family”

Chris Pfeifer and Senna Benus

For a history assignment Shena Benus wrote “Bowling: It Runs in the Family” about ChrisPfeifer, who competes with me in a Hobert Lanes seniors league .  Shena wrote:

 Chris Pfeifer started bowling at age six at Play Bowl in New Chicago near Hobart, where his family lived; 64 years later, he is still at it. His mother, Ramona Flott Pfeifer,currently living in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 100, and his Aunt Dorothy (Dot) Pfeifer McKenzie bowled during WWII on factory teams where they outfitted military planes.  Ramona stopped bowling after she got married, but Dot owned a bowling alley in Tucson, Arizona and remained active in the sport.  Chris is naturallyleft-handed, but during the 1950s the balls he came across were made for right-handers and did not fit comfortably.  Even so, by age nine Chris had a 79 average.  In 1957 Chris and his mother moved to Tucson to help care for his grandmother. Living with Aunt Dot, he continued to bowl and shared a story from this time about rolling a miserable game at an unfamiliar alley.  Competitive by nature even then, he recalled, “I fumed all the way home, and the rest of the day, I was so mad about my score.” 

  Back in Hobart, Chris joined an adult league.  He bought his first ball second-hand when 19 and had holes drilled to fit his hand.  He left for the navy in 1967 and took the ball with him to Albany, Georgia. After his discharge, he competed in a church league for ten years, beginning in 1971.  In 1980, Chris was diagnosed with Hodgins Lymphoma and didn’t return to bowling until 1988.  He bought his first new bowling ball in 1989 and raised his average to 185. That year, his wife’s team had a vacancy, so he filled the spot. She had bowled during both her pregnancies but gave it up after the 1989 season due to arthritis.

  Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early 2014, Chris put bowling aside to focus on his treatment. He returned to the lanes in September, but it took several months to regain his form. Chris said, “My stance was shorter, and I kept ending up about four feet short of the line.”He received a ring for having bowled a perfect game, 300, and his most recent awards are a Super Senior certificate for a 661 series and a plaque for most pins over average. On April 20, 2017, The Post-Tribune printed an article entitled “Proof it’s never too late to win” highlighting Chris’s achievements. 

  Whereas Chris once bowled in multiple leagues almost every day of the week, he has cut down to three senior league teams: Gadabouts at Ray’s Lanes on Monday nights; the Bandaids on Saturdays at Stardust 2; and 2 L’s & 2 R’s on Thursday afternoons at Hobart Lanes.  The team name stands for 2 lefties and 2 right-handers. He has served as president for several leagues and has been director for the local Bowling Association board since 2000.  Chris has seen a decline in bowling leagues over the years. He told me, “The biggest benefit of being in an organization is that the teams are sanctioned and bonded, meaning that prize money is guaranteed.” Chris recently came across memorabilia in his mother’s belongings dating from the early 1940s. His mother is currently living in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 100.                                                                                             

History student Nicole Groleau interviewed bowler Cele Morris, who graduated from IU Northwest in 1993 and worked in the university library as a Data Analysis/GIS Specialist until 2015.  Nicole wrote:

Growing up in a Chicago suburb, Cele joined her first mixed youth league at age 11 at Gabby Hartnett Lanes in Lincolnwood, Illinois.  Her best friend Mary Ann was on a team that had a player drop out so they asked Cele to join. She had never thrown a ball in her life and scored just 25 on her first try. At the end of the season she got a trophy for most improved bowler. She bowled in this league for 2 years through eighth grade. In high school she bowled with friends and on dates but not in a league.

After high school, Cele, her boyfriend, sister, and sister’s boyfriend all joined a summer league for two years. Her brother-in-law was a seasonal bowler so he was really good. Then her best friend Mary Ann and her boyfriend talked Cele into joining a league.  Her boyfriend also bowled with them for a season until she ended up moving to Arizona. 

