Keep on Truckin'

Trucker: “Are you a man?”

Dana Rose Gropp: “I used to be.”

         above, Anne Balay by Riva Lehrer; below, Dana Rose Gropp

Jerry Davich wrote a front-page Post-Trib column praising Anne Balay’s forthcoming book“Semi Queer: Inside the Lives of Gay, Trans, and Black Truck Drivers.”  Anne put him in contact with Dana Rose Gropp, a transgender woman and co-founder of Rainbow Wisdom Circle who came out three years ago. Anne told Davich that trucking can provide opportunities for safety, a welcomed isolation, and a chance for those discriminated against in their communities to be themselves, even though the work is fraught with regulations, constant surveillance, danger, and exploitation.  “Though it’s dirty, underpaid, and at times demeaning,”Balay wrote,“there's some magic in trucking – such as time alone to think and the feeling of being useful – that fits queer and trans people really well.” 

Underground comic artist Robert Crumb’s “Keep on Truckin’” drawing of men strutting confidently became a famous pop culture hippie image, found, usually without Crumb’s consent, on t-shirts, posters, and eventually mudflaps of truckers themselves, much to the discomfort of the creator, who called it “the curse of my life.”  In “The R. Crumb Handbook” (2005) he wrote: “I didn't want to turn into a greeting card artist for the counter-culture!  When I started to let out all of my perverse sex fantasies, it was the only way out of being ‘America's Best Loved Hippy Cartoonist.’”  

 above, Becca and parents in Wisconsin; below, Liam, James, Andrew, Kaiden

Grandson James and friends Andrew and Liam stayed overnight at the condo as David and Angie took Becca to a music camp in Wisconsin.  Andrew’s dad, John English, dropped the three of them off after they spent a few hours at Porter County Fair.  Liam had won a hermit crab that was in a tiny container.  PETA has decried using hermit crabs as prizes and has successfully put pressure on fairs in Michigan to cease the practice but apparently has failed to achieve similar results in Indiana. In nature the crabs live in colonies, shun human contact, and can live up to 40 years; in captivity they are doomed to a short, horrific life. I made sure Liam didn’t leave the crab behind, but he did forget his 21 Pilots hoodie and leftover food from Culver’s, which James ate for dinner.

After cooking pancakes and kielbasa, I took the teens bowling at Inman’s.  Because they are in a Saturday league, they were entitled to two free games.  The guy behind the counter ignored this information and, calculating four of us at two dollars a game, said, “That’ll be 16 dollars.”  When I questioned this, he asked to see their league cards.  James found his in his wallet and while Andrew was looking for his, the guy said, “OK, four dollars.”  I told Andrew he could stop his search, that the fellow trusted us.  Afterwards, while we had lunch at Culver’s, the three of them filled me in on the premise of The Incrediblesand the special powers of each family member.  

Despite playing solid golf, Tiger Woods finished two strokes behind the British Open winner, Italian Francesco Molinari, who ended the weekend without a single bogie on the final 36 holes.  Tiger, on the other hand, took a double bogie due to a foolish attempt to rebound from a poor shot instead of playing it safe. I commiserated about Tiger by phone with the Logans in California and asked Gaard what she’s currently reading. She highly recommended “Educated” by Tara Westover, a coming-of-age memoir by an indomitable young woman home-schooled in the foothills of Buck’s Peak, Idaho by Mormon survivalists who forbade television, radio, telephones or doctor’s visits.  Atlanticreviewer Ann Hulbert wrote: “Baffled, inspired, tenaciously patient with her ignorance, she taught herself enough to take the ACT and enter Brigham Young University at 17.  She went on to Cambridge University for a doctorate in history.”

 Tara Westover

I am close to finishing Ricard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” and trying hard not to rush through the final 60 pages.  Sarah and Bobby are teen soulmates but end up marrying others, in Sarah’s case, Bobby’s best friend Lou Lynch.  The novel reminds me of Edith Wharton’s “House of Mirth” (1905), whose two main characters, Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden, are attracted to each other but, bound by the social conventions of their time and class, do not act on their mutual attraction.  Many years later, expressing a hint of regret in a letter to Bobby, Sarah wrote: “Don’t even the best and most fortunate of lives hint of other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too?  Isn’t this why we can’t help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven’t been?”

