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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SEVERAL OF you have mentioned you like Honest Hoosier’s Christmas memories of late. Thanks for that! He’s going to continue until the big day. We hope you enjoy.

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A FEW of you have also let us know you aren’t thrilled over the missing comics and puzzles. We aren’t sure when they’ll be back. We’re working on some changes for that page and one thing we want to know is how important comics and puzzles are to you. If you’d let us know, we’d surely appreciate it!

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A BIG TIP of the seed corn cap to everyone involved with the annual Christmas Parade through downtown Crawfordsville. Most folks have no idea how much work goes on behind the scenes and the staff, board and volunteers with our Chamber of Commerce don’t get nearly enough credit for their yeoman efforts. Good job, one and all!

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HAVE YOU driven out in the country past the new Tempur Sealy site? LOTS of earth being moved. Sure is exciting! Kind of like a few decades ago when Nucor was being built – an event that changed Montgomery County (for the better). We suspect a couple of decades from now, Tempur Sealy will be looked at the same way. 

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SPEAKING OF the potential growth, we hear some rumblings that there might be more good news on the economic front not far away. Stay tuned and let’s see if Santa brings us another present or two!

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DO YOU regularly read the comics? If so, we’d like to hear from you. As part of our ongoing revamping and redesigning with our web site, we are taking a long look at our comic page – from top to bottom. Do we have the right mix of comics and puzzles? Do we even need comics and puzzles? If so, which ones? In the old days, comics were one of the most well-read pages. But then again, so was the TV listing page. Let us hear from you by e-mail Tim at [email protected]. We’d appreciate it! 

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ANYONE ELSE frustrated with the haphazard parking and absolute reckless pulling in and out of traffic of delivery services? We’ve heard more griping this year than any other? 

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SO WHAT’S going on with the Ben-Hur building? Big ol’ dumpsters on the east side of the building suggest something good, perhaps?

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ON THE other end of downtown, we see bits and pieces (pardon the pun) of work being done on the building by the train depot and CPD station.  

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BOILER UP! Here’s a tip of the seed corn cap to the Purdue Boilermaker men’s basketball team. For the first time in the school’s storied history, the Black and Gold are No. 1 in The AP college basketball rankings.  

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WE ADMIT that we probably focus on sports a bit too much in this space. But our Indianapolis Colts won again last week. And once again, they ran the ball well. Here’s an interesting (and revealing) statistic. The Colts are 7-0 in games this year when Jonathan Taylor rushes for 100 or more yards. Overall, the Colts are 7-6 and have a bye this week.  

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OK, ONE LAST sports note, here’s a sad note that you have probably already heard that last year’s Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit died of a heart attack during a workout in California.

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WE KEEP saying this, but please 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! We don’t expect folks to care that all the money spent with the Journal-Review goes to Alabama, but we surely care a lot that the money spent here stays right here!

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WE HAD A LOT of very positive feedback on our note last week chiding the houses and vehicles displaying the F-bomb on vulgar signs – regardless of which political party it’s for or against. “That’s just disgusting,” one long-time female reader of The Paper told us. “I’m ashamed to live here when I see those driving up and down Washington Street.”

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ALONG THOSE same civic pride (or lack thereof) lines, it was both great and terrible to be a Hoosier this weekend. On one hand, the whole country was watching as the Big Ten title game took place in the heart of downtown Indianapolis. On the other hand, it was once again terrible to learn that seven people were shot within a day of the game. There was at least one fatality, and in one case, children were in the back seat of a car being shot at. When will this end?

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GO HOOSIERS! Hoosier academics, that is! Julia Williams, a professor of English at Rose-Hulman, appears on Jeopardy this week (tomorrow, in fact). We wish her all the best!

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NOW IF ONLY the subscribers of DISH could see it . . . too bad they can’t! 

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SPEAKING OF . . . when will DISH give its customers WTHR, WISH and WNDY back – not to mention the others that are missing that aren’t based in Indianapolis? 

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FOR OUR riddle this week we simply want to know what goes up and down without moving?

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OK, CONTINUING the knock-knock jokes . . . 

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Witch.

Witch who?

Witch one of you will get a subscription first to Montgomery County’s favorite (and biggest) daily edition?

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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. These are three different quotes that all have appeared on the pages of the magazine. The first is from Ben Franklin – “What you would seem to be, be really.” The next one is from Thomas Jefferson: “He is a man whose soul might be turned wrong side outwards without discovering a blemish.” And the last is from Will Rogers: “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” 

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CONTINUING our official countdown . . . 

First Day of winter – 13

Christmas – 17 days

First day of spring – 102 days

First day of summer – 195 days

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THE ANSWER to our riddle: Stairs