With the recent closure and then stripping of the interior of my home-town high school, I've been doing a lot of reading about Gary, Indiana. It's partly for research on an informal history project on the school with which I am assisting, but more and more comes just out of curiosity about the city I remember and the city that is now.
I drove through Gary, not for funsies, but to beat some traffic, about two weeks ago. I knew that I was putting myself in danger, but a part of me was curious. The area on my drive was Grant Street and then Ridge Road in the Glen Park section of the city, coincidentally the neighborhood where I grew up. Definitely not the quiet area it was 55 years ago, it was not even the same scenery I saw a year ago when I made my last trip that direction.
In 1906, the US Steel Corporation and Judge Elbert Gary founded the city on the shores of Lake Michigan in Indiana's far northwest corner. Reputedly the ultimate company town, Gary was a beautifully planned city and, while there were always a few ethnic neighborhoods, everyone lived together in a giant microcosm of the American melting pot.
Although by my Baby Boomer generation many had forgotten why the town was established, some of us were painfully aware. Steel made the city run, and when the skies were right and you were in the right spot, you could see the red glow coming from the mills to the north. I remember neighbors pulling laundry off back yard clotheslines when the wind changed to keep the soot off their clean clothes. And wasn't everyone's snow tinged with soot after a few days on the ground? As kids, we learned to dig beneath the soot to crunch on what we determined was clean snow.
The family of one of my friends growing up was not directly involved in steel production, a rarity. I recall her commenting to her father in my presence one day that she hated the steel mills. Her dad turned on her instantly and reminded her that if it wasn't for the mills, there wouldn't be customers for his business. I never heard her speak negatively about the mills again.
I have personal connections with the local mills that go back to my maternal grandfather, who came to this area in 1932 seeking a job in the mills then on through my father and my husband. I know the joys of paychecks when the mills are stockpiling and the fear of a strike. I remember the "Big Strike" in 1959, when my father, who was management, was locked inside the mill for the 116-day strike. This is the strike that, like it or not, altered the history of Gary, Indiana forever.
President Dwight Eisenhower invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to force the union back to work, citing national security. As part of the final contract agreement, the doors were opened to more imported steel being allowed into the US. Slowly but surely, this came around to bite the steel companies who had advocated for the contract, as they found the markets being flooded in their own country by better-made, cheaper foreign steel.
Steel production began to sag and the mills began laying off. Couple that with the fear of racial integration that was racing through the city, and people from the southern areas began to leave.
I have a memory, right or wrong, of a time when it was illegal to place a sign in your yard in Gary that bore the words "For Sale." Supposedly that was to stop the thought of one neighbor selling creating a snowball effect and putting the entire block on the market.
I wasn't around for some of this, I had left Gary to live in Wisconsin in 1973 and didn't return for 3 years. I came home to find I "shouldn't" look for a home in my own home town.
Gary's Gilroy Stadium
photo c. Cynthia Bean
Fast forward to today. Gary breaks my heart. I have a dear friend, Cynthia "Cupcake" Bean, who photographs the city - she is a fabulous urbex artist - and only she can bring magic for me to the ruins of what was my home town. Her works are filled with light and shadow, texture and gumption, tears and regret. I can almost hear the departed footfalls and listen to the chattering voices that once filled her subject rooms.
Gary Emerson High School
photo c. Cynthia Bean
Gary Public Schools Memorial Auditorium
photo c. Cynthia Bean
Paul Simon, of noted - and my favorite - duo Simon and Garfunkel, wrote a song that to me is the mill town growing up experience. Its words are particularly poignant for me when I apply them to Gary.
"In my little town
I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all
And He used to lean upon me
As I pledged allegiance to the wall
Lord, I recall
My little town
Coming home after school
Flying my bike past the gates
Of the factories
My mom doing the laundry
Hanging our shirts
In the dirty breeze
And after it rains
There’s a rainbow
And all of the colors are black
It’s not that the colors aren’t there
It’s just imagination they lack
Everything’s the same
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
In my little town
I never meant nothin’
I was just my father’s son
Saving my money
Dreaming of glory
Twitching like a finger
On the trigger of a gun
Leaving nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town
Nothing but the dead and dying
Back in my little town"
© 1975 Words and Music by Paul Simon
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