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White Castle sliding into Seymour

October 9th, 2009, 10:54 am by davis

Big news on the culinary front: White Castle has requested — and received — a sewer connection for a new store to be built on East Tipton Street.

That approval came during Thursday’s Seymour Board of Public Works and Safety meeting at City Hall.

The hamburger chain plans to build a store in the parking lot in front of Big Lots in the 2000 block of East Tipton Street.

Also going in that location is Buffalo Wild Wings. A sign in front of the store just east of Seymour Health and Fitness Club indicates the restaurent will be opening soon, although no date is posted.

Don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited about White Castle coming to town. I grew up with them in Indianapolis. And I love them.

Contrary to the experience many folks say they have with the small hamburgers, they’ve never irritated by digestive system in the least.

One of my nicknames in junior high and high school was Gut Man, based on my ability to eat sliders by the dozens. Thankfully, I’m not such a glutton anymore. But I do love them.

A couple years ago when a mover and shaker in town told me that Star Bucks would soon open a store in Seymour, he said that was another of those moments that indicated to him that “Seymour had arrived.”

Sorry, I said, Star Bucks won’t last here. Plant a White Castle in town, and that maybe would mean Seymour had indeed arrived and that I’d wager White Castle would survive here longer than Star Bucks.

I’d still wager that.

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Posted in: community • food | Post a Comment »

Had your flu shot yet?

September 17th, 2009, 6:52 am by davis

Have you gone for a flu shot this year?

Doctors’ offices and drug stores are offering vaccinations now, and Jackson County Health Department is in the middle of its flu vaccine clinic for what we’ll call the “regular” or seasonal flu.

The health department clinic started Monday and Tuesday and continues today and Friday at its office, 801 W. Second St. in Seymour. The cost is $20, and the shot didn’t sting too badly when I was vaccinated Tuesday morning.

There were a few folks there, but as Brandy Emily reported in her story on Wednesday, people haven’t exactly been beating down the doors to get their flu shots at the clinic.

I am curious about why the numbers of people stopping by the health department for the seasonal flu shot appear to be off the normal pace.

Are they waiting for the H1N1 vaccine, which gained federal approval Tuesday? Is it because the seasonal flu vaccine is being offered earlier than normal this year? Or are people just not worried about the flu?

I used to be that way.

I’d get the shot or I wouldn’t.

Then last year I failed to be vaccinated after several years of getting a shot. Yep, I got the flu. Boy did I get the flu. I felt sore and lousy for what seemed an eternity (just ask my family).

So I wasn’t going to miss out on getting a shot this year.

Will this regular or seasonal flu vaccine protect you against the H1N1 flu, which many still call the swine flu despite the best efforts of the pork industry and governmental health officials to rebrand it as H1N1? No, it won’t, but failure to get a shot will also not protect against the seasonal flu.

Another question — do you plan to be vaccinated for the H1N1 flu should a vaccine be made available to you?

Me? I’m not sure.

Fortunately, I seem to be in the age group that, so far, seems less affected by H1N1. So that could be a reason to refrain.

There’s also the concern about how the general public will react to H1N1 vaccine. For some people my age and older, there may be strong memories of the 25 deaths that followed vaccination for what was called the swine flu in 1976.

No, I’m not leading a chorus against the H1N1 vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter.

But there likely will be those who subscribe to the idea of waiting to buy a new model of a car, allowing someone else to work out the kinks.

In all liklehood, if the H1N1 vaccine’s made available to me, I’ll take it.

A flu by any other name
Not that it’s uncommon for me to take grief about things in the paper, even when they’re not, reports about the flu this year have drawn criticism and questions from some area farmers who make part of their living raising hogs.

As you might guess, the pork industry isn’t too happy that what the government now calls the H1N1 flu was first called, and still often is called, the swine flu.

I recently asked Keith Robinson, Indianapolis bureau chief of The Associated Press, why the AP was continuing with the “swine flu” moniker.

“That’s because experts say the virus began in pigs and most of its genetic makeup is from pig viruses, although there are human and bird genes too,” Robinson said.

