My Experience as an Intern with the Monroe County History Center

By Matt Nokes

I remember being interviewed for the role of Permanent Collections and Exhibits Intern during the second week of classes of my senior year. I immediately knew that this would be a great place to work. Hilary and Gabby–curator and assistant curator–were very friendly and made for great supervisors–always offering to help or answer questions. This internship has offered me not only practical skills that will be useful for my future career, but great friendship and even some life advice from everyone I have worked with so far.

My first day at the museum for my orientation was exciting. I met Justin, the office manager, and was given a tour by Andrea, the education manager. Megan, the research librarian, showed me the many helpful resources in the museum’s research library. I went upstairs to my desk and began working, where I learned how to catalog an artifact and prepare it for storage.

Photo of the intern workstation

Julie Kedzie, a Bloomington native and famous women’s UFC fighter, had recently donated some of her memorabilia, and I was assigned to catalog, label, and shelve the items included in her collection. Some highlights from the Kedzie donation include a banner from one of her fights, some of her branded clothing, and even a few pairs of fighting gloves that she used in the octagon! I learned proper archival processes to keep artifacts safe and well-organized. This included labeling certain objects with archival fluids and writing the accession number on the dried liquid. Some textiles, like Kedzie’s fighting gloves, required a label to be sewn on. This took some time to figure out…

Kedzie belt and gloves

Supplies for safely labeling artifacts

I cataloged things for the next few weeks, when Hilary delegated a new project to me–I would be creating a new exhibit in the Education Room, titled New Acquisitions to the Collection. I was assigned as the curator for the display and was responsible for its design. This included pulling artifacts from storage, writing up the descriptive labels, and putting them in the case so that they would be protected and visible to the viewer. The exhibit was my first big project, and it would stay up for a few months.

New Acquisitions to the Collection Exhibit Label

I continued working on accessioning some new donations to the collection for the next few weeks, when I was assigned a truly special task: I would transcribe, organize, and catalog a collection of WW1 correspondence between a soldier stationed in France, and his family back home in Bloomington. This project will be the focus of my next blog post, so keep an eye out for that!

In December of 2022, the sports gallery was in need of a new exhibit and thus I had a new project. I researched a selection of coaching legends from Monroe County and, working with IU Archives, created and installed labels with background on each coach in the lockers area of the Sports Gallery. It was a lot of fun to learn about and was another exhibit that I was responsible for–from start to finish!

Juliette Maxwell: Pioneer for Women’s Athletics

Coaching Legends of Monroe County

Toward the end of December 2022, with the little time I had left before heading home for the holidays, I assisted Hilary and Gabby with installing the holiday exhibit, From Me to You. Andrea then asked if I might film a video for the Museum, highlighting an object from the exhibit. What did I choose? Bloomington classic, Bug Town, of course! What is Bug Town? Watch my video to find out more about this interesting piece of downtown Bloomington’s history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2oUvbpDwhA

After coming back from a restful holiday break, I completed another great project. Bloomington City Hall asked if the History Center would create a display on Bloomington civil rights history for Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January. I did some research and found many interesting artifacts relating to the subject in the museum’s collection, including a program from the first celebration of MLK Day in Bloomington in the 1980s. I installed the exhibit with the help of Aubrey Seader, office manager and program assistant with the Bloomington community and family resources department.

Exhibit on Bloomington Civil Rights History; Displayed in City Hall

Next, I helped put up the Alexander Memorial exhibit, To the Soldiers of All Wars (which is excellent–check it out while it remains on display!). Since March, I have been cataloging new accessions into the collection, performing routine exhibit and collections maintenance, and writing blog posts.

Overall, I have greatly enjoyed my time with the museum. Some of my favorite times were lunches with the staff, the cookie cake party for Susan Jones (one of our volunteers) and the multiple Baked Bloomington cookie breaks with Hilary and Gabby (can you tell there is a theme here?). I can only say great things about the internship program with the Monroe County History Center. I feel very confident that the skills I have gained will further my career in history.

Election Central

Tales of the H-T: blog posts taken from or inspired by The Herald-Times archive at the Monroe County History Center

Blog post by Rod Spaw

Election night is a special time to be around a newspaper office. It’s sort of like Christmas Eve in Santa’s workshop; weeks of careful planning and preparation come down to a few panicked hours of execution. It is both exhilarating and nerve wracking.

In the time before electronic voting machines changed how ballots were cast and counted, and before the Internet removed much of the drama from the reporting of vote totals, there was one place to be in Bloomington on election night, one place where participatory democracy was served to the public alongside doughnuts and coffee.

