Fall 2020

Welcome to the inaugural edition of “ROADS LESS TRAVELED WITH BARB AND PETE.”  We hope you enjoy it!

Most of you probably know that we had to move from the Northwoods to Indiana, primarily because of my back problems. That was difficult but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do and make the best of it.

While we were looking for a house in the Indianapolis area, we rented a place in Kokomo Indiana. The reason for Kokomo was that it had the only rental we could find that would let us bring our 3 cats and Gilmore.

It seemed a bit odd to be driving through downtown Kokomo and see a praying mantis 17 feet tall and 22 feet long sitting in front of a Subway restaurant. Sort of like driving through New York City and seeing Godzilla and Mothra on top of the Empire State Building. The “Kokomantis” has a sign that says: “Please do not climb me, I’m ticklish”. Of course, the kids ignore the sign.

Once we found a new house, then we had several weeks to kill before we could move in. So, we went exploring and were pleasantly surprised by what we found.

One of Kokomo’s things is that they like odd animals. In addition to Kokomantis, they have Willy the whale.

Willie started life as part of the Indianapolis Zoo where he lived from 1964 until 1987. When the zoo moved, Willie didn’t make the trip. Willie subsequently spent time in an amusement park, at a water park, and as part of a miniature golf course before he was purchased by the city of Kokomo in April 2019.

Another display is “Old Ben”. At 1800 lbs. when he was just a calf, Old Ben was acclaimed to be the largest calf in the world. At his death in 1910 he weighed 4,720 lbs. To put that in perspective a typical mature cow weighs around 1500 lbs. Clearly this was a massive animal. He now has a building that displays his replica which looks out on a kids’ playground. It seems like Old Ben would have been happy.

There is also a building that houses the “Sycamore Stump.” Until it was toppled by storms, the huge tree stood over 100 feet tall and its trunk was more than 57 feet in circumference. One of its lower branches was reported to have been over 8 feet in diameter. In 1916, the tree was reported to have been over 800 years old.

I had always thought that the automotive industry grew up in Detroit. Not so. Kokomo is where the first commercially viable automobile was patented (it was originally known as a horseless carriage). The car was invented by Elwood Haynes in 1894. Haynes worked with the Apperson Brothers and they jointly founded the Haynes Apperson Brothers Company of Kokomo which was the first automobile manufacturer. At its peak, the Haynes Apperson Brothers Company employed 2,000 people.

Mr. Haynes also invented stainless steel in response to his wife’s desire for tableware that wouldn’t tarnish

Another famous Kokomo person (Kokomokian?) was Nellie Keeler. Nellie was born in Kokomo on April 6, 1875. In 1879 she joined P. T. Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth as the “Indiana Midget”. During her 6-year career, Nellie was billed as being 28 inches tall and weighing just 11 lbs. She earned $100/month which allowed her family to pay off the mortgage on their farm. When she was 10 years old, Nellie literally started growing out of her job. She eventually reached 5 feet tall.

In the 1880’s, Kokomo was a vibrant, growing city because it had a plentiful supply of natural gas. It used the gas to attract businesses by offering free natural gas to any company that located in the city. Among the businesses that the boom attracted was the fledgling automotive industry in the early 1900’s.

Another place we visited was the Seiberling mansion. That speck on the front steps is Barb to give you a sense of its size. OMG, this is quite a place. It was built for Monroe Seiberling in the 1890’s. Before the mansion was built, a huge barn was built, and the mansion was built inside the barn. The barn allowed the mansion to be worked on year-round.

Just north of Kokomo is the Grissom air museum. It has several dozen retired military aircraft on display. They even have a flight simulator so you can get a feel for what it was like flying them.

Grissom is an active military base so you’ll see modern military planes taking off and landing.

Their latest arrival was a Russian Mig 22 that they were getting ready for display.

We’ve started exploring the reservoirs around Indianapolis. They’re nothing like the Northwoods but are reputed to have good fishing. This one is Lake Mississinewa which is 3,180 acres with a maximum depth of 140 feet. There are campgrounds on the lake, but no residential development is allowed. As you can see there is not a lot of boat traffic.  

Hard to believe they need warning signs like this.

I guess if you ignore the first sign, then the second sign applies.

So as of early October we were in our new house in Noblesville, Indiana. Of course we can’t find anything. Getting to the point that we could get both cars in the garage seemed like a major victory but there is still a huge pile of boxes in the basement.

The cats are fascinated with the new house since it gives them lots of new places to explore.

Gilmore doesn’t like a lot of noise and disruption, so this has been a tough couple of months for him. He’d often put his head in my lap and give me the doe eyes. It was like he was saying “Dad when will this end?”

His life is much better now that he has his chair in our bedroom back.

In mid October I had the back surgery I needed, which was the reason we moved here. That went well but then on the day I came home I came down with sepsis and had to be taken back to the hospital. I spent a week in the ICU. That was scary but I’m doing well now with no residual effects.

There was a big neighborhood competition with Halloween decorations. This is Barb’s kind of competition. The guy a few houses up the street had 35 zombies.

A few houses up from him was a castle with smoke breathing dragons. This seems to be a fun neighborhood.

In early November we had kind of an odd occurrence. A hot air balloon landed in the middle of the street a few houses up from us.

We hope all of you are holding up as well as possible during this difficult time. The world seems like such an angry, scary place these days. We’ve been through tough times before and we’ll get through this also. We’ve started planning a Christmas in July event for 2021 to somewhat make up for the family time that we missed this year. It will be such a relief to be able to get back to normal socializing with family and friends!