About Indiana: Twelve Mostly Beloved Oddities About Hoosiers

I’ve written a sometimes column at The Moderate Voice, called “Our Hometown,” mostly real news from my hometown and the outlying villages and towns around it. Like the young guy in the wheelchair whose handle grips got caught in the grill of an 18 wheeler and the trucker drove five miles on the interstate with the guy in the wheelchair like a cow catcher on the front of his rig before the police stopped him. Normal things like that.

I grew up in Indiana, in a small town population 600. This is what I can tell you about one of the most/least known places on earth.

1. The Ku Klux Klan began in Indiana, just a few miles from where I grew up. The Klan spread mostly South, East and West from there. If people think that influence is over and gone; they’d be wrong. It has only morphed. It helps to understand a lot about the undercurrents in Indiana if one can imagine that Indiana– for as far North as it is, practically on Canada if Michigan would just move out of the way– for all Indiana’s Northern latitude, it is definitely, in many parts, below the Mason Dixon line. Old Manners. Old Ideas. Sometimes, Old Confederacy. Sometimes Old James, The Crow.

2. The North, but also the middle and the South of Indiana is filled with naturalized citizens and their now grown offspring who have names with nearly no vowels in them: Schmrzky, Rzlyf, Kazmrski, and these are the Poles. There are also thousands of families of Horvats, Nagys, and other Hungarian names. There are hundreds of thousands in the aggregate of Lithuanians, Bulgarians, Slovakians, Serbians, Croats, Estonians, Czechs, Romanians, Transylvanians, Austrians… you name a country in E. Eu or Russia, or Italy or Greece or Germany–or the Netherlands… and they all came to Indiana in the 1800 and 1900s. They are conservatives, often Catholics, sometimes Lutherans or other Protestant groups, and they dont truck with liberal ideas across the board, but also, plenty truck plenty with unions and hard work. And sometimes with big business. They are salt of the earth people…

3. The Irish dug a tunnel under the ocean and it came out in Indiana. There are Manions and O’Bannons and Ryans and Mc’Everybodys all over the place. And Notre Dame, for all its Frenchie name, meaning Our Lady, after the Blessed Mother of Jesus the Christ, is Irish to the core; in values, in loyalties and in sports. If you read the South Bend Tribune yesterday, as I did, you’d see under “Most Read Stories,” only one about Hillary and one about Obama visiting the Hoosiers. All the rest of the list of ‘most read’ are devoted in the main to anything having to do with The Fighting Irish. There are honorable mentions of two cars that hit each other on the highway, and at least one story about the fact that such and such politician is a crook. In Indiana, neither Bloomington IU nor Purdue can top the Irish. The Irish themselves tend to be military conservatives and fiscally somewhat liberal, and social justice liberal depending on how high in corporate they are… but are also Catholic to the bone most often. They bring tons of good will—and sometimes shenanigans, just like any other group, but in their particular ‘brotherhood’ style — often to anywhere they roost.

4. In the 19th and 20th century, also came Blacks from the South in at least two migrations; one via fleeing, and a second one when they came up as free people in droves for the jobs in factory and on farm. They and their offspring tend to be liberal in social justice issues, touchingly willing to go to war, and ultra conservative about gays and traditional marriage. They tend to be for the worker. And unions were built of the bones and blood of blacks and the eastern European. German, Italian and Irish immigrants. Obituaries in Indiana from the old blacks still sometimes read: “She was born from the blessed union of John and Treeva, and Miss Della has gone on now to see her Holy King.” Indiana would be nothing musically without the slide guitar and the R&B and Delta blues and Ledbelly-like folk music the Blacks brought to Indiana with them.

5. Also in the 18th, 19th and 20th century came the Appalachians to Indiana, the hill and holler people. They also came for the jobs. Their way of speaking came into all our language there, and that’s why many of us still have some remnants of a lyric Elizabethan-like English, with betwixt and amongst and whilst. The hill people from the south merged with many of the Appalachians, and many worked the fields and factories. They are often pro-job, and a very loyal people who haven’t always been given a fair shake. They too brought a haunting music, hill songs of the people’s travails, crimes, triumphs and loves.

