DAZE WORK: Know-it-all? Not in the least

For years when I was first entrusted with the editorship of your favorite newspaper, whenever a question arose about a local person or place or their related history, there was only one go-to with the knowledge I needed.

Edith Browning. Aka The Chewing Gum Lady.

If I needed to know about a certain building on the square, she’d flawlessly advise that it used to be the Owl Drugstore or Webber’s Toy Store or the G.C. Murphy store, often lecturing me how it had been wrongly portrayed previously in papers I had no hand in printing.

In more recent years, my go-to gal has, of course, been Jinsie Bingham. After all, she is a “Hoosier Know-It-All,” having appeared to great success on the old Channel 4 game show of that name.

Jinsie’s responses to my queries are always accompanied by some interesting anecdotal information about the person, place or thing, be it John Dillinger, our beloved Chicago Bears or her own father, Roscoe Scott.

It has started to occur to me, as I approach another milestone birthday, that some of that Browning-Bingham wisdom has rubbed off on me.

The other day we had taken some photos down at the new Double Decker in the old KFC building. A question was asked about the old Double Decker on Indianapolis Road and how long it had been around.

Without even thinking, I noted in response that from several chats with Bob Jackson over coffee and cinnamon biscuits over the years, the business actually began on the DePauw campus, selling double-decker burgers to students.

As I rambled on about the Jackson brothers and how the Indianapolis Road site featured the drive-in and the sit-down restaurant that was absolutely the place to eat in town when I moved here in the mid-1970s, I could almost hear those old metal-insert plates sizzling as the waitress presented your hamburger steak meal. Let me tell you, since I lived along Indianapolis Road when I first moved here, many days it was lunch and dinner at the Double.

Granted, I’ve been here long enough that I have seen the old JC Penney building morph from Lou Fontaine’s Ephraim Dukes Antique Store into The Gathering Grounds and now RE/MAX Cornerstone Realty.

That G.C. Murphy store we noted previously? It eventually became Maurice’s (remember that?), turned into Remedies with its famed soda fountain, became Joe Garrison’s furniture store before the most recent downtown fire, and most recently turned into the new home of Conspire.

This is all feeling like I have been here a really long time. In reality, longer than anywhere else in my life. Forty-five years and counting now.

Then the other day I came home to an email from Mike Van Rensselaer relative to one of my recent columns about my grandfather and me being a grandfather.

“We could be brothers,” Mike wrote of our similar associations. “My grandkids call me ‘Pa’ too.”

Yep, things have been hitting way too close to home.

Meanwhile, Thursday morning, I ventured out early to Robe-Ann Park for a photo op with two teenagers -- Gillian Monnett and Mallary Meyer -- turning a wall of often-vulgar graffiti at the Emerald Palace into a beautiful mural.

As I asked the girls their names and requisite spellings, I realized then that Gillian is Ken and Joyce Heeke’s granddaughter.

So I said, “Hey, Gillian, your grandpa is one of my oldest and dearest friends.” That got a giggle out of her.

Asking Mallary for her info, I asked, “Are you Mike Meyer’s daughter? I had him on my Babe Ruth baseball team when he was 13.”

Right again, it turns out. Cue the giggles.

Been around long enough that I’m making generational leaps now, like teachers teaching the children and grandchildren of those they had taught.

No wonder, as my daughters always complained after accompanying me, it takes an hour to get out of Kroger when I’m just there to get milk and bread.

The other day, a young lady I probably knew as a teenager when my girls were in school, asked near the deli counter, “aren’t you Kara and Nicole’s dad?”

Yes, yes, I am. Didn’t even need Edith or Jinsie for that one.

Know it all? Not in the least, not in the least.