"We Are E.C."

“Put some cheery folderol

On every wall and every nook.

Tinsel up each corner

Till it’s Christmas everywhere you look.”

    “SparkleJollyTwinkleJingley,” from Elf: The Musical

At the Indiana Welcome Center John Davies’ South Shore Legends inducted three people into Wall of Legends.  Actor Avery Brooks grew up in Gary starred in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Spenser: For Hire.”  Several years ago he talked at IU Northwest on the day he received an honorary degree.  Dyer native Jack Chevigny played for Knute Rockne as a blocking back at Notre Dame, was head coach for the Chicago Cardinals and University of Texas, and, a marine lieutenant during WW II, died during the battle of Iwo Jima.  Paleontologist Sue Hendrickson grew up in Munster and discovered the skeleton of a Tyannosaurus Rex known as Sue.  Steve McShane and West Side Theater director Mark Spencer spoke about Brooks at the ceremony.

I attended Discovery Charter School’s Winter Concert at Chesterton Middle School.  Grandson James was in the Glee Club and the Advanced Band, playing drums and xylophone.  His favorite song was “SparkleJollyTwinkleJingley.”  Wonder if he knows that folderol means novelty items, trifles, silly doodads or gewgaws.  Becca was also in Glee Club but was performing in a play at East Chicago Central.  Fourth graders sang “Frosty and the Hand Jive” while doing hand motions like we used to do to the Johnny Otis “Willie and the Hand Jive.”  Surveying the couple hundred people in the audience, I wondered if any had been students of mine.  In the lobby waiting for James a young woman with a middle school kid said, “Hi, Mr. Lane.”  “Good to see you,” I replied, but before I thought to ask her name, she was gone.

In his account of postwar diners Andrew Hurley mentions Steffie’s, a truckers’ rest stop in Gary, which, he writes, “was regularly subjected to vice squad raids and was ultimately shut down by the local health commissioner in 1949.”  In the footnotes Hurley mentions that he learned about Steffie’s from a Post-Trib clipping from the Philip Roosenbloom Collection of the Calumet Regional Archives.  Dr. Rosenbloom was a Gary health commissioner, and looking through his scrapbook I found the clipping, which identified Steffie’s as being located at 1439 East Ridge.  The reason for the vice squad raids was that there were slot machines and punch boards on the premises.  My guess is that Hurley made use of the Rosenbloom collection while researching his gary book “Environmental Inequalities.”  I wonder if that’s when he got the idea to do a book on diners, bowling alleys, and trailer courts.

A 20 year-old killed at least 27 people, including 18 kids, at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, after gunning down his own mother at home.  Only in America!  Bob Lane commented, “How many times does this have to happen before we stop selling guns?”  Cristin Donahue-Brouillard wrote, “My prayers go out to those at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Not such a happy Friday any more.”  President Obama had tears in his eyes talking about it.  Flags across the country are at half-staff.

Dave’s band Blues Cruise performed at the Camelot Lounge Friday.  The room was packed, in part because East Chicago Central teachers were there to honor James Vrehas, a special education teacher who was retiring.  The band sounded great, and Missy Brush sang numerous songs, including a Lady Gaga number that couples gratefully slow-danced to.  I danced with MaryAnn, her mom, when the band dedicated “Rockin’ in the Free World” to her, and she got me up for “Brown-Eyed Girl,” which Dave has been singing for years and that the manager requested.  Mr. Vrehas mentioned to me that his son Peter was a student of mine one summer during the 1990s, and his wife Irene, a retired English teacher, told me she was so happy that Dave invites her back to talk to his AP students about “Hamlet” and other Shakespeare plays.  A teacher named Chris Bajmakovich recognized me as someone who taught his Vietnam War course.  He recalled the books “365 Days” and “Chickenhawk” that were on the required reading list.  I had him write down his name, showed it to MaryAnn, and she said that one of her husband Tim’s best friends was a Chris Bajmakovich.  It turned out to be Chris’s cousin.  At one point Dave got the crowd to chant “We Are E.C.”

