Categories
Writing

Schererville Terminal

Welcome to Schererville. Photo Credit – Wikimedia Commons.

Editor’s Note: This is a draft chapter from my memoir. I was assigned to the Schererville, Indiana trucking terminal of Lincoln Sales and Service for most of the time from 1987 until 1993.

On my first day of work, as I crested the railroad bridge just south of the Schererville terminal, I saw a car had driven under the trailer of one of our tractor-trailer rigs while it was making a left-hand turn onto Indianapolis Boulevard. I didn’t know it then, yet this would become the typical start of a day. During the time I worked there, about four of the six years we lived in the Calumet, there was always something happening. It was nearly impossible for a human to keep up. Thankfully, no one appeared to be hurt in this specific accident.

The Town of Schererville, Indiana is called the “crossroads of the nation.” Situated in Saint John’s Township in Lake County, it has been a crossroads since before becoming a state when Native American trails crisscrossed not far from the current location of the intersection of U.S. Highways 30 and 41. At one time, Standard Oil Company owned all four corners of that intersection. The Standard Oil Trust had lots of money and was buying desirable locations to sell automotive fuel and lubricants across the country. Locations along the Lincoln Highway, which ran coast to coast, were prime. Their corporate descendant, BP, still operates on the northeast corner which currently has a large gas station and convenience store. Our trucking terminal was about two miles north on Highway 41, which is also called Indianapolis Boulevard.

Because the company fuel island was close to the main roads traveled by our truckers, almost all our drivers stopped to get fuel, drop off payroll paperwork, use the restroom, check in with the company trainer, and if needed, get their equipment repaired or serviced. Our fuel island attendant J.J. knew Chicago like the back of his hand and gave directions to help out-of-state drivers find their customers using routes safe for an 18-wheeler in the city and its suburbs.

In 1987, Lincoln Sales and Service in Schererville was a full-service trucking terminal. During my two tours of duty there, we evolved into a driver recruiting station when the shop and fuel island were closed after a union organizing attempt, and training was moved to the corporate office in Cedar Rapids to provide a consistent, documented process when the U.S. Department of Transportation audited us. Driver payroll had already been centralized in nearby Griffith, Indiana. Our terminal staff shrank from more than 25 employees to half a dozen over the years. There was less traffic after the fuel island closed, yet it was busy enough for us to hire an outside security service. I was young and could keep up with the workload which often bled over into family time.

I described terminal operations in Chapter 18, yet I want to bring focus to the story of my work.

The many driver interviews I conducted were a story of dehumanization. Workers were laid off by companies that felt they had to be competitive, whatever that meant. It was a time of ubiquitous management consulting firms who restructured businesses to direct more revenue and earnings to owners, shareholders, and high-level managers. CRST followed this path eventually. It was busy at our terminal because most of the time I worked in uncharted territory in managing a recruiting operation with little guidance unless there was a lawsuit, workers compensation claim, or union activity.

In the crucible of manufacturing in transition, tens of thousands of workers in our area were trying to adjust. I was there listening to them and found one heck of a story. I hired some of them, doing what I could to ease their transition.

I officed in Schererville yet traveled a lot. By the end of my time there I was managing trucking terminals in Schererville and Richmond, Indiana, and starting recruiting operations in West Virginia, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Missouri. I would wake up on airplanes unsure of where I was, or where I was going.

I’m glad for the experience. I hated the experience. My life in the Calumet, and everywhere else I traveled, taught me about unionization and the consequences of change sparked by the Reagan Revolution in a way I believe gave me a unique perspective. They were days of hope for an intangible future that included success. In retrospect, I don’t know what that means. It was a busy time and there was little time and energy left for family.

Categories
Living in Society

Classified Stuff

The Situation Room during the death of Osama Bin Laden, May 1, 2011. Photo credit –
Official White House photo by Pete Souza

While stationed in Europe, I drew an assignment to serve as a visiting officer to a French battalion of Infantry Marines in the coastal city of Vannes in Brittany. Not many American officers knew the French language, and even though my French was marginal, the command felt it would improve and be needed in case the balloon went up. That is, there was war on the central plains of Europe. After returning to garrison, I was asked to write a classified account of my observations while assigned to a French platoon. Our battalion S-2 officer knew what the word classified meant and complied with Army procedure in handling my report. Today, I don’t recall what I wrote, except to say the French were liberal in the use of corporal punishment by officers on enlisted personnel. I filed the report and hadn’t thought about it much since then.

