Hard Candy

“Hey farmer farmer

Put away that D.D.T. now

Give me spots on my apples

But leave the birds and the bees.”

         Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” (1970)

I was listening to the Counting Crows CD “Hard Candy” and after a minute’s silence at the end on came a hidden track, “Big Yellow Taxi,” a Joni Mitchell cover with Vanessa Carlton on backing vocals. The most famous line is, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Helping Adam Duritz out on other tracks were Ryan Adams, Matthew Sweet, and Cheryl Crowe.  In the lyrics to “Hard Candy” someone is dreaming of better days and lost loved ones who fade just out of sight and then in the morning, “it’s just the same hard candy you’re remembering again.”

I gave the new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” to Chancellor Bill Lowe; we used a photo of him peering through a telescope on campus during the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017.  Spotting one of the IUN Lady Redhawks celebrating a second straight AII (Association of Independent Institutions) championship on 27 February 2011, Lowe, a frequent spectator at university basketball games, exclaimed, “I’d have been in that one also if it hadn’t been cropped.”  He inquired about Ron Cohen acquiring the William A. Wirt bust, I invited him to come see it at the Archives. Nearby, in the library/conference hallway was a compelling glass case exhibit Steve McShane put together on IUN’s predecessor, Gary College. 

Kyle Telechan posted photos from last weekend’s second annual Mexican Independence Day parade in Hammond, hosted by the HUGS Cultural Committee and coordinated by Rosa Maria Rodgriguez. Ron Cohen and I used a Times photo by Jonathan Miano of Rodriguez outside Gary City Council chambers protesting efforts by GEO to build an immigrant detention center near Gary Airport.  She once worked as a security guard for the School City of East Chicago.  Son Dave knows her and praised her dedication to bettering the community.

Huffington Post reporter David Uberti, a young, confident Detroit native, interviewed me for 90 minutes about housing in Gary, frequently checking his recording device to make sure it was still working.  He had read “Gary’s First Hundred Years” beforehand and seemed knowledgeable about current developments regarding abandoned buildings and community efforts to jumpstart development.  I provided a historic overview of steel mill employment, unionization, the GI Bill, and suburbanization. I showed him pages from the pictorial history about urban gardens and discussed City Hall initiatives, such as the Blight Elimination Program. He’ll meet with Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson and Pastor Curtis Whitaker of Progressive Community Church, who has learned how to make soil healthy and fertile; other urban gardens use raised beds.  I suggested contacting, if possible, former mayor Richard Hatcher and someone from the Latino community, often ignored by national correspondents.

 Karla and Craig Hoskins courthouse ceremony in 2014; Times photo by Jonathan Miano

Couples getting hitched at Crown Point courthouse, once branded a “Marriage Mill,” has become an integral feature of Crown Point Hometown Festival Days.  For a half-century, until a 1952 ordinance forbade clerks from issuing licenses to women who did not reside in Lake County, there was no waiting period, unlike in Illinois, which, beginning in the 1930s, also required blood tests for communicable sexual diseases.  Justices of the Peace charged $2.50 during day, $8 after hours, $10 between midnight and dawn.  Crown Point hosted the nuptials of actors Tom Mix, Rudolph Valentino (Rodolfe Guglielmo), and Ronald Reagan (to first wife Jane Wyman), comedian Red Skelton, and film producer Mike Todd. 

circa 1930

Lake County historian Bruce Woods told the Post-Tribune that the 24/7 operation at one time required a half dozen JPs: “There were certain restrictions, but the clerks did not always follow them.  The male had to be 21 and the female 18, but they could be younger with parental consent.  And they had to be sober, although there was one justice of the peace who had an office on the second floor who said, ‘If they could get up to the second floor, they could get married.’”Wedding parties arrived by the busload, and local jewelers offered a wide variety of rings to those who came unprepared. Florists and tuxedo rental establishments also flourished.  Muhammad Ali got married there during the 1960s. 