In 1996, after not having bowled competitively for 20 years, Cele joined a women’s league at Stardust Lanes in Merrillville.  After ten years, she switched to a Wednesday night league at Super Bowl in Crown Point, where she continues to compete.  Cele explained: “Before the start of the 2007 season I bumped into an old familiar Stardust Lanes bowler, Sheri, at the grocery. She mentioned that her sister was interested in alternating every other week. I liked the idea and became a member of team Hot Shots! I also served as an extra if someone couldn’t make it occasionally.  This is a pretty small league; over the years we have had as many as 12 teams and as few as 8. When I started in 2007 we had 5-person teams. Over the years teams dropped to 4 people. In recent years, I’ve become a regular weekly bowler. It was nice to ease into the schedule.” 

Cele told me: “Because Super Bowl is so small, the juke box can be easily heard unlike at larger alleys. We have a variety of ages from young adults to seniors.The ladies play all sorts of music, from current pop, classic oldies to corny renditions of ‘Happy Birthday.’ A particular favorite, much to my annoyance, is Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline.’ One league member known as “Big G” (one of the littlest women I know) adores leading the ladies in a sing along complete with all the boom, boom, booms, and so goods! My teammates just laugh at me cringing and sing along. You know it’s a really good night when it gets played more than once!” 

Cele summarized her bowling career, “I have always enjoyed bowling, but was never particularly good at it. I assume this is because I never had any formal lessons. I finished this past season with an average of 119. I rolled over 200 only once and I’ve never had a 500 series, both bowling milestones. I basically bowl for the fun of it.”

                                     Breast Cancer Awareness Night at Super Bowl

Cele Morris, second from left

Cele has participated in Indiana state bowling tournaments in Indianapolis, Terre Haute, Fort Wayne, Muncie, and Michigan City. She said, “You didn't have to be good to go to state. The only requirement was that you belonged to a state sanctioned league. As long as you paid entry fees you could bowl. The better you bowled, the greater the chance that you would win some cash. Maybe once in 10 years I won a bit of cash. It was always a fun time to get away from home for a few days with the gals.”

Not all her bowling memories are happy ones.  Cele recalled: “The first day of the season a couple years ago an announcement was made that one of our league bowlers had passed away over the summer. Kathy was a particularly beloved bowler who always had a big mischievous smile and sometimes a tray of pudding shots to share with all. A bowling tradition previously unknown to me was then carried out in her honor. Sue, a former teammate, was called upon to roll a final ball for Kathy. She rolled a strike, quite an amazing accomplishment considering the circumstances. In 2012 my dear old friend Mary Ann passed away from complications of juvenile diabetes. Her husband requested that I deliver a eulogy.  I talked about our bowling experiences together. I guess that was pretty close to rolling a final ball for her.”

We’re expecting a big turnout Saturday for Phil’s fiftieth birthday celebration at Shorewood clubhouse.  I gave up smoking after my fiftieth birthday, in part because my dad (Vic) died at that age.  Thirty years ago, Valerie Denney threw a fiftieth birthday party for hubby Jack Weinberg, who during the 1964 Berkeley Free Speech Movement famously said, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”  One homemade card read, “Don’t trust anyone under 50.”  I gave Weinberg a Ramones album, and we danced to “I Wanna be Sedated.” Both Jack and Valerie were steelworkers during the 1970s and union stalwarts . Valerie, a millwright in a Gary Sheet and Tin pickle maintenance department, was active in the District 31 Women’s Caucus.

 Jack Weinberg at Berkeley exhibit

On the cover of the annual Sports Illustrated “Where are they now?” issue: former Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, still persona non grata at Wrigley Field despite his prodigious home rum feats because he won’t apologize for allegedly using performance enhancement drugs.  What BS.  The superrich owners are being hypocritical, in my opinion.  Also featured: Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench, at age 70 estranged from a fourth wife and raising two young kids; and Washington Redskin Mark Moseley, NFL MVP in 1982 ( the only kicker to win the award) when the Skins won Superbowl XVII over Miami.  Moseley was the last NFL place kicker not to use a soccer-style technique. 

John Cicco and customer

Dead at age 93: John Cicco, member of the Merrillville Rotary and Our Lady of Consolation Church, and cofounder of John Cicco’s Menswear, a family-owned and operated business since 1952.  He became a steelworker but hated it and opened Exquisite Tailors at Seventh and Washington in Gary.  His obit stated: “John immigrated from Italy in 1951 with his wife Marta.  He began tailoring in Italy at age ten and custom tailoring was his life’s passion.”  I wish I’d recorded his oral history. Daughter Tina Popp told Post-Tribune reporter Carole Carlson that after Cicco turned the business over to others, he’d hang out in the second-floor fabric room:  “He’d get lost and create.  I’ll miss his gentle ways.  He had an infectious smile.  He loved to help people.”

