A Wholesome Family Weekend

I was in Indiana last weekend to visit my mother and sister, and got overloaded with "wholesome" family activities.  Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in some physique-watching.

Saturday:

We arrived in Indiana at 5:00 pm, picked up my sister and brother-in-law, and drove to Edinburgh, in the south.

Edinburgh is known for the Exit 76 Antique Mall, a gigantic warehouse with over 900 dealer booths -- but not much of interest.  I bought two books and an old coca-cola sign.











 Not many attractive men in the mall itself,but the guy at the checkout had a stunningly handsome face.  I was the first person that day to identify his Popeye t-shirt.

After visiting the cemetery to see my father's grave, we had dinner at the Cracker Barrel, a fundamentalist restaurant that fetishizes the "good old days."  While you're waiting for your table, you browse in a store of fundamentalists bric-a-brac, like cds of gospel music and t-shirts saying "I'm going to heaven."  This tall stringbean with brillo hair was chatting up a girl in a secluded corner by the angel costumes.

Our waiter was another tall stringbean with brillo hair -- the boss must have a thing for them.

On to the Quality Inn, a 2-star motel where scary-looking guys smoke cigarettes in the parking lot.  It's on Lover's Lane, next to some other 2-star motels to cater to the hoardes of people who visit small-town Indiana.

Sunday

Breakfast at the Waffle House, where our waiter's name was Buttercup.

Next stop: gas station, where the cute Caleb was on duty.

I had to snap this guy getting gas.  Not much to look at, but he was herding a wife and five kids, all under five years old.  His penis has been very busy.














Next we visited my elderly, conservative, Trump-loving, gun control-hating mother, who insisted that we go to church with her -- Nazarene church, ugh!  About 10 people in the congregation, all over 100.

Then we met up with my sister and brother-in-law again for lunch -- apparently Nazarenes have loosened their restrictions on eating out on Sunday.  Ann's Restaurant, a staple since 1952.

This studly blond wasn't our waiter, but I managed to get a shot of him.

A nuclear family: husband, wife, two young kids.  The husband looks like he could be the waiter's cousin.

On Sunday afternoon my sister and brother-in-law took us to the Johnson County Fair.  Apparently the Nazarenes have loosened their restrictions on going to "fairs, festivals, circuses, carnivals, and the like."
















Monday

On Monday morning, we had breakfast at Denny's.  That's right, Denny's.

This bearded guy in a suit was sitting next to a guy who wasn't in a suit, across the table from an elderly male-female couple.  I wondered if he was gay, eating with his boyfriend.

After visiting my mother again, we were on our own for the day, so we tried browsing in the antique shops in town.  But every single one of them is closed on Mondays.  Every single one!

Well, how about the museums up in Indianapolis, 45 miles away?











Every single one of them is closed on Monday.  What do they expect tourists to do?

We found a YMCA to work out.  Another cute brillo-head.  There must be a whole family of them around southern Indiana.

In the afternoon we spent 6 hours at the Works, a sex club in Indianapolis.

But that's a story for Tales of West Hollywood.  See: "Six Hours at a Sex Club."

The Beefcake Bonanza of Wawasee

I was unable to find any beefcake photos from Macomb, Illinois, but one of my searches revealed an embarrassment of riches for someplace called Wawasee.

1. Wrestling, swimming, track, miscellaneous athletes  doing pushups on balls.

2. Google images, Facebook, twitter, tumblr, instagram, team members' personal web pages.

3. Individuals, pairs, and teams.

4. An action shot with an extra-tight singlet and straining muscles.

5. Someone's memory of a day on the lake a generation ago.

6. A Facebook post from 2013 wondering why there is no powerlifting team in Wawasee, and vowing to start one.

Afte last night's deprivation in beefcake, I'm going to keep going.   I won't even stop at 10.


Where is this Wawasee?  I'm guessing Wisconsin.

More after the break

The Top 10 Hunks of "Stranger Things," Season 3, Plus Some of the Plot

The tv series Stranger Things, now in its third season, is an homage to 1980s Goonies movies, with monster-fighting kids in stereotypic small-town Indiana. I watched some of the first season, but couldn't figure out what was going on -- it was a mishmash of psychic powers, alternate worlds, missing children, and parents with histrionic backstories.