For at least three decades, the Herald-Telephone (later the Herald-Times) building on South Walnut Street transformed itself into Election Central in November of election years. The doors were thrown open, and everyone was welcome. Politicians rubbed elbows with reporters and constituents alike. All jostled together and strained to see as women ascended stepladders to write numbers on large, lined boards against one wall of the newspaper’s front office.

Further back in the building was the newsroom, and there were no gates or gatekeepers in those days to prevent people from wandering in to speak with a reporter or editor, which they often did to discuss the results of the day’s balloting.

Bob Zaltsberg, retired editor of the Herald-Times, joined the newspaper in 1976 as a reporter and sportswriter. He said he had never seen anything like the scene at the H-T on election night.

“When you walked in, to the left side of the door was a big board,” Zaltsberg said. “A company would bring in these big, foam boards and put up a wall. They already were lined precinct by precinct, with names on the left side of the board.

Shannon Wagoner (on ladder) fills in vote returns at the Herald-Telephone office as Janine Tjardes-Bullock, right, reads them to her. This photo is from an election in the 1970s.  (HT photo, courtesy of Shannon Wagoner)

“At 6 p.m., the office opened. We had deployed members of the League of Women Voters as observers in each precinct. They would phone results of each precinct, and we had a person who would write in the totals from top to bottom. At the same time, the public would start gathering.”

Also welcome were reporters from other news shops in Bloomington, Zaltsberg said. 

“WFIU would set up and do their election coverage from the H-T,” he recalled. “They would interview candidates and do reports from there. Some of the IDS (Indiana Daily Student) reporters were there, as well as other news outlets.”

Shannon Wagoner began working at the Herald-Telephone in 1971. For every election thereafter, until the practice stopped sometime around the 2000 election, she was one of the people who posted totals.

Wagoner said it was a team effort.

“People were calling in from every precinct. Then, Janine (Tjardes-Bullock) would read the results to me. She and I were the duo. I would come to work the next day and my legs were so sore. We were just up and down (ladders) all night.”

Once a batch of totals had been posted, Wagoner said her daughter Jamie would run those results back to the newsroom. After three of four precincts had reported, another group of employees would add those numbers to make new cumulative totals, which also went on the board.

Linda Breeden was one of the H-T employees running the numbers as they were reported to the newspaper.

“I started my employment in October (1976) and got initiated into election night in November when I was given a calculator and told to add precinct vote totals,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “In my years at a bank, we only used large adding machines with a full keyboard. That first election night I learned real fast how to use a calculator without looking at the keys.’

It was standing room only at the H-T in 1976 when Jimmie Carter defeated Gerald Ford in the race for president of the United States. Photo from the HT Archives.

Wagoner said there would be 6-8 employees assigned to tabulation duty each election. A tradition developed among them of walking a short distance south of the H-T to Gib & Denzil’s restaurant for dinner before the polls closed.

Another election night tradition were doughnuts. Or more precisely, as Zaltsberg described it, “boxes of doughnuts and gallons of black coffee” available for staff and visitors in the employee cafeteria.

“We’d be there sometimes until after midnight” Wagoner said.

Zaltsberg said the election night tradition would not have been possible without the cooperation of the League of Women Voters of Monroe County, whose members would supply precinct numbers to the newspaper at the same time or even earlier than the County Clerk’s office would receive them.

“It was our deal, but we couldn’t have done it without the League of Women in the 1970s and ’80s,” he said.,

H-T employees work the phones to get precinct returns in the 1988 election. From the HT Archives.

It also helped that the Herald-Telephone until 1989 was an afternoon newspaper, meaning customers received their paper the afternoon following the eletion, which Zaltsberg said made for a more relaxed night before in the newsroom.

“Before we went morning, we didn’t have to get results to readers until noon the next day,” he said.

Election Central continued for another decade after the change to a morning publication cycle, but Zaltsberg said it wasn’t quite the same. Because reporters and editors were facing tight deadlines as returns were being tabulated, it became more difficult to allow free access to the newsroom 

Zaltsberg said another change happened with the advent of electronic voting machines. When election returns were tabulated at the clerk’s office, as opposed to the precincts, he said the H-T could not count on being first with the results.

As the newspaper’s editor after 1985, Zaltsberg said he probably was as responsible as anyone for ending the Election Central tradition, but it was not without regret.

“I think it created a community, and it helped create reporter-source relationships because they would all be there and you could have a face-to-face relationship,” he said. “A lot of people in the community were disappointed (when it ended). Some newsroom people were, too.”

Server Success at Boxman’s and Groves Restaurant

Blog post by Assistant Curator, Gabby Krieble. Be sure to stop by the History Center to see the “Order Up! Restaurants of Monroe County” exhibit before it closes on November 5.

Many mid-century American sit-down restaurants prided themselves on excellent service. Boxman’s and Groves Restaurant in Bloomington were no exception.

