I can’t leave behind our trip to Minneapolis without a post about The News Room. This is the most unique restaurant I’ve ever visited. It was a couple of blocks from The Hyatt Regency, where we stayed and we had to pass it on our walk to the light rail line. Our little crew humored me and agreed we needed to enjoy a meal there. Meanwhile, Brian and I speculated on the restaurant’s roots. We guessed that it was surely once the site of a real newspaper, reinvented as a restaurant. The top of the building has a newsboy and the restaurant's name wraps in a striking fashion. I wondered if the interior would contain décor somehow representing the newspaper industry. Or if the menu offerings would boast clever print-journalism terms for the offerings. As soon as we walked through the front door for an early lunch, I was in awe! Copies of newspapers were framed and also upsized into wallcoverings throughout the restaurant with screaming headlines of the top news stories of the past century. Theme areas included sports, hard news and entertainment. Coordinating newspapers appeared in those areas. For example, the bar area had an enlarged newspaper headline and story announcing the end of prohibition. The ladies room’s dominant headline and story is from Variety proclaiming that “Women get the vote.” Overhead were a variety of TVs with live news and sports programs, providing a current news feed overlaying the historic print ones. We learned that the building itself has nothing to do with a real newspaper. The one-of-a-kind restaurant was simply the creative concept of the owner and it’s been around for a dozen years in the heart of downtown Minneapolis at 990 Nicollet Mall at 10th Street. Even though I wandered around and took photos and asked questions of the good-natured staff (having ink in my blood and all) my dining partners were there for a meal, not a habitat experience, so we ordered and enjoyed our food. I had a California turkey and avocado panini. The guys had clubs. I’m drawing a blank on what Allison had but we all agreed it was a great stop on our journey. We ordered from menus designed to look like late-breaking Extra! editions. The server said sometimes people call The News Room with news tips. We didn’t have a news tip but we left her a nice one.
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Answer this without thinking. What is your most memorable Christmas gift?
When I see that question, the first thing that comes to mind is a stick of deodorant. The year was 1981 and we were invited to a staff Christmas party for my husband’s school co-workers. We had moved to that west-central Indiana community the summer before, and while the job came with a raise, there were financial setbacks on the other side of the balance sheet. I no longer brought in a paycheck because with the move, the plan was for me to go to college full time, year-round, until I had a journalism degree. That meant college fees and gas to get there. Not only that, but we left behind in Richmond a mobile home on which we were making payments, plus lot rent, as we had been unable to sell it. To make it even harder, the trailer park wouldn’t let us put out a for sale sign. We were making it. But things were tight. So tight, in fact, that the idea of buying the gag gift for the party seemed too much to ask. So I scrounged around and wrapped up some odd thing that we had around the house. Surely, we would get in exchange some equally odd thing from someone else’s house. Instead, our gag gift was a new stick of brand-name deodorant. The person who brought it had obviously paid for it, and it was nice and useful. This meant one less item on our personal shopping list. I remember this because now it seems comical, the look on our faces, as though we had won a lottery. Had anyone been watching our reactions, that person would surely be confused by our inappropriate glee. We told this story to a friend who is a couple decades older. She has a similar story that involves the Christmas her husband bought her a potato masher. The circumstances were different but the sentiment the same. They were young, and broke, and the present was a bright spot. I suppose there are a number of morals to these stories: That living within your means is superior to buying or receiving gifts that break your budget. That delayed gratification is better than trying to grab it before its time — and then feel sick about the bills later. That at best, material gifts bring only temporary happiness. Or how sometimes shiny new presents only mean a trip to the store the day after Christmas to stand in line and return them. But also, stories such as the gag gift and the potato masher bring to mind special memories of a place and a time, of making do but not minding because you are with the ones you love. I’ve got 58 Christmases under my belt, but it would take me a while to remember many of the gifts, lovely though they have been, that have been under our trees. Yet that deodorant stick always comes to mind this time of year. And I smile with the memory. This column appeared Sunday, Dec. 18, 2016 in the New Castle, Indiana Courier-Times where Donna Cronk is Neighbors Editor as well as editor of the quarterly her magazine for women. What happens when the worst ice storm in years is timed with a trip to the airport for a weekend getaway? And when we try hard to get there but it takes almost three hours instead of one, and it’s nothing but white knuckles and spun-out vehicles along the way?
