Messages From The Heartland

[injest]

BTW.... if any of you ever do watch "Saturday Night Fever".... Double J is MY baby!

Hands off y'all..... that bronco's all mine! 

I'm gonna ride his ass all the way to homoville. 

The rest are left to the highest bidders of course.   

*Jess unrolling the water hose*

[Andrew]

Now that Saturday Night Fever has subsided for the moment...I would like to revisit the opening pages of your thread, David, which I missed (as usual) when they were fresh three days ago.  As you probably remember, I grew up in Indianapolis too, and my dad bought some beautiful wooded hill property in Brown County where he hoped to build a weekend and retirement home.  The property was just up the hill from the Bean Blossom covered bridge, of which this is a picture I just came across on the Net:



My parents, my brother and I would go down there on summer and fall weekends.  We would turn off the highway and roll the windows of the station wagon right up, because it was a dirt road and in the summer we would kick up huge clouds of dust.  Then we'd drive through the covered bridge and up the hill to the property. 

It all of a sudden came back to me how my brother and I would play in and around that bridge.  That exterior railing continued inside the bridge; I suppose it helped keep cars from running right into the walls in the dark.  On the right side of the bridge, at the bottom of the space between the railing and the wall, which was just wide enough to let a boy to climb down, there was a wide floor board which was sawed off short.  We found we could just wiggle down through the hole in the floor at the end of that board and come out on top of the stone piers supporting the bridge.  The pier was the whole width of the  bridge, but it actually supported it only on the two sides, kind of like this:
                       |                                                                       |
                       |         |                                                  |         |
                       |_____|_____________________________|    ___|     (bridge floor)
                       xxxxx                                                           xxxxx
                       xxxxx                                                           xxxxx
                       xxxxx                     Andy....                           xxxxx     (pier)
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

There we would sit, probably eight feet above the ground, the floor of the bridge our low ceiling, a secret spot mom and dad knew nothing of.  Sometimes I would go there by myself and bring an ear of hard corn from the nearby field, and break off the rocky kernels into a little pile.  Sometimes I would just stretch out on my stone floor and read, all the time waiting for the rare car to approach, coming out of silence and distance until it was a giant rumble on the boards right over my head.  There'd be the the faraway sound of the jays in the hot summer afternoons, which always make it feel like time is standing still.  In late summer and early fall the crickets would start in the tall grass...

....Hoosier days!

[David In Indy]

Thanks for your post Andrew. Actually I was hoping you would share some of your memories of Indiana with us. I was especially pleased to see you mention the tiny town of Beanblossom. Like you, I have many memories of Brown County. A close friend of mine owned a small trailer and she kept it parked at Lake Lemon, just a few miles west of Beanblossom. As you well know, Brown County is beautiful, especially in the autumn when artists from all over the Midwest go there to paint.

I also remember the many day trips we took to the Hoosier National Forest, which stretches from Brown County south to the Ohio River. Numerous caves can be found in and near the southern part of the forest and I always loved hiking in the forest and exploring the cave systems (even though we were sometimes told not to).

I hope you will post some more of your Hoosier memories soon! 

[injest]

No more disco?? 

[David In Indy]

Current Weather in Indianapolis: Partly Cloudy and Humid With Approaching Thunderstorms   Temp: 81 F (27 C)
My Current Mood: Concerned

It's happened again hasn't it?

Last week in Colorado a female student was shot and killed after being taken hostage by an adult gunman. Later in the week, a student in Wisconsin shot his high school principal. In Florida an adult wielding a gun was shot and killed by police after being spotted near school property. Here in Indianapolis, a teen was arrested after he tried to sell guns to some fellow classmates. One of the guns was loaded.  http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?s=5477131 Today a teen fled from police after a witness noticed him carrying a firearm near a high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. Just as the story was breaking on national news, 6 young girls were shot in the head, execution style, by an adult gunman in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Three of the girls died from their injuries; the others remain in critical condition in area hospitals.