IU Kokomo emeritus professor Jack Tharp is working on a history of IU’s branch campuses and, having perused Paul Kern and my history of IU Northwest, “Educating the Calumet Region” (Steel Shavings, volume 35, 2004) requested clarification about the relationship between IU’s Calumet Center in East Chicago and Gary Extension.  In particular, he wondered about the years between 1932 and 1948 when Gary College was in existence. I replied with the caveat that it had been 15 years since we had researched the topic and that Kern wrote most of the text while I concentrated on oral histories.  I suggested he consult Ronald D. Cohen’s “Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1960” (1990), which states that IU extension classes in Gary started in 1921 and that a full, two-year program commenced in September 1923. When Gary College was launched in 1932, with night-school director Albert Fertsch heading the program, it shared space with the IU extension program; extension classes were still being taught in 1935, probably as dual credit with Gary College, and perhaps until IU established the Calumet Center in 1939.  Thus, I wouldn’t say IU and Gary College were competitors but rather served each other’s purposes since some Gary College students eventually went to Bloomington. Cohen wrote that in 1948 “the drain on school resources and personnel prompted Gary’s school board to invite Indiana University to return to the city. Gary College merged with the university the following June, and in late 1950 it finally dissolved.”  As to when the Calumet and Gary centers merged into a single entity, I told Tharp I didn’t know the exact date but that when I arrived in 1970, a few classes were still being taught in East Chicago but were apparently being phased out, with IU Northwest and Purdue Calumet both expanding in Gary and Hammond.

Toni arrived home from the Shakespeare Festival in Canada bushed after the ten-hour road trip.  I had just consumed a turkey and mashed potatoes meal and sliced cucumbers she’d left me and went off to a condo owners meeting. President Sandy Carlson moved things along nicely. I was home within the hour and finished “Bridge of Sighs.”  Lou finally revealed the probable cause of his only high school friend David’s suicide:

  David and I took turns walking each other home.  One Friday after the dance, we went to David’s house, and there in the dark driveway he shocked me by kissing me full on the lips, then hurrying inside.  The next day, after a movie he walked me home and did it again, this time in broad daylight, right in front of my house.  I remember thinking my father was across the street watching, and so I shoved David away and told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore.  I can still see the look on his face.

Lou then has this epiphany:

  David was just a boy.  He was frightened to be in a strange new place and terribly grateful I’d befriended him. He felt about me like I’d once felt about Bobby.  “Adoration” is probably not too strong a word to describe that heady mingling of intense affection and dependence.  Back when we were friends, I’d wantedto kiss Bobby.  I had. I’d known it wasn’t permitted, but what, I thought, was so wrong about it?

"Bridge of Sighs" author Richard Russo

Traces

“The monuments of the nations are all protests against nothingness after death; so are statues and inscriptions; so is history.” 

    Lew Wallace, “Ben Hur” 

 Lew Wallace

Writing about Lew Wallace (1827-1905) in the Spring 2018 issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History,editor Ray Boomhower in “One Writer’s Beginning” noted that the nineteenth-century Civil War general and novelist credited teacher Samuel K. Hoshour with passing on to him at a young age this invaluable advice:“In writing, everything is to be sacrificed to clearness of expression – everything.”  After a diplomatic career that culminated in his service as U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire, Wallace became independently wealthy man as a result of the novel Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ(1880) becoming a best-seller.  Wallace subsequently turned his attention to designing a study on his Crawfordsville estate and later a seven-story apartment building in Indianapolis, The Blachern, that is still occupied. 

The once-grand Gary unit school named for the soldier-scholar and designed to implement progressive educator William A. Wirt’s work-study-play system closed in 2014, but a Lew Wallace elementary school in Hammond is still in use.  The 2018 Gary Preservation Tour included a visit to Glen’s Park Morningside neighborhood, located just blocks from boarded-up Lew Wallace School. An effort is underway to sell over 30 abandoned Gary schools, including Franklin Elementary along Thirty-Fifth, but the asking prices so far are unrealistic, given their sad state.

Mari Evans 

On the Tracescover is a mural of longtime Indianapolis community activist Mari Evans (1919-2017), poet, novelist, and a founder of the Black Arts Movement.  David Hoppe’s “The Radical Clarity of Mari Evans” contains this quote from one of her essays: “From the time I was five I was aware that color was an issue over which society and I would war.”  Near the end of her life Evans resisted efforts of well-intentioned acquaintances to persuade her to relocate from the ghetto to a safer neighborhood, arguing that moving all her books was impractical and, besides, she had a firearm for protection.