For starters, we miss our flight. Think National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Think Planes, Trains and Automobiles. That was us over the weekend. The trip had been scripted and paid for since summer when our family decided that instead of our usual gift format for Christmas, we’d do a weekend to see our Colts play the Minnesota Vikings. After all, it was an easy, direct flight and there was plenty to do including the Mall of America, a vibrant downtown, and a foodie's paradise. What could go wrong? Maybe Sam was prophetic when on the scorching-hot day that we put the trip together, he chirped, “I hope it’s 40 below!” Well, it wasn’t that bad. Game day was only 19 below. It just felt like minus 40. But who could have guessed that the real weather story wasn’t in Minneapolis. It was in Indianapolis! Little did we know when we got up at 3:30 a.m. Saturday, ice had replaced the predicted rain. Central Indiana was an ice-skating rink. Our daughter-in-law Allison called with the alert. We quickly decided to meet up at the airport to speed things along and hope that we could all still make the flight. It didn’t happen. All later flights to the Twin Cities were full. Brian scanned his cellphone to find a single possibility via air: he plugged in 4 seats one way and the cost came in at $1,100. The airport was madness. We didn’t want to scrap the trip. The seats would probably go fast. We still had our prepaid return flights. What would you do? Our answer came when Brian realized that the figure wasn’t a total for four but $1,100 apiece! The seats must have been on Air Force One with the Lincoln Bedroom thrown in. We’re Cronks, not Trumps or Clintons, so we passed on the extra $4,400. Totally bummed, we sat downstairs away from the upstairs insanity as we waited on the kids to arrive. Across from us was the Avis rental-car counter. Half sarcastic and half hopeful I said, “Well, we could drive it.” “Oh, no, we’re not doing that,” Brian said, pausing, calculating. I could see his wheels turning. “We could though.” I went over to check out the cost. “Do you realize what the weather is like out there right now?” the clerk inquired. We had a rough idea. While we chatted, Brian got a text from Allison: We could drive it. Her text was the confirmation we needed. Road trip! Why yes, we are crazy. The radar showed the farther northwest we would get, the better the road conditions – at least as far as ice goes. As the morning went on, things would surely improve, anyway as the temperature hovered at 32 degrees. We hit the road and Brian promised a breakfast stop in Lafayette. Four hours later, it was a late lunch there instead. The four of us voted whether to continue or scrap the trip. The landslide vote was to continue, stopping for a few supplies in case we ended up stuck for hours somewhere. Allison and I gathered granola bars and water. Gee, I wonder what tips the Donner Party might offer in that moment. Never mind. Onward we rolled into the dark, finally arriving at the Minneapolis / St. Paul airport to return the rental and hit the city rail system to our downtown digs. It was 15 hours later than we had planned but we were there! Thank you Jesus! The Hyatt was supposed to be “not that far” from the rail stop. That's city-speak for a crisp hike, a good mile at midnight in a downtown setting where we’d never been before. Brian quickly learned something about my packing skills as he pulled our large suitcase. “What do you have in there?” he asked later when his jaw thawed. “It has the density of a meteorite.” Believe it or not, we ended up having a great weekend with our kids, seeing the Colts play possibly their best game of the season, and experiencing a city full of friendly, interesting Minneapolis folks, dining in restaurants of national renown, laughing at the situation, making memories. It was indeed a weekend we’ll always treasure. Minneapolis is a cool city. Good thing that's true in more ways than one. There’s snow on the ground, the tree is lit, the house is dressed all cozy for Christmas, and I have some thank yous in order for this TGIF-edition of Home Row. First up. Thank you to Brian’s brother and sister-in-law, Steve and Linda Cronk, for hosting him at their winter digs in Sanibel Island, Florida, for a week. It was a great va-cay for him as he enjoys few things more than guy time with his brother where they laugh and carry on the way brothers do. Thanks for putting up with them, Linda. I am so glad he got to do this again this year. While I take a ton of photos for both work and pleasure, and enjoy posting them on social media, not everyone is a camera hog the way I am. So we’ll be lucky if Brian lets me keep the post alive with this picture. But I happen to think the bros look pretty darned cute out there in the Everglades on one of those air boats. Looks like fun too. Mail call brought a surprise this week, one in which I need to issue another special thank you. My thank you goes to retired Fountain Central Junior-Senior High School teacher Lynnette McMahan of Covington who worked for years with Brian. She attended one of my programs last summer. This week she sent me a "self-portrait" by Mary Higgins Clark, famed author of 51 bestsellers. Lynnette won the piece in a charity doodle auction. Writes Lynnette, “I was going through this stack of autographs and asked myself who I know who could relate to a well-known author. Your name popped into my head immediately.” Thanks, Lynnette! How incredibly thoughtful. Seems to me that Mary's self-description is good advice for writers of every genre. Consider: 1. Pen in hand. 2. Always in a hurry. 