It’s a treat whenever my friend Sandy, a farmer's wife, can get away from the joys of retirement long enough to squeeze me in for lunch at Café Royal in New Castle.
I love to hear about her life on the farm, about her horses, her granddaughter Carly, about Mike, her farmer husband, a retired school-bus-driver. Even though unlike me, Sandy is tall and blond, beautiful and inspiring, sometimes I think in other ways we were separated at birth. We can talk for an hour without taking a breath and it feels like five minutes. Yesterday she brought me a treat: a bag brimming with a dozen beautiful ears of yellow sweet corn, crisp and tender, delicious and perfect. Once we finished lunch, I rushed off toward work while she got an iced-tea refill. I had forgotten her request: Remind her not to forget to get the corn out of her vehicle. Back at the newspaper office, I noticed someone pulled in beside me at about the same moment I did. It was Sandy with the forgotten sweet corn! I put the cobs in the seat beside me so that I didn’t forget them again once I got home. The funny thing was, I couldn’t forget about that corn. Instead, I thought of little else. Corn reminds me of my dad. Some joke about Indiana corn with a slogan that cajoles, “There’s more than corn in Indiana.” Or people say they live in the middle of a cornfield as though that’s a bad or boring thing. When I told Brian last night I planned to devote my next blog to corn, he groaned, adding that only I would write about something as corny as, well, corn. He suggested a two-part series: Corn and Beans. This morning on the way to work, I stopped along the road near Shenandoah High School for some photos of corn growing in the field. I looked closely at that healthy stand of Hoosier gold and I saw, in my mind's eye, my dad. So many things change but corn and my dad take me back. Back home. OK, back home again. I think of that particular gold color, ears of field corn in the fall that are the exact shade of a school bus. And how the buses are back in action and that too, reminds me of him as much as do the corn stalks standing so straight and uniform in the morning sun and dew. Then I realized with a start that my father has been gone for 25 years this summer. How can that be? He’d had advanced Alzheimer’s disease for a while but still, the July he passed, his death came as a shock, as death always does. His natural habitat was our big, old barn. He was many things: A beef, corn and soybean farmer, a school-bus driver for 32 years, an artist, an inventor, a guy who could figure out how to fix anything, a seller of Lincoln Arc Welders on the side, and a repairman for dairy refrigeration operations besides. He could play a violin, roller skate with the best of them, shoot a basketball, kill you at croquet. He could, in my mind, do anything. He was king of his little slice of rural kingdom. But for today, I think of my father the farmer and how we would drive around the country roads to check on the crops, and in those moments, and many others, how I knew to my core how much I loved our farm, and how lucky I was to be that farmer’s daughter. So Sandy and Mike Moore: thanks for the beautiful ears of corn. And Dad: thanks for the memories. I’ll be passing through Union County tomorrow. I may have to leave the house early. I may have to take the back roads to get there. Just so I can watch the corn grow.
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Back in January 2007, Ovid Community Church had an experiment, of sorts. Everyone was encouraged to sign on with a life group that seemed to suit them and commit to just six weeks, no more. At the end of six weeks, those in the group decided if they wanted to continue to meet and continue “doing life” together. Not only did our group continue, but (blessing of blessings) heading toward a decade together, we’re still at it. The group, which we named the Midlife Moms (MLMs for short) has changed as some have come, some have gone and many remained a part for all these years. Our current roster is 12. The thing about church is this: if all you do is go and sit in a pew on Sunday, you won’t get to know others, develop relationships, or have personal support or encouragement in times you need them. A life group is a combination support group / Bible study / social group. A life group is a space to get to know one another and know them well. We humans have a deep desire to know and be known by both God and others. We’ve done many interesting things through these years from put on church dinners to creating women's church retreats, hosting a garage sale and donating our proceeds, to enjoying many studies together. We’ve prayed and cried and giggled and been there for each other. The journey continues. And this weekend, it continued at our annual summer lake weekend at friend Terri’s place on Cordry Lake in Brown County. I can’t get over how easy it is to put together our lake weekends. An email goes out: What does everyone want to bring? The slots are filled quickly and on Sunday – we enjoy the best meal of the weekend with our leftover brunch where we clean out the fridge. We usually do some sort of craft or creation on Saturday nights and this year we made bandana bracelets, courtesy of our friend Donna S. The entertainment revolves around boating and swimming and deck sitting. Glorious! We left Friday, came home today (Sunday) and still, the time is too short, the boat rides and swimming and giggles over too quickly. So tonight, I am grateful. Grateful to God for the blessings of these women, for our church and for these lake weekends when we can refresh and renew. Thank you Terri for a great time. I always loved girlfriend time growing up, having a slumber party in PJs with one friend or several. It’s great news that girls our age can have this kind of fun too. Captions: Upper left, only half of our gals could make it this time but we have a great time no matter the number. Upper right, a sampling from the leftover buffet -- our favorite meal of many for the weekend. Lower left, Donna S. supplied the craft this time: plastic piping rings wrapped with one-inch wide strips of bandana and glue-gunned together. Far right, a look at the wrists that wear the bracelets, in a "We are the World" kind of moment.