In Laredo, Texas, U.S. Border Patrol agent Juan David Ortiz has been arrested  for allegedly murdering four sex workers following the escape of a fifth, who fled to authorities.  District Attorney Isidro Alaniz branded Ortiz a serial killer.  Nicholas Villanueva Jr.’s “The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands” (2017) documented the increase in vigilante murders a century ago, beginning in 1910 when a suspected felon was dragged from jail and burned alive.  The most horrendous incident occurred in 1918 after refugees who’d fled the Mexican Revolution were mistaken for bandits who had recently pillaged Texas ranches. Journal of American History reviewer Tim Bowman wrote:

  A confluence of events caused a drastic decline in the number of ethnic lynchings in Texas via a transference of public suspicions from Mexicans to Germans; the onset of political stability in Mexico; and Texas state legislature investigations into depredations committed against ethnic Mexicans by Texas Rangers.

above, Anne and Michelle

Anne Balay reported: “I spent the weekend having awesome trucker adventures.”  Anne participated in a truck parade across to Macinaw Island.  Michelle Kitchin, whose rig for the excursion was loaded with pineapples picked up in Trenton, New Jersey, wrote “We were the only truck full of women. Haha!”  They also took in the St. Ignace, Michigan, truck show, a three-day event held at the Little Bear East Arena.  

Helen Boothe and I finished third in the Chesterton bridge club championship, earning 1.15 master points each. An aggressive bidder, Helen twice successfully put us in slam where I would have been too cautious. We went down one bidding 2 No-Trump only because she had an Ace-King doubleton and I held a bare Queen-Jack, wasting two honors.  Had either of us held a third Club, we’d have made the contract. Sitting North-South in another key hand against winners John and Karen Fieldhouse, we were bidding Hearts and our opponents Spades.  We went down one at 4 Hearts for minus 50, while all other East-West couples went to 4 Spades and got set. Thus, another low board through no fault of our own. Helen, 87, will soon board a train at Chicago’s Union Station and travel overnight to West Virginia for a family reunion.

 Sara Jane Moore

In 2005, when Martha Stewart was released from Alderson federal prison in West Virginia after serving five months for giving false testimony about an insider stock deal, Helen Boothe’s brother-in-law, James A. Haught, wrote a Charleston Gazettecolumn about previous celebrities incarcerated there. These included radical Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, jailed during the McCarthy witch hunts, Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, who participated in a 1954 attack on Congress, and pacifist Claire Hanrahan for trespassing at an army school that trained military operatives for Latin American dictators.  Blues singer Billie Holiday landed in Alderson in 1947 for possession of heroin, Mildred “Axis Sally” Gillars for treason, and Charleston native Sarah Jane Moore for firing at President Gerald R. Ford outside San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel. Decorated Vietnam War marine veteran Oliver Sipple grabbed her pistol and deflected the shot.  Haught wrote, “Ford did little to thank the man because reports said he was gay.” Moore, like fellow inmate and would-be presidential assassin Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, escaped from Alderson but was caught and transferred to a more secure facility.

 Buffalo Creek flood damage, 1972

Helen Boothe told me about former West Virginia governor William C. Marland, a progressive Democrat, who became a taxi driver in Chicago after he left office in 1957 and overcame alcohol addiction. While governor, Marland took on coal companies that depleted the state’s natural resources and attempted to implement school desegregation at a time other Southern governors were defying federal mandates.  More popular was three-term Republican governor Arch Moore who in 1990, a year after leaving office, pled guilty to accepting bribes from coal company moguls, including Buffalo Mining Company executives responsible for the 1972 Buffalo Creek tragedy. James Haught wrote:

  The historic flood – caused by rupture of the coal company’s illegal, makeshift, unlicensed, unstable chain of “gob pile” dams – killed 125 Logan countians, injured 1,000 and left 4,000 homeless amid sodden debris.  It destroyed a 15-mile valley, wrecking more than 1,000 homes, 1,000 vehicles, 30 businesses, 10 bridges and miles of roads.  Arch Moore accepted a $1 million settlement as complete payment for the state government’s loss in the disaster, leaving West Virginia taxpayers stuck for up to $13 million in unpaid costs.

Moore served three years in prison in Petersburg, Virginia.

Corey Hagelberg picked up a copy of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and offered to donate the woodcut “We All Share the Roots,” which appears in the third edition, to the Archives.  He was pumped up over a decision by NIPSCO to phase out coal within ten years, something he has been working on in connection with the Prairie Club.

U.S. Blues

“Son of a gun, better change your act

We’re all confused, what’s to lose,

You can call this the United States Blues.”

         Grateful Dead, “U.S. Blues”

Ray Smock posted,The Truth Emerges: Bob Woodward’s, “Fear: Trump in the White House”:

  This is not an easy book to read. Not that the language is a problem. Woodward’s narrative on the chaos inside the Trump White House is top-notch professional reporting. We would expect nothing less from this distinguished journalist.

  The book is hard to read because it is so painful. There is no let-up in the account of the president’s ineptitude and lies. There is no comedy relief in this book. This story is an unmitigated tragedy. It is uncomfortable to read, even for those of us who follow the Trump presidency closely and think our hide has been toughened now that we are more than 600 days into the Trump presidency.

