Big Newspapers, Again? No, Sorry

July 15, 2025___ 2025? Really?

If you’ve been a reader for a while you may remember a column some time back about my growing up time, a time, even in small town (439) America, when we actually had 3 newspapers delivered daily in our little town. Hardly anyone read all 3, but many people would get the morning delivery, Indianapolis Star and then their choice between either The News or The Times from Indy, or The Franklin Evening Star (more news from our county seat), which was delivered with the mail which came from Franklin to Trafalgar on a train!

My family, as I remember it, always took the local and one of the Indy papers—usually The News. The News had the right comics, according to my older brothers, and the hardest crossword puzzle, according to my Dad and one brother who always wanted to beat Dad to it! I grew up with a household that didn’t have TV till 1957, so all of us except Mama would read the paper, cover to cover. Being the youngest, unless I was home when it came, I didn’t often unroll it to see the headlines first, but whomever did spoiled it for the rest who were waiting by telling the headline out loud! 

That really didn’t bother anyone unless it was BIG news like TROOPS IN LEBANON!, or something like that….you’re old if you remember that. I can’t remember which was first, either that or CAMP ATTERBURY CLOSING SOON! That caught everyone’s attention in town! The camp was not an old established camp like many around the country, but was built especially for WW2. In fact, only a few days, I suppose each week, was the camp closed to through traffic from Edinburgh to Nineveh. Nevertheless, nearby Trafalgar received a lot of traffic for businesses from the camp and all its employees. At various times and for various reasons both my parents and one sister worked there. 

Every week, usually more than once, The News would have Camp Atterbury stories. These stories would be talked about throughout the town and caused increases in business from slightly to large amounts. The 2 grocery stores, one, two or three restaurants, a big hardware, an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership, small lumberyard, grain elevator, patent drug store, 3 barbershops (for a while) and multiple garages and filling stations had become pretty dependent on the camp’s supply of government wages filtering into their pockets from the supply of the need and want. (Not to leave out the funeral home, pool-room, a dry cleaner, my father’s blacksmith shop, a large canning factory, and our own bank, and two lodges with auxiliaries and 3 churches with 4 more less than 5 miles away—all of which contributed to the town’s life daily.) That’s a bunch of service and commerce for a town of 439 with a grades 1 thru 12 school and all it’s employees.

And all 3 Indianapolis newspapers and the Franklin Evening Star delivered every day! Think of that! Can you imagine a town that size today having anything besides a filling station/convenience store and a post office?—oh, yeah, I forgot the Dollar General.

The earliest television was from Indianapolis as channel 6-NBC and channel 8-CBS. About the time I entered high school (1956-57), channel 13-ABC joins them and shortly after that an independent, channel 4-WTTV came on from Bloomington, then they came and built a tower just outside our town—tallest in America for a short period of time.

Were we lucky? Those of us who grew up in the sort of small town I just described? I thought we were then, and all along my journeys through these eight decades, I always think of those environs as the best of the best, no matter what things I might have experienced living “larger.”

Beth Yarbrough said,
“In the moment, we seldom see the essence of life for what it really is – but the view from a distance is crystal clear. When that happens, we reach back, hoping to touch – to say thank you – to give life to the thing one more time. In my case, every time a rooster crows, a screen door slams, or a mockingbird sings over a summer morning, I am there – with a grateful heart.”

She wrote about old homes and homesteads being saved all across the Southeastern United States. She takes or “borrows” photos of places that are in abandonment and some which have been restored, glorying in the facts concerning their history, in spite of the troublesome times through which almost all have been. She writes short pages and is easy to see her work on Facebook. Most all of you who read this blog from time to time would fully enjoy her work, I wager.

Now, when privileged to return for a 21st Century look at it little Trafalgar, I nearly always weep inside because of what’s been erased of my town, but stand in awe at what has been transformed or created anew. And I wonder; had I been here all along, would it have seemed to affect me the same way? Wouldn’t wager on that, mind ya.

Thanks for reading, the elder