Boxman’s J.K. Morris, host, conducting one of the 10 min. daily schools for serving girls to get them in a smiling frame of mind before going on duty.

            The photo above shows the neatly-dressed, uniformed servers of Boxman’s restaurant preparing for the day. A clean and courteous dining experience was an important part of the restaurant’s branding, and the servers were charged with upholding that ideal. The front page of a 1952 Boxman’s menu includes a quote from Henry F. Boxman himself. It reads, “TO SERVE YOU WELL – is our desire and our constant endeavor. Should we fail – in either goods or service – immediate knowledge of the fact will be appreciated.”

            Henry Boxman went on to develop a 12-point “Employee Success Formula,” seen here. While some of the guidance pertains specifically to the job of food service, it’s striking how much the formula emphasizes character and conduct outside of working hours. Point five, for example, instructs the employee to “[manifest] a GENTLEMANLY and LADYLIKE quiet CONDUCT off duty as well as on duty. Always be neat and clean in appearance, clean in speech, and clean in thought.”

            That last point seems hard to enforce—to the best of our knowledge, Henry Boxman wasn’t a mind-reader. But it goes to show how much Boxman’s expected their employees to internalize the advice of the formula. It wasn’t just a formula for success at serving, it was a success formula “for personal achievement and advancement”—at work and at home.

While Boxman’s chose to develop a unique employee guide, Groves Restaurant opted to adopt the commercially-printed The Waitress and Waiter’s Bible (Revised Edition), written by E. Ronald Fishman and published by The Almark Company. The purpose of this little booklet is to guide a server through the dining experience, from “The Approach” (“Your greeting should be one of welcome—friendly but dignified.”) through “Taking the Order” (“Suggest additional items by saying, ‘I feel certain, sir, you would enjoy our special chocolate pie. It is very good.’”)  and “Serving” (“’Make every guest happy to be here and anxious to return.’”) to, finally, “The Departure” (“present check—face down.”).

Beyond the meal service, The Waitress and Waiter’s Bible places heavy emphasis on the personality and appearance of the wait staff. For the servers of Groves Restaurant, a good personality boiled down to six key character traits: interest, initiative, pride, loyalty, efficiency, and enthusiasm. The handbook also provides some “common sense rules” for maintaining an attractive and tidy appearance, such as keeping one’s complexion clear by eating, sleeping, exercising, and cleansing one’s face several times a day.

            Both Boxman’s and Groves Restaurant put a lot of stock in their waitstaff. The servers at these iconic restaurants were considered ambassadors, and they were expected to conduct themselves as such. The service is often the first thing that long-time Bloomington residents remember about these restaurants, so the extensive training must have paid off!

Looking Back on Old Bloomington

This is a newspaper article from the “Bloomington Daily Telephone” from December 16, 1929 by Blaine W. Bradfute.

Image of the Showers Administration Building from the cover of Shop Notes vol 1 no 2, April 7 1917 (1989.072.0027b). The old Showers pond was 100 yards south of this building.

Four and five decades ago the boys of the north end of Bloomington found amusement at the Showers pond and the Hunter pond. How many people of today can recall the sites of these two ponds? The Showers pond was located a hundred yards south of the present Showers administration building. This pond was constructed as a water supply for the factory before Bloomington had a water system. It was used by the factory for many years and it was also used by many boys as a playground. Hundreds of youngsters skated on the pond, and sailed boats on its water. With its mud bottom the pond did not offer much of a swimming “hole” and no fish lived in it. Besides its economic feature of supplying water for the factory the Showers pond gave thousands of “play hours” to the boys and girls of the north part of Bloomington.

The Hunter pond was located on the Gen. Morton C. Hunter place at the foot of College avenue hill going north – it was near the I.C. tracks but it pre-dated this railway by many years. The Hunter pond offered a place to sail toy boats, skate and fish. Its waters teemed with small catfish and many a Bloomington lad threw his first hook and line in the waters of the old pond.

The favorite swimming “hole” of Bloomington boys at that time was in Griffy Creek, a hundred yards north of Griffy Creek bridge. A huge log was part of the north shore of Griffy Creek at this place, and it offered a fine place to dive into the water. The depth of the water was only up to a small boy’s mouth but there was a great amount of diving – many youngsters learned to swim and dive in this “old swimming hole.” The diving log and pool were in plain sight of the road and the bridge and whenever a horse and buggy approached “with a woman” there was a great splashing as a dozen naked youngsters plunked into the water, much as that many frogs might have done. This was long before the day of the one-piece bathing suit; indeed it was before the day of any type of bathing suit in Bloomington. In the summer the small boys bathed in the waters of Griffy Creek, in the winter they suffered a weekly Saturday night bath in a tin tub in the kitchen. By and large this was before the advent of the bathroom to Bloomington.