CAPTIONS: Donna holds the page with Katherine Sherwood's Date Swirls recipe and Pat Buell with her mother's Date Swirl Cookies. Katherine made the cookies for six decades. Lower left, the McClellan women's vegetable soup, and bottom right, old-fashioned macaroni salad. All these recipes are in That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland.
There is a trend among certain fictional novelists to mention homemade food within story lines, followed by those recipes at the end of the chapters or books. I enjoy this approach because it adds another dimension to a story. The reader gets a taste, as well as is able to physically become a part of the action, by preparing and enjoying those recipes. While writing Sweetland of Liberty Bed & Breakfast, it wasn’t long before I knew I would “season” my tale with special recipes. It was a natural fit for a book about a bed-and-breakfast. But what to include? The three signature dishes in that book came from my mother and two of my best friends. My mom’s spice cake is probably a 150-year-old recipe, an old-fashioned eggless, milkless and butterless treat also known as a "Depression Cake" that hailed from her mother. The cake was part of every special occasion during all the years my mother baked. Growing up, when I woke up on a Saturday to the distinctive scent of that cake baking, I knew that a special event or holiday was unfolding. The granola recipe was adapted from The Best granola I have ever eaten, which came from friend Gay Kirkton, and to Gay from her mother Betty Greenwood, and from Betty’s friend to her. That’s how recipes go, and they tend to evolve from person-to-person. The funny thing is that granola is a favorite of a particular group of my friends who think of it as Donna’s granola and it is that too because I put my own twist on it. I was delighted to get both Betty’s and Gay’s permission to reprint the recipe and add my twist. The sugar cookies, which were mentioned numerous times in the first book as Sweetland’s signature sweet, came from my friend Patti Broshar-Foust, who treasures that recipe from her Aunt Martha. Those cookies have been a big topic inside our friendship and were even baked by Patti and decorated by me for son and daughter-in-law Sam and Allison’s bridal shower. So, having fictionally used three terrific recipes in the first book, the time came to decide what to serve up in That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland. In a previous blog, we unpacked in detail food writer (as well as upcoming cookbook author) Blaise Doubman’s delicious Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie. I also knew I wanted to use the recipe given to me by Brian’s Aunt Wilma for the vegetable-beef soup that all the McClellan women, including my late mother-in-law, made and I still enjoy serving in cold weather. Included is my own Simple Chicken Salad – which people seem to like for its, well, simplicity, but would be easy to embellish with veggies and or grapes to suit more complex taste buds. I also included my mother’s macaroni salad, which I have always thought was the best of its kind. Sure enough, at a book club discussion, where the food of book two was served, one of the readers made this dish and said her husband declared it the same. But there was one more recipe that I really wanted to include. It was for a type of cookie that I have thought about my entire life, but, ironically, seldom actually tasted. It was for the date-nut swirl cookies I remembered from my childhood. The cookies came into my life from farm wife, family friend and neighbor Katherine Sherwood. I can still picture that sweet woman standing at the top of her long country lane handing off a plate of the goodies as a Christmas treat for my dad, who was a farmer-school bus driver. They were delicious. All these years later, eve my brother, Tim, remembers them as tasty besides. So does everyone who knew Katherine. As with my mother and her spice cake, with Patti and her Aunt Martha’s Sugar Cookies, and with Gay and Betty’s granola, the date-nut swirls were Katherine’s specialties. I spotted the recipe in an old Brownsville cookbook and with Katherine having passed on, I contacted her daughter Pat, who is still active in the church and community. SURE, she told me. Not only could I use the recipe but she said her mother would have been thrilled. I was elated. The recipe is in the book, along with a “must-do” tip. Pat said no matter what, be sure to use black walnuts in the recipe. She recalled how her mother hand-gathered and hulled walnuts from their rural Indiana woods for the precious nut meats. To use English walnuts in this recipe would be a sacrilege, Pat explained. She said these cookies have been all over the world as they made their way by mail from Katherine to servicemen