Monday, August 07, 2006
Jim Dean of Indiana
This might be my last post for a while. We'll see how it goes. I'm in Minnesota; my blog (which insists on being in the present tense) is just getting to Indiana. Neither one of us is quite as far along as we had planned to be at this point. Yesterday - the real yesterday, not the blog yesterday - Rand McNally and I had dinner together, and Rand said getting to California was looking unlikely.
It's beautiful here. It was beautiful in Iowa. I continue to be wholly undiscriminating in that I find almost everything worth stopping for, although not everything (e.g., One and Only Presidential Museums; etc.) worth staying for. When you do a trip like this, you become pretty aware that it's probably the only chance you get, at least until you're in the Winnebago demographic. If Winnebagoes there be by the time I reach that demographic. Maybe the solar-driven Winnebago will have been perfected by then. Which is to say, faced with the choice of, say, do I stop to see the second largest concrete statue in the United States, or press on to Quad Cities, the little voice says "when you gonna be back here again?" I tend to stop.
Or Goshen, Indiana. Which is somewhere just south of Michigan. I pack up the camp at Holland in a light rain, blog a bit back at Lemonjello's, ask Triple-A for directions and get out of town. Stop for a lunch of fried smelt at a greasy spoon where Michigan Highway 40, which I was on, crosses I-94; now I've eaten smelt, and I never have to do that again. (They're a great lakes fish, small like sardines. You eat them whole. Mostly mine taste of fried cornmeal.)
Anyway, Goshen. It's on the way from Holland to Gas City, Indiana, more or less. It has a handsome courthouse seen here. So I stop and take a picture of it. I'm drawn to these 19th-century courthouses because they're places out of history, but that are still serving the same function they did 100 or 150 years ago. People go there to get married, to file land sales, to fight traffic tickets and defend themselves before their peers. And they're great civic architecture at a time when great civic architecture was an announcement that your town or county or state was a place of proud citizens, and not just an extravagant expenditure of the public's money.
That they're still in use for these acts, in the age of Homeland Security, means they're not so easy to get into and take pictures of, however. I walk up to the door of the Goshen courthouse, where a very friendly police officer tells me my camera's not going anywhere inside.
I also take a picture of the fountain out front, honoring Poseidon, which makes sense given Goshen's proximity to the ocean.
After a while, back on the road. Stop at a drive-in root beer stand in some nameless town, where three people sitting under the overhang seem puzzled to see an orange Element with New York plates driving up. The root beer is good, but I discover as I drive down Highway 9 that the root beer drive-in is not a novelty in these parts. Every little town seems to have one; at one intersection there are actually competing drive-ins. They still have a few drive-in theaters, too, showing first run features.
Finally, I reach Marion, Indiana - which I had thought was the onetime home of Pete Rose, but that turns out to have been Marion, Illinois - and make the turn to Gas City. I'm going to Gas City because it was the home of the James Dean Gallery, which I heard about from friend Rosemarie when she heard that it was closing. The two of us had shared our regret that we'd missed this example of roadside Americana, but the report did indicate that there were various other sites in the area worth visiting.
I've had in my head this utterly idealized vision of what Gas City will be like - like there will be some portal I'll drive through, and suddenly it will be 1955 again. When I get to Marion and see the endless string of big boxes and Applebee'ses, it occurs to me I may be in for major disappointment. I turn east on US 35, get around a detour at the railroad tracks and realize -
Well, I realize that I have no idea what I'm looking for. I'm greatly relying on good faith and serendipity on this trip, and all in all I think that's the right choice. But it occurs to me that maybe the slightest amount of research on this topic might have been a good idea. It's hot as hell, it's 4:15 in the afternoon and anything worth seeing will be closing soon, and I don't have a clue. And there's nothing in Gas City to indicate where I ought to be headed. (It may not strictly be 1955 here, but it looks like commerce just about stopped then.)
Fortunately, Andrew Carnegie gave the good people of Gas City a public library, which is handsome and well-maintained and located right on Main Street. And the very helpful librarian there copies a map out of the phone book and draws me a route around the detour and out the Fairmount road toward the farm where Jim Dean grew up.
Which is not, it turns out, in Gas City. I am quite probably the only person in the world who has traveled to the middle of Indiana specifically to see the Winslow farm and other important locations in the life of James Dean, and yet does not know that these sites are actually located in Fairmount. The James Dean Gallery relocated to just outside Gas City, or more specifically, adjacent to I-65, in order to attract more visitors. (It apparently failed to do so, which led to its closure, which led to an NPR report, which led to my being here, ironically enough.)
So I follow the map down Fairmount Avenue. And suddenly I am not disappointed anymore. Half a mile outside of Gas City I have driven, if not to 1955, to a place that appears to live life much the same way. I pass beautiful farms and a graveyard that, if I were the sort of James Dean fan who knows enough to go to Fairmount, I would recognize as his. I drive on into Fairmount and immediately see a big Victorian place on the corner housing the "Rebel Rebel" gift shop. It's reasonably tacky - beginning with the name - but the sign promises free maps, and at five after five the local historical museum will be closed, and it's the only straw I've got.