 Rev. Jim Jones

Tracesalso contains Dan Carpenter’s “Countdown to Armageddon: The Reverend Jim Jones and Indiana.”  The megalomaniacal cult leader responsible for the mass suicide (and, in some cases, murder) of over 900 people in a South American jungle, many of them children, started Peoples Temple in Indianapolis prior to relocating his ministry to California and ultimately Guyana.  While in Indianapolis Jones led crusades to desegregate public facilities and personally integrated  Methodist Hospital after being placed in a black ward by mistake because his physician was African American, then refusing to be moved.  He and wife Marceline adopted a black child, James Warren Jones, Jr. and three Koreans.  When daughter Stephanie died in a 1959 car accident, Carpenter claimed that “no Indianapolis cemetery would allow the child, a Korean-American, to be buried alongside whites; only a black mortician would prepare the body, and she was interred in a weedy section set aside for African Americans in a cemetery whose name is lost.”  Could this be true?  Unbelievable! Emulating black spiritual leader Father M.J. Divine, whom he came to know personally, Jones had a voracious appetite for hard work, sex, and power. 

While cleaning my teeth, and with WXRT apparently playing in the background, Dr. John Sikora revealed that he had been pulling for Croatia in the World Cup because his father had been Croatian.  Ditto Chuck Logan, whose maternal grandparents had emigrated from that small nation. Upon returning to Zagrab, the silver medalists received a hero’s welcome despite having lost to France due to two fluke goals.

Fred McColly and Liliya

Former student Fred McColly likes to refer to himself as the last of the Region’s industrial workers. After working at Atco-Gary Metals Technology for almost 40 years, the company ceased operations. A year shy of being eligible for social security, McColly has applied for unemployment compensation and is looking for employment.  Visiting the Archives, he dropped off the 39th and apparently final volume of his journal documenting his experiences at Atco-Gary Metals, titled “The Zone of Alienation” as well as a special supplement, “the brutal saga of a rat hole’s demise,”covering his final week, ending April 27.  Ten days later, the company bookkeeper called to ask how many hours he put in that week because somebody had stolen all the computers plus the main drive that included work files.  Fred commented: “Why would someone want something so obsolescent?  Sounds like an inside job to me.” A typed epilogue contains these observations:

    It has been 36 days since my ‘career’ ground to a halt.  I have had time to let it percolate through my subconscious and bubble up again, and what I have come up with is pretty much one word: waste. Even the failure of the company was marked by an incredible waste.  We basically threw everything in the basement into the scrap dumpster or the garbage dumpster – shelves, fittings, and skid after skid of paper that was probably recyclable.  One surmises that we threw away millions of dollars of value – probably worth more than the company wants for the building.

 skids of paper by Fred McColly

Jodi and Gary Biederer

Barbara Walczak’s Newsletter contained a photo of Jodi and Gary Biederer along with this caption: “Jodi and Gary came all the way from Deerfield, Illinois to play in one of Diane martin’s games at the Highland Elks Club.  They met her at several tournaments and wanted to visit her at one of her games – a 120-mile round trip going back home in a torrential rain storm.  Jodi and gary started their bridge playing about 35 years ago, and then they took a 25-year break, returning about a year ago. We hope to meet these delightful people again, perhaps at some future tournament.”

Dancing bear and Bulgarian owner, circa 1970

Witold Szablowski’s “Dancing Bears: True Stories of People Nostalgic for Life Under Tyranny” compares Eastern Europeans who lived under communism to animals rescued from captivity and presently kept at Belitsa Dancing Bears Park in Bulgaria.  New York Reviewessayist Orlando Figes noted that for centuries young bears captured in the wild had been trained to dance “by attaching chains to rings driven through their noses and forcing them to step on red-hot sheets of metal.” Most had survived on a steady diet of bread and beer.  Figes stated:

  Some of the bears are so infected with the prisoner mentality that for years they start to dance when they see a human being.  “They stand up on their hind legs and start rocking from side to side,” Szablowski writes. “As if they were begging, as in the past, for bread, candy, a sip of beer, a caress, or to be free of pain. Pain that nobody has been inflicting on them for years.”

Ray Smock wrote:

President Trump is a lot like Captain Queeg, the character in Herman Wauk’s The Caine Mutiny,the 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the commander of a World War II destroyer who is incompetent at running his ship, displays disturbing mental quirks, is extremely paranoid, and drives his crew to hate him. The crew loses confidence in their commander, become disloyal, and eventually mutiny and take over the ship during a typhoon at sea, when the commander proved incapable of acting to save his own vessel.

