Bouncing Around Like A Pinball . . .

Scattershooting while wondering what a jam session with John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker and Big Bill Broonzy might sound like . . .

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A SPECIAL thanks to County Clerk Karyn Douglas for not making this reporter feel like the idiot he is when he asked a question about early voting for the primary. Karyn kindly reminded me that without contest races there’s no primary. There will be a General Election in the fall though. If we have a nicer elected official in the county, I’m not sure who it is.

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A LOT OF you have asked about our friends over at the Journal-Review – and the recent news about them both selling their damaged building and dropping their Monday edition. Truth to tell, they didn’t consult with us. So I can’t share with you what they are doing to compensate subscribers who paid more than $160 for six days and are now getting five. I also don’t know if the new owners of the building are going to repair the wall that fell in or what. All I do know is that The Paper of Montgomery County is the only media entity that offers seven editions a week – and those seven will cost less than $35 for the remainder of this year!

Just saying.

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OH, ONE more note on the other guys . . . they continue to say the Journal-Review has served the community since 1841. They just never mention the fact that there was no such thing as the Journal-Review in 1841. According to the good folks at Wikipedia, the current Journal-Review “was founded in 1929 as an independent daily from the merger of the Journal and the Review.” The connection to 1841 probably refers to the beginning of The New Review, a paper that later became the Crawfordsville Review. It competed against the Daily Argus until those papers merged in 1900 and became the Daily News-Review. Around 1886 the Daily Dispatch was founded. It looks like it merged with the Daily Journal and a few decades later, in 1929, Foster Fudge became the owner of the Crawfordsville Journal and Review.

Not to be a stickler, but hey, facts are facts.

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AS MY PAL Honest Hoosier might say, here’s a big tip of the seed corn cap to Shannon Hudson for the series she put together on the history of the Lincoln School for Colored Children. It is great to know the history of such an important part of Montgomery County’s past. Thank YOU, Shannon!

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DID YOU HEAR that some automakers have stopped putting radios that get AM stations in their cars. A news clip I read said that AM radio is going the way of 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs in automobiles.

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SORRY TO dip into the sports world, but count me as definitely not one of the fans of the pitch clock in baseball. For those who aren’t into baseball, the pros have decided that games take too long and have instituted a clock to force pitcher and batter to speed things up. I get the idea that younger generations don’t have much patience, but the “timeless” aspect is part of what makes baseball, well, baseball. After family and faith, there are few things better than sitting in the warm sun under a gorgeous blue sky and watching a baseball game. Why does everything have to change?

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SOME FOLKS asked where I came up with “scattershooting” that occasionally leads these rambles. Well, I didn’t. The late great Robert Joseph Collins used that in some of his columns in the Indianapolis Star – the Star back when it was a great newspaper and part of the Pulliam family. I use the phrase today in tribute to one of Hoosierland’s all-time great sports editors.

-Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically on Wednesdays in The Paper. Timmons is the publisher of The Paper and can be contacted at [email protected].