Lo and behold, when Dave introduced me to the E.C. principal, Wendell McCollum, he also turned out to be a former student.  In fact, he wrote a poignant paper about his mother, Theola Wright, that I published in my 70s Shavings.  It mentions that Wendell, born in 1974, was named for his father Willie’s best friend. Willie and Theola, whose nickname was Honey, met at a Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes concert in Chicago.  Wendell wrote that Willie’s “Arkansas accent kept her trying to hide a smile every time he spoke.”  A year later Theola gave birth to son Rodney.  The inspiration for the name came from Rodney Allen Ripple of the Burger King ads.  Theola told her son that Seventies music by such groups as Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelic, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and the Bar-Kays set the table for everything that came after.  He wrote that she believed, “If you couldn’t do dances like the Robot, Bump, Pop, Hustle or Step, you were left watching everyone else get down.”

Several old friends are sending their Christmas cards via email.  LeeLee Devenney, looking radiant in a blue sweater, was everybody’s buddy in high school, while Rich Baker, in a plaid shirt behind wife Susan and joined by what looks to be three children and their spouses and six grandchildren, was my roomie at Bucknell for two years.  He still calls me Lanezer.

I attended “Big Joe” Petras’s twenty-second annual benefit brunch for Marquette Kids Park at Miller Pizza.  I talked with George Rogge about his great 12/12/12 party and with Steve Spicer’s son about folks, him included, who think the Rockabillies lifestyle is cool.  I told him about being in a public park in Barcelona and watched about 20 young people dancing to swing music.  “Big Joe” saw the Memorial Opera production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” that we will be seeing Sunday and gave it effusive praise.

Home in time for the IU-Butler game.  It was exciting, especially when baby-faced Yogi Ferrell hit a three-pointer to tie the game with six seconds left.  Even though IU lost in overtime, it was thoroughly enjoyable, nothing to get upset over, even though I am a Hoosier fan.

On the way to East Chicago Central for the play “A Holiday Shelter of Hope” I wasn’t aware that a right lane on Cline Avenue ended until almost too late.  That highway is a death trap, and I am not at my best behind the wheel after dark under rainy, foggy conditions.  Fortunately I was able to move over despite the heavy traffic.  Written by choir director Dr. Leon Kendrick, the musical was very moving, taking place in a homeless shelter and featuring characters wounded by terrible life experiences.  James and Becca were in a scene where kids in an orphanage watch a play about Raggedy Anne and Raggedy Andy at Chicago’s United Center.  They and other Raggedy dolls did four numbers, and both James and Becca did solos.  Because Becca sang “Tomorrow” from “Annie” so well at try-outs, Dr. Kendrick inserted her singing it into the show.  We said hello to several teachers, including Jim and Irene Vrehas, who I’d been with the previous night.  As Dr. Kendrick had written in the program, “A Holiday Shelter of Hope” was a message of love, peace, and joy.  With more than 40 talented cast members to deal with, hats off to him for putting it all together and pulling it off in such a professional way. 

 Becca and James Lane with Dr. Leon Kendrick

Holiday Doings begin

“See see rider, where did you stay last night?

Lord, Lord, Lord

Your shoes ain’t buttoned and your clothes don’t fit you right

You didn’t come home till the sun was shining bright.”

    Ma Rainey, “See See Rider Blues"

I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t get the NY Times puzzle answer to the clue “1957 Chuck Willis Hit,” even though Toni had filled in the first and last two letters.  Of course, it was “C.C. Rider,” which inspired the Stroll dance craze.  First recorded by Ma Rainey in 1925, over the years dozens of artists have covered it, from Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy to Peggy Lee and Janis Joplin.  The Orioles put out a doo-wop version in 1952, Elvis sang it on his “Aloha from Hawaii” special, and it was part of Mitch Ryder and the Wheels’ “Jenny Take a Ride” medley covered by Bruce Springsteen at a 1980 No Nukes concert.

I started on our Christmas cards.  We have over a hundred free ones, as well as ample return address labels from such groups we support as Greenpeace and the National Wildlife Federation.  I wanted to use a photo of us at the Indiana Historical Society Museum, but Toni didn’t like how she looked since she had a cold when it was taken.  So we’re going with one of me holding the framed Riker Award citation.