You should always have such straws. Inside I find David, the proprietor, who is just the sort of James Dean fan who you might expect would open a gift shop/gallery in Fairmount. More, actually: it turns out he's the founder of the James Dean Gallery, and it's his collection that's going to be sold at auction, following the museum's demise. He's tremendously patient with me as I try, and mostly fail, to hide my relative James Dean ignorance. He introduces me to Lenny, with whom he runs the shop, and who hails from Coney Island and seems delighted beyond words to welcome a Brooklynite, even a recent transplant, to his world. David pulls out the xeroxed map of Fairmount and highlights the way to the various sites: the memorial park, the high school where he first performed, the gravesite, the shop where he bought his first motorbike, and the Winslow farm. I ask if I'll be welcome there, and he says yes, and that if I see Marcus outside he'll probably stop to answer any questions I have.
I have to ask him who Marcus is.
And yet: maybe it's because I've driven into 1955. Maybe it's because I've been so warmly greeted on arrival. Maybe it's because it's getting to be magic hour, and maybe it's because I just want it to be. Or maybe it's because I keep looking at pictures of the most beautiful man Hollywood's ever seen, and thinking about his death at 24 and the way he looked at least 10 years older in most of the pictures I'm looking at. Which might have been acting, but is probably just unhappiness. And the way they hounded him, and I'm hounding him still 50 years after his death. I'm sure I'm as honestly moved by all this as anyone else who comes here.
The farm, which is all I had really come to see, and mostly because of the Phil Ochs song, is a lovely place. I don't see Marcus, and that's just as well, I suppose. But on my way back through town I pass the motorcycle shop, and say to myself, well, why not, and stop to take a picture, and to call Rosemarie and tell her where I am and thank her for telling me about the radio report.
As I'm sitting there on the phone, a woman comes from around the back of the shop. She turns out to be Mildred Carter, whose husband Marvin sold James Dean his first motorcycle. Or "Jimmy" as she calls him. He spent a lot of time at the shop, she tells me; didn't get along with the Winslows very well and preferred their company. We spend an hour or so talking in the Indiana evening. She tells me about the time Marvin asked Jimmy to drive over to Marion to pick up some parts and Jimmy didn't know how to get there; he'd never been to Marion in his life. She tells me about the times he'd call from New York to ask for $200 so he could eat. She tells me she's 92 years old, and then shames me by bending over and pressing her palms flat on the ground. She tells me not so many folks come around any more - it's been fifty years, after all. She tells me about the trip they were planning to go see Jimmy in Los Angeles, which they never took. She tells me he didn't have a very happy life.
Finally she sends me on my way, and not the least of her graces is that she acts grateful that I've taken the time to talk with her about her friend Jimmy Dean.
It's beautiful here. It was beautiful in Iowa. I continue to be wholly undiscriminating in that I find almost everything worth stopping for, although not everything (e.g., One and Only Presidential Museums; etc.) worth staying for. When you do a trip like this, you become pretty aware that it's probably the only chance you get, at least until you're in the Winnebago demographic. If Winnebagoes there be by the time I reach that demographic. Maybe the solar-driven Winnebago will have been perfected by then. Which is to say, faced with the choice of, say, do I stop to see the second largest concrete statue in the United States, or press on to Quad Cities, the little voice says "when you gonna be back here again?" I tend to stop.
Or Goshen, Indiana. Which is somewhere just south of Michigan. I pack up the camp at Holland in a light rain, blog a bit back at Lemonjello's, ask Triple-A for directions and get out of town. Stop for a lunch of fried smelt at a greasy spoon where Michigan Highway 40, which I was on, crosses I-94; now I've eaten smelt, and I never have to do that again. (They're a great lakes fish, small like sardines. You eat them whole. Mostly mine taste of fried cornmeal.)
Anyway, Goshen. It's on the way from Holland to Gas City, Indiana, more or less. It has a handsome courthouse seen here. So I stop and take a picture of it. I'm drawn to these 19th-century courthouses because they're places out of history, but that are still serving the same function they did 100 or 150 years ago. People go there to get married, to file land sales, to fight traffic tickets and defend themselves before their peers. And they're great civic architecture at a time when great civic architecture was an announcement that your town or county or state was a place of proud citizens, and not just an extravagant expenditure of the public's money.That they're still in use for these acts, in the age of Homeland Security, means they're not so easy to get into and take pictures of, however. I walk up to the door of the Goshen courthouse, where a very friendly police officer tells me my camera's not going anywhere inside.
I also take a picture of the fountain out front, honoring Poseidon, which makes sense given Goshen's proximity to the ocean.
After a while, back on the road. Stop at a drive-in root beer stand in some nameless town, where three people sitting under the overhang seem puzzled to see an orange Element with New York plates driving up. The root beer is good, but I discover as I drive down Highway 9 that the root beer drive-in is not a novelty in these parts. Every little town seems to have one; at one intersection there are actually competing drive-ins. They still have a few drive-in theaters, too, showing first run features.