This all happened during the past week.

The atrocity occurring today in Nickel Mines took place at a rural one room schoolhouse in the heart of Amish country. All the victims were Amish; the gunman was not.

When I attended high school here in Indianapolis from 1976-1980, the scariest thing I ever had to deal with was the three bullies waiting for me outside in the school parking lot. In those days, the closest thing to a weapon at my school was a water balloon, a squirt gun or a drinking straw loaded with spit balls. The idea of someone bringing a gun to school, much less actually using it, was about as ridiculous as a dog playing the trumpet. The thought never crossed our minds. It simply didn't happen; at least not in Indianapolis.

The appalling atrocity today in Nickel Mines, PA hit close to home for me and many other Hoosiers. Indiana has the third highest Amish population in the country; only Ohio and Pennsylvania have more. I have interacted with Amish people many times, and I cannot think of a gentler, kinder or less threatening group of people. Why then would someone want to enter an Amish school and gun down innocent Amish children in cold blood? And if this sort of thing can happen in a remote Amish schoolhouse, it could happen anywhere.

I sometimes wonder what our youth must feel when they hear about things like this. I wonder what it would feel like to not know whether a fellow peer was secretly plotting to kill you and your friends as you sit in French class? I wonder what it must feel like to not know for sure if you can trust the delivery man walking through the doors to your school?

Something has gone terribly wrong in our country (and probably in other countries too). Something terrible is happening to our youth. Somehow their innocence has been robbed from them. Today we have kids killing kids, adults killing kids, kids killing adults, and I'm not sure what we can do to correct it, or if we even can. It may be too late.

Last month a sniper was arrested here in Indiana after he killed a motorist on I-65 near Seymour and attempted to kill several other people on I-69 in Muncie.  http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?s=5187433  The person who stands accused in these sniper attacks is a seventeen year old boy.  http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?s=5485202

[David In Indy]

No more disco?? 

Nope. Not tonight Jess. 

I think I have told you too much already! 

[David In Indy]

All I can really say is.....

God, I wish they had taken pictures of you then! 

Melissa, I'm sure someone, somewhere in the world probably has one.   

[David In Indy]

Andrew -

Does this bring back any memories for you?





It is a picture of the inside of the Beanblossom Bridge. We can clearly see the exterior railing running the full length of the bridge's interior, just like you said.



Here is a picture of the Beanblossom Bridge from the other side (end).








I also looked up some information about the bridge on the Internet. According to one of the websites, the bridge was built in 1880.

[Arad-3]

"]When I attended high school here in Indianapolis from 1976-1980, the scariest thing I ever had to deal with was the three bullies waiting for me outside in the school parking lot. In those days, the closest thing to a weapon at my school was a water balloon, a squirt gun or a drinking straw loaded with spit balls. The idea of someone bringing a gun to school, much less actually using it, was about as ridiculous as a dog playing the trumpet. The thought never crossed our minds. It simply didn't happen; at least not in Indianapolis."
*********************************************************************

Hi David,
 
Was in the nieghborhood and thought i would drop in and say Hi. Just read your very troublling post. You are so right. It's very scarey to thnk that when my daughter walks out the door in the morning for school that it could be the day when some classmate goes on a shootig spree.  I have no idea while so many kids are doing this? Are they so unhappy these days that they no longer value their own lives ? Is the pressure just too much for them ?? teen suicide has sky rocketed.  Is it the music, video games,drugs, pressure? One parent families? Or all of the above. I dont know and it scares me.

Why I copied your quote above was I got a real charge out of  the weapons we had to fight with. Water ballons, squirtguns, and especially the spit balls. How nice it was back then!

talk again!
Geri

[David In Indy]

Hey Geri!

Those spit balls were something else! I remember taking a few spit balls to the back of my neck.

Actually they could hurt a little if they were fired fast enough and hit you in just the right spot.

Ouch! 

.... the good old days!