The Brownsville, Indiana Lions basketball team, 1929-30.  It's in the Depression, in my father's high school sophomore year in a tiny town between Liberty and Connersville. My dad, Huburt Jobe, is in the middle row, far right, leaning in. He'd be 106 now. He died at 79. We talked about his basketball days a lot. Why did I never ask him to write the names of his teammates? If you have cherished old photos such as this one, ask your loved ones to ID everyone.

It's the last day of January 2018. My dad was born in January 1912 in the tiny town of Brownsville, Indiana. The separate gym, and the three-story brick school, built the same year he was born, are gone. He's been gone a long time, too.

January in Indiana means basketball season, and in my father's heyday, basketball season was the time of his life. Two years after this photo, he was recruited to play college basketball. I can't help thinking it wasn't so common for a boy from the sticks during the Great Depression to continue his basketball career at Earlham College. He went, and for a while, that's how the ball bounced.

Three years after this photo, Dad's father bought a farm north of Brownsville. For the next half century, my grandfather and then father farmed it, and for 32 of those years, Dad was also a school bus driver.

My dad was more than meets the eye. He was an inventor, could make or fix about anything -- because that's what you did as a farmer. He also studied art both on his own and by taking classes, and he painted pictures. He played chess with a passion, and as a young man, played the violin. He loved to roller skate and taught me.

But basketball was his game. He loved to watch Indiana University play on TV, and whenever something was on television that he really wanted to see (such as IU basketball), he pulled his easy chair close to the TV for a front-row seat in our living room. He always followed our high school basketball team.

By the time I came along, born when Dad was nearly 46, the Brownsville Lions would soon consolidate into first Short High School in Liberty, then Union County High School, which is where I graduated 41 years ago.

My father was something of a perfectionist, or at least that was so in the subjects he cared about, such as math. I hated math and found it difficult. When Dad tried to teach me what my schoolteachers couldn't get through, the sparks flew.

Much to Dad's disappointment, I didn't want to play chess and had no particular artistic talent. So on those topics, I couldn't be his companion. But we had our mutually favorite topics. We both loved our swimming and fishing pond where dad taught me to swim and fish. We both loved having ponies and later, my horse around. He set me up well with those and taught me to ride.

But our favorite shared topic was basketball. In the 1970s, our high school had some fine teams. One year we were undefeated. My senior year and the one after, the Patriots won the Connersville sectional. That was big potatoes for us.

I rarely missed a varsity basketball game in high school, and never a home basketball game. My parents had season tickets, too.

Back at home, Dad and I sat up late and talked over each game. Once we thoroughly rehashed the key plays, shining moments, and outlook for what was ahead on the schedule, then we talked about Dad's years as a Brownsville Lion basketball star.

Those were years still precious to him. We talked about his games, and how the game itself was different back then. We discussed how a big shot from a Connersville factory tried to get my grandfather to move the family to Connersville, complete with a job offer, so Dad could be -- horror of horrors -- a Spartan! Why, that was  in the late 1920s and here it was the mid-1970s and we were still outraged by the very notion of such a treasonous offer!

I remember quivering with excitement in the chilly house in the wee hours of the morning over dad's tales, and imagining him at the age of the boys who played for my high school. I never felt closer to him or happier in his presence than those winter nights discussing basketball.

The advice he offered, not what I had expected, is something I've never forgotten.

One year I learned that the Patriots would take part in the Richmond Holiday Tournament. The tourney was a whole year away when I heard the news. This was exciting! What's more, the tournament would include a large Indianapolis school that had a star player. It was as though the rural country kids from Liberty were finally going to get their due and be noticed!

When I heard this, I was babysitting at the neighbors' house. I called Dad to tell him. "I wish it were next year right this minute and we could play in that tournament right now!" I told him.

His reaction took me by surprise. "Don't wish your life away."

Simple. Profound.  I have never wished away time since. Not even wish away a bland day in January. Life is too precious and time passes too quickly to miss out on a single moment.

Christmas 1976. My gift from sister-in-law Jeannie? An oversized afghan, crocheted in various hues of blue, a sturdy pattern designed for extra warmth, created by the hands of Jeannie's mother, Evelyn Jackson of Brownsville, Indiana.

It was luscious; so much so that I folded it up and assigned it to my hope chest. I think the girls of my generation were the last to have these large, legged boxes that were for their mothers and grandmothers standard fare among young women. They were meant to contain beautiful linens and dishes that a girl “hoped” to enjoy in marriage.

Just a year and a half later I married Brian and the cedar chest and its contents went into our starter home. We wed in late October so it took no time for the afghan to make its entrance and remain on various sofas in our lives for the next 35 years.

