Odds and ends, May 20, 2021

 The County Council met Tuesday evening with most of the members present in-person. Once again there were problems in getting audio working correctly for those on Zoom. 

The Council did not approve the minutes because the minutes from the continued part of the meeting had not been prepared. The Council appointed Steven Eastridge to the Remington Economic Commission, a body that is becoming active again. (The Council has one appointment to make to the Commission.) It approved continuing the tax abatement for Wilson Industrial Sales. The abatement is on year nine of ten. Over the years the firm has averaged seven additional employees. Currently they are trying to hire four hazmat drivers and recently the company got a new president, a third generation of the Wilson family.

There was a long discussion of a request from the County Prosecutor to hire a full-time investigator to replace a part-time investigator who recently retired. The Council did not doubt the need for a full-time position but wondered from which fund it would be funded and if their approval would step on the toes of the Commissioners, who had tabled a similar request at their last meeting. They finally approved funding the position and the Prosecutor said he would not fill it until the Commissioners approve the hire.

The rest of the meeting was routine. The Council approved some additional appropriations for the Surveyor and Emergency Management. They also approved an amendment to the Salary Ordinance to conform to new salaries in the Sheriff's Department, CASA, and Community Corrections. Finally they corrected some appropriations that they apparently had doubly passed.

In other happenings, the contractor for the DeMotte sewer/water extension hit a gas pipeline on Tuesday, causing some excitement in the northern part of the county. The Francesville mural is finished and has been dedicated. Eden Valley Farms, also in Pulaski County, will have an open house  on June 12. I have always wondered what the strange building on the northwest corner of the US 231/SR 16 interchange was. A video from Alliance Bank reveals that it was once a grocery store. It is now a residence. 

The Senior Trail is now up in Milroy Park.

Paving of streets south of the River seems to be finished. North of the River Emilie and a block of block of Walnut are finished. As I write this, the crew is working on Franklin. There are still bits of Milton, Webster, and Merritt that are milled but not paved.

The White County United Way is administering a grant from the Lilly Foundation to help non-profits affected by the Covid shutdown. The grant has moneys allocated for Pulaski, Jasper, and White Counties and has to be spent by the end of July. The White County allocation has been totally spent but there is still a lot left in the Jasper County and the Pulaski County allocations. Groups that have received funding from the Jasper County funds include CDC Resources, Fendig Theater, Junior Achievement, KV School Corporation, St. Augustine School, Wheatfield Fire Department, SAGA in Kentland, Growing Patch Learning Center, and the Tri-County Backpack Program. If you know of an organization that can make a case, have them contact White County United Way. It would be a shame if we leave money on the table.

On Monday the Jasper County BZA met to consider two cases. One was a setback variance for a large garage that could not be put behind the house because of extreme changes in grade. The other was variance for sand mining north of Rensselaer where there are many ponds and lake from previous sand mining. Both were approved. Someone at the meeting said, referring to problems getting audio from the on-line viewers, "Technology is great, when it works."

As of last weekend, the new vet clinic had a concrete floor.

Festivals

For reasons that have nothing to do with this blog, I recently compiled a list of area festivals. Even though the list ignores Pulaski County, I thought it might be of interest to a few people who read this blog. You can get it as a pdf document at http://ingrimayne.com/festivals.pdf.

Right now White county does the best job at tourist promotion of the five counties I was examining. Now that Jasper County has a tourist tax, a tax on hotel rooms and other places visitors stay, we should be able to get at least to their level of promotion.

Odds and ends, 02-06-2013

I have noticed lots of little things in the past few days, like a new transformer next to the power station. It is part of the 69K line installation.

I did not see any demolition on Monday or Tuesday when I stopped by the Monnett School, but this morning the excavator was chomping on the entrance to the school.

 It was separating the metal from the other building materials, so demolition was slow.