3. Looking for a plot. In summary: Always be ready! My third thank you is to all the Midlife Moms for their clever little gifts they made or selected for the rest of their MLM sistas. It’s always a fun part of our Christmas party to see what everyone has been up to such as Marilyn with her hand-stitched Christmas cards and Teresa with her M & M canisters, Patty with her decorated white wooden letters and this – Karen Carr’s jars of potato soup mix. I made a bowl of this for lunch today and it is simply delicious! We all have so much for which to be grateful. Counting my blessings on this Friday, and wishing you all a beautiful pre-Christmas weekend. My great-niece Nicki and her boyfriend Stephen are totally rehabbing the 1920s farmhouse where I grew up. We are so proud of the work they are doing and their vision for what will be. They have so many plans for the place! For starters, they are standing in what I knew as a bedroom, now transformed into a kitchen overlooking the living room. Last week I stumbled upon this image, which incredible as it is to realize, is approaching 75 years old. The man, who looks almost exactly like my dad, is actually my grandfather, Roscoe Jobe. The little boy is my late brother, David. The setting is the same pasture where my pony grazed in the late 1960s, early 1970s. The building is the summer kitchen and the house where I grew up is on the other side of it. I love this old photo for many reasons. For one thing, in decades past, people didn’t take bunches of pictures as they do now, so you’ve got to figure the photos that were taken and survive today represent special occasions or milestones of one kind or another. This picture is between 70-75 years old. I’m guessing that its significance is that my grandfather, Roscoe Jobe, had just bought this pony for my brother, the late David Jobe.
I also love it because this picture was taken in what I knew as “the pony lot,” or, referring to another era of the same location, “the chicken yard” (due to chickens residing there before I came along). My pony, Ginger, and later my horse, Buck, grazed and were saddled up in that same space 25 years after this photo was taken. By then, my grandfather had passed on and my brothers were grown. (Remember, I came along late in my parents' reproductive years.) I love the continuity that this old farm photo represents, but there is more. After my dad died, my brother David and his wife Janet built a home steps away from where this photo was taken. They are both gone now but their granddaughter lives in the home they built, and that granddaughter’s sister lives in the house where my grandparents, then my parents lived, and where I grew up (on the other side of that summer kitchen in the photo. It still stands as well). One of my future projects concerns creating some kind of order for these old photos. And wouldn’t the best of them make great gifts, enlarged and framed, for particular loved ones? I have century-old and older photos that are in perfect condition, clear, sharp and although they have not been cared for especially well through the decades, heaped into boxes and shelved, and who knows what else before that, they have come down through the generations intact and beautiful. I have to wonder what photos (the current term has evolved to “images”) will survive from the digital age. I am as guilty as the next person of taking family pictures, posting the best of the lot on Facebook – and forgetting them. Up until a couple years ago, I was good about making copies, at least. Before that, until about five years ago, I was good about not only copying them, but filing them in order in albums. I’m not so good at either now. We see how technology changes rapidly, and we change right along with it more gradually, but change we do. So the camera cards and smart phones of today that produce beautiful images will become obsolete and if the photos aren’t printed, ones depicting entire childhoods, vacations and special events, may be lost forever. It’s something to think about. Will my kids and grandkids, let alone great-grandkids, give a hoot about old photos? Will there even be remaining images of their ancestors or will today’s selfies be tomorrow’s long-lost fad? I’m curious about how others manage their vintage, as well as more current photos. How do you store them? Do you still print and fill family albums? Do you ever print photos anymore? Do you trust the “cloud” to house your content on into the future or will it be lost when the “next big thing” comes along? And even if you trust the "cloud," will your descendants be able to access those images? The Whetsels of Brownsville, Indiana, about 1900. As did I, my grandmother Hazel arrived later in her parents' life. Far right, seated, is her mother, Sally Ann, who interacted with Indians as a girl, and saw the Abraham Lincoln Funeral train. Her youngest daughter -- my Grandma Hazel -- stands next to her. Hazel's father is seated in the center. I recognize Grandma's sister, Etta, in the back. The little kids are probably Hazel's nieces and nephew. Mine are nearly my age, too. Brian and I spent a most pleasant last Saturday morning in downtown New Castle at the Henry County Farmers Market. He read a library book and enjoyed the weather while I chatted with passersby almost nonstop and moved some books.