Generally, The Tribune is now using the term “H1N1” because that’s what we receive in government reports and news releases. We’re generally changing “swine” to H1N1 in AP stories, although the occasional “swine” reference may slip through.

So there you go.

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Posted in: community • flu | Post a Comment »

Bittersweet day for Freedom

September 1st, 2009, 3:25 pm by davis

News of Freedom Communications Inc. filing for bankruptcy protection Tuesday stirred bittersweet emotions.

It’s bitter in that Freedom — for which some of us have worked many years — may well no longer exist as Freedom when the company emerges from bankruptcy proceedings.

It’s sweet in that the company will continue, our jobs will remain and the company is in better shape to move forward today than it was Monday.

It’s also bitter, however, in that the company’s founding family, descendants of R.C. Hoiles, will no longer command the helm that’s guided the business since its inception during the early 1900s with the purchase of small town newspapers in Ohio.

But it’s also sweet in that Freedom’s legacy — of promoting personal freedom and liberty — will continue in the hearts and minds of people who value those principles. We’d hope that’s about everyone.

Interviewed by telephone Tuesday, Dick Wallace said he hopes people will remember Freedom for its commitment to those core values that Hoiles, the grandfather of Wallace’s wife, strived to live by and do business by every day.

He maintains a hope that his family will retain some ownership of the new business that emerges.

Wallace, who started with Freedom as a salesman for national advertising with what is today The Orange County Register on Dec. 13, 1961, retired about a year ago. He’s remained active, however, with the family’s commitment to what’s been called the Freedom Philosophy.

“The family has no control over it now, but I hope it will continue through editorials and those sorts of things,” Wallace said.

It was a decades-long family squabble that led to what became a massive debt that helped lead the company to bankruptcy proceedings Tuesday.

Some of Hoiles’ descendants cried out in 2004 for the company to “show me the money.” They took it and ran.

Some, however, stayed with Freedom. Wallace was among them.

“Those of us who stayed wanted to support the company and its core values going forward,” Wallace said. “We were not in this for the money.

“We have a little bit of the company left, and hopefully there’s something that will be left in the new business and that the newspaper business will turn around,” Wallace added. “If the industry doesn’t turn around, it will be a sad day for all newspapers.”

Sad indeed.

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Posted in: The Tribune • community • economy • media | Post a Comment »

No signs of panic

August 28th, 2009, 1:28 pm by davis

So far there’s no signs of panic among parents of schoolchildren in Jackson County.

That was the word from Seymour Community Schools and Brownstown Central Community Schools, anyway, on Friday, one day after we reported on TribTown.com that the first case of H1N1 flu had been reported Thursday in an area school.

Contrary to our initial story online and in print in Friday’s edition of The Tribune, the student is not enrolled in Seymour Community Schools. That was an assumption on our part — something we try not to do is assume — because of the folks involved with reporting information to the public about the county’s first reported case of H1N1. That assumption was easily made, but we shouldn’t have made it. It also could have been avoided had officials simply included the school’s name in their news release.

But that’s another story.

Back to the good news. Seymour schools Superintendent Teran Armstrong said the district’s absenteeism was not up Friday, and Harry Rochner of Brownstown schools said he was not aware of any increase in the number of students home sick Friday.

You can read more about it in January Wetzel’s story in Saturday’s edition of The Tribune and online at Tribtown.com.

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Posted in: community • flu • health | Post a Comment »

Sad afternoon in a melon field

August 21st, 2009, 2:45 am by davis

Walking through a field of rotting cantaloupes Thursday afternoon was a sad thing.

The rotting fruit and browning plants made it look more like fall, when the late-to-blossom fruit fail to mature as the growing season runs out.

But not in August.

That, however, was the case in a field south of Vallonia farmed by Mark and Sue Kamman. They shared their story of how a wet, cool growing season is devastating part of the watermelon and much of their cantaloupe plants they set this srping.

You can read about it in Friday’s edition of The Tribune and online at Trib.Town.com.

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Posted in: The Tribune • agriculture • community • economy • food | Post a Comment »

Tomato meets the deep fryer

August 13th, 2009, 6:42 am by davis

Hoosier voters failed to disappoint in one of their last elections — choosing this year’s so-called Indiana State Fair Tomato Signature Foods.