 Another excavator was busy at the Tractor Supply site. The city is installing the water supply for the building. The trench that they are working in is deep, so they have to use a metal cage to prevent wall collapse and they were busy pumping water, probably because the water table was above the bottom of the trench.

 Yesterday there were a lot of these ice chandeliers along the river. The icicles seem to form from the river water because they are just above the water level and every so often the water touches them.

I checked my Rensselaer Adventures e-mail recently. The lay minister at St. Peter's Episcopal Church wanted publicity a for Valentine Card Making Workshop on Saturday, Februrary 9 at 5:30 pm. The cost is $5 for supplies per 5 cards. This event will be taught by "Close to my Heart" consultant Anne-Marie Lessner.  All are welcome!

I had an exchange with Donna Wetzel and learned that she writes things at a website called hubpages.com. Those who like Rensselaer history will enjoy her reminiscing about Joe Sheldon's Produce.

The Jasper Foundation is hosting another Community Conversation on March 7 at 8:30 am. They would like an RSVP for anyone who wants to attend. Call them at 5899 or respond to jasper at liljasper period com.

The Jasper County Economic Development Organization sent me their February newsletter. They have a new on-line guide to Jasper County that is full of information. Did you know that Jasper County is the leading agricultural producing county in the state with a market value of product sold in 2007 of almost $300 million? The publication has the 32 largest non-retail employers in the county. The top five are Jasper County Hospital, Kankakee Valley Schools, Advanced Auto Parts, NiIPSCO Schahfer Station, and Rensselaer Central Schools. To see where the other firms place, visit the JCEDO site at http://www.jaspercountyin.com. In 2011 the mean wage was $17.00.

It also had data on worker commuting patterns. Jasper County exports workers. 2549 people commute to work from Jasper to Lake County, 1009 to Porter County, 459 to Illinois, and 319 to Newton. 741 commute to Jasper County from Newton County, 338 from Porter, 313 from White, 254 from Pulaski, and 242 from Lake.

In other JCEDO news, Emily Gross, who for me has been the face of JCEDO, is leaving for a job at the Kankakee Iroquois Regional Planning Commission. I had not heard of this group before. It is headquartered in Monon, which is a bit strange since they are not in the Kankakee or Iroquois watershed. From their website it seems that they try to help local governments in Benton, Carroll, Jasper, Newton, Pulaski, Starke, Warren, and White Counties get grant funding for whatever projects that they are pursuing. They have a downloadable publication with lots of information on the region.

Memory Lane Sectional

Earlier this month while I was on cleanup duty for the Saint Augustine School rummage sale, tossing the leftovers into boxes, a pamphlet caught my interest. My first impression was that it was quite old, but a closer look showed that it was from 1994.

 The pamphlet was the program for a basketball tournament to raise money for Charles Halleck Scholarships given to area students. The tournament teams were made up of alumni of the schools shown on the cover above. The program had a couple pages highlighting fifteen recipients of Halleck Scholarships and I knew a couple of them, though I probably never knew that they had received such a scholarship. This was the second such tournament. The first one had been held in 1991 and its results were reported in the program as well. The Wheatfield High School Alumni had defeated the Rensselaer Alumni 52 to 33.

Also in the booklet was a list of sectional championship games from 1923 to 1970. Look at those early scores: 15 to 14; 18 to 6. Was that the same game as is played today? And how did tiny Mt Ayr do so well in the 1940s?

 The program had a page on each of the schools in the tournament. The Rensselaer Bombers are the only one that remains mostly the same. The Morocco Beavers and the Mt Ayr Arydales are gone, now part of North Newton. The Kentland Blue Devils, The Brook Purple Aces, and the Goodland Trojans were consolidated into South Newton. The Remington Rifles (a great name) became part of Tri-County. And the Demotte Indians, Wheatfield Red Devils, Tefft Tigers, and Fair Oaks Cherokees became part of Kankakee Valley.

Some of these schools were very small. For example, the largest class to ever graduate from Tefft was 18.