 I visited Fred Chary, recovering from a medical setback, at Avalon Springs Health Campus. The facility’s physical therapists are pushing him hard to exercise.  He’s anxious to get back to revising a novel he recently completed about seventeenth-century Russia and, like me, is still writing book reviews. We talked about Philadelphia sports teams, and he invited me to watch Eagles games at his place once football season starts (he’s got a special NFL package).  

Home alone since Toni’s in Canada at a Shakespeare festival with Alissa and Beth, I stopped at MacDonald’s and asked if I could have the girl (Edna) in Incredibles 2as a three-dollar Happy Meal prize and ended up with Frozone as well.  

Do You Realize?

“Life goes fast

It’s hard to make the good things last

The sun doesn’t go down

It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round”

                            “Flaming Lips, “Do You Realize?”

Listening to music on WXRT from 1974, I was unfamiliar with many selections since back then I was listening to “Top 40” fare on WLS, but I did sing along to “Takin’ Care of Business,” “The Bitch Is Back, and “Bad Company.”  I enjoyed Brian Ferry’s rendition of “The In Crowd,” recorded ten years earlier by Dobie Gray and the jazz group Ramsey Lewis Trio. WXRT touted that evening’s Taste of Chicago Flaming Lips concert, which Marianne and Missy Brush attended.  I put on the Lips’ “The Soft Bulletin” (1999) CD, which contains “The Spiderbite Song” and “Waiting for a Superman.”

 above, Wayne Coyle of Flaming Lips; below, Flaming Lips fans

In a Time review of “Eighth Grade” was the acronym ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.  The reference was to online videos evidently popular with teens and meant to relax viewers. Examples are gentle whispering, lip smacking, nail tapping, and rhythmic hand movements.  I hope “Eighth Grade” comes to Portage or Valpo.  In all likelihood, it’s more sophisticated than current hits “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.”

At Memorial Opera House VU student  Carley Kolsch starred as Elle Woods in the lively musical “Legally Blonde,” based on the 2001 Reese Witherspoon movie.  The far-fetched plot has a California sorority cheerleader being accepted to Harvard Law School.  The boyfriend she wanted to impress turns out to be more shallow than she, once she gains self-confidence.  Westville theater teacher Erin Sharpe played lesbian law student Enid; two minor characters danced and kissed passionately once exposed as gay lovers.  There were cameo canine appearances by tiny Bruiser Woods and huge Rufus MacDonald. In the sold-out audience were bowling buddies Gene Clifford and Dorothy Peterson, who recently returned from a road trip to the Grand Canyon and will soon depart for the Florida Everglades.  “Mamma Mia!” is on the 2019 schedule!

above, Pussy Riot protest; below, Mbappe

 

In Moscow France leading Croatia, 2-1, in the World Cup when four Pussy Riot protestors dressed as law enforcement officials ran onto the field, protesting illegal arrests of dissidents, including Oleg Sentsov, sentenced to 20 years on bogus charges of conspiring to commit terror acts for opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.  The TV announcers made no attempt to explain the interruption.  One protester gave 19-year-old French star Kylian Mbappe a double high-five.  A few minutes later Mbappe connected on a brilliant shot from 25 yards, the youngest player to score in the final match since Brazilian soccer god Pele in 1958 at age 17.  Phil, Delia, Alissa, and Josh watched at Grand Rapids Garage Bar and Grill.

Helsinki, Finland was the site of a meeting between Trump and Putin, as well as the scene of anti-Trump protests.  CBS correspondent Major Garrett appeared to be reporting from Market Square, as I recognized Helsinki Cathedral and government buildings in the background.  Dan Rather posted: “The President trusts the word of a former KGB agent over the consensus of the American intelligence community.  This is a shocking reality.  Everyone who excuses Trump’s behavior must answer that now, and when history inevitably judges.”Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russia’s past and continuing interference in our election process, despite a dozen recent indictments of Russian operatives by the Mueller investigators, produced this diatribe by Ray Smock:

For the first time in American History the United States has TWO presidents: Vladimir Putin and his puppet Donald Trump. This is appalling and unconstitutional. This was not a Summit it was an American capitulation! Do we have ANYONE in Congress who is still an American patriot? Anyone in Congress with Courage? This was grounds for IMPEACHMENT!

