Is It The Spooky Season, Or Just Silly?
By: Tim Timmons
Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Abe Martin . . .
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DID YOU hear that when it comes to money we’re spending more and more and more and more on . . . no, not talking about government. I’m talking about Halloween. According to the National Retail Federation, we the people are going to pony up $12.2 billion on candy corn and costumes.
As Tom Carnegie would say, that’s a new track record.
The record it broke was just a year old at $10.6 billion.
Here are more facts and figures from the retail organization.
· 73 percent of consumers are expected to participate in the holiday
· Per-person spending is projected to be $108.24
· Seven in 10 of us plan to hand out candy
· A little over half of us (53 percent) plan to decorate our home or yard
· Half of us are going to wear a costume
· A third of us are going to a Halloween party
· A quarter of us are taking the little ones trick-or-treating
And when it comes to costumes, the kids are going as Spiderman, a princess or another superhero at a cost of $1.4 billion. Us grown-up types are more expensive. We’re going to spend $2 billion to dress up like witches, vampires or Barbie.
But wait, it gets sillier.
We’re going to spend $700 million on pet costumes.
The older I get the more I understand why my grandpa would just shake his head sometimes.
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THREE CHEERS for Noblesville’s Victoria Spartz. The rookie Congresswoman released a statement that basically said if the House does not address the obscene and ridiculous spending by the end of this year – she would resign.
For that, she took a fair amount of heat from WIBC’s Rob Kendall. Normally I’m pretty much in agreement with the WIBC crew – but Kendall is off base on this one.
The very definition of insanity comes into play here – keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. I respect the hell out of Spartz for saying she has tried as hard as she can but her colleagues simply won’t stop running up the bill for future generations.
Maybe it’ll take a member of Congress walking away to finally return some semblance of financial responsibility to our government. I don’t know if it will or not. All I do know is that nothing else is working.
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HOW ‘BOUT them Millers! OK, so maybe a 3-4 record on the football field isn’t much to write home about. But at this point a year ago, NHS was 2-6. And the years before that they finished 2-8, 2-8 and 1-9. In fact, the Millers haven’t had a .500 season since 2014 and haven’t had a winning season since going 7-5 in 2001 – a real odyssey.
Think about that for a second. No one on the team today was alive the last time NHS wrapped up a winning season.
That’s incredible.
Granted, the cards are stacked against the Black and Gold this week when undefeated Brownsburg comes calling, but hey, stranger things have happened. After that winless Avon wraps up the regular season for NHS. And in sectional, a favorable draw might mean another win or two.
For the once-proud program, this counts as progress. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
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SPEAKING OF sports, yours truly made a big-time error in a recent story about Julia Kozicki. Apparently, my eyesight isn’t the only thing going and I misheard her when she was talking about her time at NHS. The Millers won state back then, but unlike what I wrote, Julia wasn’t on the team.
Sorry for the mess up!
However, I will reiterate what a pleasure it was to talk with the former Noblesville mayoral candidate. She is a class person and a credit to the community. It’s no wonder the Chamber’s Women in Noblesville selected her for this year’s Woman of Impact honor.
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MOST HOOSIERS are well-acquainted with Abe Martin. The folksy cartoon was created by Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard and appeared in newspapers around the state and nation. Recently, a state historical marker dedicated to Kin and Abe was unveiled at the Abe Martin Lodge in the Brown County State Park. Abe used to share his wit and wisdom with things like, “We’re all mighty unselfish when it comes t’ handin’ out advice we could use ourselves.”
-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 ttimmons@thetimes24-7.com.