Reading literary theory in the City of Churches

Fort Wayne, Indiana, called itself the Summit City.

The summit of what, I always wanted to know.  Indiana's tallest mole hill?

Indiana isn't flat top to bottom and side to side.  There are high dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan and hills you can actually ski down below Indianapolis.  But it's flat enough around Fort Wayne because the damn city's built on a floodplain.

The early settlers came upon some open land at the confluence of three rivers and said, Look, no Indians!  Let's live here.

Filling sandbags has been a community ritual every spring since.

Summit City, my eye.

Fort Wayne also called itself the City of Churches.  That was far more apt.  Lot of churches in town.  In fact, you could stand on just about any street corner downtown, pick up a rock, close your eyes, spin yourself around, and then let the rock fly in any direction and you could count on breaking a stained glass window or beaning a minister on his doorstep.

The comedian Mark Russell came to town once and told of opening his curtains in his hotel room that morning, looking out, seeing all the churches below, and dropping immediately to his knees and saying to God, "Ok, I get the message!"

I don't know.  Probably Fort Wayne had no more churches than any other Midwestern city its size.  But downtown there were only two high-rises, neither one approaching skyscraper, and there were, as I said, no hills---no damn summits---so the skyline was dominated by spires and steeples.

So.  The City of Churches.

City of churchgoers too.   (Anyone who's been to Europe knows that one doesn't always follow the other.)  People in town went to church and they let you know about it.

I wouldn't say folks were obnoxious about it.  I can't recall a whole lot of proselytizing.   JAY-sus didn't figure in everybody's conversations.  Neither did Jesus.  God did though.  But not as regularly as Bobby Knight.

If you'd asked me what the religion of most Hoosiers was back then I'd have had to pause a moment to decide between Christianity and basketball.

But people talked about their faith more casually and openly than did people anywhere else I'd lived before and when they got on a moral high-horse, as people everywhere I've ever lived are prone to do, God and what the Bible says were brought into it with far more frequency than I was used to hearing.

This was the Reagan-Bush the First era.  The Religious Right was on the rise.  There were mega-churches forming in the subdivisions blossoming out in the cornfields outside of town.  Right Wing Christians made noise and made their presence felt, mostly by getting themselves elected to school boards and then embarrassing their communities with their views on teaching "science" and not allowing the children to celebrate Halloween.

Indiana was a pretty solidly Republican state.  But generally I'd say people's religion was more conservative than their politics.   That's misleading, though, on both counts, politics and religion.

The most famous Hoosier politician at the moment was Dan Quayle.  Both senators were Republicans and so was the governor.  Fort Wayne had a Democratic mayor when we moved there, but he was replaced in short order by a Republican, although that might have had something to do with the Democrat's..um..ethical lapses rather than either man's party affiliation.

But Indiana had still sent Birch Bayh to the Senate once upon a time.  Evan Bayh's star was on the rise.  And Richard Luger was, until the Bush Leaguers neutered him, the kind of Republican Democrats didn't have to apologize for voting for.  He once wrote me a letter complimenting me on an op-ed piece I wrote for the newspaper.  Didn't make me vote for him next time out, but I wouldn't have said I'm sorry if I had.

As for religious conservativism...

The Presbyterian church downtown was across from the women's clinic.  Operation Rescue regularly staged some of their barely-contained near-riots out front, blocking the street between the church and the clinic.  Women who had appointments at the clinic that day waited with their escorts in the church.

That was one kind of sanctuary.  The other kind, the Sanctuary Movement that sponsored refugees from the Reaganites' quasi-war in Central America had several local churches affiliated with it.

Indiana was a mixed bag.  It had more than its share of conservatives, ultra-conservatives, Right Wingers, and die-hard John Birchers.  There was a town in the southern half of the state whose main claim to fame was that it had the highest per capita membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the country!

But it had plenty of Democrats, plenty of Liberals, and even plenty of that dying breed, Liberal Republicans, and they could often get it together enough to cancel the conservatives out.

What's more, many of the people who thought of themselves as conservatives were only that way when they went to the polls to vote Republican.  In their attitudes about how to live their own lives, what they expected from their public schools, the way they expected their local communities to function, they were fairly progressive.

And my main evidence for this at the time was the Allen County Public Library system, particularly the main branch in downtown Fort Wayne, which was the best library I have ever had the privilege of owing massive overdue fines.

I think I still owe them a few bucks.

The reason I owed them so much was simple.  They had a lot of books I wanted to read.