Ads in these sorts of publications are always interesting. Even though it is only 18 years old, quite a few of the businesses listed in the booklet are either gone or transformed. I am not familiar with the many businesses listed for Newton County and northern Jasper County, so I cannot say whether they are still active.

 Charlie Roberts is still around, but no longer sells new Chevrolets. Brooks Motor Sales is long gone, as is its successor. Cargill no longer runs an elevator in Rensselaer. The building that once housed INTEC is now used by Waste Management.

 Most of the business on the above page seem to be still active. Jasper County Coop merged with a larger coop so its presence in Rensselaer is much diminished.

Bank One and First of America were bought by bigger banks. Hudgens House is long gone, as is the Rensselaer Chrysler dealer.

I doubt if another edition of this tournament could be held today. School consolidation happened in the 1960s, so few if any of the players for most of these teams would be younger than 60.

casonline

While walking through a building at Saint Joseph's College a few weeks ago, I noticed a flyer on a bulletin board about an observatory near Lowell, Indiana. It was something I had never heard of before, so I checked it out on the Internet.

The Calumet Astronomical Society has been in existence since 1975, but only recently--in 2005--did they build an observatory, the Thomas Conway Observatory, southeast of Lowell, near the Buckley Homestead Park. The society claims to be the most active astronomy organization in the Chicago area.

Their website has pictures of the observatory and a long explanation of how it came to be. The telescope is a 16-inch reflector. Nearby is another telescope, the NIRo or Northwest Indiana Robotic observatory, run by Purdue University Calumet that was dedicated in August, 2010. It is a 20-inch reflector that cost a quarter of a million dollars. It captures the image with a camera and transmits it to Purdue-Calumet.

Did you know that this facility was nearby?

(I need a picture. How about the one that is shown in this article? It is taken with a much bigger telescope than what is available near Lowell.)

Some pictures from Fowler

A few weeks ago I visited Fowler and while there I checked out their city park. Fowler is pretty well contained north of US 52 and the railroad track, but there is a little bit of it that squeezes out to the south, and the park is in that little extension. It features a pond with a fountain and a view of windmills.

There were no windmills the last time I was in Fowler and visited this park. That was for a Fourth of July 5K race which started and ended at this park. Near the end of the race I was trying to beat a grade school girl and she was determined not to let an old man beat her. She won our duel. I do not feel too bad about the defeat because in the years after she went on to star on West Lafayette's cross country team. She should be in college now--my last previous visit to the park was a long time ago.

It is even longer--twenty to thirty years--since I last visited their swimming pool, which was and probably still is the home pool of the Benton Eels Swim Team (BEST). Every other year the Rensselaer Summer Swim Team would have a meet there, and they probably still do. I do not remember much about those meets, but am pretty sure the pool did not have this slide at the time.

I wonder if the slide competes with the diving board. One thing I noticed at the Rensselaer pool is that a lot of kids were doing a lot of interesting dives last summer. They kept challenging each other, so even little kids were doing more than a standard head-first dive.

Some news

The Remington Town Manager's Blog (see the sidebar) has a link to the March newsletter of the Jasper County Economic Development Organization. (It is a pdf file.) There were a several intersting things in it. Jasper County population increased about 11.5% from 2000 to 2010. Any increase in a rural county is good. Rensselaer grew by a bit over 10% to 5,859. Wheatfield also grew about 10.5%, and DeMotte grew by over 17%. Remington lost about ten percent of its population.

A new on-line portal for Jasper County has started up at GoJasperCo.net. We will watch it and see how it develops. Advanced Auto in Remington is hiring (something reported earlier on this blog) and expects to have about 75-100 employees by September and 360-370 by May 2012.

Check it out.

Update: I was poking around some of the Remington things on the Internet and found that the Homestead Buttery now has a Facebook page, and it looks like it was a very recent addition. I told them last summer that they should get one. They also have an attractive website, something else I told them they should get. Of course, they would have gotten there without my advice. Lots of other people told them the same thing.