abroad. Fast forward to last Sunday. The Brownsville UMC invited me to give a little talk following a pitch-in lunch. I brought Blaise’s sugar cream pie (which is fabulous, I might add) and meatloaf the way mom made it (simply ground beef with oats, onion, eggs and ketchup). I hoped that Pat would do the very thing she did: bring the famous cookies. It was only the second time she had made them as she said there was no way they could be as good as her mother’s. They went like hotcakes. Pat made them with candied cherries, which she recalls her mom adding for the holidays. Others at church Sunday commented that they didn’t remember them with the candied fruit. I don’t either. But one thing I know for sure. These cookies taste exactly as I remember. They are fantastic. So if you make them, remember that tip to use the black walnuts. Those give them their distinctive flavor. The cookies are soft and chewy on the insight with a crispy crunch on the outside. It’s fun to share these truly hometown, tried-and-true recipes with readers-- in a novel way, of course. Both of my novels are available directly, signed if you want, by contacting me at newsgirl.1958@gmail.com. They are also on Amazon in print and Kindle versions. Better yet, book me for your club or gathering and along with giving a program I'll bring stacks to sell and sign. And we'll have a good time! As I travel around Indiana, I love hitting the back roads and scoping out interesting stops in small towns. This week I was reminded, however, that often we don’t know what we have in our own back yards.
I found this true Wednesday when a couple of Brian’s work-days pals, Sandy Burns and Lois Valasek, invited me to lunch in downtown Fortville. We met at the Foxgardin and enjoyed a fabulous, affordable meal. Lois and I had the Fortville Tenderloin sandwich which was a party in a bun, with all the fixings. Sandy had a wonderful cheese soup and she ordered a sugar cream pie slice for the three of us to sample. I noticed some scrumptious-looking salads on the table next to us. The restaurant, at 215 S. Main St., defines itself as "Kitchen. Ale." And a slogan, "eat.drink.meet." It was Wednesday. It was 1 p.m. The main floor was packed! We walked upstairs to look around in the old downtown building. There we found a comfortable and unique bar-lounge-type setting, cozy, with unique art on the walls and black comfortable chairs. Out back is a covered patio. I was elated because this is a great new place to meet friends or take guests. Who knew? I was amazed at the downtown vibe which is, unexpectedly to me anyway, very Mass Ave. There were several funky home-décor and unique clothing boutiques as well as a tiny sewing shop (it wasn’t open but it’s where the PINK mailbox is downtown). After our visit, I walked around and snooped through the shops. I overheard one shop owner talk about how the town had a couple of nice Mexican restaurants too. I didn’t even realize that Fortville had a downtown, on Main Street, just west of the main drag. Until now, I associated the town with its signature pink elephant on Ind. 67 and the Dairy Queen where both boys worked years ago for a time. Fortville is just a stone’s throw from Pendleton. I’ll be back! This month a beautiful Pendleton home graces the cover of Indianapolis Monthly as part of a cover story about small-town homes. Sometimes we take for granted what’s right here in our own back yards. 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. This is the only photo I have with Debbie, taken two years ago at the Huddleston Farmhouse in Cambridge City at a farmers market. I found myself with a free Saturday morning and asked about setting up with my first book. There wasn't much of a crowd but good things happened. Debbie was free and drove over from Ohio. We chatted away the morning and then went to lunch. Also, one of the shoppers was a writer for the Western Wayne newspaper and did a little interview, took some photos, and that led to another gig down the road. I wish I had thought to get our photo taken together last week. But I am grateful that Debbie is in my life and helped edit the new book. And, I am grateful for her friendship. I’m excited to welcome Debbie McCray from the Buckeye state as today’s guest blogger. Debbie was one of three editors for That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland, and when I asked if she would be interested in making the hour-and-a-half drive to New Castle for last week’s book luncheon, she said yes! Debbie beat me to my own event. It was such a comfort to see her sitting there, smiling, waving. It was not our first book-signing adventure together. A couple summers ago, we met up at a small farmers market and chatted away the morning. Debbie welcomes you to visit her blog at www.snowdrops4faith.wordpress.com.