The news this week is of the operational security breach when National Security Advisor Michael Waltz added national security reporter and editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg to a chat about an ongoing attack in Yemen on the messaging application Signal. I had not heard of this app, which is an American open-source, encrypted messaging service for instant messaging, voice calls, and video calls. Signal has known vulnerabilities to infiltration by Russian and Chinese intelligence. Worse case scenario, bad actors were listening in on the chat in real time, in addition to an experienced national reporter present by apparent mistake. There are issues.

First, the president was not part of the chat and likely should have been. When people on the chat asked whether the attack should commence, whether the president authorized it, no one knew. The decision to make the strikes then appears to have been made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to Heather Cox Richardson. What was the president doing then, instead of being in this meeting? Watching television or doom scrolling his phone? The president said he didn’t know anything about it.

Content of the chat aside, why weren’t the participants using secure channels for this discussion? Even if the Situation Room at the White House is not a viable option, the government has secure channels for use in its place. Either the administration hopes to avoid scrutiny by using a commercial messaging app, or they are incompetent… maybe both.

I would much rather write about other things on this blog. The truth is I need to process what I’m hearing and writing about it helps. What we heard this week is important and we can’t look away. Plenty of other sources have better detail and analysis about the security breach. I’ll let the story run its course, which is expected to be a long one.

Categories
Living in Society

Finding My Way

Trail walking.

The weather has been kind of pissy to this gardener. Ambient temperatures have been all over the place during the last ten days. The soil for the garlic patch has been spaded yet is too wet for tilling and planting due to intermittent rains. It is raining as I write… and wait for spring to truly arrive.

I received notice my Medicare Supplemental Insurance premium is increasing by 11.7 percent beginning May 1. Making a big assumption — that Social Security will continue to pay out as previously — there should be enough money to cover the additional $28.73 for me and a similar amount for my spouse. May have to cut back elsewhere, but insurance is a top tier priority.

My Social Security payment arrived on time this month. Two for two for the new administration. The Washington Post has been following the turmoil since DOGE turned its sights on the agency upon which more than 70 million Americans rely.

“What’s going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it’s accelerating,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I have people approaching me all the time in their 70s and 80s, and they’re beside themselves. They don’t know what’s coming.”

Most of us fear what is coming. As the senator said, we don’t really know what’s coming, except that in fits and starts, the administration appears to be making random cuts and illogical accusations about the program with an endgame of privatizing or killing it. My fear is the billionaire class plans to rob the Social Security Trust Fund in its entirety. It’s almost $3 Trillion value won’t even begin to cover the tax cuts the president has proposed, and the Congress seems intent on legislating into law. That means more debt if it moves forward, in addition to poverty among many seniors, if it doesn’t kill them first. Republicans don’t seem concerned about bankrupting seniors, the government, or anyone but themselves.

Today’s news hits like a brick. I can deal with pissy weather and am reminded of this verse from Cristy Lane’s hit song One Day at a Time, which provides some resilience:

Do you remember, when you walked among men?
Well Jesus you know if you're looking below
It's worse now, than then.
Cheating and stealing, violence and crime
So for my sake, teach me to take
One day at a time.
Categories
Reviews

Book Review: Food for Thought

My reaction to Food for Thought: Essays & Ruminations by Alton Brown is it fills gaps in my personal culinary history. Brown occupied space after the formative experience I had in South Georgia in 1997 and 1998. While working on a logistics project at a clay mine and processor, after a 14-hour shift at the plant I retired to a motel room in nearby Thomasville. There I was exposed to Food TV Network, Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, Susan Feniger, Mary Sue Milliken, Julia Child, and others. It was a formative experience yet Brown came along after that period, airing his first episode of Good Eats on July 7, 1999.