Remington had a ribbon cutting today, for the new office of the Regional Occupational Care Center.

Facebook, a link to the outside world

I found this video via the Morocco Times Facebook page, who found it via the Lake Village Indiana Old Photo page.

The video is of the 1957 homecoming parade for the Morocco Beavers. Most of it is not in focus, and there is no sound. It looks like almost all the grades from the school marched. I remember marching in homecoming parades in the 1950s as a grade school kid in Morton, Minnesota--it must have been pretty much like this parade. I do not remember football games, and only vaguely remember the parade.

I look forward to seeing more of these old videos--it seems that whoever has these old home movies is digitizing them and putting them on youtube.

Other things from Facebook, my source of news for the area: Road construction has ceased for the season in Wolcott, where they had closed the highway for a while. And Little Indiana has a neat giveaway of a train set. But do not enter it, because I want to win it. ;-)

Parr

Parr was established in 1895 along the railroad to provide a shipping point for agricultural products, including livestock. Today its most prominent feature is the large elevator.

Unlike many of the little settlements that remain in Jasper County, Parr is more than a group of houses along one road. Parr has four east-west streets and three north-south streets, several quite short. In its early days it had two or three general stores, and in its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s it had gas stations, garages, a pool hall, a barber shop, a creamery, and a blacksmith shop, according to the memories put down in History of Jasper County, Indiana (1985). It also had a park south of 114 at the crossroads. And like many other little settlements along the railroad, it had a pickle factory, the Claussen Pickle Factory.

The building below was once a commercial building and for some reason the Jasper County Interim Report likes it. The Report says it was built about 1910.

The Parr school was built in 1917 (or 1916) and was originally a three-room building. In 1938 a small gymnasium was added that was also used for community events. For some years it had grades 1 through 8, and those who attended it went to Fair Oaks for high school. In 1959-60 it had only grades 1 to 6 with and enrollment of 58 and two teachers. It was closed in the spring of 1965.

I do not know if there is any way to get inside of it. I am sure the interior would be interesting.

The most intriguing sentence in the History of Jasper County, Indiana (1985) about Parr was this one: "The location and times of operation of a couple of stills were well kept secrets along with the particulars of the Ku Klux Clan meetings." (p. 263)
I have heard from some people older than I am that the Jasper County Klan was quite active in the 1920s and 1930s. There does not seem to be much written about that bit of local history, but maybe it is something that people would rather forget. (The Indiana Klan was huge in the 1920s and a powerful political force until scandal brought it down. According a map on Wikipedia, Jasper County was a hotbed of Klan activity in the 1920s. Unlike the Klan in the south, the purpose of the Indiana Klan was not to maintain segregation. Although the Indiana Klan was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, it was a more complex phenomenon than modern stereotypes of the Klan suggest.)

Feast of the Hunters' Moon 2010

I went the the Feast of the Hunter's Moon in West Lafayette on Sunday. I saw several fellow Rensselaerians there. Here are other things that I saw.

It is pretty much the same from year to year, but it is such a great festival that repeated visits are in order.

(Two years ago the transportation was awful. This year it was quite good. The weather was ideal. If you have never gone, you should go--it is the biggest and best of the area festivals.)
 

Indiana's Everglades

On Tuesday I attended the meeting of the Jasper County Historical Society and heard a mention of a film called "Indiana's Everglades." I googled the term and found this video on youtube. I have done only a few posts that touch this subject, but it an important part of county and area history.

(Do not be surprised if on some days in the next two months I do not post. I have picked up an old project that requires I spend a lot of time in front of the computer doing very tedious work, so sitting in front of the computer and doing posts may be a bit too much for me. So if there are some dry spots, blame it on the macrons, breves, dotaccents, ogoneks, and carons.)

