Lindsey Monroe, the well-dressed weather lady on WTHI-TV, stated this morning there was going to be fog in most of the Wabash Valley.
I got to thinking. I was born very near the Wabash River and lived in towns on or near the Wabash River until I went to work after high school.
I could no more draw a picture of the Wabash Valley than I could fly to the moon. I’m sure I could draw a map of America and all of its states more accurately. Sitting around the courthouse at Newport, listening to the old-timers, never once did I see one of them slap their knee and say, “They can’t do that to this Wabash Valley.” In fact, in all my years of living in these parts, I can’t remember hardly anyone referring to the Wabash Valley as their home turf. It might be because it’s rather confusing.
I suspect Terre Haute is the actual epicenter of the Wabash Valley. I don’t think of the people in Lafayette north or Evansville south as part of the Wabash Valley. Many counties in both Illinois and Indiana are considered Wabash Valley turf. I don’t know how accurate that is. I’m sure the Illinois prairie counties of Clark, Edgar, Douglas, and Coles have many citizens who do not consider themselves as part of Wabash River country. In Indiana, I’m not sure how many of the counties would consider themselves a part of the Wabash Valley. Even writing about it is a little confusing.
For me, it’s fairly simple. I can see the bluffs, where there are bluffs, and I get a sense of the Valley and its spread-out flood plain when I go south towards Evansville.
I think it’s easy for the media. They don’t have to identify individual counties. They just have to throw out a general catch-all term — the Wabash Valley.
I suspect for those of us who live alongside the River, we can understand why we call it the Wabash Valley. But you get out of sight of the River and some of its major tributaries, and it might be a little more difficult.
Somebody said to me a long time ago that the term “Illiana,” combining the names of the states of Illinois and Indiana, sounds more like a disease than a geographic area. In the northern part of the state, they refer to it as “Michiana,” that is, southern Michigan and northern Indiana. And the folks who live there seem to feel that way as well. So, anybody who can draw a map of the Wabash Valley in Illinois and Indiana, please stand up. I’m just at a loss to explain this succinctly and I suppose I always will be.
Ronn Mott, a longtime radio personality in Terre Haute, writes commentaries for the Tribune-Star. His pieces are published online Tuesday and Thursday on Tribstar.com, and in the print and online editions on Saturday.
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RONN MOTT: The Wabash Valley
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RONN MOTT: Israel’s Air Force
Recently the Israeli Air Force bombed and rocketed a convoy leaving Syria going to Lebanon with rockets that were going to be used to attack Israel. It did not get there. It was destroyed.
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RONN MOTT: Media merry-go-round
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RONN MOTT: ‘Raccoons II’
In the Algonquin Indian language, raccoon means “working with hands.” They are really cute little fellows until they injure a child, or a pet, or leave feces around where you certainly do not want it.
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RONN MOTT: ‘NRA Convention’
At the recent NRA Convention in Houston, Texas, where the right-wing political hot air almost lifted the convention's building off its foundation, the NRA trotted out the forever yours political dame of the right wing, Sarah Palin. Sarah did not disappoint.
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RONN MOTT: ‘Heritage gone’
The last high school I attended was being torn down just a few days ago. I didn't learn about it until I saw classmate Dick Mills on television and a display he had put together about State football championships in the middle 1930's. I began elementary school with Dick Mills. That was Matthew South Elementary School on South Sixth Street in Clinton, Indiana. After seeing Dick on TV, it dawned on me that all schools I had attended in Clinton have been torn down.
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LIZ CIANCONE: We always want more than we need
Washington seems more preoccupied with the unemployment rate than they are about the constant stalemate. Still with thousands out of work and the unemployment rate hovering somewhere between 7 percent and 9 percent, it does deserve more than a passing nod.
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MARK BENNETT: Should I stay or should I go?
Some have their Bill Clinton-era Cavalier packed (with the trunk bungee-ed shut), apartment cleaned (except for the fridge), and iPhone GPS locked onto the fastest route out of Terre Haute. Others are staying — until they find a better job, or because they’re starting a career here, or because this town feels like home. In each case, a new stage of life begins today.
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College Class of '13 gets a little extra advice
Local college grads will hear commencement speakers offer life and career advice this month. We’re offering them an extra dose here from folks who’ve found success in various vocations and regions of the nation. Many have Terre Haute roots.
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RONN MOTT: Things that go bump in the night
I live in a very old house. There are all kinds of noises that occur, especially at night, or so it seems. Aside from the various creaks and pops from old wooden floors and walls when the furnace heats up and sends warm air into the rooms, we, my wife and I, have heard other noises.
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RONN MOTT: Around the dial
At lunch the other day with Terry Tevlin (First Financial Bank), I bumped into Dale Mahurin. I hadn’t talked to Dale in a long time and inquired about his wife, Julie Henricks.
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ANDREA NEAL: Newspaper journalists still make a difference
A recent survey ranked newspaper reporter as the worst career of 2013, just below meter reader and lumberjack, but you wouldn’t guess it from the stories told by journalists who gathered in Bloomington to see six of their own inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
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RONN MOTT: George Jones
I got to Nashville in the early ’70s, hired by John Patton, who had been a DJ for WBOW earlier in his career. Then, he was managing WMAK in Nashville and I was promised a top sales list and received the yellow pages (many a promise like this has happened to people in this business). I also did sports commentary for the morning man and would ultimately do a season of play-by-play and a short TV schedule for Tennessee State.
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LIZ CIANCONE: Old age is in email of the beholder
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MARK BENNETT: Spirited response to a rising river
The power within the Wabash revealed itself last week.
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FLASHPOINT: Time has arrived for overhaul of TV news
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RONN MOTT: Remembering Pat Summerall
I don’t remember how I first became aware of Pat Summerall, but the first time I heard him was on a New York radio station (WCBS, I think). He was doing the sports for the morning man and exchanging some opinions about sports and such with him.
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RONN MOTT: What I don’t know
I was watching a segment on the History Channel the other night while I waited for the end of “The Big Bang Theory” and a show I had seen before. It was “Sex in History.” And the two segments I watched were about Ben Franklin and Howard Hughes.
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RONN MOTT: You, me, and the Muslim world
I don’t know how to do this. I’m a fairly intelligent human being, but the events of the past week in Boston have turned me emotionally inside out. It’s more than the people who died, it’s more than the people who were injured … some permanently,
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LIZ CIANCONE: A memory test from the oldtime radio days
For some reason, I seem to be the go-to source for all sorts of obscure information out at the Wabash Valley Family Sports Center.
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MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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RONN MOTT: China
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