Tales From Southern Indiana

When I was a boy my mother scarred me for life by reading to me the James Whitcomb Riley poem, “Little Orphant Annie”, which was all about the horrible ways little children would die if they stepped out of line. Ah, the days before cable tv.

If cleanliness was next to Godliness, some of us had quite a ways to go on our faith journey in Southern Indiana back in the day. Time to break out those bottles of vinegar and tackle the tough chores.

In a town where you often waited a long time for much to happen, the local police force had to occupy themselves with something, so apparently by silent agreement, folks called 911 to report items that were on par with kittens stuck in trees. Finally a word about the bad news awaiting survivors of suicide pacts.

As we’ve shared before on the podcast, a lot of things we might think of as fun were illegal in Southern Indiana, which may explain why folks got testy with their spouses, relatives and friends from time to time. Join us in reminiscing about the days when swearing was illegal, “provoking” could also get you arrested, and an appearance before the local Justice of the Peace passed for a therapy sess...

Just as there were rules against having fun at school dances, we had some pretty interesting dress codes, with punishment for violators ranging from suspensions to getting smashed over the head with a chair. My school’s comparatively liberal policy provided that in temperatures well below freezing, the girls could wear slacks. Join us in reminiscing about simpler conflicts — culottes, sideburns an...

As hapless parents in Southern Indiana, we were almost overwhelmed with the number of things that could cause us considerable embarrassment, not the least of which was the chore of talking to our children about the birds and the bees. Starting in the late 1960’s, the school systems tried to come to our rescue by adopting sex education curricula. Those courses turned out to consist of few facts and...

History tended to get buried quickly in Southern Indiana, but we always had faith in folks helping us find things we may have lost, including Christmas. In this episode we share some old news items about things or pigs folks lost at Christmas time as well as buried skating rinks, Mastadons, entire towns, and way stations along the Underground Railroad.

There’s nothing quite so irksome as being attacked by a wild animal you didn’t even know existed. Meet the coywolf, our newest neighbor in the suburbs and a much more handsome relative of the coyote but also kind of a junior wolf, and listen to a few tips on how to get past that awkward first encounter.

Back in the 1950’s one of the things a lot of homes in Southern Indiana lacked was an indoor toilet. Hear all about outhouses and their native charms (and hazards).

We were more than a little nervous about dreaming big in Southern Indiana, as it called attention to us and posed the risk of being ridiculed, which was the fate met by the folks who once dreamed of building a replica of the Great Pyramid out of limestone or, failing that, a limestone replica of the Great Wall of China. You can probably guess how all that turned out.

My Aunt Teddy and Uncle Happy liked playing practical jokes that involved pretending they were dying. As we delve again into Southern Indiana history, we see that sometimes practical jokers don’t have to pretend.

They had a lot of rules back in the 1960’s designed to discourage young people from having any fun, and it started with dancing regulations. The Devil is in the details.

Not that we had a choice growing up in Southern Indiana, but there were pluses and minuses of life in the country verses the big city. So here is a list of a few of each.

There’s a fancy name for the Southern Indiana dialect; but growing up, we just knew we sounded different from folks up north in Indianapolis. Join in to hear some descriptions of how and speculations about why we talk different in the land where I grew up.

More a philosophy than a list of do’s and don’t, the notion was to avoid standing out or appearing to be putting on airs, while at the same time still achieving a modicum of style and neatness.

Seems like I learned how to do lots of things growing up in Southern Indiana that have no practical application in the big city. Like communicating with semaphore flags or extracting fish hooks.

Asking for what you wanted wasn’t a common talent among folks where I grew up. This led to many a dilemma, from receiving unwanted birthday gifts to waiting a long time for someone to help you get out of a hole you’d fallen into. If only the snail telegraph invention from the 19th century had fulfilled its promise.

High on the list of situations that might have made folks anxious in Southern Indiana when I grew up there, was the fear of all the potential social pitfalls that accompanied fine dining. Here are some tips to ease the social pressure of dinner etiquette.

Where I grew up in Southern Indiana, even the words “public displays of affection” would make folks nervous and in need of an immediate conversation about sports or hunting to wash the memory of those words from their brains. Here is a guide to acceptable forms of public displays of affection where I grew up in Mitchell Indiana in the 1960’s.

Tales about the drunken monkey who lived at the end of the street and his colorful and sometimes dangerous owner.

Keeping expectations down took some of the sting out of life in Hoosier hill country. You could expect to have a nice car if you didn’t mind having it get stolen, or have a nice hobby if you weren’t all that good at it. Sometimes just average was a comfortable place to be.

The annual stealing of the Christmas trees, favorite memories of Christmas in Mitchell Indiana.

Back in the day, Mitchell was a real small town with a Main Street filled with a variety of stores and businesses that seemed endlessly fascinating when I was a kid. Come on a visit with me to Main Street, Mitchell Indiana, circa 1964.

We might have seemed a little standoffish to strangers in Southern Indiana, but we were really just being cautious because of our fear of being bitten.

I grew up with 3 brothers, 40 cats, and 4 million fleas. Apart from staring at the flea wedding display at the Bedford museum, I didn’t much like them. In this episode we discuss some bizarre advice on how to get rid of fleas.