Its wonderful size spread comfortably over all of Brian’s 6’3” frame, and for me, allowed more than enough room for napping in warmth with a toddler at my side, or a cat, or dog or even two of the three at once.

On especially cold nights, it was added on top of the bed blankets to my side of the bed only as it provided one too many layer for Brian’s.

New Year’s Eve 1980: Our friends visited for what would become the first of the next dozen years of new years seen in together. Pam was expecting their first baby, Jenny, and wasn’t feeling well that night. We insisted that she bundle up in that blanket.

Another few years later, it swaddled a sleeping niece for her ride home with parents after a too-late visit to our house.

I joked with Brian, sort of, that if I died, he should bury it with me.

All the while the blanket washed and dried beautifully in our appliances on standard settings.
Then in about 2010, the year Ben and buddies rented a house together in college, it apparently went off to live with him. Or at least that’s what we think. We didn’t see it again at home, and with a sigh, figured it got lost or abused beyond use in the world of college life and a household of young bachelors. I marveled at what a useful life it had led. That was that.

Until last weekend.

 I was going through some things upstairs. I decided to clean out the antique cradle that holds pillows and extra blankets. You know what’s coming ...

The long-lost afghan surfaced at the bottom of the cradle! I couldn't believe our good fortune! It was back in our lives. I unearthed it and whisked it off to the washer for a good cleaning, then to the drier. As it had done every time for decades, it came out soft, clean, and perfectly intact.

One would be hard-pressed to give or get a more useful and better made gift than that afghan.

Thank you again, Jeannie, and thanks to her mother Evelyn, all over again. It will be making regular appearances again for the rest of this winter – and beyond.

Do you have a handmade staple in your life like our afghan? Also wondering if any of you ladies had hope chests and if you still have them?

The laptop I’m typing on now is several years old. It’s probably closer to 10, and 10 may be a larger number than several. I just know that all the popular keyboard keys are worn to a frazzle, their letters a mystery had I not taken Ethel Sharp’s typing class my freshman year of high school.

The laptop is so old (How old is it?) that when the power cord stopped holding power, I was in a fix. Its replacement cord is obsolete. We found a makeshift one that will work with the addition of the right plug, specifically with the last plug of its kind known to mankind. (Or at least to central Indiana just days before I had to leave on a special work assignment last year.)

Revived with its new plug, the computer did not disappoint me, allowing the production of words and the transmission of photos, news stories and blog posts I needed, and all the blog posts, Facebook likes and email notes I could muster since.

Brian told me I should transition to his laptop. He bought his own right after he retired, thinking that he would need it. Turns out he upgraded his phone and favors it over getting out the laptop.

He keeps asking me how I’m liking it.

I am trying to like it, I tell him, but it isn’t this one. His is jumpy whereas this keyboard is steady. His has a clean face with crisp letters whereas this one looks, well, comfortable.

I don’t know, but this old keyboard may have set some kind of record for number of documents produced. On it I wrote and published two novels, two-and-a-half years of blog posts, endless web searches, occasional news and feature stories and a bazillion emails.

While I enjoy nice things, I don’t get especially excited over those that are pricey, shiny, and new. Things can be nice and old. There’s zero chance, for example, that I’ll trade in a century-old (or older) pie safe for a new piece of furniture or that because honey oak is not the popular wood of the day, that I’ll paint my Seller’s Cabinet.

I like my old friends and my old husband. I like my older car and my job that is anything but new. I'm not inclined to give any of them up just now.

But I should take Brian’s advice, I suppose, and learn to love the much newer laptop; should make sure it’s loaded for bear should this one go kaput. I should.

Yet if his laptop is so smart, why does it always greet me with, "Welcome, Brian!"

Shouldn't it know I'm not Brian?

And wouldn’t it be ha-ha funny if the new one gave out before the old one did?   

Have you ever gotten your signals crossed? That happened to me today, and I’ll tell you about it shortly.

But first, I want to tell you about another time I pulled something like this. OK, there have been more than two times, but I’m only sharing the two. This older one happened in 2002.

I hadn’t thought about the 14-year-old incident for a long time until two weeks ago when Pendleton icon Steve Cherry died suddenly. Mr. Cherry was a lifelong bachelor and the right-hand man of numerous coaches, administrators and probably teachers at Pendleton Heights High School for decades. One speaker at his funeral said that he is survived by the Pendleton community. I’d say that’s about right.

He was a mentor to our younger son, Ben, as Mr. Cherry was the former director of the school radio station and he selected Ben as the WEEM radio scholarship recipient his senior year, the award being endowed by Mr. Cherry.

Among Mr. Cherry’s many duties, yet another one involved the school’s drivers’ ed program. This is the 2002 story.

Word came that there would be an informational meeting about the summer drivers’ ed program during a particular school day. Attendance was mandatory. A freshman, Sam would be taking drivers’ ed that summer and we didn’t want to miss out on the mandatory meeting.