Addendum: I was disappointed to see the person playing the "greed card" at the beginning of the film. Using greed as an explanation is almost always either a sign of lazy thinking or an attempt to demonize people who have a different view of the world. Perhaps they will fix this in the final version. Land developers, like the pioneers who plowed up the prairies and cut down the forests, thought that they were doing a social good by turning wasteland into productive farmland. If you want to understand the vociferous opposition to the proposed wildlife refuge a few years ago, that attitude explains a lot more than some vague and nebulous notion of greed.

Where does the wind come from?

Every time I go by the windmills along I-65 I am amazed at how quickly they are being constructed and how many there are. Last weekend they were almost a mile further north than they had been the last time I drove through them, and now are approaching the rest stop. You can see mile-marker 195 in the picture, and they extend all the way to mile-market 184.
Which brings me to a story I heard third-hand. A person I know was in Fowler a while back and had a conversation with a state cop. The cop had been patrolling SR 55 and found a car in front of him weaving back and forth. It was the middle of the day and he thought that it was a tad early to be so drunk. He pulled the woman over and asked her why she was driving so erratically. She was unaware that she was doing it as she was mesmerized by the windmills. She told the cop, "So THAT'S where the wind comes from!" He didn't have the heart to give her a ticket.

I wonder if she was from Chicago.

Small towns

I try to follow what is happening in the area small towns on blogs and Facebook. I am friends with Brook and Goodland, and am a fan of Morocco Times, Town of Morocco, Remington, Indiana, Wolcott Indiana, Wheatfield Indiana, and just about anything I can find in Rensselaer. There are two things that I found interesting enough to mention from these places in the past two weeks. The first is a series of comments about some old buildings in downtown Wolcott. I had a post on them a long while back, and the comments on the pictures provide some history of these buildings and the memories associated with them.

The second is a video from Remington, showing scenes from the 150th birthday party. It seems to epitomize small towns.



What other neighboring towns are on Facebook or have blogs?

The White County Poor Farm?

A while back I had a post on the old Jasper County Poor Farm. I noticed an auction notice tonight for the White County Lake View Home, and I recall someone telling me that it was White County's equivalent. The auction for contents is Saturday. and for the building and property July 24. The building looks quite interesting--see pictures here. I especially like the fire escape.

Until recently this was a retirement home. I found this description, which obviously is out of date:

Lakeview Home of White County is a Senior Community. Senior communities are for seniors who can take care of themselves. It is often a set of apartments in a variety of sizes from studios to large two bedrooms, where seniors live independently, but may receive additional services like transportation, pools, a convenience store, bank, barber/beauty shop, resident laundry, housekeeping, and security, are all services and amenities that may be provided there.

If you have additional information, please leave it in the comments.

Update: The Journal and Courier had a story about the first auction, for the contents. The home was closed at the start of the year. It had nine residents but could hold about 21.

Build it, but will they come?

Advanced Auto Part issued a press release back in 2007:

REMINGTON, Ind. February 12, 2007 – Advance Auto Parts, Inc. (NYSE: AAP), a leading automotive aftermarket retailer of parts, batteries, accessories and maintenance items, today announced plans to operate a new distribution facility in Remington, Indiana.
....
Advance anticipates creating over 600 new jobs to support the facility’s operations at full capacity. These new positions will include drivers, dispatchers, material handlers, supervisors, and managers, who Advance will actively recruit from the town of Remington and surrounding areas.

The distribution facility has been built, but currently it only employs watchmen. When you pass over the railroad tracks near the US 24 intersection, you can see it in all its magnificence. It still may open, but not until the economy improves.

In the foreground is the Caboose Lake Campground, which always seem to have lots of RVs. I would not expect that a site so close to the Interstate would be so attractive, but it is.

Another windmill update

On Easter Sunday we drove to Indianapolis, and I was amazed at how much construction had taken place in the wind farm along I-65 in White County. Three weeks ago we drove through it and there were many towers on the east side of the interstate under construction, and just a few getting started on the west side. On Easter Sunday all the towers on the east side seemed completed, but there were many new towers on the west side under construction. (Click on these pictures for larger versions.)

