Sign-Eating Tree III: The Re-Awakening

They cut it down. Did they think it was finished?


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This is like the part of the movie where the hero thinks they have killed the villain but then makes the mistake of turning their back on the vanquished foe. Or maybe it's the part where the supporting character you think has abandoned the hero suddenly shows up again to help save the day.

But, as you may have noticed, the regrowth of the Sign-Eating Tree has recently been mangled by one of those big sideways-mowing-machines that went through cutting back all the forest growth along the roads in this area. I don't know what part of the movie that is.


Anyway, Happy New Year from Ainsworth!

Merry Christmas from the Black Cat (et al.)

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Hobart Gazette, 25 Dec. 1958.

"Open all day Christmas and New Years"!

An Encore for Pastor Moberg

Remember our "mighty hunter before the Lord," Pastor Theodore Moberg?[1] CK Melin has found an article that summarizes his life and career up to 1955:



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The Rambler (Texas Wesleyan College, Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 4, Ed. 1 Tuesday, October 4, 1955 (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth336975/), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu

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Theodore's first wife, Julia, had been born in Hobart in February 1890 to Swedish immigrants Andrew and Christine Peterson (1910 Census). She married Theodore in Lake County in June 1909 (Indiana Marriage Collection). The 1910 Census shows the young couple living in New York. In 1920 they were in Illinois, and by 1930 in Minnesota. Sometime during that decade they moved to Texas.

When Julia died in Texas in 1937, her body was brought back to her hometown for a funeral at the Swedish Methodist Church.[2] She was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.

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[1] He also appears in the two choir photos. (One of these days when I get some time I am going to have to fix a lot of small preview images in my blogs.)
[2] "Hobart," The Hammond Times, 14 Dec. 1937.

Bad Times Not at the Black Cat, Actually

At last the mystery of the wrecked car at the Black Cat has been solved!


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So the accident didn't happen at the Black Cat, but somewhere on Liverpool Road. And the Black Cat Garage was probably the closest auto repair business, although that car looks more like a candidate for the Black Cat Junkyard, if there was such a thing.

The Truman Handshake

I bought some random photo negatives on Ebay, which turned out to be mostly behind-the-scenes shots of a one student's graduation from Hobart High School. Each negative was in an envelope with handwritten notes on it, and the notes contained just enough information for me to figure out that the graduate in question was Denise Marie Perney, and the year was 1968.

This photo shows Denise in her graduation gown flanked by (I'm guessing) her parents, Cleo and Gordon Perney.


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The notes on the envelope holding this photo included the term, "Truman Handshake." I hadn't heard of the Truman Handshake before. Apparently, I've just been out of the loop, since an online search on that term unearthed several images of President Harry Truman's signature two-way handshake. For example:


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Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Left to right: Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin.

Anyway, here is Denise's picture from the 1968 Memories yearbook:


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society, Hobart, Indiana.

And the rest of the 1968 graduation pictures are here.

Banded Longhorn Beetle

A couple more nature photos I took last summer and didn't get around to posting before.


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This critter is a Banded Longhorn Beetle in my Queen of the Prairie.

Maybe I didn't post these originally because I hadn't managed to get a good shot of the beetle. But looking at them on a gloomy December day, it isn't the out-of-focus beetle that draws my eye — it's the vivid pink of the blossoms in the abundant sunlight. It is amazing to think that there was ever so much light and color in the world.

Where Alice Lived

I have discovered that my favorite house in Hobart has an Ainsworth connection.


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Hobart Gazette, 3 Sept. 1953.

Gilbert and Alice Estella (Markham) Bullock had left their Ainsworth-area farm and retired to Hobart before house numbers were in use,[1] so it wasn't until Alice died that I realized they had lived in a house I have always loved.

As we know, Gilbert died in March of 1916. The newly widowed Alice put the Center Street house up for rent[2] and went to live with her daughter and son-in-law, Ruth and Dwight Mackey, on Connecticut Street, where the 1920 Census records her. By 1930, however, she had moved back to 404 Center and was living with her other daughter and son-in-law, Margaret and William Killigrew, and their children.

The Bullock farm described in the obituary as being across from what is now Indian Ridge Golf Course was bought sometime after 1890, when it fails to appear in the 1890 Plat Book, and 1908.[3]

I do not know why Alice's grave marker shows 1952 as the year of her death. The Gazette and her death certificate say 1953.

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The newspaper page above brings in another Ainsworth connection: the death of Pauline Hunter. With her husband, Lee, having died in 1947 and their son, Gilbert, now a resident of Chicago, all connection between the Hunters and Ainsworth was at an end.

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[1] I believe they moved to Hobart in 1902, not 1899 as stated in the obituary, based on contemporary newspaper reports (see "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, 17 Jan. 1902; "General News Items," Hobart Gazette, 21 Mar. 1902). Per the Lake County records, the house was built in 1880.
[2] "Local Drifts," Hobart Gazette, 17 Mar. 1916.
[3] Possibly as early as 1901; see "Bullock-Lambert Nuptial," Hobart Gazette, 5 Apr. 1901; see also "Obituary," Hobart Gazette, 10 July 1903.

European Mantis Preparing an Invasion

Late last September, I found this mantis laying an egg case on my garden shed.


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I got all excited — it obviously wasn't a Chinese mantis; had I finally found a native mantis? I took pictures and posted them to the IN Nature group on Facebook for ID help. That's how I learned that there is another non-native species in the U.S.: the European (or German) mantis.

Their distinguishing feature is the "bull's-eye" on the inside of their upper foreleg.



The next day I went out to the shed and found another (or maybe the same?) European mantis laying an egg case next to first one.



Like the native mantis, both non-native species eat pests, but due to their size (especially the Chinese mantis), they also eat things that are not pests, including native mantises. Some sources say that these non-native species have become naturalized; other continue to call them invasive.

Anyway, I will keep hoping to find a native mantis someday. Not sure they get this far north.