During that work assignment I escaped into the T.V. During thirty minute segments I could forget extreme poverty and plain family restaurants that served a meat and three sides in rural Georgia, and engage in celebrity chefs who enjoyed what they were doing as locals did not. I had no kitchen at the motel so the interest was intellectual. My later involvement in the local food movement has its origins in the contrast between that poor, uninviting place in South Georgia and my nightly food escape. I learned a lot from Brown’s television programs when he later came on the cable channel and I watched them back in Iowa.

I didn’t know if I would enjoy his book. As I read, I liked it more with each turn of a page. For the kind of local food enthusiast I have become it is essential reading because of Brown’s unique role in televised, public cooking. Hearing his personal history, especially beginning with the premature and unexpected death of his father, informed the personality I remember from Good Eats.

After Good Eats ran its course, I fell off the Alton Brown bandwagon. I did not care for the stadium-style Iron Chef cooking competitions where he was a commentator. I also missed his coronavirus pandemic home cooking show on YouTube. By the pandemic, I had developed my own concept of a kitchen garden and no longer needed a recipe writer as Brown describes himself in Food for Thought.

The book is a miscellany of stories in the form of a memoir. As such one can both enjoy and not enjoy the writing, chapter by chapter. It was somewhat disappointing to read of Brown’s tobacco use and over-indulgence in alcohol. At the same time, the “Meals that Made Me” series is engaging and insightful. In all, the positives outweigh the negatives which is what I seek in a memoir.

If a person works in a modern, American kitchen, Food for Thought is well worth the time it takes to read.

Categories
Living in Society

Week Nine

Snow and ice melt draining off the Lake Macbride watershed.

It’s no secret a new president has a limited amount of time before re-entering an election cycle. I assume our current president is not stupid and realizes, given recent polling, Republicans could well lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. Those campaigns crank up in about a year and that’s how much time he has to make his mark. This is politics 101, and nothing about the current administration modified that.

It’s been nine weeks since the inauguration and the resistance is getting more active, court cases more numerous. What became clearer this week is the plan, whether it be Project 2025 or whatever, is to move as quickly as possible to dismantle parts of the federal government to stay ahead of the courts. The courts are now catching up with the administration. They will not bend a knee to the president, even some justices appointed in the president’s first term. Public resistance to dismantling our government is also growing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared he was done with USAID on Monday, March 10. He cancelled 83 percent of their contracts and rolled the remainder of them into the State Department. A done deal, one could reasonably say. On March 19, a federal judge ruled that Elon Musk and his DOGE team likely violated the Constitution when they effectively shut down USAID, National Public Radio reported. Out here in the middle of the country, that looks like too little, too late to save the organization. The jig is up, though. By executing their plan, they also disclose it, empowering the resistance.

When on Friday, March 14, the executive order to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) came down, it didn’t take long for friends of libraries to respond. Over the weekend, libraries across the state launched an advocacy program to contact our elected officials to explain what the agency did and why it should not be dismantled. Various libraries explained it differently. Here is one example:

The State Library of Iowa relies on Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding from the IMLS to deliver statewide library development initiatives and services to Iowa libraries and citizens. This critical funding is tied to matching dollars from the Iowa Legislature.

These funds directly support services our patrons depend on:

  • Interlibrary loan system and twice-weekly delivery service
  • Annual Summer Reading Program theme & resources, and the All Iowa Reads program
  • Bridges (Libby app) platform fee and magazine collection for the statewide digital library consortium
  • Brainfuse HelpNow online resource
  • Website hosting
  • Online calendar, registration, meeting room scheduling software
  • Train and support skilled public librarians and effective library boards and the State Library Endorsement program
  • Standards and Accreditation program for high quality libraries
  • People’s Law Library of Iowa.

I haven’t time to follow all agencies affected by the administration’s executive orders, yet am guessing the same response is happening widely. The resistance is building. I sent my own email to elected officials, saying, “As a resident of your district, I don’t understand how the executive branch can intervene in a congressionally created agency, cancel grants, and in effect put it out of business. Please explain.” Senator Grassley’s office was first to respond. Here is an excerpt from his March 21 response:

I appreciate hearing of your support for IMLS employees and the programs they administer. I agree that Iowa’s libraries play an invaluable role in the lives of Iowans by promoting literacy and information access, and our museums are valuable cultural assets that enrich the lives of Iowans and promote tourism in Iowa communities.