So I am starting Season 3, Episode 1 fresh,  mostly looking for gay characters and beefcake, but also trying, once again, to figure out the painfully interrelated characters and endless back stories in this monsterized Peyton Place.

Prelude: A top-secret underground lab in the old Soviet Union, where scientists are trying to break on through to the other side.  When they finally manage to blast a crack in the wall, something slithery and horrible comes out and kills them, then goes back in.  The experiment was a failure.  "You have one year!" Colonel Klink growls.

1. In stereotypic small-town Indiana, Sheriff Hopper (David Harbour, top photo) is annoyed about his daughter and another girl kissing.

A lesbian couple!  Score! When they pull back, I find that they're not lesbians after all, but it's still cool that they're so gender-atypical.  The more masculine one is the girl, El (Millie Bobby Brown), and the more feminine one is:

2. Mike (Finn Wolfhard).

Great name, although he looks less like a Wolf Hard than anyone I can imagine.

Sheriff Harper doesn't want his masculine daughter having sex with a feminine boy, or anyone, for that matter, so he asks advice of Joyce (Wynona Ryder), his old girlfriend, who runs a local drug store that has fallen on bad times since the opening of the mall.

Joyce suggests a heart-to-heart talk; but when the Sheriff tries the talk, the teens laugh at him, so he drags Mike out to his truck and threatens to kill him.

3. Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) is at the new mall with his girlfriend Max and another feminine boy, Will (who looks like Mike's brother but isn't).  Finally Mike and El show up, apologizing for being late -- the sex took longer than they expected.

They are sneaked into the movie Day of the Dead by:

4. Steve (Joe Keery), the ex-boyfriend of Nancy (Mike's older sister), who works at a horrible ice cream place in the mall.

Afterwards Steve tries to pick up every female customer in sight, but usually fails.  His coworker Robin is keeping a tally (spoiler alert: Robin turns out to be a lesbian.)

By the way, Nancy (Steve's ex, Mike's older sister) is now dating:

5. Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), the older  brother of the androgynous Will, who was waiting at the mall with Lucas and Max.

Both Jonathan and Will, by the way, are sons of Joyce, the ex-girlfriend of Sheriff Hopper who works at the drugstore downtown.

Jonathan sneaks Nancy (Mike's older sister) out of the bedroom, and she goes to work at a horrible job bringing hamburgers to the local newspaper staff and having them make fun of her ideas.

Turns out that Mom Joyce is aware of Jonathan's sexploits, and fully approves.  His heterosexuality established, she turns her attention to:

6. Will (Noah Schnapp). the androgynous boy who looks like Mike's brother but isn't.  "You'll meet a girl someday, yada yada yada."

 "I'm not gonna fall in love!" he exclaims.  So he's either asexual/ aromantic, or he means "with a girl," and he's gay.

Spoiler alert: later on, during a fight, Mike exclaims that Will doesn't like girls, and he gets all upset.  But he doesn't express any interest in boys or girls this season.  Maybe the writers are ok with lesbians but skittish about gay men.

After Joyce's "what girl do you like?" interrogation, Will meets up with his friends (El, Mike, Max, and Lucas), where they use El's magical powers to arrange a welcome-home surprise party for:






7. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), who has been away at summer camp. He got a girlfriend there, so instead of doing something fun, he insists that they all trek to a mountaintop to install a makeshift radio tower, so he can call her via short wave (what, no telephones in Utah?)

There's no answer.  They hang out all afternoon, abandoning him one by one, until he's all alone.  Then finally he gets a message -- but it's in Russian!

Call back to the first scene.  He's getting transmissions from the Soviet lab where they had "one year" to break through to wherever the slithery thing is from.

8. That night, Joyce, having rejected Sheriff Hopper's dinner invitation, is eating microwaved lasagna and peas and watching Cheers.  All of a sudden Sean Astin is sitting next to her, laughing at Cheers and asking whether  Sam and Diane (the "will they or won't they" couple) will ever get together.  Apparently this is a metaphor for Joyce, who has been rejecting Sheriff Hopper for quite some time.  But I have no idea what Sean Astin was doing there.

9. Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), the older brother of Max (one of Mike's friends, the girl who is dating Caleb) works as a lifeguard, where lots of middle-aged women are lusting after him.