Photo from the MCHC photo collection (1989.041.0001)

The electric light had just come to Bloomington, gas was a long ways in the future, the automobile was to be invented a decade later, the “very rich” people drove a horse and surrey or phaeton. Livery stables occupied prominent places about town; here the “sports” kept their red-wheeled buggies. All the Saturday visitors carried their buggy whip in hand as they strolled about town Saturday afternoon. The mothers of small boys warned them against three great evils – the saloon, the pool parlor and loafing around a livery stable. It was a day of simple pleasures, a “nickle” was a large amount of spending money for a small boy, a dollar was a day’s wages for the ordinary working man. Chickens sold for 20 to 25 cents. There were saloons still about the public square and on north Walnut street (in the Princess and Harris Grand block). The general populace did its drinking in the saloons, celebrating the annual arrival of the Bock beer season. Business and professional men, town officials and deacons took their drinks at one of two famous drug stores. Life was very liable to be short, there was no hospital, no surgeons in Bloomington; it was before the day of appendicitis – men died from causes which today would hardly be termed a serious illness. Excitement dated from one fire to another; there was a volunteer fire department and a hand “Cater-rack” and every man, woman, and child down to the last baby atteneded – no excitement can compare to a good sized fire of the old days when Bloomington was a village.

Watching a fire continued to be a form of entertainment in the 1920s. Here a crowd gathers in front of the Hooks Drug fire in January 1929. From the MCHC photo collection (2003.059.0005)

Irish Immigrants Valued Education

by Rose McIlveen March 22, 1986

For the Irish, the trauma of uprooting themselves from the old country may have been offset by the promise of a fresh start, but most of them who came to Monroe County did not leave the futures of their children to chance.

Fully 64 percent of the Irish families who were here in the 1850s sent their children to Indiana University for their education. Of the immigrants’ young people who attend IU, 31 percent received their degrees.

A study of the scanty information about the backgrounds of the Irish families does not indicate how much they brought with them in the way of financial resources. But the fact that a high percentage of them took some college courses, at least, indicates that as a group the Monroe County Irish placed a high premium on education. The opportunity was not far from their doorsteps, and they availed themselves of it.

The first of the Irish to arrive in Monroe County saw its untouched scenery from the back of a horse. John Carr and his fellow U.S. Mounted Rangers were headquartered at Fort Vallonia, and they crisscrossed this area, pursuing Indians that had raided settlements or stolen horses. Carr was a lieutenant in the same unit with First Sergeant John Ketcham. The latter built the second Monroe County Courthouse and was a trustee of IU. Carr was the first of the Irish immigrants to buy land, purchasing his in 1816 in Van Buren Township.

More conspicuous in the early history of the county were the Blairs. It was at the cabin of Abner Blair that the commissioners met in 1818 to conduct the county’s first business. Presbyterians by religious persuasion, the Blairs were adamantly opposed to slavery. In time, the family would produce lawyers, and a trustee of IU. The family homestead on the near westside of Bloomington was once proposed as the second site of IU.

John Campbell, of County Antrim, fathered a son by the same name, who joined the Union Army during the Civil War. The younger Campbell served in Company F of the 27^th Indiana Regiment. He was wounded at Anteitam, fought at Chancellorsville, was wounded again at Gettysburg, and suffered a broken arm in the Battle of Resaca. Upon his return from the army, he was elected township trustee, and he and his wife adopted one of their own, young John Maginnis, to add to their family. The Campbells were believers in education. Eight of them attended IU. Another family that contributed one of its sons to the Union Army was that of John Dinsmore. His son, Joseph, who had received a degree from IU, joined Company F of the 82nd Indiana Infantry. Before the war ended, Joseph was a veteran of the battles of Chickamauga, Resaca and Kenesaw Mountain and was with General Sherman in the “march to the sea” in Georgia. When the Dinsmore family arrived here in 1838, they bought 120 acres in Van Buren Township. Eventually the homestead was enlarged to 240 acres. The sons of the family each received family farm acreage as wedding presents. John Dinsmore was a member of the Monroe County Fair board.

Veterans Reunion 82nd Indiana Volunteer in 1906. Included in this photo is Joseph Dinsmore. Photo from the MCHC Collection (2009.024.0007)

Newsboy a Witness to Wave of Terror in Monroe County

Blog post by Rod Spaw

Tales of the H-T: stories taken from or inspired by the archives of The Herald-Times at the Monroe County History Center.

Newsboy sculpture on Chris Kohler and Sherry Rouse’s lawn

For more than 40 years, the limestone sculpture of a newsboy has graced a corner of the yard at the home of Chris Kohler and Sherry Rouse in Monroe County.