Their top selection tapped two choice foods — tomatoes and the brown food group (that, of course, is anything fried, deep, pan or otherwise).
Voters chose the Deep-Fried Pizza from Urick Concessions as the top signature food at this year’s state fair. They’re being sold in front of the Grand Hall on the fairgrounds.

This year’s fair, which opened last Friday and runs through Aug. 23, pays a salute to that fruit-slash-vegetable known as the tomato, if not tomahto.

The corporate sponsor is Red Gold, an Orestes-based tomato processor in northern Indiana. It contracts with farmers around the state, including here in Jackson County, to keep its line of products, including ketchup, tomato sauces and canned tomatoes, on grocery store shelves.

Other tomato-based foods spotlighted by concessionaires this summer at the fair include the Pizza Cone, Ya Ya’s Tomato Balls, Sun-dried Tomato Pork Burger and the Tomato Bob.

Do you like tomatoes?

I love tomato sauce. I love ketchup. I love pizza sauce and salsa. I even love stewed tomatoes. It’s the one way I can eat zucchini that’s not been turned into bread.

But I have a confession. I don’t like raw tomatoes.

Ann Lentini, whose accent reveals she moved to Seymour from New York, urged me to try them again, telling me that’s what her grandfather once told her. She’s been eating them ever since.

But I have tried them, over and over, at least once each summer.

And much to my Pop’s dismay, I just don’t like them. Pop loved snapping a tomato off the vine and eating it like an apple.

I don’t know. I think it’s the texture. That usually gets a roll of the eyes from true tomato lovers. Lentini gave an understanding nod as we talked after she bought some tomatoes Wednesday at the Seymour farmers market.

“I don’t like peanut butter,” she said. “Although I can eat some on a cracker.”

I’m certainly not in the majority, however, in my disdain for raw tomatoes. According to the USDA, Indiana ranked second in U.S. tomato production in 2007. That year, Hoosier farmers planted tomatoes on 10,000 acres.

That’s not including the thousands of home gardens like Ed Mills’ plot on North Elm Street in Seymour. He was selling tomatoes, watermelons and blackberries produce Wednesday at the market.

“There’s nothing better than a big slice of tomato, green beans and corn,” Mills said.

I’m down with the sweet corn and beans. Just don’t make me eat a raw tomato.

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Posted in: agriculture • community • fair • family • food | Post a Comment »

‘Tsunami’ of golf balls

August 6th, 2009, 3:51 pm by davis

It’s not often you get to use the word “tsunami” in a headline about a local news story when you live in southern Indiana.

But I’ll get to do that in Friday’s edition of The Tribune and online at TribTown.com as Aubrey Woods reports on a lawsuit filed in Jackson Superior Court I.

The lawsuit was filed by two couples who live on the Ash Hollow Golf Course south of Seymour. They seek relief from damages resulting from gold balls being hit onto their property.

Apparently some golfers are trying to convert par 5 hole in to par 3, shooting over one of the houses in attempt to record an eagle. In golf parlance, an eagle is scoring two shots under par on a hole.

Other stories we’re working on Friday’s paper include two that concern flooding in the area. Extension education Richard Beckort said area crops under flood waters will likely suffer, but to what extend remains to be seen.

And reporter January Wetzel tells a story about Seymour Christian Church framing a house and donating it to Jackson County Habitat for Humanity.

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Posted in: agriculture • church • community • golf | Post a Comment »

Area post offices escape list

August 3rd, 2009, 6:06 pm by davis

Jackson County’s post offices escaped a list of others around that the country that may be closed.

That’s the word Monday night from Seymour Postmaster Donna Hedges.

I had to chuckle when she said smaller offices were generally not being closed. That, she guessed, was because people using smaller post offices would likely complain the most.

The chuckle came was a memory of covering an effort back in the 1980s to close the Cortland Post Office at Indiana 258 and County Road 400 East.

Cortlanders sure squawked, and the post office remained open. It’s still open.

Look for a story about the list of possible closures in Tuesday’s edition of The Tribune and online at Tribtown.com.