According to IUN student Brenda “Kay-Kay” Auxier, Lauren Winicky grew up in Glen Park and was the youngest of three. At age 19 she married Bruce Unland, and they got into bowling as a hobby they could enjoy together. Winicky wrote:

       They joined a Sunday night bowling league at Hobart Lanes and went out and bought bowling shoes the night before. The first week they used house balls and shebowled a 112, the lowest score in the league that night.  Humiliated, she decided to start taking bowling seriously. On Tuesdays and Fridays, she and Bruce worked on their bowling skillsat Hobart Lanes. A few weekslater,they bought their own balls. Since Kay-Kay had trouble keeping her wrist straight, she bought a brace for better ball control.  Seven weekslater, Kay-Kay bowled a 178, a huge accomplishment for the young bowler. 

      What started as a casual hobby turned into a family lifestyle. In the late 70’s and 80’s, Bruce and Kay-Kay found themselves in bowling alleys most nights of the week. Their children competed in youth leagues. Daughter Brenda recalled, “My favorite thing about growing up in the bowling alley was always being around my friends. The regulars up at Hobart Lanes were pretty much family. It was such a great community feeling.”In addition to Sundays at Hobart Lanes, the couple also joined other leagues, which Kay-Kay believes made her a better bowler. She explained, “Every alley will oil their lanes differently. You have to bowl on a lane for a bit to see where you have to place your ball.” 

      Kay-Kay described  reacting to her husband’s first 300: “I could not believe it at first. Then all of a sudden, over the loud speaker, the owner announces that Bruce Unland just bowled a perfect game. He ran over to me and spun me around. I was so happy for him but a bit jealous.”Her highest game was a 298. 

Jake and Kay-Kay

      Kay-Kay’s grandson Jake was present for Bruce’s second 300 at Camelot in November of 2004. He and brother Dustin were bowling in a youth league before the adultleague started. Jake recalled: “When I saw my grandpa get his second 300, I knew that I wanted to be just like him. He had gotten pretty big around the area. When he walked into bowling alleys in the region, everybody knew him.”Seeing Jake’s passion for bowling andwatching him improve each weekled Kay-Kay to apply for a bowling coach position at Thomas A. Edison Junior-Senior High School in Hobart. She was hired on the spot. Kay-Kay coached girls bowling at Edison for four years and turned the program around. She said, “When I first got there, the team was not even practicing together. They would practice on their own and an honor system was in place. The first thing I told the girls was that from now on, we practice three times a week as a team.”  Sometimes Jake came to the practices and later bowled varsity for Portage, following in Dustin's footsteps. Her third and fourth year at Edison, they were sectional runners-up. Unfortunately, Kay-Kay had to resign from coaching at Edison when Bruce got sick. “I am so proud to be a part of what that program is today. I have been able to coach so many great kids. It makes my heart warm to know how many lives I have influenced,”Kay-Kaysaid, adding, “The whole dynamic changes when you start coaching. You start thinking about strategy. It becomes more than just trying to throw strikes.” 

      Kay-Kay continued to coach Jake through high school. She recalled: “It was hard his senior year because Bruce had passed away the year before.  But we knew that Bruce would be looking down on us and watching us do what we love. In the sectionals Portage upset Michigan City, winning just by one spare. The tension was insane. No one said a word as we watched both teams tie up with one another over and over.”She admits shedding tears when she saw her grandson garner individual honors and his team win the match. 

In Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs” Lou Lynch wonders, “Who cares about a single life beyond the one whose task is to live?  Why scan the past for the shapes and meanings it surrenders so reluctantly, if you mean to suppress some and exaggerate others?”  Tess, Lou’s mother, was strong and practical while his dad was a dreamer whom Lou invariably sided with, to the extent that she sometimes believed he didn’t love her. Lou Senior’s had a brother named Declan (Elvis Costello’s given name), who knew Tess during her wild teenage days and whom young Lou rightly regarded as an untrustworthy scamp.In Bridge of Sighs” 

Waterfront Inn before and after fire; Post-Trib photos by Carole Carlson and Craig Lyons

Fire destroyed Waterfront Inn, a former bar and dance hall located in New Chicago on the banks of Deep River just days before the eyesore was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a park. The fire may lead to a more rapid demolition since the site is now a health and safety hazard.  Located in Hobart Township, tiny New Chicago, whose total area is less than one square mile, has fewer than 2,000 residents.  New Chicago’s website contains this information:

New Chicago boasts its own police station, a volunteer fire department, water department, three small parks, one gas station, Pizza Hut, [La Ranchero] Mexican Restaurant, and many other businesses.  Up until 1977 there was one police officer in town and the dispatcher answered the phones from his home day and night. New Chicago has Interstate 80/94 to the North, Route 6 (Ridge Road) to the South, Interstate 65 to the West, and Indiana Route 51 to the East.  We are a small blue-collar community where everyone knows your name.  According to a former barber in town, there were 30 drug store licenses in New Chicago at one time.  During Prohibition, if you had a drug store license, you could set a bottle of aspirin on the shelf, call yourself a drugstore, and sell wine and beer.  It was quite a bootleg place in those days.