At the onset, I understand and recognize many Iowans are concerned about the Executive Order I will be discussing in this message. I would like to take this time to share as much information as I know about this situation, and please know myself and my staff are continuing to monitor this situation.

Grassley’s response was something, yet it left me feeling dissatisfied because he doesn’t seem to know much more than I do. It seems clear moving quickly to address the administration’s action with members of the Congress should be a main tool in our resistance toolbox.

There is a lot to talk about. Let me close with this: The game in the reconciliation bill (that hasn’t been written yet) is to cut government costs by $1.5 Trillion to give a $4.5 Trillion tax cut to the wealthiest Americans. If they pass it, they are going to get the money somewhere, namely by incurring more debt. I know in my household budget, thinking like that doesn’t stand the scrutiny of family members. Even someone with a basic understanding of arithmetic sees the numbers don’t add up.

Bottom line: if we can’t afford a tax cut (and we can’t) without incurring additional debt, we shouldn’t legislate one. House Republicans don’t know how to write a federal budget, as evidenced by the need for a continuing resolution through the end of the fiscal year. There is plenty of time to resist a large tax cut for the wealthy. The resistance should keep our collective eyes on this ball.

Categories
Environment

Iowa Sunrise

Categories
Writing

The Work I Do

Photo by Yury Kim on Pexels.com
The work I do
is not for me

so much as it is for

the friends I have come to know.

The collages
The poems
The journal entries
The performances

Not for me.

The nuns taught us.

All for the honor and glory of God.

It is a lesson

that stuck.

~ Labor Day, 1989, Lake County, Indiana
Categories
Environment

Extreme Weather #2 1988-1990 Drought

It snowed overnight on March 20, leading into spring.

The year we moved to Indiana’s Calumet Region in 1988 marked the onset of the worst U.S. drought since the Dust Bowl. The 1988-1990 North American Drought covered a smaller amount of geography compared to the 1930s Dust Bowl yet it was the most expensive extreme weather event in terms of monetary damages in U.S. history until that time.

Nearby Milwaukee, Wisconsin, set a record 55 consecutive days without measurable precipitation. During summer heat waves, thousands of people and livestock died. The drought led to many wildfires in western North America, including record fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988.

While living in the Calumet, I understood the region’s activities were adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, enhancing the greenhouse effect that causes planetary warming. This includes the enormous Amoco Oil Company refinery located 23 miles from our house.

In 1988, we were turned inward, living our family life. We also had air conditioning. I did not understand how prevalent the deleterious effects of climate change would become in our lifetimes. It was one of what became a series of extreme weather events leading through time to when I wrote this post. We understand now.

The United Nations suggests ten thing we can do to address climate change. They even have an app! It is not too late to begin addressing our contributions to global warming and environmental degradation. Click here to learn more about what you can do.

Categories
Living in Society

Concerned Library Lovers

Solon Public Library

Library lovers gather at the public library. It is not a formal meet up or conference. We are more like a living coral reef where symbiosis is more important than creating permanent structure. The weather was so mild on Tuesday, we chatted outside on the walkways to the parking lots. Library lovers are concerned about what our government is doing regarding libraries.

As mentioned March 12, there is an anti-intellectual movement afoot in Iowa that would abolish public libraries. The expectation is a slate of bills will be debated on public and school libraries soon. Hopefully they are defeated, and better yet, never come up for a vote because of lack of support.

Among the bills is repeal of the state exemption from obscenity laws for public libraries. A worst case scenario of repeal is some librarians may see jail time because a kid brought home a book their parents didn’t like. The purpose of public libraries is not to provide cheap child care to parents who are too lazy to supervise what their children read.

An equally serious problem is the impact state lawmakers new “library regulations” will have on the talented staff at libraries across the state. I would expect these good folks to err on the side of caution: caution against winding up in jail. If the zealots have their way, I would expect libraries to experience significant turnover. If such turnover happened, the quality of patrons’ experience would be diminished, possibly permanently.