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Alton Brown, Food Network should sample these good eats

July 26th, 2009, 8:01 pm by davis

There’s nothing like July in Jackson County.

There’s first the anticipation of the arrival of cantaloupes, watermelons, sweet corn and the Jackson County Fair.

Then, slowly, the month progresses and you boil or roast that first ear of yellow, white or perhaps mixed ear of corn.

The butter and salt, of course, the gravy on the kernals. There’s nothing like it in the vegetable world, although of course there’s nothing green about it.

Then, you start asking the produce managers and vegetable stand operators the big question of the month — where are your melons from? They’re used to it. Those really in the know realize you’re not just interested in whether the cantaloupes and watermelons are from Indiana. They know you want to hear the words “Vallonia” or “Brownstown” or “Jackson County” because we all know that while those melons grown in Davies or Knox counties in southwestern Indiana are good, so much better than the hard, almost inedible melons we must tolerate — or ignore — all through the winter and spring, they still don’t compare to the orange and red delights grown in the sandy soils of Jackson County.

No, they don’t. They can’t. Maybe it’s regional pride, but I don’t really think so, and that’s my story and it’s the story I’m sticking with.

And then, of course, there’s the arrival of the Jackson County Fair, a time when all three of the best — the fair, the melons and corn — all collide. You can enjoy the treats, sights and sounds of the fair, all the while knowing you can pick up a melon or two or three on the way home, with produce stands just a few miles out of the way down one road or another.

What’s your favorite treat of July? The corn? Do you favor cantaloupes over watermelons? Do you like the long, striped melons or those that are squat and dark?

Do you like salt or pepper, or maybe both, on your melons? I like mine plain, thanks, although as a kid I always used salt on watermelon because Pop and Grandpa Davis did.

And what about butter on a roasting ear? How do you spread it? With a knife, fork, fingers, bread or some other method unique to your family?

Surely Alton Brown of The Food Network could devote 30 minutes of his “Good Eats” to these questions if not just on the greater qualities of Jackson County melons.

Hope you enjoy the fair and the good eats that Jackson County has to offer.

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Posted in: agriculture • fair • food | Post a Comment »

And that’s the way it was

July 19th, 2009, 6:50 pm by davis

Two events clashed for me over the weekend — the death of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite and the approaching 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s famous leap for mankind.

As I read news stories, feature stories and opinion pieces over the last week or so as today’s lunar landing’s anniversary approached, I always recalled Uncle Walter’s reaction in the CBS studios that hot July day.

“Man on the moon,” Cronkite said, almost giggling with delight as Armstrong reported the Eagle lunar landing module had touched down. “Oh boy,” he added moments later.

Here was the man who told us — and therefore President Johnson — that Vietnam was lost. The man who reported on JFK’s assassination. The print reporter who filed storties from battlefields of Europe during World War II. And he was nearly speechless, imploring his analyst, astronaut Wally Schirra, to say something, perhaps anything, because Cronkite was speechless, all the while taking off his eyeglasses and rubbing his hands together.

I was just 8 years old and just as excited as Cronkite. By gosh, I’d go to the Air Force Academy and become a fighter pilot and then an astronaut.

Although my commitment to the academy and flight faded with my vision, spaceflight still amazes me.

Just as I’m chagrined at NASA being a shadow of itself these days, I’m also chagrined at the state of national news broadcasting. Can you imagine anyone considering Bill O’Reilly, Keith Olbermann or Dan Rather being considered the most trusted man in America?

I can’t. Sure, Cronkite was stating his own view on Vietnam, but at least it was clearly defined as an editorial. Most of the clowns that have followed Cronkite couldn’t carry his copy, let alone his mantle.

And we’re all the worse for it.

Thanks for reading my blog, and thanks for logging on to TribTown.com.

Posted in: community • media | Post a Comment »

White Castle sliding into Seymour

Had your flu shot yet?

Bittersweet day for Freedom

No signs of panic

Sad afternoon in a melon field

Tomato meets the deep fryer

‘Tsunami’ of golf balls

Area post offices escape list

Alton Brown, Food Network should sample these good eats

And that’s the way it was

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