Barbara Mort and History student Courtney Nagel communicated by email before they met in person at her home in Chesterton.  Barbara showed Courtney photos of her family, friends, and beloved pets, and provided her with the following information:

       Born on September 1, 1935, Barbara grew up in North Manchester, Indiana.  An only child, she was very close to her maternal grandfather John, who passed on to her his love of horses.  Her grandmother Cora ran a kennel and bred show dogs. Thus, Barbara grew up around horses and dogs.  She could teach a pony to sit and lay down like a dog and got her own horse when just nine.  Soon after high school Barbara got married and by the age of 22 had three children, Penny, Kathy, and Greg.  She went on to have a successful career in banking, eventually rising to the position of vice president.  In 1983, she moved to Chesterton when a bank manager offered her twice the salary she was earning downstate.  She loves to travel and is very active in Rotary.  Her toughest challenges were undergoing a divorce and losing both her daughters to cancer just nine months apart.  She said if she could change anything in her life, she would not have gotten married so early and gone to college instead.  Barbara passed on her love of horses to granddaughter Brogan, who has competed in jumping shows.

      A large part of Barbara’s life involves bridge.  She grew up playing euchre, which uses a 32-card deck (nine through Ace) and involves winning tricks and playing with a partner. She didn’t learn bridge until she and her husband were living in Tampa, Florida.  A military couple taught them on condition that they’d agree to play at least two times a week.  Later Barbara had a boyfriend named Fred who played gin rummy, and Barbara persuaded him to take bridge lessons with her at Woodmar Country Club.  She said that in bridge one never stops learning.  On Tuesday evenings she and bridge partner Kris Prohl compete in duplicate, and most Mondays they get together at her home to practice bidding.  Barbara often makes soup or a salad for the occasion. 

I had another mediocre night at bridge, being too cautious when I should have been bold and vice versa.  One hand, I was in 6 No-Trump and needed either for Diamonds to break 3-3 or, failing that, a Club finesse to succeed.  Diamonds broke 4-2 and Chuck Tomes covered my Club Queen with the King for the setting trick.  Terry Bauer’s daughter arrived in Hong Kong to start a new job just as a typhoon was threatening the island.  I told him that pet birds are popular among Hong Kong residents who lived in tiny apartments.  On TV recently forced I saw a Japanese man forced evacuate his apartment being interviewed and he had a caged bird with him.

Trapped

“I'm the innocent bystander
Somehow I got stuck
Between the rock and the hard place
And I'm down on my luck”

         Warren Zevon, “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”

The dozen Thai boys trapped in a cave for two weeks with their assistant Wild Boars soccer coach are finally safe, rescued by a team of divers just ahead of monsoon rains that would have doomed the effort.  The New York Timesreported:

    It took an amalgam of muscle and brainpower from around the world: 10,000 people participated, including 2,000 soldiers, 200 divers and representatives from 100 government agencies. It took plastic cocoons, floating stretchers and a rope line that hoisted the players and coach over outcroppings. The boys had been stranded on a rocky perch more than a mile underground. Extracting them required long stretches underwater, in bone-chilling temperatures, and keeping them submerged for around 40 minutes at a time. The boys were even given anti-anxiety medication to avert panic attacks. “The most important piece of the rescue was good luck,” saidMaj. Gen. Chalongchai Chaiyakham, the deputy commander of the Third Army region, which helped the operation. “So many things could have gone wrong, but somehow we managed to get the boys out.”  

The ordeal in Thailand reminded me of the bizarre saga of Floyd Collins, trapped 55 feet underground in 1925 while exploring Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. The ensuing 18-day rescue effort took on a carnival atmosphere, attracting hordes of reporters and live radio coverage.   Vendors were hawking souvenirs and selling food to thousands of onlookers.  The episode ended in failure when the passage above Collins collapsed.  In Appalachian History Dave Tabler revealed that the explorer’s body became a tourist attraction:

    [It] was put in a glass-topped coffin in Crystal Cave where cavers from around the world paid their respects to Collins for many years. Then in the most dramatic and grotesque twist to the story, his body was stolen—and later found in a nearby field missing a leg. After this incident his body was placed in a chained casket.