Another impact on Iowa libraries is what the federal government does regarding the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—the only federal agency focused solely on supporting the nation’s libraries and museums. Established by Congress, the agency assures federal resources would be available to improve and support the nation’s libraries. Iowa City Public Library Development Director Katie Roche issued a press release on the impacts of losing funding through IMLS last night. Read it here. The impacts of killing IMLS would be many. It would change dramatically what we could expect from public libraries. Yes, I’m talking about your library.

Folks who work at public libraries are well aware of how to deal with budget constraints. What makes the current climate different is a third party, namely outside zealots and the federal government, are directing actions with expected and politicized desired outcomes. People across the political spectrum can agree public libraries are a positive influence on society. We should stand up to defend them. How best to manage them should be and is an ongoing topic of discussion. Library lovers are stakeholders who shouldn’t be excluded from the discussion. For heaven’s sake, visit a library and check out a book. That’s what I was doing on Tuesday and it was uplifting. We do more than check out books.

Categories
Sustainability

Big Grove Township Extreme Weather #1

The home we built in 1993 from Google Earth.

Editor’s Note: Our arrival in Big Grove Township was marked by the first in a series of extreme weather events: the 1993 flood. It was called a once in 500-years flood, yet we would soon find out flooding had become more common, including the next 500-year flood event in 2008. I plan to weave at least six extreme weather events into my memoir, beginning with this chapter on Big Grove Township.

Big Grove Township was established before Iowa Statehood. The first sawmill was built here in 1839 by Anthony Sells on Mill Creek. Put the big groves of trees together with the sawmill and you have us. The oak, walnut, hickory, ash, elm and cottonwood that once thrived among numerous pure springs were gone when we bought our lot here. What dominates is the culture we and others brought with us to an area where all trees indigenous to the Northwest once existed in abundance yet no longer do. There is something essentially American in that.

There is a subdivision named Mill Creek today, suggesting this history. Throughout the area, people refer to early settlers and builders of homes instead of the people who now own and live in those structures. The names Cerny, Beuter, Andrews and Brown persist, as does the more recent name of Don Kasparek upon whose former farm our home is situated.

On the vacant lot we purchased, there were scrub grasses and a lone mulberry tree. The tree appeared to have been planted by a bird’s droppings while it perched on a surveyor’s re-bar marker. The ground had a high clay content which suggested Kasparek had removed the topsoil before subdividing the plats. When he died in 2003, I recognized him in our association newsletter. We speak of him from time to time in the neighborhood, although not always in a positive way.

I looked at an old picture of a building on Main Street in Solon, the nearest city. In sepia tones, seven teams of horses and wagons are lined up in front of a building on the dirt street. We can make out the lettering on the shop windows: Cerny Bros Grocery, Cerny Bros Hardware, and Cerny Bros Feed. While the roads have been paved for many years, much of downtown and the surrounding area resonates with the area’s origins in history before automobiles.

We built our home during the record-breaking floods of 1993. Governor Terry Branstad described the extreme weather event as “the worst natural disaster in our state’s history.” The Des Moines Register published a commemorative book titled Iowa’s Lost Summer: The Flood of 1993. Extreme weather delayed construction of our home that summer, causing us to stay with relatives and in motels for about a month after we moved from our house in Indiana. We moved in during August 1993. I was used to severe flooding from growing up in Davenport where the 1965 Mississippi River flood broke records. I was not used to flooding, 1993-style.

I couldn’t help but believe who I was represented itself in any of local history. My culture was what I brought with me, rooted in coal mining, factory workers, farming, home making, and the rural cultures of Virginia, Minnesota and LaSalle County, Illinois. Our history as a family goes back on both sides to the Revolutionary War. My line in Virginia goes a hundred years prior to the revolution.

That my ancestor Thomas Jefferson Addington is a common ancestor to the Salyer girls of the Salyer-Lee Chapter 1417 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy stands in contrast to the story of Maciej Nadolski working in coal mines in Allegheny, Pennsylvania after the Civil War and then buying land from the railroad in Minnesota. What of my father’s birth in Glamorgan, Virginia? What of the suppression of Polish culture by the Russians after 1865 that led to a massive migration of Poles to North America? If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t speak much of these things in Big Grove Township. Perhaps with time we will.