“I know you,” one lady who stopped at our table told not me, but Brian. “Me? I’ve never met you ma’am. How do you know me?” he asked. Of course the answer is that in the nearly three decades I’ve worked at The Courier-Times I’ve written a column about life, and life of course includes family as a huge component. So she’s read about the guy. The morning reminded me how much I continue to love Henry County and its people. They are home folks and I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful ones through the years. Saturday morning alone, a good sampling of people I’ve written about or worked with happened by my space as they gathered their supply of luscious and local fruits and vegetables or maybe a stellar baked good from Sheila Tieken. It’s fun to have Brian along with me at some of the random places I go these days because now that he’s retired, he has time for such excursions. And, I love it when our various “worlds” meet and last week they did in two ways. Along with the Saturday market, two of his friends from his career with Hamilton Southeastern Schools invited me to lunch and we agreed we’d get together again soon and bring Brian. In a busy career where he sometimes put in 70-hour work weeks, there wasn’t much time or occasion for him to visit Henry County, aka my neck of the woods. For the past 27 years, we’ve met in the middle, halfway between our separate workaday worlds, in Pendleton, where we raised our boys and where we continue to live. Brian pointed the car southwest and I pointed mine southeast for 26 years as we headed to our separate towns to work. It’s how we’ve made ends meet, with three communities a daily a part of our lives. They still are. But Fishers, New Castle and Pendleton aren’t our only stomping grounds. There’s Fountain County, where we spent the 1980s, Parke County, where Brian’s folks lived out their retirement, and Union County, a place we both see as our heart’s home in ways too complex for some to understand. I dare say we’d be comfortable living out our days in any of those places. One of my favorite life principles is, using an old cliché, finding a way to kill two birds with one stone, or to use a modern term for the same thing, to multitask. At Saturday’s farmers market, in addition to having a good time, seeing lots of community friends and peddling my paper goods, I scoped out three different feature stories that I’ll be pursuing for the newspaper. I call that a good day. Henry County may not be my home in the property-deed sense, but one thing is absolutely certain: I’m at home in Henry County. Note: The Henry County Farmers Market is open 8-noon Saturdays until October on the east side of the courthouse in downtown New Castle, Indiana. Lots of seasonal fruit, vegetables, beef, baked goods and homemade uniques. This Saturday, July 16, is Customer Appreciation Day. Free sloppy joe sandwiches made with fresh, local beef while supplies last. For a dozen or so years now, Brian, his brother Steve, and their good buddy Tom, take a summer fishing trip together. The few days spent on one Hoosier lake or another, and in recent years, Raccoon Lake in Parke County, are more than what it seems on the surface of the water or even into its depths where the fish are (hopefully) biting. The trip is discussed all year long. On a frosty January day this year, in fact, we passed through the area and stopped beside Raccoon Lake to take photos and text them to Tom. Also about January, they decide the particulars of their reservations. For a few days, fishing may be the official reason they get together, but the real reason has more to do with seeing each other and a designated stretch of laughing so hard—yes at each others' expenses—like goofy schoolboys, that hospitalization is a real possibility. When Tom was a newlywed a few years back, his lovely bride enthusiastically suggested that the spouses be included in the annual to-do. I said that would be a to-don’t. “They really need their guy time,” I told her. And I totally get it. If we blew in on them, the dynamics would change, the fishing trip fall apart. It would be like the guys showing up at my women’s life group and settling themselves between friends on the sofa, as they listened to our stories and plans. No! Brian’s specific fishing-trip prep gets under way days or weeks before the trip. He gets his poles out and sees if they need adjusted. He rifles through his late father’s and his own tackle boxes looking for – something. He talks about (more than once) and finally prints his fishing license. Trips are made to town for supplies. It’s four days. And it’s a big deal. The first year they took a fishing trip, I started what has become a tradition. I get them gifts that somehow relate to fishing. This can be a loose relationship, mind you, like the year I made each of them canisters of homemade chocolate-chip cookies