    Eventually, the National Park Service absorbed Crystal Cave and closed it to the public. In 1989, Collins was properly buried in Mammoth Cave Baptist Church Cemetery on Flint Ridge. Today Floyd Collins’ final resting place has an extraordinary array of tokens on it — coins, sunflower seeds, stones, and other objects left by cave explorers and others for whom Floyd Collins was, and is, a legendary symbol.

In 2008 a Southern alternative metal band from Edmonton, Kentucky, Black Stone Cherry, recorded “The Ghost of Floyd Collins" with these lyrics:

Down in Mammoth Cave, is where his body laid
Walls came in life could not be saved
No man made machine could see the things he's seen
Mr. Collins, you did not die in vain

Strangers moved in, brought the circus to town
You know, there's people makin' money off a man underground
Somebody said they weren't doin' him right
That's why old Floyd's comin' back tonight

Stopping by the Archives was IU South Bend Folklore professor Anita Kay Westhues, who spoke at the IOHA conference in Jyvaskyla on “Beliefs and Practices Related to Community Water Sources: The Specialness of Springs.” She is interested in a  Gary artesian well located north of Ridge Road near Chase Street.  A few months ago, she accompanied Samuel A. Love on a Steel City Academy student field trip that included the site. I introduced Kay to John Trafny, who had heard of the Chase Street water source, which bubbles up from an aquifer. In January 2016 Post-Tribreporter Michelle Quinn wrote about efforts by Lake County Sheriff’s Department trusties to rid the area of garbage and debris dumped by the road, which has been closed for the past decade.  Quinn interviewed Miller resident Marion Patton, who claimed to have been drinking the water for at least a half-century.  He said: “The old men in the neighborhood told me about it, and I think it helped me.  It’s got a sweet taste to me.  Now, when you first get it, it may have a bit of a foul odor to it, but once it settles for a day, it’s my favorite.”

 

Chase St. Well cleanup; Post-Trib photos by Jim Karczewski

Little Calumet River Basin Commissioner David Castellanos, who helped arrange the cleanup, told Quinn: “I didn't even know it was out there.  It’s not part of the river basin, but a lot of people get water from there, and talked about the minerals from the water as being medicinal or that they couldn't afford to get bottled water. I've seen men out there fill up the back of their pickup truck with gallon jugs of water from there, and one time, I saw an older couple out there getting water. The man carried it up the road back to the car while the woman waited in the car.”

A section on Westhues’ website called “Chase St. Flowing Well, Gary” contains 

 over a dozen comments by longtime residents of Small Farms and other nearby communities. Jerry Baldwin recalled people lined up in the 1950s to obtain the water.  Silas G. Sconiers said, “It was the only source of fresh water we had living in unincorporated Lake County on the outskirts of Gary.” Sconiers no longer drinks from the spring because, in his opinion, dumping at Lake Sandy Jo, a 50-acre landfill, poisoned the water table and it now smells like rotten eggs.  Sharma Crenshaw recalled the liquid tasting great and being ice cold 40 years ago. Sharma added: “We never drank the tap water at home.  My grandmother made the trip every couple days with sterilized milk jugs or other containers.”  Nancy Cohen, who grew up in Gary’s Edison district, recalled often seeing people getting water from that source.

I had a mediocre night at bridge. Typical was a hand where partner Dee opened a Diamond and Dottie Hart overcalled a Spade.  Holding Ace, King, Queen, spot of Spades, four Clubs to the Queen, three small Diamonds, and Jack spot of Hearts, I bid one No-Trump (in retrospect, I probably should have doubled).  After Dee rebid Diamonds, I jumped to 3 No-Trump, figuring we had adequate points for game but might not have enough for 5 Diamonds.  I expected Dottie’s partner to lead a Spade, only he was void in that suit. What he had were 6 Hearts, while Dee only had a singleton in that suit and we lost the first six tricks.  Two couples who ended in 5 Diamonds also got set but only down one, not two like me for -100. Cracker, my favorite band, is kicking off a Thursday evening concert series in Valpo. I told bridge opponent Terry Brendel about it, but he didn’t seem to have heard of their big hits “Low” and “Teen Angst.”

photos of Roger Miramontes by Kris Steele

Kris Steele interviewed Rodrigo (Roger) Miramontes, a 2008 Hammond Clark graduate, and spent a few hours watching him bowl. Beforehand, she discovered that bowling in one form or another has been around for thousands of years.  In America rules began to be codified about a hundred years ago, such as that balls should weigh no more than 16 pounds.  Kris wrote:

