Indiana University Press - Undeniably Indiana: Hoosiers Tell the Story of Their Wacky and Wonderful State

Undeniably
Indiana

AN IMPRINT OF
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bloomington & Indianapolis

Hoosiers Tell the Story of Their
Wacky and Wonderful State

Edited by

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Introduction by Nelson Price

This book is a publication of

Quarry Books
an imprint of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

2016 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Indiana University Press, editor.
Title: Undeniably Indiana : Hoosiers tell the story of their wacky and
wonderful state / edited by Indiana University Press ; introduction
by Nelson Price.
Other titles: Hoosiers tell the story of their wacky and wonderful state
Description: Bloomington : Quarry Books, an imprint of Indiana
University Press, [2016]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016009608 | ISBN 9780253022264 (pbk. : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780253022349 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: IndianaHistoryAnecdotes. | IndianaSocial
life and customsAnecdotes. | IndianaBiography.
Classification: LCC F526.6 .U55 2016 | DDC 977.2dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016009608

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by Nelson Price

Well, fellow Hoosiers, youve gone and done it. In honor of Indianas upcoming bicentennial, we at Indiana University Press asked for you to share whats meaningful to you about our state. The word went out through social media, and you respondedmany times over. Boy, did you share. So much poured into our officereminiscences of growing up on farms, in small towns, and cities; legendary tales of the past; reflections on the ever-changing Hoosier weather; events both wonderful and calamitous; unforgettable and infamous people. And, of course, basketball. Although praising the state, a number of you also recognized its challenges. Together you built the first crowdsourced book at the press, and one of the first ever by a university press.

Using your words, your stories, we wove together a tapestry of the wonderful and sometime wacky goings-on that are undeniably Indiana. Some caveats are warranted, here. Unfortunately, because of the sheer volume of responses received, we were not able to include everyone. It should be noted that if your submission was already available in a publication, then we tended not to include it as your marvelous stories were already available to readers. A handful of tales we needed to edit, for brevity and clarity. Finally, it should be readily acknowledged that this book does not purport to be comprehensive in its geographical, cultural, or historical coverage of the state. You wrote in 2015 of what interested you the most about Indiana, and we put the book together accordingly.

So, sit back, pick a section, and dive into some charming, moving, and sometimes downright funny tales. We bet youll learn a new tidbit or two, and come away with a smile, appreciating once again why it will always matter to be a Hoosier.

Indiana University Press

First off, Im mighty proud to be a Hoosierand a fifth-generation one to boot. Like many of us locals, I get revved up about sugar cream pie; the movies Hoosiers, Rudy, and Breaking Away; young Abe Lincoln; and roadside motels as well as the lavish West Baden Springs Hotel.

Also like many of us, I dont give a hoot about the derivation of Hoosier. That intrigues newbies and out-of-staters far more than those of us who have lived with the designation all of our lives. Long ago, we moved on to revel in the rest of our colorful folklore, of which Indiana undeniably has a mountain.

Speaking of which, although Indiana doesnt literally have mountains, we do have hills, including some mighty steep onesdespite the myth that the state is as flat as a pork tenderloin, one of our favorite entrees. When Indiana became the nineteenth state in 1816the same year that seven-year-old Abe Lincoln moved here with his familymost of the terrain was a deep, dense forest consisting of towering trees. According to folklore, a squirrel could have jumped from the Ohio state line clear across to our Illinois border without ever touching ground, accomplishing the aerial odyssey entirely by leaping from towering tree to tree.

So much for another misconception, that Indiana was a Plains state like Kansas or Nebraska. To the contrary, the Native Americans here were Woodland Indians, tribes such as the Shawnee, Miami, Potawatomi, and Lenape (Delaware) who flourished in the forests, not like their Plains counterparts. The forced evacuation of Native Americans to faraway placesthats where the link to Kansas comes inwas not the proudest chapter in our Hoosier story.

Even after two hundred years, though, the Native American heritage endures in many of our place names. Consider the Potawatomi, who controlled nearly all the region north of the Wabash River (thats almost one-fourth of Indiana) during the early 1800s. They lent their names everywhere from Lake Maxinkuckee (our second largest natural lake) to the town of Wakarusa (some natives translate that word as a Potawatomi term for stuck in mud) and Pokagon State Park. The park in our far-northeastern corner has been renowned since the 1930s for its spectacular toboggan run that was created on the slope of, ahem, a steep hill.

In regard to place names, this state is, admittedly, as illogical as Garfield the cat. (The strip drawn in Delaware County by PAWS Inc. founder Jim Davis became, shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, the most widely distributed newspaper comic in the entire world. The antics of lasagna-loving Garfield are enjoyed by readers from Tokyo and Madrid to Salt Lake City and Muncie.)

A sampling of our inconsistency: South Bend is located in the far north, while North Vernon can be found in the southeast. At least a dozen of our towns are not in the identically named counties. The town of Decatur is far from Decatur County; instead, Greensburgthe town with the tree growing out of its historic courthouseis that countys seat. The town of Franklin isnt in Franklin County. Marion County consists of my hometown of Indianapolis, not the city of Marion. Alas, you wont even find our towns of Berne and Geneva in Switzerland County.

With all of that inconsistency, who would have predicted that more Carnegie Libraries would be built here than in any other state? Our trove of libraries constructed in the early 1900s is just one of Indianas claims to fame.