Connections that entangle the heart By Debbie McCray Connections are our sense of belonging. We have connections from our tight-knit circles to ever-expanding circles that eventually connect us with people throughout the world. This past week, I was invited to spend time with one of my Indiana connections: Donna Cronk. Donna was launching the book tour for her sequel, That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland. The venue was a group at a local funeral home in New Castle, Indiana. Witnessing her connections prompted me to reflect on our connection through the years. I trace ours to our boys growing up together in the same school district, the same sports teams, and on the same street. We were friendly neighbors busy with life. Donna likes to remind me that Carriage Lane was not the place where we first met. Over 26 years ago, we were in the same Sunday school class at the same local church. In a way, our connection has also been a journey of faith where God kept putting us together for a reason. God eventually revealed the reason a couple of years ago, when we shared our mutual desire to self-publish a book. In practice, the enduring connection has been our shared love of writing. Writing was natural for Donna as she went to college for journalism and has been a community journalist for 27 years in one Indiana town and county. Writing was never on my radar given my engineering background with its focus on numbers and logic. I was the stereotypical engineer. I never aspired to be a writer and I did not care about writing, other than what was necessary to complete an assignment. Hence the surprise when shortly after I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior in 1994, God prompted me to write. God was very specific. I was to write devotions for our church’s monthly newsletter. I often thank God for Pastor Dick Blose of Pendleton Christian Church. When I approached Pastor Dick, he said “Yes” and allowed God to use me. Pastor Dick’s encouragement enabled me to “blossom where I was planted!” Donna’s recently published book was the day’s connection for the crowd that attended her new presentation. As I was introduced to people, I asked, “So how do you know Donna?” Some connections were common to all of us: work-related with both current and former co-workers. Other connections were more specific to the book: editors, reviewers, and fellow self-published authors. It was a friendly crowd with people Donna knew and friends of friends that Donna met for the first time. Donna shared her new presentation, “Bloom Before You Are Planted!” Her message reminded us that God has good plans for each one of us. The deeper take-away involved self-reflection on my part. Am I paying attention to God’s nudges? Will I act on the seeds that God plants in my heart? Do I embrace God’s joy for my growth? Will I praise God for His beauty inside of me, waiting to bloom in the perfect season? After Donna’s program, she and I enjoyed our unique connection by simply sitting and chatting for hours. We covered much territory, revisiting old connections and discovering new connections. Finally, it was time to walk out to our cars and say goodbye for the day. That’s when I remembered my family cookbook. Over the previous six-and-a-half hours, I had completely forgotten about the cookbook I wanted to connect over with Donna. This is the nature of genuine connections. The time goes by too quickly and we are left with a longing for the next visit. The best connections always explore the nuances of life and entangle hearts! 2 John 12 I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. One of the most unlikely things that ever happened to me is a friendship with Joyce Maynard.
For starters, she went to Yale and worked at The New York Times. I went to Indiana State and work at a small-town newspaper. She has major publishing houses finance her manuscripts and two of those, To Die For and Labor Day, became movies. I self-published one small novel with another on the way. She travels more and has more interesting things happen in a typical month than I do in … well, I’m embarrassed to say. Yet some things are meant to be. Life is full of mystery and opportunity. I’ve thought about Joyce a lot this week because her new book, Under the Influence, hit the shelves. And also because her husband, Jim, is in the hospital in Guatemala, where Joyce has a second home and runs writing workshops. Together, the couple has spent the past year and more battling his cancer. Things have been looking up, but he took ill last week. Joyce came on my radar in 1987 when in Editor & Publisher I spotted a promotion for her book, a compilation “best of” her Domestic Affairs newspaper columns, in a book by the same name. The ad offered editors review copies. It was her face that reeled me in. Her eyes so wide and alive, and she was sporting these charming bangs and pigtails (pigtails!). It was as though she could jump off the page and we could go for coffee and talk about life as moms. I was new to the mom scene; she had spent the past few years by then writing about adventures in that realm from the vantage point of a remote New Hampshire farm. The book arrived and I inhaled it: stories about canning tomatoes, middle-of-the-night