    Roger married his high school sweetheart and they have three children. Roger works at Midwestern Steel in Hammond as a fabricator and bowls in two leagues at Olympia Lanes in North Hammond.  He often takes his children with him to teach them how to bowl. He started bowling at age eight, thanks to his uncles. His team name is Four Loco’s, and he carries an average of 190.  Roger bowled his best game last year, a 276. Roger uses a few different balls, but his favorite is a 14-pounder called the Hammer. He bowls with a right-handed hook that moves down the lane very quickly. 

Croatia defeated England, 2-1, and will face France in the World Cup final.  Down a goal at halftime, the underdog Croatians went ahead during extra time when Mario Mandzukic scored the game winner. AP reporter Donald Blum wrote: “Football will not be coming home to England, and there will be no title to match the 1966 triumph at Wembley Stadium. Harry Kane & Co. will deal with the same disappointment that felled Shearer and Platt, Gazza and Wazza, Beckham and Gerrard.”  Great Britain’s best player a half-century ago, George Best, who played for Manchester United for 11 years beginning in 1963, competed for Northern Ireland in international competition rather than England.  Thirty years later, David Beckham had an equally acclaimed 11-year career with Manchester United but an undistinguished World Cup career.  In a New Yorker article entitled “Goal-Oriented,” Leo Robson wrote that during the Middle Ages English monarchs had sought unsuccessfully to ban games because they often led to violence between villages.  

In Richard Russo’s “Bridge of Sighs” Lou Lynch ruminates on writing his autobiography, despite having lived an outwardly undistinguished life: “I’ve written far more than I expected to, having underestimated the tug of the past, the intoxication of memory, the attraction of explaining myself to, well, myself.”

 photo by Chris Daly

Johnny Hickman; photo by Lorraine Shearer

Cracker fans Lorraine, Jinbo, Marianne, Missy

Performing at Valpo’s Central Park amphitheater, Cracker was in great form and played an awesome 90-minute set, beginning with “King of Bakersfield.”  Performing with David Lowery and Johnny Hickman were a keyboardist and fiddle player in addition to a drummer and bass guitarist. I ran into Cracker fans Lorraine Shearer and Marianne and Missy Brush right away and positioned my chair next to where they’d deposited their cooler.  For “Low,” “Teen Angst,” and “Euro-Trash Girl”  I joined them at the front of the stage.  Guitar player Johnny Hickman was beyond charismatic and often looked our way and winked.  Marianne was wearing an ETG t-shirt, standing for “Euro-Trash Girl,” and Missy was dancing uninhibitedly during virtually every number.  After the show band members found time to say hey before heading off to a gig at the Hard Rock Café in Pittsburgh.

Marianne: "Our new friend Brian, Cracker bass player"

Dave Serynek sat next to me and another former student, Chris Daly, said hello and remembered Ron Cohen.  When I told Chris I’d seen Cracker about ten times (including at Hobart Jaycee Fest, Valpo’s Popcorn Festival, and  two Cracker Campouts in California), he replied, “You were always into music.”  After I asked him how he spelled his last name, I remembered that he’d written an article published in my “Latinos in the Calumet Region” Shavings (volume 13, 1987).  Titled “Learn from Grandma,” it contained this information:

  Rose, a waitress at John’s Pizzeria in Griffith, was born in the Region.  Her father was born near Mexico City and her mother is from El Paso.  Rose is married and has three children.  “I plan on teaching them Spanish and on bringing them up in a strong family background,”she said.  “What else they pick up, they’ll have to learn from grandma.”

Chris took a selfie of us and sent it to Jeff Walsdorf, asking, “Recognize this dude?  He went walking behind me at the Cracker concert and I caught him out of the corner of my eye.  Went and chased him down.  He told me he’d just been with Dr. Cohen [finalizing plans for a third edition of ‘Gary: A Pictorial History’].”Walsdorf replied: “I was just thinking about Dr. Cohen the other day.”

Our neighbor, semi-retired Roman Catholic priest Father George, has been saying Sunday mass at  Holy Angels Cathedral, whose origins date to 1906, the year of Gary’s birth. The first parishioners were mainly Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European, while the present congregation is primary African American and Puerto Rican.  The present Gothic Revival house of worship was built during the late 1940s.  George told me he’s been reading up the city’s church history in “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”