Newspapers under one arm, and with most of its features obscured by a wide-brimmed, floppy hat and baggy shirt and trousers, the statue has the fluid qualities of a figure in one of Thomas Hart Benton’s classic murals, a similarity not lost on Rouse, a retired curator at Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum of Art.

She and Chris do not know who carved the sculpture, but they do know some of its history, especially what befell it before coming into their possession. The statue has a dark stain around the neckline left by epoxy used in its repair. There is a crack in the middle of its back and a depression left by something striking it there with force, such as a sledgehammer. A big chunk of the hat has been broken off.

The newsboy is perhaps the last evidence of a wave of crime that had local officials and journalists on edge in the summer and fall of 1976. Arson fires, bricks through windows and assorted other crimes and misdemeanors were attributed to a shadowy character who called himself “The Inspector” in a series of calls to the Herald-Telephone (now the Herald-Times).

“I’m ‘The Inspector,’” he told the newspaper during one of his calls. “I inspect things in the county that are undesirable, and if they don’t meet my standards, then I remove them.”

The wave of nighttime vandalism began on June 25 with the attempted arson of a barn on the farm of Monroe Circuit Court Judge Nat U. Hill. Four nights later, the county’s last remaining covered bridge on Maple Grove Road burned down.

Calls to the newspaper began on Aug. 8, when an unidentified man took credit for dumping trash on Judge Hill’s lawn overnight and for tossing a brick through the front window of reporter Larry Incollingo’s home. Other reporters could expect the same treatment, he warned.

The newsboy became a victim during the overnight hours of Aug. 17-18. A reporter received a 4 a.m. wake-up call from The Inspector, who took responsibility for “decapitating” the statue.

While the motive for his crime spree was unclear, the newspaper believed it was connected to reporting about a leaked tape recording in which an inmate at the Monroe County Jail talked with a detective about the Nat Hill barn fire and destruction of the Maple Grove bridge.

The limestone sculpture, which measures 49 inches tall by 18 inches wide and sits on a base that is two-feet square, had been a fixture in front of the Herald-Telephone building since the newspaper had moved to South Walnut Avenue from downtown in 1961.

Photo of the newsboy sculpture in front of the Herald-Telephone building (from the MCHC photo collection)

According to newspaper files, former H-T publisher Stewart Riley had commissioned its carving using drawings of a similar sculpture he had admired during a trip to Brazil.

An image of a scultpure in Brazil taken from historicimages.com. Is this sculpture Stewart Riley had in mind?

One of the H-T’s reporters at the time was Sunny Schubert, a sister of Chris Kohler. He said his sister offered to buy the statue once the newspaper decided it was too damaged to repair. After paying a nominal amount for the now-headless newsboy, Schubert first hauled the sculpture to her residence at the Fountain Park Apartments at 10^th Street and Russell Road.

She later offered it to her brother, who besides being a geologist at Indiana University, was a real-life newsboy; he delivered copies of the Indiana Daily Student newspaper to its home subscribers. Kohler said he moved the statue to the home he and Rouse had just finished building, where it has remained to this day.

But that is not the end of the story.

The head wasn’t reattached immediately, and one Halloween, it just disappeared, along with a slew of lawn ornaments from other homes in their neighborhood. Rouse said her husband made a plywood sign and set it near the road in front of their home, appealing for the return of the newsboy’s head.

Not long afterward, a man drove past on his way to the county dump, his truck filled with pilfered lawn decorations that had been dumped on his property. He saw the sign, stopped, and left the entire load with Rouse and Kohler, who told neighbors where they could retrieve their stolen property.

The statue now has become part of the couple’s life story.

“Chris and I think of the sculpture as an icon of our youth,” Rouse said. “We have lived here for much of our lives, and it anchors our front yard. Our dogs, a cat and a couple of important fish are buried out there. … I always imagine him yelling, “Extra, Extra, Read all about it!”

The Inspector’s story didn’t end with the newsboy, either. In late September 1976, an arsonist succeeded in destroying Nat Hill’s barn. The Inspector took credit for that in a call to the Herald-Telephone, as well as an earlier attempted arson at Ye Olde Regulator Tavern, now the site of Kilroy’s Sports bar.

Other crimes were attributed to the nighttime vigilante; he took credit for some of them and some he claimed were the work of others. In fact, in his last call to the newspaper on Sept. 30, 1976, The Inspector said he was “retiring” because of copycats. “This thing’s getting out of hand,” he told the newspaper. “Everybody and his brother is taking it up.”