6. There are also the Amish and the remnants of the Dunkards, Quakers, and several other German groups that are often religiously conservative, but social justice liberal, and self-sufficient. Some do not vote. Some will not serve in war and receive ‘conscientious objector’ status without quarrel. They are some of the most

thoughtful and calm people on the face of the earth. They tend to think in terms of what God would like, rather than what the individual would like. Their political views would follow.

7. There are Korean and Vietnamese family groups that have come to Indiana, often through church groups, but also through intermarriage with G.I.s’. They are sometimes merchants and their children are often educated even though the grandparents and parents might not have had much past high school. They are also a family loyalty emphasis group, and although much smaller in numbers than other groups in Indiana, they are significant as reliable souls and dedicated people.

8. There are many Latino people who have been in the Great Lakes Region for nearly 100 years. They came in several waves when in the 1800s and 1900s, the US government brought thousands of Mexican men in to be laborers in the fields. Gradually, the Mexicans married, and family members came from Mexico to up north. There have been three wholesale deportations and tearing apart of families in the last 100 years in the USA. TO most Americans, it is a hidden part of history. The Mexican Americans who have been able to remain have built homes and schools and are also hard workers, who value education for their children. They now, in the North of Indiana have taken over the formerly old immigrant Hungarian churches so that Masses are sometimes now said in English, Spanish and Hungarian. The Latinos tend also to be pro-labor, serve in war as an honor, are pro-family, often Catholic or Evangelical, and socially conservative. They are the latest group to bear the brunt of opprobrium from some of the people in some of the other groups, but also that whipped up by radio and television hosts, and sometimes those who jeer in the streets. They would tend to vote for who will help them be accorded parity in dignity with others.

9. There are Native American people in Indiana, the Pottawatomie in the north, are a healthy vigorous tribal group. They tend also to be pro-labor, pro environment, pro decency about most everything. They are a small segment, but when they speak, many listen. There are also many mixed blood Native-American/ French for instance, for the French explorers and trappers lived deep down from Canada to Indiana too.

10. Then there’s the Heinz 57 people; a huge part of the Indiana mix. These are people whose ancestry hails often from some combination of British, German, Scot, Welch, French, and more. You’ll find them everywhere, running things, making things, selling things. They are a diverse group, and also, at least at face value, often claim to be conservative in most things, but also progressive in terms of whatever their idea is of ‘progress.’

11. Then there’s the Tribus Basketballus. Hoosiers love basketball as much as they love Notre Dame. Which is like, slightly psychotically. (That’s a small joke, but we don’t’ call basketball season “Hoosier Hysteria” for nothing…) However, Hoosiers can absolutely be counted on to be touched by a middle aged basketball player like Obama, but it wont change their vote unless they like him for the things they think he’s good at. That’s the thing about Hoosiers. They are straight talking, yet also secretive. They’ll tell you the truth of what they think, but they might fib to you about who they’ll vote for. Many think the latter is nobody’s business but their own. Besides, it would all take too long to explain.

12. And if there’s one thing Hoosiers like not to do, its to stand out in the heat with all the mosquitoes and crease-rash explaining why they like or don’t like something. And winter doesn’t change that mood to more loquaciousness either… for we say in winter, talking is twice the work, for it gets so cold in Indiana that when people talk, their words freeze in the air and you have to lug the frozen words into the house and cut them apart and warm them at the fire, to unthaw them before you can every know what anyone said.

You can pretty much count on that being the outcome of the vote in the Indiana primary too. Gonna take a lot of sorting and cutting apart after… to know what/ why everyone voted the way they did

Like we used to say when we were kids at the creek scrying our future plans to cross upriver: the most dangerous time ain’t in the crossing; it’s in the planning.

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CODA
THere are many other groups of people in Indiana, most notably in terms of ‘voting blocks,’ a large student population at aforementioned Universities: Indiana University, Ball State, Purdue and Notre Dame, St Mary’s of the Woods, amongst others. There are also large families of Novatos, Rovattos, Consciglione, Carbones and other surnames from both Sicily and Italy throughout Indiana.