Scattershooting While Wandering (Or Is It Wondering) Around

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Stanley Andrews . . .

I READ an interesting story from our friends at the Indiana Capital Chronicle about how small towns are trying to revitalize themselves again.

The regular eight or nine of you who read these scribbles won’t be surprised to know that I’m a big fan of small towns – and, truth to tell, am excited about any efforts to help them stay alive.

But does anyone else find it ironic that in many cases, small towns hit a major bump in the road during school consolidations? Don’t get me wrong, No cast stones here. The good folks who way back when served on school boards wanted to do right by students, and the idea that you could do better by combining resources made some sense.

But it’s hard to argue that when those communities lost their school, they lost a piece of their heart and soul. We all know what happened next. Stores closed. People moved. And in some cases, the town just up and blew away like dust in the wind. In others, it became a shell of what it was.

The irony comes in now because a whole bunch of grants – some from the same government that closed the schools in the first place – are being made available. It’s nice that our tax dollars are going to help revitalize important places, but if our tax dollars hadn’t gone to take away those schools in the first place . . .

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MANY THANKS to several of you who responded to my question about a possible trip to Israel. To be clear, this is not going to happen anytime real soon – just too much uncertainty over there right now. But it’s clear from your responses that when we do, some of you are as excited to go as my wife and I! Stay tuned.

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LAST NOTE: Today is the statewide newspaper rally at the Indiana Statehouse you’ve been reading about in these pages (and hearing me blather on about) for a while. I have no idea how it’s going to go. We may have three or four of us show up or we may have a hundred.

All I do know is this. The Indiana Legislature annually tries to kill newspapers. There are almost always one or two members who are ticked off because their local paper wrote something they did not like. And then the lobbyists jump in (wouldn’t our world be better off without lobbyists and lawyers?) and to hear them tell it, newspapers are as out of date as a Model T parked in front of a horse and buggy dealer.

The truth – and believe me, they HATE dealing with that pesky little thing – is that newspapers have more readers than ever. LOTS of folks read us – they just do it on their phones, tablets and other electronic devices. The real problem my industry has is we haven’t figured out the best answer for our advertisers yet. It’s a tough nut to crack, but we’re working on it. And in the meantime, here’s hoping a loud and clear voice tells state lawmakers to stop trying to kill off the only private institution the Founding Fathers thought enough of to protect in the Constitution!

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REMEMBER STANLEY Andrews? He was a host on the radio and TV series Death Valley Days. I remember the announcer telling us it was sponsored by Borax, makers of 20 Mule Team Borax. Advertising must work. Both Mom and Grandma used it in the laundry for years.

By the way, you may have heard of another one of the hosts who came along after Stanley. He was an actor named Ronald Reagan. He actually left the show to run for governor of California . . . and we all know what happened after that.

Two cents, which is about how much Timmons said his columns are worth, appears periodically in The Times. Timmons is the chief executive officer of Sagamore News Media, the company that owns The Noblesville Times. He is also a proud Noblesville High School graduate and can be contacted at [email protected].