A week after that final communication, police arrested a man for one of the crimes linked to The Inspector, a home burglary and assault case. Carlisle W. Briscoe Jr. did not admit to being The Inspector, and local authorities could not prove it. However, he was found guilty by a jury of the burglary and assault charges; he spent more than two years in state prison before the verdict was overturned on appeal.

Briscoe was one of the better-known miscreants in Monroe County at the time of his arrest. A decade earlier, a 26-year-old Briscoe, who claimed to be a member of the Klu Klux Klan, was convicted of firebombing the Black Market, a mercantile run by civil rights activists at the site of what now is People’s Park. Briscoe received a sentence of one to 10 years in prison for that conviction.

Briscoe eventually left Indiana and settled in Nebraska. He died in 2013 at the age of 71 in the Nebraska State Penitentiary, where he was serving a sentence for possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.

The PCB Display at the Public Library Didn’t Go As Planned…

Blog post by Rod Spaw

Tales of the H-T: Stories taken from or inspired by the Herald-Times archive at the Monroe County History Center.

A display intended to inform the public about an environmental hazard had unintended consequences for the Monroe County Public Library and its patrons in the summer of 1984.

The issue was polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), an insulating fluid used for two decades at the Westinghouse Corp. plant in Bloomington in the manufacture of electrical capacitors. Congress banned the manufacture and use of PCBs in 1976 due to their toxicity and persistence in the environment; once present, it was nearly impossible to get rid of them. By the time Congress acted, an estimated 2 million pounds of PCBs had been released in Bloomington through discharges by Westinghouse to the city sewer system; by the scrapping of old capacitors at unregulated dump sites; and by the use of PCB-laden sewage sludge as a soil amendment throughout Monroe County.

From the Herald-Times Archive at the Monroe County History Center

By 1984, city government had expended nearly 10 years and more than $1 million to address the problem. PCBs seemingly were everywhere, including the local library, as the Herald-Telephone (now the Herald-Times) reported on July 25, 1984.

As reported by the newspaper, state health officials advised the library to close after learning about a display that included burned capacitors and PCB-soaked paper. The materials, along with information about PCB contamination, had been placed in the library about two weeks prior by an activist group called Citizens for Clean Air and Water.

A spokesman for the group told the newspaper that the display was covered and sealed to prevent release of PCBs. However, health officials said they smelled an odor associated with PCB oil after the building was closed. Subsequent air testing detected the presence of PCBs, but at a level well below the limit for occupational exposure, the H-T reported.

Library director Bob Trinkle, who had been on vacation when the display was installed, told the newspaper that the building’s air conditioning system was cleaned thoroughly – twice — as was the carpet and hard surfaces near the display, whose contents were removed by an Indianapolis company specializing in hazardous material handling.

The library then reopened to the public on July 2, one week after it had closed.

Smithville Saloon Gets Rude Treatment

“Looking Back” by Rose McIlveen March 28, 1987

Monday, August 29, 1898, was not a run-of-the-mill kind of day in Smithville. That was when the locals awoke to discover that in the near future, at least, they would have father to go to to “wet their whistles.”

Chirped the Bloomington Courier, “The people of Smithville have a novel way of getting rid of saloons. At least it is a different way than is being used by the temperance people of this city who are remonstrating against the sale of liquor.”

The newspaper primly explained that “Smithville is not used to saloons.” In fact, the liquor business that James May established in Smithville was still a novelty, being only two months old. He may have thought he was providing a much-needed service to the little community, but there were those who thought otherwise.

At approximately 1:30 am – give or take a few minutes – persons residing in the vicinity of the saloon were awakened by a terrible commotion. Of those who had intentions of venturing outside, none actually did that, due to the advice of a gang of men armed with such formidable weapons as guns, axes and sledge hammers. For the intimidated ones, imagination had to suffice.

From the MCHC Collection (1987.037.0040)

What was going on were some alterations at the local saloon – alterations that would cause May to reconsider the marketability of his product in the Smithville area. Whip-capper vigilantes wielding the hammers and axes shattered doors and windows first and then proceeded to the interior attractions. Attacking a mute, $150 refrigerator containing cold beer, the men returned the liquid to the earth from which it came. In fact, every bottle containing an alcoholic beverage received the same treatment.

The Bloomington Telephone  reported that the group numbered 10 or 12, who arrived on horseback from the east. Continued the newspaper, “They had evidently come for business and in little time whiskey and beer were soaking the ground.” Nor did the tables and chairs escape destruction. They were said to be worth $300.

Speculated the Telephone as to why May was put out of business, “For some time there has been talk in the community that men both old and young had been spending too much money for liquor, when their families were going without the necessities of life.” That might have been said of some Bloomingtonians, but the temperance movement in the city took a more rational approach, trying to persuade people to vote “dry” in the periodic referenda during the years of local option.