Christmas shopping, perilous, New England roads in winter, loving kids and family and life. Each essay was served up, readable, edible even, in the candor and humor. And each piece had a twist. Perhaps it was some bit of lesson learned or at least question asked. I loved it. I started noticing her Kids in the Country column byline in Country Living, and somehow, in the days long before social media, learned about her fan newsletter and subscribed. I still have the copies in my attic. Joyce was accessible, real. In fact, she made it a part of her life and, surely, was an instinctive part of her own branding and marketing, to connect well with fans and hear their stories. I wrote a piece or two for her newsletter, coming onto her radar. Life happened. She divorced, cared for and buried her beloved mother, moved off the farm to Keene, N.H., wrote more books. Her column ended but she had become a novelist with a bread-and-butter career as a magazine contributor. I moved too, worked for a different newspaper, birthed a second baby. In 1997, her newsletter announced that she was moving to San Francisco and if anyone was in New England on June 22, stop by her garage sale. I took it as a personal invite. I knew I had to attend that garage sale, as unlikely and ridiculous as it sounded. I had to meet Joyce, pick up a relic from her life. So I wrote her a letter and asked about where to stay. She called and said stay with her for the weekend and help with the sale. Could I bring a friend? Sure. And so my bestie Gay Kirkton and I did just that and had one of the most remarkable weekends we can imagine. Little did we know there would be a New Hampshire II. It came in 2013 when Joyce invited us to her wedding to Jim. “You have to go,” said my husband, and we did. We sat among TV stars, writers, and other remarkable people on a mountaintop in New Hampshire and watched Joyce and Jim tie the knot. She had waited a long time to find this man. We stayed in a 1700s bed and breakfast, went to church in a town the size of Brownsville with a Harvard-educated pastor; discussed The Great Gatsby with a Dartmouth English professor, and toured a gorgeous loft that belonged to a friend of Joyce’s and was featured in Country Home. We danced at her wedding along-side a famous 1960s community activist and were interviewed by a New York Times reporter. Just a weekend in the life of Joyce. A big weekend in the life of this fifty-something Hoosier farm girl. We were saddened to learn of his illness just short months later. But then later, happy to hear he was cancer free. And now, like so many times before, a new Joyce book joins the others. Once it’s read, it will reside next to its siblings in my glass-front book cabinet that holds special volumes and keepsakes. I don’t abuse this unique—what?—relationship/fanship/friendship—with Joyce by asking her to read my manuscripts or give me advice. She is asked these things by many people all the time and as she has explained kindly to her fans, if she helped everyone who asked, she would never get her own work done. Plus, she makes a portion of her living leading writing workshops both in Guatemala and in the states. I get it. It takes a lot of time to comment on other people’s work in a constructive way. But Joyce has given me a few key pieces of advice, personally: 1. Always take the adventure. 2. Make Samantha ( heroine in Sweetland of Liberty Bed & Breakfast and the upcoming follow-up) 50, not 60. 3. Keep telling stories. I’ve learned that adventures abound—they are the way we approach our everyday lives—and include, for me anyway, the occasional one that physically takes me away. Samantha is 51 in the new book. And as for stories, here’s another. Monday night I couldn’t sleep but I don’t think Brian had a clue because I didn’t toss and turn, just tucked myself around a body pillow and stayed put. When I got home Tuesday evening, I thought of all the things I should do. Two lessons to read and complete for two separate classes; some fall decorations to gather for work as we’re decorating for Friday's big community party; some lists I should make regarding that party; regular-life stuff. And yes, I wanted to tune in to the Democrats’ debate. While contemplating all of that, my eyes fell on the big, blue bag next to the TV. On Monday, our friend, Gay, stopped by on her way to Indy to visit her daughter. I was at work so her visit barely registered with me, as she chatted with Brian for a while and I missed her completely. But Gay left her calling card in the form of The Bag. It was full of magazines. One of the many things we have in common is our love for magazines. And through the years, between us we’ve developed a fine recycling system. I save my old ones for her and she saves hers for me. She subscribes to a couple and gets others from her mother, who hands them off to Gay. I have stopped subscribing to magazines, in favor of borrowing them from the library, but sometimes people give me copies they are done with, and other times, I pick them up at garage or library sales, or I see an issue that I just can’t resist and purchase it from the newsstand. Once I finish reading Gay’s stash, I hand the issues off to my daughter-in-law, Allison, who also enjoys magazines