  Trump seems incapable of shame. His lies don’t bother him. He may not even see them as lies. And some of those Woodward interviewed believe Trump can’t help himself. It seems to be in his DNA somewhere. Gary Cohn, Trump’s economic adviser, until he left the White House, kindly called Trump a “professional liar.”Trump’s lawyer, John Dowd, used the vernacular,“Trump is a f**king liar.”

Journal of Urban History editor David Goldfield, like Smock an old friend from Maryland grad school days and Wobblies softball teammate, knowing I’d published “Jacob A. Riis and the American City” soon after we collaborated on “The Enduring Ghetto: Sources and Readings,” asked me to review an article about the Progressive reformer’s work on behalf of creating small parks in New York City.  I strongly recommended the article and had only a few suggestions to improve it, including better opening and closing paragraphs.  Here is part of my critique: 

      The article might begin with this anecdote, in the author’s words, taken from James B. Lane’s “Jacob A. Riis and the American City”: “The formal opening of Mulberry Bend park took place on 15 June 1897.  Despite his eight-year struggle toward this end, Riis received no invitation to attend the dedication.  He had argued with city officials about trespass signs which forbade residents from walking on the grass. In fact, one day he had disobeyed the edict, and a policeman put a cane to his back and ordered him off. Attending the ceremonial opening with Lincoln Steffens, Riis noted with pleasure that policemen allowed the thousands of spectators to gather on the grass to hear the band and speeches by politicians and community leaders.  The moment he cherished most, however, was when Colonel George E. Waring led the crowd in saluting Jacob Riis with three cheers.”(see also New York Sun, 16 June 1897; Riis, The Making of an American, pp. 283-4)  Regarding the author’s account of the Mulberry Bend fight, I suggest he move the information in a footnote about a deadly accident involving two children to the main body of the paper (go for maximum emotional impact, as Jacob Riis would have wanted it).  

    On Riis and ethnic stereotypes, mentioned on page 5 and footnote 35, the Danish-American’s attitude evolved, especially after interacting with Southern and Central European immigrants at Jacob A. Riis Settlement and becoming friends with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. 

    I’d also suggest a concluding paragraph mentioning Riis’s work in his later years on behalf of providing slum children with healthy, open air spaces, such as supporting the Jacob A. Riis Settlement, the Fresh Air Fund, the Boy Scouts, Sea Breeze Tuberculosis Hospital, and other Progressive endeavors of that ilk.  In line with Riis’s belief in the curative powers of fresh air and sunlight, it might be fitting to mention that in his later years Riis frequented spas and sanitariums for his health and purchased a money-draining potato farm in Massachusetts. 

A woman has come forward to accuse Trump’s Supreme Court nominee of sexual battery when he was 17 and stumbling drunk. Republicans are crying foul but used similar tactics 20 years ago when they impeached Clinton on smarmy stories and innuendoes.  Heartless Trump is claiming that opponents are inflating the number of Puerto Ricans, estimated to be at least 3,000, killed in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and is blaming California’s numerous deadly megafires not on global warming but bad environmental laws that prevent “readily available water”from being used against the blazes (“wingnut drivel,” the L.A. Times countered).  Dominating the headlines: devastating flooding caused by Tropical Storm Florence, which continues to affect much of North Carolina, not only coastal areas but inland, due to rivers expected to crest at record levels.  Toni and I vacationed in Kitty Hawk, NC, with Dave Goldfield when Phil was a toddler and flew into Wilmington (now virtually under water) en route to Dick and Donna Jeary’s Myrtle Beach condo 20 years later, where we learned Alissa had been born in Raleigh.

 1963 Hobart varsity basketball team; Dave Bigler, top, second from right

Alan Geller, presenter Alan Yngve, and Dave Bigler, top local pair at World Wide Bridge Contest

With Samantha Gauer’s help, I interviewed Dave Bigler at the Calumet Regional Archives.  Beforehand, Steve McShane gave him a tour of our facilities. I first met Dave when he partnered with Lynn Bayman in Chesterton.  Evidently Lynn had bid on playing with him at an Alzheimer’s fundraiser, but he has since returned to play with her several times.  A 1963 Hobart and IUN grad with a degree in Special Education, Bigler worked over 30 years at U.S. Steel.  He and four other supervisors, dubbed the Loose Cannons, when asked to trouble-shoot a thorny problem, often met at Hank and Casey’s taproom in Glen Park near the old Shaver Chevy dealership to thrash out tactics and strategy. While Bigler learned bridge from his parents at a young age and played related games in college, including euchre, bid whist, and a similar Serbian version, he didn’t take up the card game seriously until invited to join a bridge o rama in Portage.  Henceforth, in retirement he and Chuck Briggs formed a successful partnership.  Dave enjoys teaching bridge to beginners and introducing them to area games; he’s been involved in Little League baseball for almost 30 years and has been a member of the Hobart School Board since 2003.