There was speculation that the gang of men were self-styled Regulators, an extra-legal force that had been known to resort to bodily harm to get their point across. The instances of taking the law into the average citizens’ hands was not a Monroe County phenomenon, and in later years the excesses prompted the governor of Indiana to take drastic action.

Neighborhood Stores Were Full of Charm

Looking Back by Herbert H. Skirvin 8/8/81

Jackson’s Grocery & Meat Market, c. 1926. 400 E. 3rd Street. Photo from the MCHC Collection (1988.109.0198A)

Three cheers for the old fashioned country stores, like those once existing in and around Bloomington! They were enshrined in Americana years ago, but a few real-life survivors can still be found in some of the nation’s out-of-the-way spots.

Then, too, there are the replicas, fascinating the vintage buffs at many of the tourist havens. One of the largest and most faithful in detail is located at St. Augustine, Fla. It even has an adjoining blacksmith shop, where the smith will fashion you a ring out of a horseshoe nail. 

(Around 1917, when I was a boy here, an old blacksmith working in a barn-like building on Indiana Avenue, halfway between 10th and Cottage Grove, made me one of those rings. Crude though it was. I kept it a long time. It was the first ring I ever owned.)

In the 1900-20 period, all the grocery stores in Bloomington, except several big ones downtown, were in the country store bracket. While they generally were larger, had fancier layouts, carried more goods and did more business, they were, in many respects, much like their contemporaries operating in nearby rural areas.

The importance of the old-time grocery to the community was incalculable. Neighborhood and family life revolved around it. Besides supplying food and other essentials, it served as a halfway social center, where a customer could loaf awhile, exchanging gossip and news, and get a word of cheer – even a helping hand if one was needed. 

It didn’t have discounted coupons and 10 kinds of dog food, as today’s supermarkets do, but it offered something special – a lot of heart. Soup bones and a liver snack from the family cat were always free in the meat department. If you bought a pound of something, the proprietor and clerks usually gave you 17 ounces. A dozen of anything usually turned out to be a baker’s dozen (13); wooden crates for kindling wood were free, and so on.

Burch Grocery at 905 W. 11th c. 1940. Photo from the MCHC collection (1995.020.0014)

The proprietor, typically a stocky man with a bald head and a mustache, knew most of the people in his neighborhood and dealt with them on a first-name basis. He granted credit to all but the drunks and the shiftless, and, in hard times, kept the wolf away from many a family door. Sometimes, unfortunately, he went broke because of excessive charity. 

Some of these stores were well managed, some weren’t. All, however, in their best days, were fascinating to both young and old. In the minds of small children, especially those with a few coins to spend, they were the closest things to heaven there were, other than the churches.

The first time I ever was inside one was in 1911, when I was 3 years old, and our family was living on N. Lincoln, a few doors north of 10th. My mother sent an older brother to Clark’s, on the northeast corner of 10th and Grant, to buy a loaf of bread and he took me along.

The first eye-popper was on the Grant Street side of the brick building. Large posters were pasted on the wall, two of them having pictures of a muscular pioneer and an Indian chief wearing his feathered headdress. There were a lot of words on all the posters. As I later learned, they were advertising Bull Durham smoking tobacco, Sweetheart soap, Arm and Hammer baking soda and Star chewing tobacco. 

On entering the store, I immediately went into an open-mouthed bug-eyed, speechless trance. The candy counter was on the right and my brother lifted me onto the top of a covered bushel basket of apples so I could see all the goodies. I nearly fell off the basket. I couldn’t believe my eyes. 

Each of us had a penny to spend and after the bread was purchased, my brother tried to get me to pick a penny item. But it was no use – I couldn’t talk. Finally, he told the clerk to give me a peppermint stick and when I clutched it he pulled me out the door. 

As we started to walk home, we saw the store’s large delivery wagon and its team of horses drop-hitched at the curb on Grant. The wagon had just returned from one of the rounds and the driver and his helper, using a back door, were loading it with baskets of groceries for another. We stood and watched until they finished and the driver, returning to his seat, cracked his whip in the air and yelled “Giddy-up!” to the horses and they took off 

In the next two years I often went to Clark, many times by myself, on errands for my mother. Usually, she gave me a penny or two for candy. Once, I got a nickel. Boy, that was a treat!

From the fall of 1914 until the spring of 1920, I attended the McCalla Grade School at 9th and Indiana Avenue. That’s when I became well acquainted with Todd’s Grocery on 10th, three doors west of Indiana Avenue, and its colorful proprietor, Tom Todd. Only the playground, an old pasture and 10th Street separated the school and the store and the pupils beat several paths on the pasture, traveling back and forth. 