Finally, I reach Marion, Indiana - which I had thought was the onetime home of Pete Rose, but that turns out to have been Marion, Illinois - and make the turn to Gas City. I'm going to Gas City because it was the home of the James Dean Gallery, which I heard about from friend Rosemarie when she heard that it was closing. The two of us had shared our regret that we'd missed this example of roadside Americana, but the report did indicate that there were various other sites in the area worth visiting.
I've had in my head this utterly idealized vision of what Gas City will be like - like there will be some portal I'll drive through, and suddenly it will be 1955 again. When I get to Marion and see the endless string of big boxes and Applebee'ses, it occurs to me I may be in for major disappointment. I turn east on US 35, get around a detour at the railroad tracks and realize -
Well, I realize that I have no idea what I'm looking for. I'm greatly relying on good faith and serendipity on this trip, and all in all I think that's the right choice. But it occurs to me that maybe the slightest amount of research on this topic might have been a good idea. It's hot as hell, it's 4:15 in the afternoon and anything worth seeing will be closing soon, and I don't have a clue. And there's nothing in Gas City to indicate where I ought to be headed. (It may not strictly be 1955 here, but it looks like commerce just about stopped then.)Fortunately, Andrew Carnegie gave the good people of Gas City a public library, which is handsome and well-maintained and located right on Main Street. And the very helpful librarian there copies a map out of the phone book and draws me a route around the detour and out the Fairmount road toward the farm where Jim Dean grew up.
Which is not, it turns out, in Gas City. I am quite probably the only person in the world who has traveled to the middle of Indiana specifically to see the Winslow farm and other important locations in the life of James Dean, and yet does not know that these sites are actually located in Fairmount. The James Dean Gallery relocated to just outside Gas City, or more specifically, adjacent to I-65, in order to attract more visitors. (It apparently failed to do so, which led to its closure, which led to an NPR report, which led to my being here, ironically enough.)
So I follow the map down Fairmount Avenue. And suddenly I am not disappointed anymore. Half a mile outside of Gas City I have driven, if not to 1955, to a place that appears to live life much the same way. I pass beautiful farms and a graveyard that, if I were the sort of James Dean fan who knows enough to go to Fairmount, I would recognize as his. I drive on into Fairmount and immediately see a big Victorian place on the corner housing the "Rebel Rebel" gift shop. It's reasonably tacky - beginning with the name - but the sign promises free maps, and at five after five the local historical museum will be closed, and it's the only straw I've got.
You should always have such straws. Inside I find David, the proprietor, who is just the sort of James Dean fan who you might expect would open a gift shop/gallery in Fairmount. More, actually: it turns out he's the founder of the James Dean Gallery, and it's his collection that's going to be sold at auction, following the museum's demise. He's tremendously patient with me as I try, and mostly fail, to hide my relative James Dean ignorance. He introduces me to Lenny, with whom he runs the shop, and who hails from Coney Island and seems delighted beyond words to welcome a Brooklynite, even a recent transplant, to his world. David pulls out the xeroxed map of Fairmount and highlights the way to the various sites: the memorial park, the high school where he first performed, the gravesite, the shop where he bought his first motorbike, and the Winslow farm. I ask if I'll be welcome there, and he says yes, and that if I see Marcus outside he'll probably stop to answer any questions I have.I have to ask him who Marcus is.
And yet: maybe it's because I've driven into 1955. Maybe it's because I've been so warmly greeted on arrival. Maybe it's because it's getting to be magic hour, and maybe it's because I just want it to be. Or maybe it's because I keep looking at pictures of the most beautiful man Hollywood's ever seen, and thinking about his death at 24 and the way he looked at least 10 years older in most of the pictures I'm looking at. Which might have been acting, but is probably just unhappiness. And the way they hounded him, and I'm hounding him still 50 years after his death. I'm sure I'm as honestly moved by all this as anyone else who comes here.
The farm, which is all I had really come to see, and mostly because of the Phil Ochs song, is a lovely place. I don't see Marcus, and that's just as well, I suppose. But on my way back through town I pass the motorcycle shop, and say to myself, well, why not, and stop to take a picture, and to call Rosemarie and tell her where I am and thank her for telling me about the radio report.
As I'm sitting there on the phone, a woman comes from around the back of the shop. She turns out to be Mildred Carter, whose husband Marvin sold James Dean his first motorcycle. Or "Jimmy" as she calls him. He spent a lot of time at the shop, she tells me; didn't get along with the Winslows very well and preferred their company. We spend an hour or so talking in the Indiana evening. She tells me about the time Marvin asked Jimmy to drive over to Marion to pick up some parts and Jimmy didn't know how to get there; he'd never been to Marion in his life. She tells me about the times he'd call from New York to ask for $200 so he could eat. She tells me she's 92 years old, and then shames me by bending over and pressing her palms flat on the ground. She tells me not so many folks come around any more - it's been fifty years, after all. She tells me about the trip they were planning to go see Jimmy in Los Angeles, which they never took. She tells me he didn't have a very happy life.Finally she sends me on my way, and not the least of her graces is that she acts grateful that I've taken the time to talk with her about her friend Jimmy Dean.
