A lot of pictures and Greyhound

The Jasper County Historical Society Museum has a new exhibit featuring advertising items from their collection. This calendar from 1944 was issued by the Snyder Funeral Home. I had never heard of it. When was it in business and what happened to it?

The Iroquois Roller Mills was located on Front Street where the dentist office is now. It burned, I think in the 1970s. I am familiar with the name Sprague because when we moved to our present home, we were told by old-timers that we were in the old Sprague house. Ralph Sprague died in 1933. His daughter married Emory Harrison for whom the RCHS football field is named.

I do not know anything about Blue Ribbon Bread of the Rensselaer Bakery. 

Jesse Chambers Gwin served in the Civil War and died in 1935 at the age of 90. A son was a doctor in Rensselaer.

I vaguely remember this. Some of the businesses mentioned are still around.
 

Below is a picture of some fairly recent items. 

Another picture of small but fairly recent items.

The Museum is open the first and third Saturdays of the month from 10:00 to 1:00.

In somewhat related news, the Jasper County Public Library received a grant for almost $25,000 to begin to digitize old newspapers that are on microfilm. The project will begin with Rensselaer papers from 1853 to 1920 and the KV Post News from 1932 to 1950. 

On Friday night and Saturday morning strong storms blew through the area. The winds knocked out power to many homes and toppled several trees, including a large tree in Weston Cemetery.

The old Monnett School building is for sale on an on-line auction that ends December 15. 

There was an open house on Saturday and I could not resist the opportunity to peek inside.

Whoever buys it will need to do a fair amount of repair work. Below is a large room on the second floor. The contents of the room were sold a few days ago but it appears that the person who won the bid did not want some of the toys.

I missed a few Christmas trees in the pictures I posted pictures of Potawotomie Park in the last two posts. Below is a pretty tree that has no identification of a sponsor that I could see.

Franciscan Health's tree is below.

This tree is sponsored by the law office of Lori James.

I had posted the Donaldson's display, but that was before the big storm knocked down the filter men.

The tree below is not in Potawotomie Park. Do you know where it is?

The Rensselaer Board of Public Works met Monday evening and approved paying invoices or spending about $100,000. There were three invoices from Commonwealth Engineering, two for work on the main lift station and unsewered areas and one for work on the Water Main and elevated storage tank. The work on the first was for bid assistance. The City is waiting to hear from the Federal government what kind of financial assistance it can expect. The second project is still in very early stages. There were two small invoices from Riley & Ahler for bid assistance. Finally, the Board approved a refreshing of an engineering report about the wastewater treatment plant. The report was part of the control plan that IDEM approved for the City and the purpose of updating it is to make the City ready to apply for funding if any becomes available as a result of the infrastructure spending that was recently enacted.

After the normal preliminaries, the City Council meeting had a public hearing on the new trash ordinance. No members of the public spoke. About 150 people older than 65 have signed up for the smaller trash container and the new containers should be in and distributed in early January. (To sign up, visit the utility office in City Hall.) The Council approved waiving a second reading of the ordinance and then passed the third reading, making the new rates official. 

After some transfers of funds, The City approved a electric tracker of $4.20 per megawatt of usage, which will increase the average monthly utility bill by about $2.94. Some of the large increase of the gas tracker from last month was reversed for December with a 32¢ decrease per hundred cubic feet. 

Perhaps the most interesting news from the meeting was that Greyhound is planning a new route between Chicago and Indianapolis and would like to stop in Rensselaer. The preferred location for the stop would be the Amtrak station but the City needs to get permission from the railroad to have that happen. Until that happens, the bus stop will probably be by the parking lot next to Fenwick Farms. The bus schedule will have stops at 7:00 am and either 12:15 or 12:50 pm. (It was not stated which way the buses would be traveling at those times.) Other stops planned are Crown Point, Lafayette, and Lebanon. The Council approved bus service to Rensselaer.

The City's vactor truck, used to vacuum sewers among other uses, is a 1999 model that is rusting and needs repairs. There is a used truck the City could buy, a 2015 model for $265,000. A new truck would cost $440,000. The current truck has no trade-in value. The Council approved the purchase of the truck if funding can be arranged. The old truck would be sold if a buyer can be found. The Rachel Street water tower is currently used by Sprint and T-Mobile for cell-phone equipment. Sprint/T-Mobile has informed the City that they will terminate the contract in February. They are paying $1800 a month to the City. The Drexel water tower is used by Verizon, which pays $1064 a month. Sprint/T-Mobile will remove all of their equipment from the tower.

The Council reaffirmed that the Christmas holiday for employees will be December 23 and 24. The front door of the police station was damaged in the Friday-Saturday storm and is (or was) unusable. The electric department was busy Friday night and Saturday morning restoring power. The company that manufactured the new firetruck for the Rensselaer Fire Department has been given permission to use pictures of the new truck in their advertising brochures.