Undeniably Indiana , livre ebook

Undeniably Indiana
AN IMPRINT OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bloomington Indianapolis
Hoosiers Tell the Story of Their Wacky and Wonderful State
Edited by
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Introduction by Nelson Price
This book is a publication of
Quarry Books an imprint of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
2016 by Indiana University Press All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Indiana University Press, editor. Title: Undeniably Indiana : Hoosiers tell the story of their wacky and wonderful state / edited by Indiana University Press ; introduction by Nelson Price. Other titles: Hoosiers tell the story of their wacky and wonderful state Description: Bloomington : Quarry Books, an imprint of Indiana University Press, [2016] Identifiers: LCCN 2016009608 | ISBN 9780253022264 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253022349 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Indiana-History-Anecdotes. | Indiana-Social life and customs-Anecdotes. | Indiana-Biography. Classification: LCC F526.6 .U55 2016 | DDC 977.2-dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016009608
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Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction by Nelson Price
Who We Are
Just Plain Peculiar
The Gooood Life
Those Magical Younger Years
Eatin Out
First and Only, Biggest and Best
Hoops
Town and City Delights and Reflections
Just Wait till It Changes
The World Enriching Our Home
The Infamous
The Extraordinary Ordinary
Preface
Well, fellow Hoosiers, you ve gone and done it. In honor of Indiana s upcoming bicentennial, we at Indiana University Press asked for you to share what s meaningful to you about our state. The word went out through social media, and you responded-many times over. Boy, did you share. So much poured into our office-reminiscences of growing up on farms, in small towns, and cities; legendary tales of the past; reflections on the ever-changing Hoosier weather; events both wonderful and calamitous; unforgettable and infamous people. And, of course, basketball. Although praising the state, a number of you also recognized its challenges. Together you built the first crowdsourced book at the press, and one of the first ever by a university press.
Using your words, your stories, we wove together a tapestry of the wonderful and sometime wacky goings-on that are undeniably Indiana. Some caveats are warranted, here. Unfortunately, because of the sheer volume of responses received, we were not able to include everyone. It should be noted that if your submission was already available in a publication, then we tended not to include it as your marvelous stories were already available to readers. A handful of tales we needed to edit, for brevity and clarity. Finally, it should be readily acknowledged that this book does not purport to be comprehensive in its geographical, cultural, or historical coverage of the state. You wrote in 2015 of what interested you the most about Indiana, and we put the book together accordingly.
So, sit back, pick a section, and dive into some charming, moving, and sometimes downright funny tales. We bet you ll learn a new tidbit or two, and come away with a smile, appreciating once again why it will always matter to be a Hoosier.
Indiana University Press
Introduction
First off, I m mighty proud to be a Hoosier-and a fifth-generation one to boot. Like many of us locals, I get revved up about sugar cream pie; the movies Hoosiers, Rudy , and Breaking Away ; young Abe Lincoln; and roadside motels as well as the lavish West Baden Springs Hotel.
Also like many of us, I don t give a hoot about the derivation of Hoosier. That intrigues newbies and out-of-staters far more than those of us who have lived with the designation all of our lives. Long ago, we moved on to revel in the rest of our colorful folklore, of which Indiana undeniably has a mountain.
Speaking of which, although Indiana doesn t literally have mountains, we do have hills, including some mighty steep ones-despite the myth that the state is as flat as a pork tenderloin, one of our favorite entrees. When Indiana became the nineteenth state in 1816-the same year that seven-year-old Abe Lincoln moved here with his family-most of the terrain was a deep, dense forest consisting of towering trees. According to folklore, a squirrel could have jumped from the Ohio state line clear across to our Illinois border without ever touching ground, accomplishing the aerial odyssey entirely by leaping from towering tree to tree.
So much for another misconception, that Indiana was a Plains state like Kansas or Nebraska. To the contrary, the Native Americans here were Woodland Indians, tribes such as the Shawnee, Miami, Potawatomi, and Lenape (Delaware) who flourished in the forests, not like their Plains counterparts. The forced evacuation of Native Americans to faraway places-that s where the link to Kansas comes in-was not the proudest chapter in our Hoosier story.
Even after two hundred years, though, the Native American heritage endures in many of our place names. Consider the Potawatomi, who controlled nearly all the region north of the Wabash River (that s almost one-fourth of Indiana) during the early 1800s. They lent their names everywhere from Lake Maxinkuckee (our second largest natural lake) to the town of Wakarusa (some natives translate that word as a Potawatomi term for stuck in mud ) and Pokagon State Park. The park in our far-northeastern corner has been renowned since the 1930s for its spectacular toboggan run that was created on the slope of, ahem, a steep hill.
In regard to place names, this state is, admittedly, as illogical as Garfield the cat. (The strip drawn in Delaware County by PAWS Inc. founder Jim Davis became, shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, the most widely distributed newspaper comic in the entire world. The antics of lasagna-loving Garfield are enjoyed by readers from Tokyo and Madrid to Salt Lake City and Muncie.)
A sampling of our inconsistency: South Bend is located in the far north, while North Vernon can be found in the southeast. At least a dozen of our towns are not in the identically named counties. The town of Decatur is far from Decatur County; instead, Greensburg-the town with the tree growing out of its historic courthouse-is that county s seat. The town of Franklin isn t in Franklin County. Marion County consists of my hometown of Indianapolis, not the city of Marion. Alas, you won t even find our towns of Berne and Geneva in Switzerland County.
With all of that inconsistency, who would have predicted that more Carnegie Libraries would be built here than in any other state? Our trove of libraries constructed in the early 1900s is just one of Indiana s claims to fame.

Garfield. PHOTO COURTESY OF GRANT COUNTY VISITORS BUREAU
Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis is the burial site of more US vice presidents (three) than any other graveyard. Nine of the ten largest high school gyms are located in the Hoosier state. The exception in the top ten can be found, naturally, in Texas, where bragging almost is a cultural imperative.
In contrast, Hoosiers historically have been modest and self-effacing, traits that are endearing but that often cause our contributions to be overlooked. Consider just 2 of the 160 notable Americans from all walks of life who are profiled in my book Indiana Legends: Famous Hoosiers from Johnny Appleseed to David Letterman . A pair of the twentieth century s literary greats were sons of prominent Hoosier families: Kurt Vonnegut ( Even my adenoids are Indianapolis, he once said, referring to the state capital s influence on him) and Booth Tarkington, one of only two novelists to have won the Pulitzer Prize twice. (The other was William Faulkner of Mississippi.)
True, we have our eccentricities. Since the 1940s, some excitable residents in the town of Churubusco claimed to have glimpsed a giant turtle looming in a murky lake. Known as Indiana s version of the Loch Ness monster, the massive turtle s presence never has been verified even though Fulk Lake has been partially drained and scuba divers have searched. In the face of such persistent folklore, though, Churubusco residents made the shrewdest possible move: They toss a town festival to celebrate the Beast of Busco, real or delusional. It s called Turtle Days.
Hoosiers love our town festivals, just like we adore our Indiana cuisine. There is such a thing as the latter, and it starts with the aforementioned breaded tenderloin sandwich, which a restaurant in Huntington, Nick s Kitchen, claims to have invented. Sugar cream pie-marketed as Indiana s official state pie -evolved out of farm kitchens in the 1800s because, unlike fruit pies, its ingredients (flour, sugar and cream) are staples available year-round, including during our harsh winters, as food historians note. Even today, Wick s Pies in the far-eastern Indiana town of Winchester remains the world s largest maker of sugar cream pie. Take that, Texans.
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