The blades of the newer towers are different from the blades of the ones erected just a few months ago.

All of the windmills in these pictures are west of I-65. In this row, some are competed and some are still waiting to be topped off.

This set of three is interesting, showing one completed, one getting close to having the generator and blades installed, and one still waiting for its final bit of tower. One the way home in the evening, I saw these again silhouetted in the setting sun, and it would have made a wonderful photograph. Unfortunately, I was driving and could not take any pictures.

Here is a closer view of a tower under construction. All the parts are there and they just need to be assembled. These pictures were all taken from a moving car (I was the passenger for these) and they are a bit blurry as a result.

Here is another tower that probably will be finished in a week. The crane is ready to start putting the pieces together.

There is a rest stop on I-65 just north of this wind farm. I have not stopped in it lately, but if it does not have information about the four wind farms that are in the vicinity, the state should start preparing some exhibits. They could also present some information on natural gas. I believe there is a geologic formation in this area that allows for the storing of natural gas, and just to the south of the rest area is a facility that has something to do with that.

Here is some video from the highway showing the three southernmost windmills of the Meadow Lake Wind Farm in White County.

Update: Here is the video I wish I could have shot.

Downtown Remington

It has been several months since I wrote about Remington, noting that its downtown was laid out along the railroad. I meant to write a bit more about the old buildings in the downtown, but other things kept coming up.

Old pictures of downtown Remington show buildings along both sides of Ohio Street, but those on the east side have been replaced with more recent structures. The west side of the street, however, still has some of the original buildings. The Jasper County Interim Report lists all four of the buildings in this picture. The two story building is an Italianate built around 1895. Next to it is a commercial building from about 1920, then the Bowman building, a parapet-front commercial building from 1918, and finally a commercial building from about 1895.
The Bowman building has a stained-glass window in front with the word "Bowman" on it.
There are three buildings along South Railroad Street that are listed in the Interim Report. I think they are the white two story building with the bay window, the other tall building a bit further down the block, and then the brick building next to it.
Below is a better view of the third building, which the Interim Report likes best of the Remington downtown buildings. It was built about a century ago, and the Report says, "This small parapet-front commercial building has retained its original storefront windows and transom of leaded prism glass." It is rated as "notable."

Nothing on North Railroad Street makes the Interim Report, though some of them look old.
I liked this building because it has such an obvious false front. I wonder why it did not rate a mention.
Downtown Remington has about the same amount of activity as downtown Wolcott, but the old buildings that remain in Remington are not nearly as interesting or as impressive as those in Wolcott.

Windfarm update

Going to and coming back from Indianapolis in the past couple weeks, I was astounded at how many new windmills are going up in White County near Brookston. Part of the Meadow Lake Wind Farm, they extend from near the southern border of White County almost to the interchange with US 231, a stretch of about eight miles. Below you can see a row of towers that need another section and that have the blades of the windmill on the ground next to the towers.

Here is a closer look at an uncompleted tower. These pictures were taken from the car in heavy traffic, so they leave a lot to be desired. Even a good set of pictures would have a hard time capturing the scale of this windfarm--it is enormous.

There were even several new towers being constructed west of I-65.

I have not been over to see the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm, but it may be even bigger.

Past Pleasant Ridge

I do not get out past Pleasant Ridge very often, so I took some pictures the other day when I passed by. The area is interesting in that it has three industrial operations that employ a considerable number of people (the ethanol plant, the elevator, and Talbert Manufacturing), but no residential area has developed there.

 

Last fall's harvest must have been a good one. There is still a large hill of corn outside of the elevator.

 

Ghostly windfarm

In mid December I traveled through the windfarm near Earl Park. The day was cloudy and misty. One could not see the windmills until they were very close by. First the base would appear, and then the blades if they were near the road.

Can you see the windmill?