IU Northwest’s semi-annual Retirement Reception honored policeman Juan Gonzales, English professor William Buckley, and Nursing professor Linda Rooda.  Buckley skipped the event, as did the entire English Department, but I decided I’d like to read two of his poems I used in Shavings issues.  Chancellor Lowe thought that was a great idea as a follow-up to his remarks, so, labeling him the Calumet Region’s Poet Laureate,” I recited “Backlit: Lake Michigan 2003” fro “Ides of March” and “We Have Our Nights” about Crown Point Courthouse Square in August 1990 from “Shards and Midden Heaps.”  Describing rollerbladers “flying down Main,” Buckley wrote: “Our boys lean for the wind, circle round a gingerbread courthouse on wheels like birds around the lawn, and cop cars cool their engines by the Triple Play Saloon.”

I considered reading “Night Shift,” about steelworkers with faces orange from the flames of the forgings as boiling in the acid-baths are tank plates and “chrome for fat Lincolns.”  The poem references night shift workers throwing back beer in taverns afterwards while the “deep pockets” of corporate bosses and their political lackeys “are lined with your blood.”  Good old Buckley, but so like him to be a no-show at his own retirement reception.

Juan Gonzales served as a Gary cop for 20 years before joining the IUN force 20 years ago.  Another veteran spoke about how he initially thought of “Gonzo” (Juan’s nickname) as an old guy but after observing him work out amended that to “strong old guy.”  Juan worked the evening shift and was always friendly when I’d see him on campus near the end of a day.  The Nursing Division had another party for Linda Rooda, but several folks paid tribute to her, including son David, an attorney at the Lake County prosecutor’s office who will be teaching a SPEA course about environmental law on campus in the spring. Mike Certa mentioned Linda’s husband John, who passed away in 2010 and had served for almost 30 years as Ross Township Trustee.  I recall seeing Linda and her family at numerous IUN basketball games, and on December 31, 2007, they, like us, were at an IU Alumni Association event at Buffalo Wild Wings, as IU played in the Insight Bowl against Oklahoma State.  Although the Hoosiers got slaughtered, we had fun playing trivia games.

The reception food was heavy on meat (Swedish meatballs, chicken wings, crab cakes) but also contained egg rolls, veggies, fruit, and cake, so I’m not complaining.  Pat Bankston mentioned that he and Margaret Skurka (looking very fit and attractive) were now two of the oldest faculty in Health and Human Services.  A baby boomer, born in 1946, Pat mentioned that his dad was in North Africa when Truman ordered an atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima or might have been shipped to the Pacific for an invasion of Japan.  After I questioned the necessity of a second bomb so quickly launched against the city of Nagasaki, the subject turned to the firebombing of Dresden and “Slaughterhouse Five.”  It turns out Vonnegut is one of Bankston’s favorite writers.

During the night I bit the left side of my mouth.  I hate when I do that.  What was I dreaming about?  Food?  The pain woke me up.  “Oh, shit,” I thought, “that’s going to bother me for the next week.”

Andrew Hurley’s chapter on diners in his excellent social history of postwar consumer culture “Diners, Bowling Alleys and Trailer Parks,” opens with mention of the Chuck Wagon Diner on Ridge Road that had become Owner George Yonko got the inspiration while working at Continental Foundry in East Chicago during World War II.  When his shift ended at 11 p.m., he’d often stop for a hamburger at a small lunch car near his plant that was packed with mill workers.  In 1945 he bought an abandoned dining car near Broadway in Gary and came up with the name from a friend who sketched covered wagons.  At first his clientele was mainly male factory workers, but within a few years he expanded his business, moving to a larger lot two blocks to the west and emphasizing booths rather than counter service and special kiddie meals to attract middle-income families.  During the 1950s Yonko met Colonel Sanders at a restaurant convention and added his chicken recipe to the menu items.  Hurley wrote: “If the prewar diner had functioned as a scrappy adjunct to the factory, the postwar variant (until eclipsed by the national restaurant chains) would cultivate its identity as a tidy and inviting extension of the happy suburban home.”   Hurley interviewed Yonko in 1994; like so many white ethnics (his parents were Romanian immigrants), he had moved away from Glen Park in the mod-60s and was living in Macon, Mississippi. By the 1970s it had morphed into Miner-Dunn, a place where the four of us often had dinner, which came with ice cream sherbet.  Driving by 315 W. Ridge on the way to IUN, I saw no evidence the restaurant had ever been there.