At Hobart Lanes an opponent’s grandson ended up under a table above us and spotted the dimes and quarters I had spread out nearby for doubles and tenth-strike pots.  I spotted the rascal just as he appeared ready to make away with some coins.  Friday Toni arrived home after spending five days with sister Marianne in Granger, Indiana, visiting from Florida.  James slept over, as bowling season commenced, and I made pancakes and Polish sausage and then took him to Culver’s for lunch after his match at Inman’s.  He’s chosen Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt” for an assignment in Advanced English; I told him I’d assigned the novel in my History class on the 1920s and described the author’s other satirical best-sellers, “Main Street” and “Elmer Gantry.”  Dave spotted Ron Cohen and my new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” and noticed three photos by Guy Rhodes, his former student at E.C. Central,including an aerial shot of spectators at Marquette Park for the 2010 air show taken through the open back doors of a Golden Knights Team plane.

 above, photo by Guy Rhodes; Paul and Oz, August 2017

Toni and enjoyed Paul Kaczoha’s retirement picnic. As the invite stated, “after 48 fun filled years of working in the a steel mill, he is no longer a wage slave.”  In the garage hung a quilt made from old t-shirts bearing inscriptions (i.e., “Labor creates all wealth”) and photos of labor radicals.  We helped ourselves to delicious food, including ribs and chicken.  Toni’s salad disappeared fast, and my dill pickles from Jewel were also popular. We sat with Bill and Dorrean Carey (still active in Save the Dunes), Sue and Oz (my Wednesday lunch companion), and labor activist Alice Bush, there with son Mike Appelhans, who teaches Math at Ivy Tech. Mike met IUN Chancellor Bill Lowe at the Arts and Sciences Building dedication (the two institutions share use of the facility) and discussed the Irish revolutionary period of 100 years ago, Lowe’s academic specialty. 

I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Remembered” with reluctance, realizing there’d be no sequels.  Harry’s offspring turned out just fine, each with characteristics inherited from him.  Son Nelson referred to death as a freeze-frame.  Grandson Roy, a computer nerd, described net-surfing in 1999 as “all Boolean logic.”  At Bucknell in 1962 a Math instructor attempted to explain (without much luck) George Boole’s nineteenth-century algebraic system wof variables based on 1 and O.  Updike referenced 1999 TV ads for Nicoderm and Secret Platinum (“strongest deodorizer you can buy without a prescription”)and the sci-fi satire “Galaxy Quest,” containing a scene where the extraterrestrial turns into an octopus when sexually excited. He compared a disappointing turn of events to a kid undressing a Barbie doll and finding no nipples nor vagina and legs that don’t bend, much less spread.

Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest; Matt Burns as Aristotle 

Although my favorite NFL teams, the Eagles and the Skins, suffered upsets, Jimbo Jammers Fantasy team kicked butt, as Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Gurley racked up a combined 67 or my 105 points.  Sports Illustrated’s Charlotte Wilder wrote about 29 year-old Matt Burns (a.k.a. Airistotle), two-time air guitar world champion who in August finished second to Nanami “Seven Seas” Nagura in Oulu, Finland.  How I wish Dave and I were there at the time.  Thirty years ago, he, Jimmy Satkoski, and I won a TV in a similar contest doing “Cretin Hop” by the Ramones.  Our secret: get on and off the stage quickly.  Performances at championships last just 60-seconds and are judged on stage presence, technical merit (do contestants appear to be playing the proper notes?), and “airness,” an intangible akin to originality.  Like in roller derby, competitors assume such alter egos as Shreddy Mercury, Nordic Thunder, Hot Lixx Hulahan, and Windhammer. Burns compared the scene to drag shows, “but for frat bros.”

A September 2018 Journal of American History article by Andrew Pope titled “Making Motherhood a Felony” opened by mentioning that in 1960 Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis proposed a segregation package that would have barred black women from giving birth in the state’s charity hospitals and imprisoned women for up to one year who conceived a child out of wedlock.”  These measures failed, but lawmakers passed measures that denied the vote to women who had given birth while unmarried and prohibited AID (Aid to Dependent Children) payments to mothers who gave birth out of wedlock, lived with a man, or whom caseworkers considered “promiscuous.”   Over 98 percent of the approximately 30,000 poor people denied funds in the first few years were African American.