I arranged to miss work for a few hours so that I could attend the meeting, held in the “pit,” an auditorium in the high school where the stage is sunken and the audience is at ground level with rows tapering down, not up.

So I arrived prepared to pay whatever fee was involved and took my seat in the front row, putting me basically on the stage. Soon, the freshmen students started filing in, filling the audience. But something odd: Where were the parents? I wondered. There was not a parent in sight! I was the only parent among my son and hundreds of his peers. I spotted Sam but thankfully, didn’t catch his eye.

I couldn’t get up and leave, climbing dozens of rows with every eye in the place on me. So I sort of sunk down in my seat and vowed not to turn my head or turn around. Obviously, I had messed up; this meeting was only for the students.

Mr. Cherry picked up the microphone and started addressing the students, just inches from me. Maybe if I just lay low, the whole thing would be over before my son or his peers saw me, the lone parent, front and center.

In the middle of Mr. Cherry’s presentation, without missing a beat, he looked right at me, and into the microphone he said, “Can we help you with something, ma’am?”

I shook my head no, mouthing the word to match, my face no doubt a brilliant red. Thankfully, he didn’t press the issue and continued talking.

Once it was over, I explained to Mr. Cherry that I thought parents were supposed to attend and I was sorry. Still, I didn’t turn around, praying that no one was laughing at Sam or at me.

Once the coast was clear, I got out of there and drove to work.

I feared Sam’s arrival home that night, that he would tell me I humiliated him and what was I doing there anyway. But he said nothing. I said nothing about it either.

Fast forward to today.

On my list of errands was to secure tickets for some friends and me to attend a  20-year celebration of the local Christian Moody radio station that we enjoy listening to. There will be a national speaker and music. The party will be held at a local large church 10 minutes or so from my house. 

I decided to just pop into the station and pick up the tickets. As I pulled into the parking lot, I noted that there was a staff entrance, and what appeared to be a front entrance with the sidewalk cleared off nicely. I got the front door half open when a man walking through the lobby looked at me and said, “Can I help you?”

I told him I was there about tickets. The receptionist then took over. “Oh, we don’t have them here. You need to order them online.”

I told her I’d figure it out and turned toward the door.

Maybe I hesitated or simply looked pitiful, but she offered to go ahead and process the order for me online and print the tickets. “Oh, that would be great,” I told her. As she worked, I leaned over and knocked over a knick-knack on her desk. Twice.

Still, she completed the task, took my money and handed me the tickets. I thanked her profusely.

“So, do you have a lot of people stop in here for the tickets?” I asked.

“No, you’re the first,” she answered.
 
Seems about right. 

We had plans for a cross-state day trip Friday. We probably should have canceled Thursday but we thought there was at least a 50/50 chance that the weather media was freaking out prematurely, and the bread shelves were barren needlessly.

Early Friday we decided that since there was ice on the ground and snow coming in, we wouldn't take the chance and rescheduled.

Once all the cancellations and rescheduling were finished, we had ourselves a snow day.

There's something cozy and comforting about a snow day. It feels as though you've been gifted a block of "free" time to spend however you want, within the boundary of your home or your farm.

I'm a new year's cliche -- back on Weight Watchers. After the act of slithering back in there, I quickly learned that WW embraces such creatures as myself and I'm back in the fold. This time, I was most pleasantly surprised to learn they recently rolled out a new program, and there are aspects that so far, are satisfying to my taste buds like no other program I've been on. Of course the test is if I feel that way writing here a year from now.

Around noon, we went to the grocery store with no problem, and came home with ingredients for WW-friendly mini pizzas, shown above. Not half bad. In fact, Brian liked them too! Boom! A new go-to recipe.

Along with cooking, I most enjoy cleaning on snow days. Yes, cleaning! I feel driven to make the house as cozy as I can and that begins with cleaning (at least on a snow day). So the kitchen got a good scrub, cabinets organized, 2017 papers to keep bundled up and put elsewhere, and more cooking: butternut squash sliced into spaghetti-like strips and flavored with spaghetti sauce. Crunchy, bulky, boom!

Next came straightening laundry-room shelves, bathroom storage and I even scrubbed under the kitchen sink.

Tonight, I'm grateful for a warm home, a cozy house and for a fresh start, and a pantry and fridge full of food. How did you spend your snow day or days?

There's a lot of flu and other illness going around these parts of central Indiana right now. And while I don't usually get sick too often, I'm one of those who when hit with the flu, it's lights out for a week. That said, guess what I didn't get in the fall and forgot about during the holidays?

So after work tonight, I stopped by the New Castle CVS and got my flu shot. Better late than never, right? Let's hope so. But it's not the injection I want to talk about. I want to speak of the pharmacist who administered it.