If they didn't have a particular book I wanted to read the librarians happily ordered it for me.

Thanks to me the library's collection includes at least a couple dozen obscure works of literary criticism, the collections of who knows how many forgotten poets, and a shelf's worth of novels nobody but I and the authors' families ever read.

The library had a fantastic genealogy department and an amazing collection of rare books.  It was there that I met Garry Wills and Arthur Schlesinger, among other well-known authors and public figures who came to speak and read there.

I practically lived at that library.  I would have lived there if they'd served food.

Which they now do.

Nancy Nall, who has put Indiana behind her too, reports that after a massive rebuilding and remodeling, the library has gotten even better:

The plan called for the abandonment of one block of Webster Street, even though the building wasn’t going to grow significantly in that direction. Instead they built a wide plaza at the main entry, an outdoor gathering place suitable for everything from political speechmaking to lolling with a good book. (I’m assuming there’ll be some benches there once the weather turns.) And that’s apart from the other public spaces within — a theater, meeting rooms, acres of study tables and computer work stations...

The new children’s section is vast, with several play areas and, well, a big upgrade in the aquarium department — two semicircles of beautiful saltwater tanks, along with a tubular bubble display that drives the toddlers wild with delight...

Plus there's a used bookstore and a cafe!

Nance says that thinking about the renovated library makes her pea-green with envy.  Me too.

Every state in the union is a mixed bag.  There are shards of Cambridge, Massachusetts all over the South and Midwest, patches of Mississippi and Alabama in Southern California.  It's mainly due to settlement patterns.  If you want to find the bluest parts of any state, look along the coasts and on the riverbanks.  Liberalism has always followed the waterways.  Northern Indiana tends to be more liberal than the southern half of the state, because the top part was settled by New Englanders and German immigrants coming in on the Wabash Canal, while the southern counties were settled by poor Scotch-Irish dirt farmers from Kentucky and points below.

But I'm describing a tendency and not a rule.

At any rate, I wasn't surprised when I learned, via Shakespeare's Sister, a pure product of Indiana and still a reluctant Hoosier in geographic fact if not in spirit, that a museum devoted to Creationism will be opening in Ligonier, Indiana.

Sorry.  Creation "science."

PZ Myers titled his post on the news State of Shame: Indiana.

I think that's unfair.

As described by the museum's hopeful founders the place sounds more glamorous and enticing than it will probably turn out to be.  I expect it will be just another one of the thousands of amateur roadside carnivals that dot the highways all across the country, the kind of place Charles Kuralt used to find and report on as another example of the quiet, creative, interesting, and even lovable ways the pure products of America find to go crazy.

I doubt it will stay in business long.  Tourists don't flock to Ligonier and I don't think the museum will change that. Cars full of curious Christians taking the scenic route between Indianapolis and Flint, Michigan might wander over now and then, enough to keep the curators looking expectantly at the doors all day, but it probably won't be long before it turns into one more decaying monument to the overly optimistic and cockeyed American entrepreneurial spirit.

If I build it, someone's always thinking, they will come.  But if we do, we never do in sufficient numbers, and we never come back.

Such a museum fits into the Indiana landscape of my memory, right alongside the church we used to pass on Route 30 when we were driving to Chicago which had a two-story plate glass facade filled with an eight-foot tall painted statue of David facing off against a fifteen-foot Goliath.

On the same road was Valparaiso University and a completely self-serve, coin-operated adult book store and novelty shop.  The museum will be as typically Indianan as the church and the college and the novelty shop were as typically Indianan, which is to say as typically Midwestern and as typically American.

I don't see how Indiana will have anything to be particularly ashamed of, certainly not when you consider that the state is home to three of the finest universities in the country, Indiana, Purdue, and Notre Dame.

And certainly not when you consider the Allen County Public Library.

I'm telling you, when I finally get back out there to visit Shakes and Mr Shakes, I'm dragging them to Ligonier to visit the museum.

But not before we go to Fort Wayne to see the library.

First thing, though, before we hit either place, I want to go someplace I never got to when we were living out there.

The Auburn Cord Dusenberg Museum.

Now that's America!

Comments

[OutOfContext]

I got confused for a moment as I read this. Confused because those of us in the Cincinnati area are eagerly awaiting the opening of our very own Creation Museum in June. This one, the brainchild of creation superstar Ken Ham, makes the Indiana museum look like a high school (creation science fair. I highly recommend his "Answers" radio spots.

Though I am usually loathe to link to my own haphazardly written posts, there are 45 Churches within three miles of my home.