He tries to pick up Karen Wheeler, the mother of Nancy and Mike.  Initially she resists, probably due to his horrible 1980s double-entendre talk: "I could give you a...private lesson...I know some...moves...the breast stroke...."  But then she agrees. That night she gets dolled up, and leaves her husband and youngest child asleep on the couch to head out for her hookup.

On the way to the hookup, Billy hits something slithery that drags him into an old abandoned iron mill.  Call back to the Russian blasting experiment?

That's all for this episode, but see how nicely everyone is interconnected?

10. To get to 10, I had to go to Episode 2, where Grigori (Andrey Ivchenko) shows up, a Russian agent assigned to beat up Sheriff Hopper and otherwise cause mischief.

I don't think I'll be watching.

My grade: B for the gender-atypical and queer characters, D for the plot.

Auburn, Indiana: Beefcake Boys and the Little Brown House

The nearest big city to my parents' home town is Auburn, Indiana, population 13,000 (doubled since I was a kid), known for its own now-defunct automobile manufacturer (1900-1937), a bank robbery by John Dillinger (1933), and humorist Will Cuppy (1884-1949), who published The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody.  He never married; maybe he was gay.

Auburn was also home to my Aunt Lynn and Uncle Gus, whose two kids were considerably younger than me, so I was often saddled with the job of "entertaining them"while the grown-ups gossipped. They lived one block from a park and six blocks from another park, but nowhere near anything fun; the nearest bookstore was in Fort Wayne, and the only museum in town was a museum of cars.

But the park six blocks away had one advantage: the Brown House, which had been there since my parents were kids and is still there today.  A frozen custard with a maraschino cherry on top!  Why hasn't that idea caught on?

Looking for Auburn beefcake, I searched under "Auburn High School." There are 14 in the U.S., plus a university.

This wrestler is from a Facebook page devoted to "Auburn High School Wrestlers."  It doesn't state which one.





















This photo is of Boylan Catholic Boy School Swimming Vs. Auburn  High School, Rockford, 2016, copyright Paul Johansen.  Prints available on his website.

Why so many Auburns?  It just means "reddish brown." Auburn, Indiana is named after the Auburn in the poem "The Deserted Village" (1770) by Oliver Goldsmith, which is depopulated as residents move to the nearest big city, or to America:

Far different there from all that charmed before
The various terrors of that horrid shore;
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray,
And fiercely shed intolerable day

Hey, geniuses, Goldsmith thinks America is horrid.

Surprise -- the high school in Auburn, Indiana is actually named Dekalb, after the County.

But there are a dozen Delkalb High Schools in the U.S., including two in Indiana.

These Speedo-wearing guys are from the Sports DeKalb and Dynamo Water Polo Club, which partnered for the 2018 Power Bar Cup in Atlanta.

This guy broke the York Athletic Pool Record for the backstroke "previously held by Daniel H__ of Dekalb."

I don't know which Dekalb, or which Auburn.

But I know that there is only one Brown House in the world, and it's still serving frozen custard with a maraschino cherry on top.

Let's Go to Kokomo

I've been bouncing around Indiana all my life, but I've never been to Kokomo.  Never had a reason to.  Didn't even know much about it except for that Beach Boys song, which is actually about a mythical atoll in the Florida Keys

Then I saw this photo.  Gulp.

In front of God and everybody?

Whoa.

But anything of interest above the belt in Kokomo?

Well, there's the Kokomo High School wrestlers posing with biceps.
















And the annual Kokomo Strongman Competition.

Ok, so off we go to Kokomo.

It's on the Wildcat River about 60 miles north of Indianapolis, a town of 45,000 known for auto manufacturing.  Somewhat grim:

Violent crime rate 722 per 100,000 (more than double the national average)
20% of the population under the poverty level
Median household income 30% below the national average

Former hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity, the home of Ryan White, the teenager who contracted AIDS in the 1980s and had to leave town with his family after facing discrimination and death threats. 

Still a lot of hate in town.  In October 2017, Solid Rock Ministries featured an Islamophobic conference.

This is heavy Trump country, and heavily fundamentalist (5 fundamentalist schools in town).

But there are some amenities.  The Howard County Museum is housed in the Seiberling Mansion.

The home of the guy who invented stainless steel is also a Kokomo museum.

