Douglas A. Wissing - IN Writing: Uncovering the Unexpected Hoosier State

IN Writing will be enjoyable to the general reader for its obscure or previously suppressed stories using a well-researched behind-the-scenes point of view, as well as essays about more renowned people and issues that make up the fabric of our states image. This is a celebration of Indiana, a state that, in my opinion, has suffered in the past from its collective inferiority complex.

RACHEL BERENSEN PERRY,
author of William J. Forsyth: The Life and Work of an Indiana Artist

Douglas Wissings collection IN Writing is a revelation, an appealing insiders look at the often overlooked and unexpected history of a great swath of Indiana, its people, history, and lore. Though it begins and ends in Indiana, the reader will see how the rest of the world appears through the prism of the Hoosier state. Indiana is both a lens and a heart in Wissings capable rendering.

WILLIAM OROURKE,
author of Confessions of a Guilty Freelancer

A Hoosier through and through, I love the way Doug Wissing reveals the quirks and marvels of our state and its people. I cant wait to give it to my Flyover friends with the inscription I told you. Were way more interesting than you think.

BARBARA SHOUP,
author of An American Tune: A Novel

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

iupress.indiana.edu

and a co-publication with

INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY PRESS

Eugene and Marilyn Glick

Indiana History Center

450 West Ohio Street

Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-3269 USA

indianahistory.org

2016 by Douglas A. Wissing

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

Wissing, Douglas A., author.

IN writing : uncovering the unexpected Hoosier State / Douglas A. Wissing.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01904-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-253-01910-3 (ebook) 1. IndianaDescription and travel. 2. IndianaBiography. 3. IndianaHistory. I. Title. II. Title: Indiana writing.

F526.W78 2015

977.2dc23

2015033430

1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16

When we speak of place we often speak of our sense of it, its constant though peripheral presence. That is, there no such thing as a place, only our inscription of it we carry around in our own nervous systems.

MICHAEL MARTONE

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT INDIANA IN ALL ITS GLORIOUS complexity: the sacred and profane; naughty and nice; saints and sinners; war and peace; small towns and big cities; art, architecture, poetry, and victuals. Ive been around the world a few times, and contributed to big-city media like the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC and CNN, but I always tell people Im as Hoosier as you get: a small-town boy descended from Quebecois fur-traders who paddled down to Vincennes in the 1700s and an Alsatian French Foreign Legionnaire who established a brewery there in the 1850s. So I am rooted in Indiana pure and simple. And no matter what I write, I always seem to swing back to the Hoosier state to explore the depths of who we are and what we do.

This is a book about the connectionssometimes unexpectedthat bind us Hoosiers to the world. Ive been learning that story since I was a kid standing by the Wabash River with my beloved grandfather Clarence Stout, Sr., who proudly celebrated our Hoosier-Creole heritage. He pointed upstream and explained our people came from up north in Canada. And then he pointed south and talked about how the wild boys of his youth used to paddle down to New Orleans to see what a real Creole city looked like. Connections. Ive been seeing them since. Hoosiers contributing their talents and genius to the larger world: a famous Indiana-born explorer who introduced Tibet to America early in the twentieth century; courageous Indiana farmer-soldiers ardently trying to win the hearts and minds of twenty-first-century Afghan insurgents; Hoosier artisans work pulsing with the aesthetics of far-away homelands; a famous modernist poet who had to leave to make his mark. Places that speak to the wider world: Columbus and its remarkable architecture; New Harmony and its enduring idealism; Indianapoliss gargoyles and its renowned Crown Hill cemetery. Then theres our celebrated Hoosier fare, offering quirky diversity to the world.

The essays in this book were selected from the million or so words Ive written on Indiana in the course of producing hundreds of articles and a half-dozen books over the last twenty years. Excepting a new essay, Jihadis in Indiana, all of the articles originally appeared in publications that include the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Indianapolis Star, Nuvo, Cond Nast Details, Traces, Indianapolis Monthly, and the long-lost and lamented artsindiana. There are a few excerpts from my books.

The collection is not inclusive; its not even representative. But hopefully these thirty-one chapters reflect some of Indianas unexpected ways, and help us appreciate our remarkable state even more. So here it is, IN Writing: Uncovering the Unexpected Hoosier State.

Douglas A. Wissing

Bloomington, Indiana

Indiana-born entertainer Red Skelton left Vincennes in 1925 to join Doc Lewiss Patent Medicine Show. From there he entertained people in tent shows, showboats, circuses, dance marathons, vaudeville, radio, movies, and television.