Summer of '87

"Born in secrecy during the summer of ’87, the child of lofty idealism and rough political bargains, the Constitution is a story that will continue as long as the nation does,” David O. Stewart

At Monday’s History book club meeting Joy Anderson gave away books, including “Maria’s Journey,” which Ray and Lorenzo Arredondo gave a report on last year. Handing it to Barbara Wisdom, there with her sister and friend Rock Ferrer, I told her of having edited it and written the afterword. I took home David O. Stewart’s “The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution” and started it while getting an oil change and 30,000 check-up at Lake Shore Toyota.  Stewart introduces George Washington, eulogized in Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition,” in this manner, describing a 1784 meeting at his Mount Vernon plantation with fellow Virginian George Mason:

  Known to crack walnuts with a single large hand, the strongly built Washington had thrived on outdoor living and battlefield dangers.  At 53, he retained the grace and power of a splendid horseman and dancer, but it was something from the inside that made him the master of every room he entered. Certainly, he was a Virginia gentleman of courtesy and integrity, but so were others. Equally, he had his flaws, including being “addicted to gambling . . . avid in the pursuit of wealth, . . . a most horrid swearer and blasphemer ,” and unrelentingly ambitious.

  Washington’s force came from the antagonistic qualities he blended.  His “gift of taciturnity” radiated dignity and calm, yet he simultaneously implied, in the words of one admirer, “passions almost too mighty for man.”  No one who saw Washington’s rage ever forgot it. The combination of steely discipline and powerful drive generated a charisma so compelling that, by one account, every king in Europe “would look like a valet de chamber by his side.

end-of-summer party; Phil and Dave on both ends: below, Dave and Toni at IU

During the summer of 1987 the Lane nest was emptying, as son Dave prepared to join his older brother at IU Bloomington, where Phil participated in celebrations touched off by the Hoosiers winning the NCAA championship.  It was a memorable summer at Maple Place, with visits from friends and relatives and a lively end-of-the-summer party featuring friends of our college-bound sons.  I was 45, Toni 43, and our lone home companion was Marvin, a cat inherited from Suzanne Migoski, also off to school. I don’t recall suffering from “empty nest syndrome,” then or since. Nine months later, granddaughter Alissa came into our lives.  In the news: President Ronald Reagan accepted responsibility for the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Senate rejected reactionary Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

At Chesterton YMCA Alan Yngve’s lesson dealt with being overly aggressive when your hand doesn’t justify a game bid.  On the hand he demionstrated from last week, I went down one in 4 Hearts, but others get set two and three tricks.  Against Carol Miller and Barbara Larson, I was dealt 7 Clubs, Ace, King, Queen, 4 Spades, a doubleton in Hearts, and a void in Diamonds.  Carol, on my left opened 3 Diamonds, Alan bid 3 Spades, and Barbara bid 5 Diamonds.  In short, to bid Clubs, I’d have had to go to the 6 level.  Instead, aware of going against Alan’s lesson but convinced it was a good sacrifice, I bid 5 Spades, and Alan went down one.  Another couple bid and made 5 Spades doubled, the double allowing the declarer to correctly guess whom to finesse.  Our worst score, against Kris Prohl and Barbara Mort, began when Alan opened one Diamond.  With 17 high card points, I jump-shifted to 3 Clubs and, much to my chagrin, he passed. All other pairs bid and made game, either 5 Clubs or 3 No-Trump.  Alan suggested I should have said 2 Clubs, evidently a demand bid. I’ll have to learn that  system, known as New Minor Forcing.  We finished right around 50%, fifth out of 11 couples, with Chuck Tomes and Tom Rea the winners.

Dee Van Bebber and Chuck Tomes achieved a 75.66% at Charley Halberstadt’s Valparaiso game, Barb Walczak’s Newsletterreported.  Chuck recalled: “Not only is Dee a lovely lady but also a solid, experienced player from whom I’ve learned a lot, especially about bidding. We plussed 18 of 27 boards with 9 tops and 3 tied for top.  We made no major mistakes and got a lot of good breaks.”  Dee added: “Chuck is one of my favorite players, never critical and always complimentary.  We were in sync all afternoon.  Of course, we had our share of good luck – making for a memorable day.”