The Holiday Reception for Faculty and Staff, normally held at noon in the Savannah gym, was in the conference center at 2 p.m.  In the past Garrett Cope had booked first-rate entertainment, such as choral groups from Gary schools, and administrators had sometimes dressed in holiday costumes.  It had been an opportunity to greet retired staff members such as Mae Walker and Joanne Hurak and emeritus faculty such as Bill Neil and Jack Gruenenfelder. Things were scaled back this year – finger food, not turkey and trimmings, albeit good finger food -  but it still was fun.  I chatted with retirees Leroy Peterson (Math) and Bill Lee (Admissions) and historians Chris Young and David Parnell, among others.

The Obama administration is edging closer to intervening in the Syrian civil war.  First came warnings we would not tolerate the use by the Assad regime of chemical weapons.  Now Obama is granting recognition to a coalition of Syrian rebels and charging that Assad’s forces have fired Scud missiles at enemy targets.  While some 40,000 civilians have died in the past two years, it is naïve to expect that the rebels will support democracy, religious toleration or equal rights for women or even be pro-American.

George Rogge and Susan Rutsen hosted a 12/12/12 party like they had on 10/10/10 and 11/11/11.  They live in a fabulous house on Vigo built by Pat Lee atop a sand dune near the lake and invited local authors plus many Millerites.  Several folks asked what I was working on, and I mentioned an article on Gary Nobel Laureates Paul Samuelson and Joseph Stiglitz.  I told Dolly Millender about lecturing on Vivian Carter and Vee-Jay Records.  She knew Vivian well and lamented that the company didn’t have qualified financial accountants.  After I quoted YJean Chambers that Vivian went from rags to riches to rags in ten years time, Dolly repeated Vivian’s mother once said, “She started in my basement and ended up in my basement.”

Beforehand, I looked up interesting things that happened on December 12 and came up with these.  In 1800 Washington D.C. became the nation’s capital.  In 1899 George Bryant patented the wooden golf tee.  In 1957 Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year-old cousin Myra.  In 2000 the Supreme Court released its 5-4 decision that gave the election to George W. Bush.  George asked guests to comment of the date, and Karren Lee explained that so many couple were getting married because 1 stood for males and 2 for females; thus the numbers being together three times could signify good fortune for the their future together.  I took Rogge my latest Shavings issue, but he already had it as well as several others.  He’s in it in connection with a program about Gary last year at the Aquatorium where he played Mayor George Chacharis with a fake nose and glasses.  Karren Lee was Simone de Beauvoir. Rogge’s library spanned two floors and included numerous books about his political hero, Teddy Roosevelt.  Four of Corey Hagelberg’s art pieces were on the walls.

A comely young woman behind the kitchen counter turned out to be “Merciless” Mary McGee, a lightweight boxer whose record in 20-0.  She’s managed by Rogge’s company, One in a Million, Inc.  Jim Spicer and I discussed Lincoln and Jefferson with former mayor Scott King.  I mentioned that when Lincoln’s funeral train passed through Pennsylvania, both James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens paid homage to the slain leader who had once differed greatly from them.  King told of being in a restaurant in Memphis and seeing a century-old photo of the black proprietor and his fair-skinned wife.  He was shocked that an interracial marriage would have been tolerated there.  I speculated that just as some African Americans “passed” as Caucasians, some whites, such as geological explorer Clarence King, “passed” as mulattos in order to live with black spouses.  King had a humorous anecdote about rotund former Bears coach Abe Gibron, fired in 1974 after three losing seasons.  His wife asked the Michigan City native to bring home a cooked lamb for a post-game party at their house.  By the time he arrived home, there was hardly any meat left.

Several TV stations aired a benefit concert for victims of Sandy featuring virtually every big rock star on the planet, starting with Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, and Pearl Jam.  Especially noteworthy were appearances by Billy Joel and The Who.  Roger Daltry looked a lot like Bill Clinton.  Steve Buscemi, Nucky Thompson in “Boardwalk Empire,” did a feature with an Atlantic City cleanup crew.

Janet Bayer posted two photos from “The Rachel Maddow Show” blog of Larry Duncan and Randell Shepherd applying for a marriage license in Seattle and then getting married at the First Baptist Church.  “Love is a wonderful thing,” she commented.  Darren Mitton wrote, “Despite what the media tries to shove down your throats, heterosexuals, not all gay men look like Ricky Martin and talk like Ru Paul.”