COMING OF AGE IN INDIANA!

On September 30, 1955 James Dean was killed in an automobile crash in Central California. I wrote the following piece in 1996. It is my most widely circulated writing and is also my personal favorite. I tried to capture the transition, the coming of age of my generation. I have also included some notes of the times. I hope you enjoy this little piece of history.

Custer’s Last Stand

A neon drive-in casts long shadows across a vast parking lot as the sun drops behind a distant hill. A large neon sign buzzes in the foreground. . . Mel’s Drive-In, while in the background, “Rock Around The Clock” blares from the radio of a beautiful decked and channeled, white with red trim, tuck-and rolled ‘58 Chevy Impala that glides into the drive-in.

The opening scene in American Graffiti from the original script.

We lived American Graffiti in Marion, Indiana -- my home town. Custer’s Last Stand was the Mel’s Drive-In of “Marion Graffiti”. I imagine every teenager of the fifties and early sixties had a Mel’s Drive-In or a Custer’s Last Stand in their town that evokes the same wonderful memories of those by-gone innocent days of a high school summer. Custer’s Last Stand was a classic 1950’s drive-in restaurant on the by-pass. It was Bob Custer’s place. It was our place. It was the gathering place on those warm Indiana nights

A driver’s license and a car were the only passports needed to participate in the rituals of youth at Custer’s Last Stand. Transportation came in a variety of shapes, sizes and ownership. It might be a friend’s car, your family car, or if you were lucky, your own car. I was one of the lucky ones.

My car looked like it might belong to a grandma -- actually it was a car formerly owned by a grandma -- mine. It was a 1949 four-door Ford sedan, battleship gray in color, with a straight stick. The closest thing to customizing it was a quick-turn knob I attached to the steering wheel. My car was hardly a symbol of cool, but it was all mine.

Some kids borrowed their family’s car to cruise Custer’s. Borrowing the family car was the low end of cool, but it did represent a degree of independence and freedom. Girls were often the prime borrowers of their families’ cars, since the boys often provided their transportation. Girls didn’t have to be cool. They were the object of cool.

Some cars circled round and round -- some parked. Circling Custer’s Last Stand was a little like the Indians circling General Custer and his troops at Little Bighorn. Cars were backed into parking places on the back row in order to have a prime view of the parade of teenage freedom. The stars of the parade were the half-finished customized ‘49 Mercs with gray primer, lowered rear-ends, chopped tops, de-chromed and leaded in, dual exhausts, smooth custom mufflers rumbling, radios blaring out the sounds of the fifties and drivers’ left arms cocked in open windows. Customized cars were cool. Cruisin’ Custer’s was cool.

If we had any money, we’d punch the call button on the speaker and wait to hear the familiar, “May I take your order please?” “I’ll have an order of fries, double ketchup and a Coke”. A car-hop, an auto waitress, would bring the order to the car and carefully (most of the time) attach the tray to the door. It was the haute cuisine of the times. Fries and a Coke were cool.

Custer’s Last Stand was more than fries and a Coke. Custer’s was a place to see and be seen. If you weren’t seen, you were missed. It was a place for cruisin’ and buzzin’ and parkin’, squealin’ tires a little, dates and sittin’ close, hangin’ with the guys and checkin’ out the chicks. It was a gathering place, and a place for making plans. It was a place to be together and ask the “whys” of the deaths of our friends, Larry and Jim. They peeled out of Custer’s one warm summer night and got themselves killed. Our plans didn’t include tragedies, but for the first time we caught a glimpse of our mortality, but it didn’t last long. Custer’s was the center of our universe, and we were immortal. Custer’s was the coolest.

We leaned on the fenders wearing the styles of the times, ducktails, pegged pants, senior cords, saddle shoes, white bucks and penny loafers; smokin’ cigarettes, eatin’ fries, drinkin’ Cokes and talkin’ ‘bout “stuff”. It was a James Dean thing. He was our icon of cool, wearing his red jacket with the collar turned up and his teenage frustrations out front. He was our Rebel without a Cause. James Dean had been born in Marion, just like us, and we felt he was our kindred spirit, expressing our inner most thoughts and feelings as the teenagers of the times. James Dean was cool.

James Dean was killed in a high-speed car crash, September 30, 1955. It was the day our music died. I was just starting college and sitting in my dorm room when I learned the tragic news. I felt the deep shock you feel when a famous person you like and can relate to meets a too soon death. His death served as a symbol of a coming of age, the carefree days of Custer’s were gone forever, and the rest of my life was beginning. It was my personal Custer’s Last Stand.

Custer’s Last Stand was eventually torn down and replaced by a McDonald’s.


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Footnotes:

1. Although Colonel Robert (Bob) Custer was the director of the Indiana Selective Service Commission, he is remembered by generations of Marion teenagers as the man who built and owned Custer’s Last Stand., the “ultimate drive-in on the by-pass” From its opening day in 1947 until it was torn down in the 70s to make room for the North Park Mall, and a McDonalds, it was the spot to see and be seen as a teenager in Marion. “C’mon, let’s buzz Custer’s.

2. American Graffiti was probably the best movie ever made depicting life of a teenager in the fifties and early sixties -- my era. Rebel Without a Cause was James Dean’s second of three pictures he made in his short lifetime, and I think his best.. His first picture was East Of Eden. When it was announced that East of Eden was coming to the Indiana Theater in Marion, they passed out buttons saying, “Dean Must Be Seen”. His third and last picture was Giant. Just after completing his work on the picture, he was killed in an automobile accident near Paso Robles, California on September 30, 1955, driving his Porsche to a sport’s car race, one of his many passions.

3. James Dean was indeed born in Marion, Indiana in an apartment on Fourth Street and raised in Fairmount, a little town ten miles South of Marion. He is buried in Fairmount next to his mother. There is a museum in his honor in Fairmount, as well as a James Dean Festival held every year, where his legions of fans (est. 30,000 annually) still pay homage to this icon of the fifties. To the younger generation of Fairmount, it is an old person’s get-together and rather thought by them to be a little silly. I wonder when their generation will make pilgrimages to the grave sight of one of their teenage idols. It’s a thing all generations do. From Dean to Elvis to Kurt Cobain.

4. I believe I saw James Dean in Marion one evening in Nick’s Chili Bowl restaurant in Marion. My Dad, brother and I were seated at a booth at Nick’s one evening in the late fall. A small group of three young men came in. My Dad thought it was James Dean, and I thought there was certainly a resemblance. He was wearing an overcoat, which was something he wore in some of his publicity photos. If James Dean was visiting home, Nick’s would be a place he might have come (not much to do in Marion). There is a note in his biography that he was at home about that time with a photographer friend. I have no way of knowing for sure, but for now I’ll just say, “Dean Was Seen.”

5. Larry Ellis and Jim Bonge were killed in an automobile accident. It was the first time we experienced the deaths of friends. I think of that tragedy every time I read of a similar accident involving teenagers such as Larry and Jim. It is a recurring event in every generation. Through their mortality they attain immortality in the memories of their classmates.

6. The character, Wolfman Jack in American Graffiti was a real disc jockey. I used to hear him broadcast from XTRA, a powerful mega-watt radio station located across the boarder in Tijuana, Mexico. He was a mystery man for many years. Before American Graffiti, because of his voice and style, some people thought he was black. He died in 1995.

7. In June, 1996 the U.S. Postal Service issued a James Dean stamp. Forty-six years after his death, he is still remembered on a large scale -- a true American icon. As with most human icons, he could also be a real immature jerk. But he was a true artist -- a very complicated individual. It must be remembered that he was only twenty-four when he was killed.

March, 1996

Have a nice day!

Sam