AM 670 (The Score)sports jocks Dan Bernstein and Connor McKnight claimed that Dodger pitcher Clay Kershaw’s great-uncle was on the team of astronomers that in 1930 discovered Pluto, the so-called dwarf planet. Located in the Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, Pluto’s solar orbit takes 248 years.  Tom Wade has a t-shirt defending Pluto against detractors who in 2016 argued that it wasn’t a real planet.  One thing about Dan Bernstein, dating back to his afternoon show with Terry Boers, he often abruptly hangs up on obnoxious callers.

Weather has remained summery, sunny with highs in the 80s, but the daylight hours are markedly shorter. At lunch with Mike Olszanski, I discovered the veggies I had packed were missing. Later I found them on the ground near the Corolla.  On a library elevator a half-dozen students were peering at someone’s phone.  I asked what interested them; Apple was unveiling new products. 

Nicki Minaj and Cardi B got into a shoving match at a New York Fashion Week event after Cardi had called Nicki a bitch.  In retaliation, Minaj evidently stepped on Cardi’s dress, causing it to rip in the back.  After security teams separated the two rap divas, Cardi threw a shoe at Nicki, who kept it as a souvenir. The New Yorker’s Carrie Battan believes that Minaj epitomizes rappers’ tendency toward self-mythologizing and braggadocio:

 It feels cheap to draw a parallel between Minaj and President Trump, but the attitudinal similarities – the obsession with winning, the instinct to dismiss critics as losers or liars, the paranoia, the rabid fixation on the initial    victory rather than the ensuing work – are too obvious to ignore.

East Chicago Central grad and friend of the family Denzel Smith wrote: “I remember when I had a speech impediment. Now I’m doing speeches in front of Presidents. Honored to have been asked to lead the invocation for the Bethune Cookman Annual President’s Assembly at the Mary McLeod Bethune Performing Arts Center.”  Son Dave was one of his mentors.

below, former coach and AD Earl Smith praising Rod Fisher

Both the Post-Triband The Timescovered protests at a Gary school board meeting regarding the unjust termination of longtime West Side girls basketball coach Rod Fisher. Supporters of Fisher plan to present a petition (I’ve signed it) to the Indiana Distressed Unit Appeal Board. West Side principal Marcus Muhammad praised Fisher’s extraordinary career but claimed a woman could relate to “the young ladies we have today”better than a man.  Former athletic director Earl Smith called Muhammad’s statement “asinine”and predicted that this would have a negative effect on the community. Smith said, “He dedicated his life to the West Side Cougar family and former players love Coach Fisher.”  Smith added that during the 14 years he was AD, Fisher “never asked the athletic program for anything.  What he couldn't do raising (money) with the parents, he took out of his pocket. You find me another coach that's any more dedicated than that.”  Fisher’s wife Linda told supporters, “They didn’t just tale away his job, they took his life” and asked, “Is he too old, too successful, too white?”  My Facebook coverage generated numerous emoji responses, including sad and angry. 

Times photos by Ed Bierschenk (above) and Jonathan Miano

The third edition of Ron Cohen and my “Gary: A Pictorial History” arrived, looking great. The photos covering the past 15 years are in color and more vivid than I’d hoped for.  In ones by Timesphotographers Ed Bierschenk and Jonathan Miano of protestors at City Hall opposing efforts to open an immigrant detention center near Gary Airport I recognize Miller activists Ruth Needleman and Tom Eaton and possibly Jim Spicer and Carolyn McCrady. Cohen’s updated bibliography even includes Leonard Moore’s 2018 book on the 1972 National Black Political Convention at West Side High School. At my suggestion chapter 8, “Looking Ahead, 2004-2018” begins:

     On the evening of July 14, 2005, Gary’s Centennial Committee held a gala at the Genesis Center.  Waiters on loan from Dean White’s Star Plaza served hors d’oevres. The Roosevelt High School band marched through the crowd playing “76 Trombones” from “Music Man.”  Emerson students put on a moving skit.  The musical group Stormy Weather, whose members were self-proclaimed “region rats,” entertained with doo wop hits and a stirring, a capella version of the national anthem.  Not since Mayor Hatcher’s “Evenings to Remember “was there such a glittering party. More important, U.S. Steel pledged $400,000 toward a “Fusion” statue and other efforts.  President of the Centennial Committee, appropriately, was First Lady Irene Scott-King, who stated: “It’s important to understand where you’re come from in order to see where you are going and move ahead in the future.  It’s critical to enlighten and give young people the foundation they need to one day take over the reins of the city.”

