1943.
Crime Does Not Pay- Zaltsberg, Passmore, Cole, Friend, Hawley;
"It sounded like a good idea at the time, but we don't think so much of it now," the five industrious Winchester High School pupils agreed Thursday a few minutes before the above picture was taken of them removing paint from the walk in front of the Union City High School.
The sixth member of the group, J.R. Zaltsberg, also of Winchester, "came along just to see that the others got the job done satisfactorily." He is pictured at the extreme left wielding a big stick in the Simon Legree role. The others who are removing a bright blue "Yea, Yellow Jackets-'43" from the walk with the aid of paint remover and brushes are Sonny Passmore, Jim Passmore, Bob Cole (it was his idea), Frank Friend and Harold Hawley.
According to our own report, the boys drove to Union City Monday night where they adorned the old bell mounted in the school yard and the school walk with various inscriptions lauding the Yellow Jackets. "This definitely was a mistake because on Wednesday night we met defeat for the first time this season....our fifteenth game," Sonny Passmore said.
The boys were apprehended by police in Winchester after being reported by someone who saw them placing their empty paint cans in a refuse container in the uptown district. The police traced the car license number, because the person who reported them thought they had been stealing gasoline. The rest is pictorial history.
Oh, yes! The boys wanted it mentioned that they will have to do time-and-one-half at school today for the studies they missed Thursday. School on Saturday!
1970.
A landmark of the Ridgeville community, the former A & C Stone Quarry, will be officially opened May 30, 1971, under the name of Lake Campeinnelle, according to plans of the new owners, Mr. and Mrs. John N. Laymon of Indianapolis.
The Laymons purchased the 65-acre stone quarry tract, located one mile east of Ridgeville, several months ago. The grounds include a 22 acre lake where quarry operations were carried on for about 40 years.
The original quarry site contained 40 acres of the Riddlebarger estate, when operations began in 1903 under the name, A & C Stone Quarry. In 1937, the year of Ridgeville's centennial, the pit was estimated as one-fourth mile long, one-eighth mile wide and 75 feet deep. The pit area increased during the five years of operation after 1937, especially in depth.
In 1937, the quarry employed 40 men and was running day and night. Steam power had recently been replaced with diesel engines at an installation cost of $30,000. The quarry was producing 100 tons of crushed stone per hour and in the same length of time manufacturing about 10 tons of dust.
Laymon plans to retain as much of the area's natural wooded beauty as possible in his 10-year plan for establishing Lake Campeinnelle (incorporated under the name of Surrey, Inc.). Old stone structures, once a part of the quarry buildings, will be renovated for use as shelter houses. They will also house art and craft festivals.
Early next year, construction will begin on a bell tower at the park entrance, housing offices and chimes. All buildings will be constructed in Tudor (Old English) style architecture, including the Laymon home to be built on the north side of the lake.
Chimes in the bell tower will play on the half hour and hour and on holidays there will be special music. Beaches and swimming facilities will be improved, including building of some shallow swimming areas. There will be no autos or other motorized vehicles allowed in the park. These will be put in an outside parking lot. Transportation in the park will be solely on foot and by horse-drawn vehicles. Tours are planned for visitors during the first year of the park's operation.
Other plans include a shopping center on the southeast side to contain around 40 buildings, all in Old English style and to be known as Surrey Downs. Bleachers will be erected on the northeast side to command a view of the entire lake area. Also, picnic grounds will be established in this same area.
Written by Lucille Thomas.
1919.
May 27 has been set aside as "Rat Day" in Randolph County. The Goodrich elevators of the county and the Union City elevators have offered prizes for the boy or girl who will catch the most rats and prizes for the boy or girl who will catch the biggest rat. The judging will be done by boys and girls chopping of the rats tails and taking them to the elevators where they were killed and the amount and size will be judged there.
Cash prizes will be given. A county prize will be given the youngster who catches the most rats.
Boys and girls, get busy and kill all the rats and mice you can!
1962.
A Winchester business which for 41 years has been operated by the same family is being sold, bringing to an end a continuous line of development that began as almost a pioneer effort.
Frank Metz, who will be 80 years old on October 9, explains that he founded the Winchester Oil company in 1921 as a bulk plant wholesaling and retailing oil products. The company is situated just east of the north end of Jackson street at the railroad, and Metz recollects that the site was "a mudhole" when he first began operation.