She is Molly Radford and I have known her since, well, since before she was born. The daughter of my former boss and forever friend, Darrel and his wife, Becky, Molly has never been without a broad smile. Of course I don't follow the Butler University grad around all the time to know that for a fact, but I can't think of a more perennially pleasant young woman than Molly Radford. I think Darrel would probably confirm that his girl came into the world smiling!

Through the years I've seen her in a variety of settings in real life and on Facebook. Always, that smile is present. And so it was today when she gave me a SHOT!

I'm happy not only that she is now a pharmacist, but is engaged to be married!

I remember the week she was due to be born. We were in a newsroom-staff meeting and somehow, Darrel's cup of water fell over, soaking the floor. I said, "Darrel! Your water broke!"

Well, it was funny at the time.

Earlier in the day, I had another similar moment to the Molly one. My boss, Katie Clontz, said something about her children. I said, "You know you're old when you remember when your boss was a little girl." Actually, Katie was a toddler when I showed up at The Courier-Times.

And now my boss and my pharmacist are all grown up and productive citizens and I can say I knew them when. I could feel sad that I'm old enough for such things or comment on time flying or some other cliche. The truth is, it's kind of exciting to see another generation serving as community leaders in a new way, in their hometown of New Castle, Indiana. Kind of like the world is in good hands and all that.

I wish both of them everything good. I know their parents. I know where they came from. They've done their folks and their community proud.

Once when Ben was a kid, he said, "I'll be glad when I'm an adult and don't have homework." I laughed and told him that homework never ends, it only changes.

I'm reminded of that today as I stare down my own stack of must-dos on this brisk but sunny January Saturday morning.

You probably don't even want to ask what I have going this month. Unlike some fortunate folks who view this month as one of quiet and rest, easing into a new year after all the busyness of December, January is a hit-the-ground-running month in my world.

First up is calling hundreds of numbers for my share of verification of listings for social, service, governmental, church, and other services that will be listed in our newspaper's upcoming annual Answer Book. In addition, we have to round up a good number of photos fro
m the previous year that depict some of these community scenes and services. I've been working from home on this project because at work ...

I have to button up an early deadline for the winter issue of her magazine for women. The quarterly magazine started in summer 2011 by founder-publisher Tina West. Well, after five years away, Tina is back! And she'll contribute to the winter issue.

When Tina asked me to edit the magazine in 2011, it was a dream come true. I had always entertained the idea of working for a magazine, but with a home, family, lifestyle and no connections to speak of in national magazine publishing, it wasn't a realistic goal. I've done some freelancing through the years but with that, you are on an article-by-article basis with no promises of tomorrow.

Sometimes, though, a dream comes true through reframing it. A local women's magazine? Seriously! And here we are seven years later.

We have a special edition coming at the end of the month called HOPE. For one Sunday, there's only good news in the front section of the paper. (The bad news goes in the next section.) So that means some special feel-good stories and I have interviews for both under my January belt.

January also means my book Indiana Sales Tax is due. We're heading to our accountant next week to get that squared away.

There's the daily workload, the house, bill paying on today's agenda, and Monday night, Bible Study Fellowship resumes for 2018. A week from tomorrow, my church life group, the Midlife Moms, also resume and we're beginning a new study, the book Fervent, by Priscilla Shirer.

So a quiet January isn't part of my agenda. And today means delving into that stack of homework you see in the photo.

How about you? What kind of homework keeps you busy? Is January quiet and contemplative or do you have a lot going on too?

One of my favorite songs is that old John Denver tune, Back Home Again.

It's one of those songs that grabs me somewhere deep as only a beloved tune from our youth can do. It always reminds me of my childhood home, winter, and my mother's simple meals on the stove. I thought of it today as I had the day home alone.

The snow softly fell outside my window today adding maybe another inch to the solid covering we already have. Down came most remnants of Christmas around the house, and into the slow cooker went chili ingredients.

If something didn't get done for the holidays, it won't now. The page has turned and we're into a new year. I spent a couple more hours today on the phone and internet for a work project, proofed a column for her magazine that was so nicely written, I could do nothing as editor to improve it, even with an odd comma or a new paragraph.

I could have accomplished more today, but that would have meant getting out of my pajamas before 4 p.m. Now it's 6 p.m., Brian is eating supper, and I'm typing in my first blog post of 2018.

Night has fallen to cover the view out my window and I'm hoping to get to bed by 9:30. A good night's sleep is gold for the day ahead.

So there's little point to this post other than to wish you and yours a Happy 2018 and to remind you that when it comes to the simple joys of home, hearth, supper in the slow cooker, a hot bath in the works, and the lure of an early bedtime, hey, it's good. It's all good.