I also added this final peroration to Cohen's draft:

 Though a tough environment, especially for those struggling to find work and raise families, Gary in the past has afforded opportunities for a host of athletes, actors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other notables who have achieved success elsewhere.  Even more impressive are those who stayed or returned and became community pillars. While some lament what Gary has lost, there is potential for a bright future, not only in the development of the lakefront but in commercial possibilities associated with airport expansion, an academic corridor along Thirty-Fifth Avenue (anchored by IU Northwest and IVY Tech’s new building on Broadway), and downtown revitalization (exemplified by the newly refurbished main library).

Fascinating Rhythm

“Got a little rhythm that pitter-pats through my brain

So darn persistent, the day isn’t distant

When it’ll drive me insane”

         “Fascinating Rhythm,” George and Ira Gershwin (below)

It’s annoying when you can’t get a certain tune out of your head, especially one especially inane such as “Who Let the Dogs Out?” by Baha Men.  Published in 1925, “Fascinating Rhythm” was recorded by countless by vocalists such as Fred Astaire, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, and Judy Garland, as well as Big Bands led by Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and Percy Faith. There are Latin versions (i.e., by Xavier Cugat), country-flavored recordings (Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards), a mellow one by Hawaiian steel guitarist Sol Ho‘opi‘I, and a snappy Motown release by The Four Tops.

Charleston Gazette editor James A. Haught characterized “Fascinating West Virginia” as containing “wild, wonderful episodes – and some not so wonderful.”  “Institute rose from epic love story” traced the antecedents of West Virginia State to the antebellum Samuel I. Cabell plantation located nine miles southwest of Charlestown.  Cabell took slave Mary Barnes as his lifetime mate and eventually freed their 13 children, provided for their education in Ohio, and took elaborate steps to insure they’d have full legal rights and inherit his 900 acres of property along the Kanawha River.  In July 1865, seven neighbors fatally shot Cabell, in all likelihood because, in Haught’s words, “of white resentment toward his integrated family life.” A jury acquitted the perpetrators within minutes.In the 1890s daughter Marina and other Cabell heirs sold 80 acres of land to the state for the creation of West Virginia Colored Institute, forerunner of the present university. In 1970, when Haught published the column about Samuel Cabell and Mary Barnes, he wrote: “Strangely, this story isn’t recorded in any West Virginia history book, even though it was a minor sensation at the end of the Civil War.”

 Belle Boyd, "the Cleopatra of the Confederacy"

Haught wrote that  Civil War Charles Town changed hands four times.  In 1863, the western counties broke off from Virginia, and until 1870 the capital of West Virginia was Wheeling.  Haught mentioned that Shepherd University’s Center for the Study of the Civil War contains information on Martin Delaney, a free black who fled Charles Town and recruited volunteers for a famed Massachusetts colored regiment and that 17-year-old beauty Belle Boyd served as a Confederate spy for fellow West Virginian Stonewall Jackson.  World War II general George S. Patton’s grandfather, a native Mountaineer, was a Confederate colonel under Jackson’s command killed during the Battle of Winchester.

 Wirt bust by Emory Seidel, photo by Steve McShane; below, Jack Tonk, P-T photo by Carole Carlson

Among the 78 William A. Wirt High School items auctioned off on orders from Gary Emergency Manager Peggy Hinckley was a 21-inch bronze bust of the city’s first School Superintendent and school’s namesake by Chicago artist Emory Pius Seidel.  Ron Cohen bought it for $6,800 and has donated the impressive work to IUN’s Calumet Regional Archives.  Post-Tribunecorrespondent Carole Carlson noted that former guidance counselor Jack Tonk paid $75 for a student painting he had purchased 30 years before for his office.  He told Carlson, “I bought it twice.”

 Coach Fisher in 2016 with Brianna Joiner; P-T photo by Jim Karczewski

“Fisher firing fishy” pronounced Post-Tribune columnist Mike Hutton, lamenting the sudden dismissal of legendary Gary West Side girls basketball coach Rod Fisher, 68, who notched 674 wins during a 41-year career, second in the state to Scottsburg’s Donna Cheatham with 699.  Two years ago, administrators tried to terminate Fisher but at that time needed school board approval, and former players rushed to his aid.  Now with the state having emasculated the board’s authority, petty academic officers carried out the dirty deed.  I recall Coach Fisher was a gym teacher at Marquette School during the early 1970s when sons Phil and Dave were in first and second grade (one taught by Linda Bonner, now Fisher’s wife).  He was a hardnose, but Jackie Gipson, who played for Fisher, asserted that he really cared for the players, often buying them meals out of his own pocket. His replacement, Shanee’ Butler, has no head coaching experience, Fisher’s wife claimed.  Envy and nepotism are possible explanations.  Former West Side star Dana Evans, now playing for Louisville, told reporter John O’Malley: 