using Brian’s and Steve’s late mother’s recipe. Who doesn’t love chocolate chip cookies, true, but these were really for Tom, who had a special love for these treats of Mary’s. So the loose relationship here was that they ate them while fishing. Lanterns, T-shirts, novelty fish lighters, coffee mugs, caps, fishing or general interest books have all been prizes wrapped up and shared when they get to the lake. This year was no different. “Have you got our gifts?” Brian asked weeks before the trip, adding that the guys would be disappointed if I didn’t come through. I think that means he would be too. This year, as in several years past, I found the surprises at Cracker Barrel. There they were lined up on a shelf – three of them in fact –insulated beverage containers with fish motifs on the outside, lids included. Done! And a bonus by getting them at Cracker Barrel: free gift wrap. I also made some homemade Chex Mix. Days before they left, Brian had everything all boxed up. He rolled west on a sunny morning and I felt happier for him than for myself when I get to do something special. This morning, the fishing trip is over for another year. I think they should get together more often. I think they should take more fishing trips than one a year. Among the three couples involved, some are retired, some are working full-time, some part time and all have full, busy lives. But no matter how busy, one thing doesn’t change: the annual fishing trip when these three best buddies get together and catch more than fish. They catch time together. And that is priceless. When I was a little girl growing up in the 1960s, society was much more formal, even in rural Indiana. This was particularly apparent at Easter when each year, the little girls each got a new Easter dress and bonnet. White patent-leather shoes were also purchased, and we pulled out the white gloves and knee-high white socks. Easter dresses were always pastel, and when you were preschool-age, there was a lot of smocking. I remember the layers of flounce and frothy fabrics in hues of lavender, pink and yellow. One year, when I had a particularly pretty dress, I begged Mom to let me debut mine on Palm Sunday, a week early. I don’t think she let me. But that’s OK because the dresses would be worn again and again, Sunday after Sunday, special event after event, until they were outgrown and replaced by the following Easter’s "good dress." I felt pretty, but not particularly comfortable, in Easter clothes. One dress in particular had scratchy under-layers but worse were those bonnets with the elastic chin straps. Those cut into our necks but I don't think the straps survived long from all the pulling we did at them. I'm not sure how many times this happened, but at some point a pastor pointed out that it wasn't our pretty new dresses and Easter duds that Jesus cared about. So I felt a little guilty about the satin and tulle after that, and I suppose due in part to his comment, it has never been a stretch for me to believe it doesn't much matter what you wear to worship. Do you remember the hand-held paper fans? Seems they were compliments of a funeral home and the photo on them was of a sweet little girl dressed for Easter. The first time I ever wore pantyhose was on Easter. I could not wait for the morning to arrive so I could get them out of the package and wear them with my yellow-checked mini-skirt-length dress. This was fifth grade. I suspect that women always wore hats as typically as they would have hose -- until the late 1960s -- and we're not likely to wear them as a matter of custom ever again. When I worked at a department store my senior year of high school, there was still a hat department but I don’t recall ever seeing a woman in there trying on anything. I suppose it was a nod to the older-lady crowd that still believed hats made the outfit. Remember the “I Love Lucy” shows? Lucy loved hats and I remember one episode where she discussed with Ricky her love of a beautiful hat she had purchased. And who could forget Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox toppers? We’re always hearing that hats are making a comeback, and while I see a few fashion-forward younger women rocking them beautifully, for most of us, they just don’t look right. There’s a Knightstown attorney-author I know, Patricia Goodspeed, whose signature look includes a hat. And she has some beautiful ones, as well as she looks great in them. But honestly, most of us don't have what it takes to pull them off. And frankly, I'm not quite sure what it does take but it's something I don't have. I enjoy accessories as much as the next woman but, I’m grateful that fashion doesn’t dictate that I add hats to my wardrobe. I’d rather have another purse. Or some patent-leather shoes. And I wouldn't mind a corsage. For old times' sake. |
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