Jean Edward Smith’s biography on Chief Justice John Marshall is appropriately subtitled “Definer of a Nation.”  Like Earl Warren 150 years later, Marshall was skilled at forging consensus on the high court while increasing its power and scope.  Smith is a bit unfair, I believe, in accusing Thomas Jefferson of vindictiveness in wanting Justice Samuel Chase impeached and Aaron Burr charged with treason.  Both Chase and Burr were scoundrels, the former a threat to free speech and the latter with ambitions inimical to the new nation.  Smith refers to Kentuckian Richard M. Johnson being the only vice president elected by the Senate in 1837 (Smith incorrectly lists the year as 1847) as prescribed by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution. On the Democratic ticket with Martin Van Buren, Johnson’s backers adopted the imbecilic slogan “Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.”  The Virginia electors abstained, perhaps because Johnson,  had secretly married octoroon slave Julia Chinn and acknowledged their two daughters as his children.  In grad school John Haller could recite in order America’s vice presidents, earning him numerous free beers at Maryland watering holes.

                                                                 V.P. Richard M. Johnson

Discussing Grant Wood’s famous portrait of an Iowa couple, “American Gothic,” New YorkReviewessayist Geoffrey O’Brien wrote that parodies can be found inMad, Hustler, Time, Forbes, AARP andGood Housekeepingand that the pair “have been replaced by Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Barbie and Ken, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Simpsons, dogs, cats, rural pot smokers, same-sex couples, economically challenged retirees, Satanists, zombies, and thousands of other candidates. Trump-related iterations alone are beyond counting.”  Branding “American Gothic” folksy, quaint, and a bit menacing, O’Brien  noted: “It was equally easy to see Wood’s pair (the models were his sister and his dentist)  as embodiment of a sturdy and sober pioneer spirit or as hapless provincial specimens.”

Steve McShane provided author Wayne A. Young with a photo of the 1961 Anderson Little League team, runner-up to the state champs, for an article published in Port of Harlemmagazine about growing up in Gary.  The rightfielder was African American at a time when most Gary neighborhoods were segregated. Young wrote:

  As a pre-teen growing up in the mid-1970s industrial heartland, I often spent Saturdays at the old Moose Lodge, which The Anderson Company (ANCO) had purchased and turned into the John Will Anderson Boys Club. I would run all over the building, eat a discounted lunch, and most importantly, build things in Mr. Mack's woodshop, like my daddy would at home.
  ANCO, then the world's windshield wiper giant, helped make America great. It was also a major supporter of Little League baseball, often buying baseball uniforms and building grandstands for the Anderson Little League. Gary demolished the old Moose building that housed the Boys Club that I knew. The Boys and Girls Club relocated to one of the more than 30 schools Gary has closed.  As the new name suggests, the club now welcomes girls. New housing sits on the downtown site - - part of another effort to rejuvenate our dreams for the Steel City built on sand.

I told Helsinki host Joe Davidow that his father Mike Davidow gave Toni and me a copy of “Cities without Crisis” (1976) inscribed “for cities without crisis everywhere”when he and wife Gail were visiting the Bayers during a visit to Gary.  Born in 1913, Davidow took part in student protests at Brooklyn College during the Great Depression and became active in the Workers Alliance of America.  After serving in the Pacific Theater with the 169th Infantry and participating in the invasion of Okinawa, Davidow became a newspaper correspondent for the Daily World.  He was living in Moscow when Boris Yeltsin came to power in 1991 and was present during a failed effort to oust corrupt Yeltsin two years later when he dissolved the Supreme Soviet parliament.    

above, Tipsy Gipsy; below, Kardeimmit

I’ve been listening to a CD entitled “Arctic Paradise” that Joe’s wife Jaana gave me.  I particularly like “Gatzi-Ma,” a selection by Tipsy Gipsy featuring vocals by Susan Aho ( who plays accordion) and Karoliina Kantelinen (who plays kantele).  All four women in Kardemimmit play 38-string kanteles, a modern version of a native instrument, and sing harmony on the track “Kun mun kultani tulisi” (I Wish My Loved One Was Here”).