  It's really horrible. I’m surprised and I’m really upset. It’s just so unfair and it’s not right. He’s one of the best coaches in the area and around the state. He was always willing to work hard and put extra time in with the kids to help make them better.  After everything coach had done, they just should have let him decide when he wanted to give up coaching and retire. It’s really not right. Gary can never have anything good. They try to destroy anything positive in the city, or anything that’s something, that really helps Gary. They (school officials) have been wanting coach Fisher out for years. I saw it, and I never understood that. It makes no sense. Why would you want a person like him out?

Roosevelt athletic director said the decision was a terrible way to end something so special for so many people. Unfortunately, this continues a trend, following shabby treatment of other Gary coaches, including Marvin Rea, Ted Karras, Jr., and Renaldo Thomas

In “Rabbit Remembered” Harry Angstrom’s son Nelson met half-sister Annabelle for lunch at the upscale (for Brewer, PA) Greenery (Salads, Soups and Sandwiches)and described their Dad as a narcissist who never grew up, nor did he seek to, and, like many men of his generation, was scared of his homoerotic side. He was better with grandchildren than his own son, though Nelson recalls them playing catch in the back yard and going to a Flyers ice hockey game in Philadelphia. The son claimed the only job he ever cared about was working the linotype at The Blast, next to his Old Man, Earl Angstrom (1905-1976).  When the family brought Rabbit’s ashes back from Florida in a square urn and stopped at a Comfort Inn, 9-year-old granddaughter Judy insisted that they bring it in from the trunk and had wanted to open it and look inside.  Next morning, Nelson drove off without the urn until Judy remembered it two exits up the road. Author John Updike wrote: “Afterwards, with schooled hindsight, Nelson saw that there had  been a certain unconscious vengeance in their leaving Dad behind, as he had more than once left them behind.”  Nelson’s Aunt Min, upon hearing she had a niece, replied, “Life is wild.  When it isn’t, a total bore.”

above, Jamrose Band; below, Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum

Over the weekend, Jamrose Band rocked out at Miller Pizza and Soul Asylum at Valpo Popcorn Festival.  Ron Cohen met Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame conference and concert honoring Woody Guthrie.   The Cubs sat through ten hours of rain delays.  The Friday game lasted a mere inning, wasting a start by ace Jon Lester.  Saturday they lost a twin bill, with rain interrupting a performance by pitcher Cole Hamels.  Sunday they cooled their heels at the D.C. ball park for over 4 hours before it was cancelled. That night, the Bears blew a 20-point lead against Green Bay in the final 18 minutes with QB Aaron Rodgers directing the comeback on a gimpy knee and girlfriend Danica Patrick in the family box.  Old friend Terry Jenkins attended last week’s Phillies game when the Cubbies beat Aaron Nola on Home Runs by Baez, Rizzo, and Murphy. We’re both huge Eagles fans, and I mentioned that when Falcons QB Matt Ryan threw into the end zone on the final play of Thursday’s contest, I wanted it to be incomplete but if caught, by Julio Jones, who’s on my Fantasy team.  It was an incompletion, but Jones still got me 17 points, enough, combined with 19 by Todd Gurley, to allow Jimbo Jammers, to easily beat Pittsburgh Dave’s Bruisers.  

At bridge on Saturday Toni finished first, 90 points ahead of Brian and Connie Barnes, who tied for second.  Beforehand, I had a burger at Bulldog Restaurant in Ogden Dunes, which I couldn’t finish after eating a salad and rolls.  I wish that, like Toni, I’d just ordered the bacon-wrapped scallops appetizer. Monday night, Connie and Brian attended the Gino’s book club talk on “Valiant Ambition.” Beforehand, on the bar stool next to me, Bill Walton was discussing IU professor Peter Guardino’s new book, “The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War.”  Centering on the experiences of ordinary Mexicans and American soldiers, this social and cultural study claims that the United States underestimated the strength of Mexican nationalism and ferocity of their resistance to being conquered, resulting in thousands of American casualties and at least twice as many Mexican combatants and civilians. Evidently, young Irish recruits endured buggery and rape and witnessed atrocities inflicted by U.S. troops on Mexican civilians. (Guardino below)