He started with one 12,000 gallon tank and gradually over the next few years added four more, including both fuel and gasoline tanks and later a tank of marine gasoline for outboard motors.
In 1944, Metz's son Carl (Slim) and his wife Myrtle (Mert) took over the bulk of the operation, and the family is selling out now largely because Carl has been in poor health. Metz has also built and operated a number of filling stations, the first three-pump station in Winchester, on West Washington street when Ind. 32 was first completed, built in 1926; he also built Fountain Park station, the first two-bay three-driveway station in Winchester in 1936. Metz's other son Dale helped with early filling station operations.
For eight years, in the early days of Funk's Speedway, Metz attended with a tankload of gasoline for the race cars, but abandoned that project when a careening racer narrowly missed his fuel truck and caused him to jump a fence to avoid being run over. Although Dale and Carl helped at first with the filling stations, Dale, now a post office employee, has for years had no part in the company business. . The Metz family also built a filling station in Ridgeville in 1930 and have operated, until now a filling station on West Washington street, Winchester.
Gasoline was scarcely the booming business it is now, in 1921 when Metz first began. However, he remembers that as the operator of onestop improvements had been added over the years, Mr. Metz was obviously sad at leaving a business which occupied half his lifetime. "I have had very loyal patrons," he said, thinking back. "I want to express thanks on behalf of myself, my son Carl and my daughter-in-law Myrtle, to those people for their loyalty over the years."
1948.
Georgetown. Situated one mile south of Farmland on the Winchester-Windsor turnpike was the village of Georgetown, platted in 1835 on land owned by John McNeece. At one time there were six dwellings there, also a tavern or hotel, a doctor's office, a general store, a blacksmith shop and a toll gate. For probably two or more decades this village had a lucrative business catering to the emigrants using this road.
In early spring hundreds of mover's wagons with their livestock traveled this road, some caravans not stopping, others pausing long enough for some repairs at the blacksmith shop and some loaves of bread, and again some would stop for a few days on account of sickness or to rest their jaded teams and foot sore cattle.
Always on Sundays there would be several emigrant wagons under the trees along White River for very few of these caravans traveled on the Sabbath day. Usually there were religious services of some kind.
Sometimes these emigrant trains consisted of half a dozen or so wagons, then again there would be as many as twenty-five or thirty wagons, several fitted for comfortable traveling and others loaded with feed for the horses and cattle and others with farming implements, tools of all kinds, seeds, such as corn, oats, potatoes, etc. There would be coops of chickens, ducks and geese. The sheep and cattle were driven but the hogs were hauled.
The tavern or hotel was for several years under the management of Henry Huffman.
Dr. Keener was the physician, as history records it, but much of the time there were two doctors here.
The blacksmith shop was a busy place. Many times the smithy and his helpers worked all night setting tires, welding chains and shoeing horses so the caravan could hurry on.
At daylight there would be the smell of wood smoke, meat cooking and coffee boiling. Soon the teams would be harnessed, wagons loaded and the emigrant train would be on its way. For some reason they usually sang when they began the days journey and many times their voices would be heard long after they were lost to sight in the morning fog along Cabin Creek.
Many times whole families from grandparents to tiniest of grandchildren, uncles, aunts, cousins and many neighbors were going west where land was cheap and easily tended, glad to leave their small rocky farms in the eastern hills not realizing how terrible droughts, prairie fires and grasshoppers could be, but the new countries were settled with brave pioneers like these.
As these people made good, soon there were great droves of cattle being driven east to market, sometimes hundreds of them passing Georgetown in one day.
These hoofs churning the wet roads into knee-deep mire in early spring and in dry weather great clouds of dust followed along the way.
Many discouraged homesick people came, caravans of them, with gaunt teams of oxen or horses, going back east to their old homes, hungry for the wooded hills, the sight of old neighbors and a good cold drink from the well at home.
When the Indiana and Bellfountaine railroad was put through in 1852 it was a bitter disappointment to the people of Maxville, Georgetown and Windsor that it bypassed. Each year there were fewer caravans with the outfits moving west and fewer droves of cattle, hogs and sheep being driven to eastern markets. Every year more and more traveled by rail and livestock was freighted to their destination, so at last Georgetown was no more.
Probably the toll gate was the last to go and it has been gone for sixty or seventy years.
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