The

MEGAPHONE

Elwood, Indiana                                                          Elwood High School(s)

              Volume 5, No. 11    Monday, November 1, 2004

Contents

(You can use the page numbers as links!)

       

Page 1 . . . Your Old Home Town -- Sharon (Benedict) Hurst

                    A Little Fiction Here, With a Moral to the Story -- Louise (Mountcastle) Romine

Page 2 . . . French Lick -- Bob Hinshaw

                    Your Old Home Town -- Sharon (Benedict) Hurst

Page 3 . . . Bert & MaryBelle Fisher and Lucy Manis -- Ann (Orbaugh) Brewer & Frances (Fisher) McDaniel

Page 4 . . . The Anderson Jinx -- Episode I -- Jane Ann (Seright) Lemen

Page 5 . . . The Moon -- Ginny (Hocker) Noble

Page 6 . . . Cleaning -- Mark Rogers

Page 7 . . . The Empty Nest -- Part 2 -- Sharon (Benedict) Hurst

                    He Lived A Hard Life, That Daddy -- Louise (Mountcastle) Romine

Page 8 . . . Life -- Shirley (Fite) Dellinger 

                    Thanksgiving Poem -- Carol (Kochman) Lewellen                       

Your Old Home Town

 by Sharon (Benedict) Hurst

                                    

The annual Chili Cook-Off sponsored by Red Gold was held here on October 10th and was a rousing success. This year the festival was held at the fountain area on South B and South Anderson Streets. This makes a very attractive site for the event.

 

This years winner of the cook off was won by the Cattails Restaurant. Cattails is located where the country club was. The club and golf course has been purchased by Jeff Mays, his son Brian, and Brian Reichart. It is now open to the public. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner daily and the food is pretty darn good.

 

The new owners also purchased a large area south of P Street and are adding an additional 9 holes there to make the Cattails Golf Course an eighteen hole course. There will be a cross over in front of the club to access the new part and a bridge over the creek to the back holes. In the process of expanding the course, they are making sure the old cemetery is made into a safe and secure area. There will be a new fence around the site and the excess growth of shrubs, etc. has been taken out. There will also be a car park and cement pathway from P Street back to the site. This has been a long time coming and was much needed. Those of us who have ancestors buried there are especially glad to see this done.

 

Highway 13 is just about finished all the way through town. It is really looking nice. The new street lights are what makes the difference and when they are all ready to turn on just imagine how nice the road will look. No more of those ugly vapor lights. Thank goodness for that.

 

It won’t be long before the work on State Road 28 will be started. Now that 13 is finished, the community will be able to deal with 28 being torn up better, I think. We know that it will get finished and that it will look so much better when it is done.

 

There is still a lot of construction going on in other areas of the town also. Several new homes are going up our here on Fairground Road across from the school.

 

The Elwood Pipecreek Historical Society has taken a two year option to market the old city building. It is historically significant to this town in many ways and there already have been calls of interest made to the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana regarding the building. Landmarks have the building featured on their web site at this time. For those of you who are interested, their site is: www.historiclandmarks.org .

 

The Opera House has their annual Halloween Haunted Basement the last two Fridays and Saturdays in October and this is a big attraction to the kids here in town. I have not attended this and do not plan to. I am glad that it is a success for Randall Hall, though.

 

Things here in Elwood are relatively quiet during this time. The little kids ball games are going big time and a lot of the people are busy with that. It is fun to see these small ones trying so hard to look and act like the big kids in high school. Some of them are surprisingly good and the energy they have is to be really envied.

 

We did have some magnificent foliage this fall. I am glad that we did have quite a bit of time to enjoy the colors before it turned gray and rainy.  We did need the rain though so I should not complain.

 

All in all, life is good here in this little town in the Heart of Hoosierland. I don’t hear anyone complaining. I again extend the invitation to all of you to come back to see all that I write about for yourselves.

 

Your Roving Reporter here in this special place, Your Old Home Town, Elwood.

Sharon (Benedict) Hurst '53

A Little Fiction Here, With a Moral to the Story . . . 

by Louise (Mountcastle) Romine

               

Once upon a time there was a painter called John, who learned to work smarter making a buck go farther so he would thin down paint to make it go a wee bit further. And he got away with this for a long time.  

 

One day the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on their biggest buildings. John put in a bid, and because his price was so low, he got the job. And as usual he thinned the paint.

John was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed when suddenly there was an unexpected cloud burst and the rain washed the thinned paint off the church making telltale puddles of thinned...useless paint on the lawn below.  

Knowing this was a judgment from the Almighty, he got on his knees and cried out "Oh, God! Forgive me! Tell me what to do"!

And with a clap of thunder, a mighty voice spoke...

"Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!"

( I told you it had a good moral...)

Louise (Mountcastle) Romine '56
Elwood, IN

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