Watchword

“Peel out the watchword

The man with the golden gun

Thinks he knows so much.”

         Tori Amos, “Cornflake Girl”

I returned the CD “Into the Pink” by Tori Amos to the Chesterton library, along with Elizabeth Strout’s “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” whose last words are reminiscent of Strout’s master-work “Olive Kitteridge” (2008). She wrote:

      At times these days I think of the way the sun would set on the farmland around our small house in the autumn. . . the sky lingering, lingering, then finally dark.  As though the soul can be quiet for these moments.

      All life amazes me.

I checked out “Vinegar Girl” (2016) by Anne Tyler, who also writes about strong women buffeted by life’s vicissitudes.  At the end of chapter 1 Kate leaves a brick colonial building near Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore where vatios organizations had offices.  Tyler wrote: “She opened the front door and walked into the sunshine.  Two of the Christians for Buddha women were sitting on the steps with their heads together, laughing.”

With partner Dee Von Bebber I played duplicate bridge twice within a 20-hour span, first at Chesterton YMCA and then at Banta Senior Center in Valpo in an 11 a.m. game directed by good buddy Charlie Halberstadt.  I’ve been learning new conventions.  A Michaels cue-bid overcall is where you raise your opponent’s suit. For example, 2 Clubs over 1 Club or 2 Diamonds over 1 Diamond signifies having at least 5 Hearts and 5 Spades; 2 Hearts over 1 Heart or 2 Spades over 1 Spade signifies having at least 5 of the other major and an unspecified minor.  The rule of 16 comes into play when deciding whether to respond 2 or 3 No Trump to partner’s 1 No Trump: raise to 3 if your high card points and the number of cards 8 or over equals 16.   The rule of 17 pertains to whether or not to answer a partner’s pre-empt.  To do so, high card points plus number of partner’s trumps should be at least 17. Dee mentioned this to me after she opened 2 Spades and the player on my right bid 3 Diamonds.  I held singleton Diamonds and Spades, Ace, Queen, and three other hearts, and Ace, Queen, and four other Clubs.  After much hesitation (I was 4 points short of 17), I bid four Clubs.  Being void in Clubs, Dee bid 4 Spades and went down two.  To make matters worse, opponents playing 3 Diamonds got set.

 Charlie Halberstadt

Marcia Carson

Tuesday evening bridge winners Jim and Marcia Carson (we finished fourth for .35 of a master point) are planning a trip to Australia and New Zealand, which gave me an opportunity to describe Toni and my trips there.  In Sydney with Miranda we found a great Asian restaurant and went on side trips to the Eastern Highlands mountain range and the capital, Canberra, and in New Zealand we drove (on the left hand of the road) the length of the North Island from Auckland to Wellington, braving icy hairpin turn on mountainous Highway 1 and stopping at Lake Taubo near Tongariro National Park. On the way back to Auckland, we visited Rotorua, an active geothermal area featuring geysers and steaming springs.

In a NWI Times notice entitled “Newsletter gains archival status” was this mention:

      Housed within the vast collection of the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest, duplicate bridge's newsletters, American Contract Bridge League's monthly magazines and videotapes have become part of the history of Lake and Porter Counties in northwest Indiana. James Lane, Emeritus Professor of History at IU Northwest and co-director of the Archives is overseeing an oral history project with IUN students interviewing duplicate bridge players. Students' papers and tapes of the interviews will become part of the District 8, Unit 154, Northwest Indiana Bridge Collection.

My peony plant is starting to bloom, but most flowers are leaning on their side, so I cut a couple and put them in water.  They are beautiful but don’t last long.  The weather has been glorious, with temperatures in the high 60s and low 70s.  A woman at Wednesday bridge made a delicious desert with strawberries her grandkids picked from her substantial patch.  Sylvia and George, a couple living in the Valpo subdivision of Aberdeen, are involved in a fight over whether the board should purchase the golf course next to their home.  He believes it to be necessary because if it folds, property values will plunge. On the other hand, it will take an estimated half-million-dollars to bring the course up to speed.