[Marcus]

Lance, did you ever make it to French Lick? I spent 7 years in grad school in Bloomington, though without a car, so all I ever saw of Indiana was the road between B'tn and the Indy airport. The,n spring break of my last year, I rented a car and drove around the southern half of the state. My fevered imaginings were nothing compared to the reality. French Lick was the high point, without a doubt. Pluto Water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_Water.

As one of my classmates use to joke, "French Lick isn't as interesting as it sounds."

[MoXmas]

Isn't Ligonier near the really good Amish Restaurants on the long drive between South Bend and Fort Wayne? I can't see any Creation Museum competing with a slice of chocolate pie with raspberry compote -- the best slice of pie I have ever had, so good that even typing the words produces a taste memory so intense that I am wiping drool from the corners of my mouth.

One of the great things about being from Indiana is how fun it is to aggressively defend the qualities of a place you no longer want to live. (Though I would move to Bloomington in a heartbeat.)

[Jennifer]

"One of the great things about being from Indiana is how fun it is to aggressively defend the qualities of a place you no longer want to live. (Though I would move to Bloomington in a heartbeat.)"

My thoughts exactly! I always say it was a great place to grow up and a great place to leave. I don't want to live there anymore, but I can think of many qualities/pros, I'd defend, Bloomington being one.

[Dan Thue]

from fort wayne:
The new Library is the BEST; i lived in Lansing, MI for 15 years before moving down here, and this town's library system was always as good as lansing's, which is pretty good, too.
And you say you never went to ACD museum? Dumbass. If you have any interest in cars and/or automotive history whatsoever, you will really, really enjoy it. Bring the kids.

[Kevin Wolf]

Wow. I've never set foot in the state but now I think I'd visit. I'd just never really thought about it.

I'd never heard of French Lick until I moved to Boston - the connection being it's Larry Bird's hometown.

The car museum sounds like a Dussie (sorry) and I'd gladly visit it. BTW, if you ever find yourself near Detroit, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn is without doubt one of the best museums I've ever seen - sort of a Smithsonian of managable size.

[Nancy Nall]

The car museum IS a Dussie, although most spell it "doozy" and once, in the morning paper, someone went strict constructionist and tried "deusy." I did a story on the ACD Festival a few years ago. Interviewed a Cord owner from out west, who was stopped for speeding en route, in Missouri. He'd been going 80something. The cop was writing him up when he got out of the car, walked back to the cruiser -- bad thing to do in any case -- and asked the trooper to round it up to an even 100. He'd pay the extra fine, he didn't care, but, he told the cop, "It sure would be nice to display that ticket on the windshield at the festival, show people this 70-year-old car really can fly." The cop told him to get out of Missouri.

[Claire]

Lance, this is a great post and made me a little misty for my days in the Hoosier state.

I got to hear Birch Bayh speak once at a Monroe County Democrats function I attended with an ex-boyfriend. He rambled a bit, but it was great.

[Mr. X]

Northern Indiana tends to be more liberal than the southern half of the state, because the top part was settled by New Englanders and German immigrants coming in on the Wabash Canal, while the southern counties were settled by poor Scotch-Irish dirt farmers from Kentucky and points below.

Another way of thinking about it is Great Lakes vs. Ohio River Valley. I live in Illinois, and after the '04 elections I was thinking that a truer political division than red/blue states, at least east of the Mississippi, could be had simply by extending the Mason-Dixon line west to the Mississippi. You'd separate Cleveland (home of the Rock and Roll Museum) from Cincinnati (which prosecuted the museum that exhibited Robert Mapplethorpe's work), and it would pass just south of Indianapolis and Springfield, Illinois. Before '04, I might have extended that line all the way west to the Missouri, to include Minnesota and Iowa, but now I dunno.

Of course, that's still oversimplifying things. George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, was born in my hometown of Bloomington, IL, and Dennis Hastert's Congressional district is well above the extended Mason-Dixon.

[OutOfContext]

Kevin's right about the Ford Museum. I'm not a big fan of historical costume villages, but Greenfield Village is a great one. When I was there a few years back I saw a 19th century rules baseball game which was really nice and learned more about the silkworm than I ever expected to know. Big thumbs up.

[Dave the H.]

Didn't the Klu Klux Klan get started in southern Indiana?

(Not in a southern state, as many might expect.)

[rosa salter rodriguez]

hi there-- where are you now? and do you have any idea where the phrase city of churches was first used or how i could find out?