and then shares them with her mom. Historically speaking, the flow of this type of reading material is a consistent, but rather complex operation. I get Oprah, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple and More from Gay, and a travel magazine from Gay’s mom, which then will go to Allison, except for the travel magazine that my friend, Cheryl, gets. But my Country Living and other oddball magazines are funneled toward Gay, which then likely go to Gay’s mother. When my friend, John Hodge, was living, he shared stacks of his sports, news and AARPs with me, and they were then sent into both Gay’s and Allison’s directions, as the proper cases may be. Still with me? It occurs that in the past couple of years, I haven’t been pulling my weight in magazines. I don’t have a bag full to share with anyone these days. Instead of reading magazines, I tend to fill most evenings working on my Bible study lessons or projects regarding my books. I also like to slip in a yummy novel or biography into my reading mix. When I looked at Gay’s bag, filled with top-shelf periodicals that I enjoy so much, I felt a stab of guilt that I had nothing to send back with her. But then, I decided that on such a chilly, beautiful, fall evening I would give myself a respite from my usual self-imposed homework to pursue a favorite pastime. I selected three magazines from the bag, headed for the bathroom, filled the tub with water and lavender froth, then sunk into the hot water. Heaven. However, it wasn’t long before my sleepless Monday caught up with me and despite the splendid company of choice issues with some particularly exceptional articles at hand, I found myself flat-out asleep, head dropped over, magazine nearly dunked, right there in the tub. I was, however, still gripping the magazine with both hands. Survival instinct of some kind, I suppose. I woke up, got out, put on jammies and climbed into bed. If I was too tired to read, at least I could surely listen to the debate, and I stretched out sideways across the bed. At 10:30 Brian came in and asked what I thought of the debate. There was a debate? I had no idea. Just one year and one week ago tomorrow, a bunch of Courier-Times friends got together at retired photographer John Guglielmi’s home to send retiring sports editor John Hodge off into retirement. In the photo, John is the second from the left, the one proudly wearing the dorky RETIREE badge, the kind of thing he loved. It was a great day, followed by another, when the newspaper hosted an open house for him and the traffic and laughter were nonstop. In came coaches, former employees, former athletes John had covered in his 27-year tenure at the paper, mostly as sports editor. Even State Rep. Tom Saunders personally showed up to present John with the Distinguished Hoosier Award. I remember watching that week on the last day of his career as John strode off through the front door at his usual fast clip, old-school briefcase in hand. He was retired. We gave him a great send off. It felt satisfying. He had exactly, to the day, one year of retirement when without warning, he dropped over dead on a golf course on a gorgeous July day in the month of his 66th year. For the past week, I have thought a lot about John and our friendship. Perhaps it was an unlikely bond we shared, a sports editor and a lifestyle editor. What could we have in common? As it turns out, more things than I can count. We both took our first breaths at Reid Memorial Hospital in Richmond. We both loved our hometowns, his of Richmond and mine of Liberty, and our transplanted ones of New Castle. We had the same offbeat sense of humor. We were both corny as heck. We shared woes of caring for and loving aging parents, including the heartbreak involved, including the humorous moments. We were newsroomies. We talked a lot. So today, just hours before John’s funeral and his last ride to his original hometown where he has some fine real estate in one of the prettiest cemeteries anywhere, Earlham, I want to pick up the phone. I want to call John! No one loved a social gathering more than that guy. I want to tell him that Craig and Bethany Mauger, two of his favorite reporters in a long line of them, are coming from Michigan; that Bill Brooks, our first shared managing editor, the guy who hired us both, now of Indy, is attending. I want him to know that people like basketball legends Steve Alford and Kent Benson send unsolicited, spontaneous tributes; that James Pindell, a Boston Globe reporter who has the national stage often on TV as a political expert, calls John out as his mentor. I know that John would enjoy the plans for today. He’d like it that some of us are meeting early to visit and share special memories of our one-of-a-kind favorite sports editor, then going to honor him officially, then seeing him back to Richmond properly, and that it doesn’t end there. His Kiwanis buddies are hosting a reception back in New Castle after all of that. He’d like it that one of his many best friends, Jeremy Hines, is telling stories on him at the service today. I can hear John’s distinctive laugh now, just thinking about all of this; thinking of how we loved him. But then, I’m sure he knows. |
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