In addition to joints named Hawg Heaven and Jamies Soda Fountain (no apostrophe), there's at least one Thai restaurant.

And Kokomo is slowly moving into the 21st century.  There's a Kokomo Pride group (founded in 2013) , a gay-straight alliance at Indiana University Kokomo (found 2015), and a gay youth group (founded in 2016).

The Mystery of LaGrange

My father was born in LaGrange County, Indiana, in the far north of the state, on the Michigan border.  When he was five years old, he was adopted by the Davis family and moved to Garrett.  He didn't remember anything about LaGrange County, and we never visited.  It was a cipher, a mysterious spot on the map, the Ultima Thule of my cosmology.

Recently we have been driving through the county on the Indiana Toll Road en route to visits to New York.  You can't see anything but trees and marshland, but still, the passing town names give me a little frisson of magic, and I always want to stop and take a look.

1. Shipshewana. LaGrange County is Amish country, and Shipshewana their capital, with the famous Menno-Hof cultural center and museum, the Millers Buggy Line Company, a huge auction and flea market, and a dozen Amish-style restaurants (plus El Zorito, Wanna-Cup, and East of Chicago Pizza).

2. Howe, home of the Howe Military Academy, founded 1884, closing at the end of the 2019 school year. 

There's a story about Howe on Tales of West Hollywood.

3. Wolcottville, year round population 1,000, double in the summer, when the ultra-rich of Chicago retreat to their lakeside "cottages."  Here's one for sale for a mere $438,000. 

Home of my fourth cousin Justine, one of the McCormicks (McCormick Place, McCormick Theological Seminary, etc).  There's a good story about her, and her grandson Michael, on Tales of West Hollywood.

This is actually the swim team of Angola High School, the next county over.  Is the guy second from the right like 40 years old?

4. LaGrange, the biggest town in the county, population 2,600, with a lot of historic buildings and old WPA murals.  Lakeland High, home of the Lakers, offers wrestling, football, cross-country, and golf, but no swimming.  No Gay-Straight Alliance.

5. Valentine, a collection of farmhouses, a long-abandoned church, and an abandoned post office about 5 miles south of LaGrange.  I can't find the house where my grandfather and father were born, but all I had to go on was a single photo.

Another swim team from the next county over.



What, precisely is a Grange?

Turns out to be a country home with farm buildings attached to it, so a farmhouse.   It derives from the Middle English grange, "barn," through Old French to the Latin granum, grain.

The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry is a farmer society, started in 1867.  There are still 160,000 members.  Its hundreds of Grange Halls are like private clubs for farmers.

LaGrange County, Indiana was actually named after the home of the Marquis de Lafayette. the Chateau de La Grange.

The Beefcake of My Home Town

My parents grew up in Garrett, Indiana, a small town in the northeastern corner of the state, near the borders of Michigan and Ohio.  I was born there, and if my father hadn't been transferred, I might have grown up there. 

Seeing my grandparents and uncles and aunts in real time, not just on holidays.

Going to school with my cousin Buster.

Going to the drive-in theater next to the Blue Moon frozen custard stand. 

Buying comic books at Manuel's Newsstand instead of Schneider's Drug Store. 

Graduating from Garrett High School, home of the Railroaders.

It sounds idyllic for a little kid, but I don't think it would have been optimal by the time I hit high school.  The Quad Cities were conservative and homophobic enough, but at least they had a bookstore, a museum, two gay bars, and a bit of racial diversity.  Garrett is 99% white, and there is literally nothing there except bars, banks, and clothing stores.  And churches.

The best restaurants in town are Shorty's Steakhouse and Timmy's Pizza and Barbecue.  Oh, and the Blue Moon is still standing after over 70 years (My parents went there when they were in high school).

Garrett has a Museum of Art, which opened in 2008 in the old State Bank building.  A little late for my childhood.

For amenities like gay bars, you have to drive 30 miles to Fort Wayne, which would have been unfeasible for me in high school.

I was looking for Garrett beefcake, but there isn't a lot. The top photo is a wrestler from East Noble County High in Kendallville, about 20 miles away.

Here's the cross-country team.

More East Noble Knights. My brother was born in Kendallville.  Maybe we could have lived there instead.

East Noble High swim team.

A bodybuilder, but I think Garrett is his name,

I think this wrestler is from South Garrett County, Maryland.