Tom Todd was a stocky, partly bald man and had a mustache. Although a kindhearted man, he was serious and became gruff, sometimes inpatient, when the youngsters were slow in making up their minds at the candy counter. One day, when I couldn’t decide how to part with three pennies, he grabbed a broom and chased me out of the place.

Later, when I was in 4th grade, my teacher asked me to go over to Todd’s and buy some things for lunch. She gave me an itemized list: 3 cents worth of crackers, 5 cents worth of cheese, a 4 cent apple and 4 cents worth of cookies. When I presented the list and 16 cents to Tom Todd, he turned red in the face and looked like he was going to have a stroke. But since the order was for a teacher, all he could do was sputter and growl.

Barter Once Common Substitution for Money

Looking Back by Rose McIlveen April 1981

Monroe Countians who are used to making regular stops at the drive-in-windows of their banks probably didn’t realize that their ancestors had to swap goods and services to get their necessities. 

In 1833, Mrs. Cornelius Perring, wife of the principal of the Young Women’s Seminary, wrote to a friend back home in England: “In this State we have principally silver and United States Notes, there being as yet no Bank in this State….Money is scarce in this State at present, but the people are looking forward to their State Bank, which is to make plenty enough.”

An early photo of the First National Bank of Bloomington

Actually it was a good thing Monroe Countians didn’t hold their breaths until Mrs. Perring’s predictions finally came true. Meanwhile, the small amount of cash in circulation was a strange mixture of English and French coins as well as Spanish pieces of eight of pirate story fame. 

Considering the scarcity of actual money, Hoosiers resorted to trading for the staples they needed. Mrs. Perring wrote that such ordinary table and household items were going for the following prices: “tree sugar”, 6 ¼ cents per pound; cane sugar, 12 ¼; loaf sugar, 16; dried ham and bacon, 6 ¼; coffee, 20, and wood, 75 cents a cord.

Mrs. Perring’s husband was paid for his services as principal of the seminary in money, but many of their rural neighbors brought their produce into town in the buckboard and either traded it off the back of their wagon parked on the square or ventured into the nearby businesses to make a swap. It was not uncommon for church members to tithe with ground corn or eggs and patients to pay physicians in bacon or firewood. Homebrew, legally produced by many farmers, was also used for exchange, along with homespun cloth – until the years when improved local transportation brought in the cloth from eastern mills.

In the midst of America’s precarious and haphazard banking system, Monroe Countians fared pretty well, considering the chaos of banks that issued their own paper money. In 1811, when Congress failed to re-charter the Bank of the United States, state-owned banks began to spring up. The Encyclopedia of American History says that such banks flourished in Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia.

Widespread bank panics followed in 1837 and 1857, when the public reacted nervously to the federal government’s lack of credibility and unwillingness to make up its collective mind about a sane banking system. Since paper money was scarce, Monroe County businessman Tarkington and Atkins issued “shinplasters”, in the denomination of 50 cents and a dollar in 1855. Another merchant, J.M. Howe, soon followed suit.

Only a temporary measure, the home-made money began to depreciate in value and according to an account in Pop Hall’s Historic Treasures, Bloomington businessmen ganged up on the dubious money changers by running the following ad in the local paper:

‘Shinplasters’

We, the undersigned citizens of Bloomington, Indiana, pledge our word and honor that we will not take any ‘shinplaster’ currency after the 1st day of February for more than ninety cents on the dollar; and that we will not circulate any more after that date – nor any other paper currency not regularly chartered according to law.

January 20, 1858

Signed – William O. Fee, Thomas Mulliken, A.W. & Faris P. Henoch, A.S. Mercer, E.E. Sluss, B.S. Cowgill, J.S. Tibbets, A. Halton & Co., M.L. McCullough, A. Adams, Dunn & Co., E. Johnson, B.J. Wade, J.C. McCullough.

In the History of Lawrence and Monroe Counties, Indiana, Amzi Atwater, IU professor wrote: “The bank of Akin and Tarkington having ceased in war times to do business, there was no bank in Bloomington forty years ago. People had to obtain their bank drafts as best they could. A little later, Smith HUnter, Brother of Gen. M.C. Smith, started a kind of banker’s office in a building where Campbell’s dry goods store is not. Through his hands the professors received their salaries and cash on their drafts.”

By 1857 a bona fide Bloomington Bank was established backed by $20,000 in capital. A few years later another private bank started doing business, and out of it evolved the First National Bank as we know it today. Other businessmen followed suit with the founding of the Monroe County State Bank, which was chartered in 1892, the Citizens Loan and Trust Company in 1899, and the Bloomington National Bank in 1906-07.

Through the National Bank Act of 1863-65 brought some order to the chaos of goods-swapping and homemade currency, Monroe Countians were still a long way from running past the drive-in-branch to get some money.