Bits’n’Pieces

Welcome back to Bits’n’Pieces, a weekly look at some of the interesting, funny, comical and sometimes outright weird things that happen in and around Montgomery County. Have something you think should go into Bits? E-mail it to us at [email protected], won’t you please?

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CAN YOU believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow? Us neither!

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ALONG THOSE lines, everyone here at the worldwide HQ of your favorite Montgomery County daily want to wish you and yours a most Happy Thanksgiving! We are forever grateful to all of you for not just inviting us into your homes, but for doing so year after year after year. We are like a lot of you, an age where we remember four TV channels that proudly broadcast in black and white. But like the onset of color and additional channels, things changed. Channels 4, 6, 8 and 13 soon got a new competitor with Channel 59 – and that channel took over on a lot of fronts. Today, it’s one of Indiana’s favorites. Here in Montgomery County, most everyone grew up with the Journal-Review, but almost two decades ago The Paper – a truly local product, came along and in the last couple of years you have made us the biggest here. Let us repeat – we are humbled and most grateful. Happy Thanksgiving, Montgomery County!

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BUT ENOUGH about us. Like those tee-vee folks might say . . . now back to our regularly scheduled programming!

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HERE’S A TIP of our buddy Honest Hoosier’s seed corn cap to Joyce Fitzwater! This tireless volunteer has put in a yeoman’s effort on the Community Christmas Dinner, and is now asking for someone to step up and take over. We put in this space last week that this might be an awesome project for a community fraternal organization or club. And we’re pleased to report that Joyce said she has indeed had some responses from the story and the notice. We are keeping our fingers crossed. And in the meantime, thank you, Joyce!

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HERE’S ANOTHER tip to the Chamber for what we are sure will be another wonderful Christmas parade in beautiful downtown Crawfordsville. If you didn’t see the story, it’s a week from Sunday. See you out there!

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ARE YOU going to another wonderful event in beautiful downtown Crawfordsville? This Saturday is the annual Party Night, and we hope to see you down there wandering around! If you see us, please say hi! We love to chat!

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CALL US Johnny-Come-Latelys, but some of us just heard a song called The Ballad of the Monon Bell. The song has been around for quite a while, since the mid-1980s or so. It came from a group of folks from DePauw that included Pat Aikman, Darel Lindquist, Nancy Ford and Jimmy Ibbotson, a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a 1969 graduate of DePauw. If you have not heard the ballad, google it. It’s worth your time.

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OF COURSE it’s always a bit sweeter when the Cavemen from Wabash win, isn’t it?

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AND SPEAKING of Cavemen, it sure would be nice to see a return to the old Caveman Bouts – an annual boxing event that the college distanced itself from in recent years. C’mon guys! Be bold! You are in everything else!

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WE’VE SAID it in this space before, but please do patronize advertisers in The Paper. If it wasn’t for them, there would be no daily edition. We appreciate our local businesses and we hope you do, too!

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THIS NOTE came to us from one of our long-time readers who wishes to remain anonymous. They are talking about the question we asked earlier about when is it appropriate to put up Christmas lights: I find it depressing to see a yard full of gaudy Christmas lights in the middle of November. I think it would depress any Honest Hoosier. In full discloser, I don’t like a yard full of gaudy Christmas lights any time, but willing to put up with it for a month. But it really does tick me off to see them in November . . . or January.

It’s too bad that people have to suck the fun right out of Christmas.

What say you? Agree or disagree?

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OK, SO after that we’re almost afraid to say . . . but what the heck, we will anyway. We’re still on the lookout for great holiday displays. If you see one, or if you are the proud owner, please send us a photo with some details, or let us know an address. We’ll try to pass along some of the best ones as we get them.

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AND IT’S OK if not everyone likes that, right? To each their own!

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SPEAKING OF . . . we mentioned last week that it would be neat to see a drive-thru winter wonderland in our city park – much like Waynetown, or Frankfort, or a number of other places? After the flood of responses, it appears there a lot of you out here who agree! Is anyone at the city listening?

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DITTO OUR note about a Santa’s Workshop on the courthouse veranda. One caller said that it would bring more people back to downtown on Saturdays – and that would be a good thing for local merchants, right? Wonder if anyone in the county is listening?

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HEY, HERE’S an idea! What if we had one night set aside as a Christmas celebration in each of our smaller towns around Montgomery County? A night in Darlington? An evening in Ladoga? Waveland? New Richmond? The merchants who are there might open their doors and maybe someone could get some hot cocoa and cookies ready. Perhaps residents might decorate a bit extra and we might all come together as a county? Just a thought . . .  

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AND IS anything that brings us together a bad thing?

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ON THE other hand . . . how many of you got a bit nervous last Friday when President Biden had a colonoscopy and while he was under anesthesia Kamala Harris was the acting president? Forget the fact that for a short while the United States had the first female president in our history. The rumor inside the Beltway was that, like the southern border, she got nowhere near the Oval Office during that time.

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OF COURSE we’ll be labeled as racists or sexists for saying such a thing. So let us be clear. We are neither. Some of us just think she’s incompetent.

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BACK ON fun topics. Does anyone really like cranberry salad? And why do they call it salad?

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MUMOCO! Mask Up, Montgomery County!

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VUMOCO! Vax Up Montgomery County!

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FOR OUR riddle this week we’re turning to math – so think hard! How many times can you subtract 10 from 100?

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OK, CONTINUING the knock-knock jokes (and getting in the “spirit” of the season . . .

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Tank.

Tank who?

Happy Tanksgiving to one and all and tank YOU from your friends at The Paper!

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HERE’S AN interesting tidbit from one of our favorite publications (besides The Paper of Montgomery County, of course), the Farmer’s Almanac. Ever used a goose to predict the weather? This seems very appropriate around Thanksgiving, because years ago for T-giving, some folks would eat a goose. They would save the breastbone, dry it out and watch it closely to see if it changed color. If it turned dark or blue, that meant they were in store for a bad winter. If it got white, we were in for a mild winter. The reason, we’re told, is that a goose retains oil as an internal defense against the cold. So the dark or blue color meant the oil content was high.

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CONTINUING our official countdown . . .

Party Night – 3 days

First Day of winter – 27

Christmas – 31 days

First day of spring – 116 days

First day of summer – 209 days

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THE ANSWER to our riddle: Did you get 90 for one, eighty for two and so on? Us too. But then we were told that you can only subtract 10 from 100 one time. After that, it’s no longer 100.