Gary native Wayne A. Young, founder of Port of Harlem magazine was at the Archives researching ANCO (Anderson Company), once Gary’s third largest employer (after U.S. Steel and Budd Company) and manufacturer of windshield wipers.  The company moved its Gary operations to Michigan City before being bought out by Champion, which in turn was purchased by Federal-Mogul.  ANCO wiper blades are now made in Asia.  Young was surprised to learn that IUN’s library/conference center was named for ANCO founder John W. Anderson, who died in 1967 but whose charitable trust has benefitted the university to the tune of millions.

 John W. Anderson

Hemmings Classic Car reporter Jim Donnelly described how John Anderson made millions from an idea that came to him in 1925, two years after moving his automobile accessories company from South Bend to Gary:

Anderson was on a road trip to visit a potential distributor when it began raining heavily. His personal car was still fitted with the wipers installed when it was assembled. The blades were badly worn to the point of uselessness. At night, somewhere in the rural Midwest, Anderson found it impossible to locate a replacement set of blades. Consequently, he decided to diversify his business to produce replacement kits, with an eye on making them available wherever fuel or other common auto needs were sold. And so ANCO, all upper case by now, was born.

Today, it's amazing to contemplate that before Anderson's soggy-night adventure, nobody had seriously thought about meeting the need for good all-weather visibility in less-than-new cars. Anderson not only created the business of making new blades, but also a convenient and unforgettable way of marketing them.

Within five years, practically every single gas station and tire store in the United States sported one of the bright yellow ANCO boxes, with a chart to replacement blade sizes inside its lid, hanging from a wall someplace inside. It didn't take long before the owner of just about any light American-made vehicle could find and install ANCO blades whenever the ones in place began sliming and squealing. To move sales along, Anderson offered gas retailers and attendants a $5 premium for every 20 ANCO blade box ends they sent in, a novel promotion when it was new in the 1930s.

 Stormy Weather with Jay Leno

Ron Cohen showed up at the Archives, as he was speaking to Steve McShane’s class on Gary School Superintendent William A. Wirt.  At Miller Bakery Café a few days earlier, he ran into Henry Farag, whose group recently opened for comedian Jay Leno at an area gambling casino.  Ron brought me a copy of New York Review of Books, which contains Gordon S. Wood’s review of T. H. Breen’s “George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation” entitled “The Inventor of the Presidency.”  Wood concludes that Washington succeeded in reconciling citizens to the new national government created by the Constitution but “did little or nothing to deal with the one issue that eventually shattered the Union he had devoted his life to creating and preserving.”  That issue, of course, was slavery.

Reacting to Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreements, Ray Smock wrote:

     Trump follows our close allies Syria and Nicaragua in rejecting the Paris Climate Accords. Only three of the world's nations have rejected it. The United States led the effort to create these accords but our new bull in the American china shop just wrecked everything. Trump said he did it to protect the American people. Why don't I feel protected? From whom and from what is he protecting us by denying reality and being such a shit about it? Who benefits from this totally arbitrary 180-degree shift in American domestic and foreign policy?

In “The Incredible Shrinking President” Smock wrote:

President Trump gets smaller by the day. I say this even while personally he is getting fatter, perhaps because the pressure of the office has him binge eating. Maybe he hopes to become the “biggest” president ever. But let’s hope he never exceeds the weight of President William Howard Taft, who tipped the scales at 340 pounds.

       What is shrinking is the power of the president and his ability to get anything done. President Trump does not have the ability or the wherewithal to act presidential. Only part of this shrinkage is related to his image as an out-of-control buffoon who tweets in the middle of the night, but that is part of it. Image is important to a president, and Trump, the image master from reality TV, is flunking in his ability to look and act presidential. Just today he once again referred to Hillary Clinton as “Crooked Hillary,” in a tweet. Jokes abound about his late-night typo introducing the word “covfeffe” into our language. Reporter Chris Cillizza to say this is “all you need to know about Donald Trump.”

      Trump is shrinking because he does not trust anyone but a handful of people most of whom are members of his own family, who are complete amateurs with no experience in government. What arrogance must exist within this family to think they run something this big, this complex, and this important, while at the same time pretending that their own private businesses can go on without any conflicts of interest. It is impossible to make this up. He even has a private body guard because he does not completely trust the Secret Service. Yet this is where we are.