Newburgh

This is a column I wrote about Newburgh around Memorial Day. I think it still holds:

Newburgh, Indiana, I salute you!

Late Memorial Day, the town council decided to close the town. It was a decision made by a caring group of citizens whose first priority is to the welfare and safety of families who live here in the town.

I’m sure lots of people resented being “sent home” like naughty children, but for the sake of order from chaos, those not belonging in Newburgh were banned. I was going home from babysitting the grandkids on the far side of Newburgh when a police officer was stopping traffic. “Yes!” I said out loud as I realized what was happening. I whipped out my license. I was the only car in 30 allowed to enter the town.

The night before, the town was hit pretty hard by a tornado. It touched down just short of the main part of town. It made its way across the ball field, up one of the access roads and out into the countryside. Newburgh was a mess. It sadly touched everybody’s life.

Early Memorial Day a visitor would have thought there was a festival in town. Bumper-to-bumper traffic squirmed for hours down my narrow street and every other street in town. The congestion amidst the chaos was unbelievable. No one could make a left turn. It took me 30 minutes to navigate around my own short block.

The message was clear – stay inside, keep your children inside, keep your family life on hold because the gawkers were invading. What do people want to gawk at? Is destruction something to show children? Is shadenfreund the offending sin? If you want to see tree pieces, go to a lumber yard.

Good, I thought weaving around the roadblock, I truly live in the best little town by a dam site. Unlike its larger neighbor, Evansville, which is the largest small town you will ever encounter, Newburgh is the largest tiny speck on the map you will ever visit.

Newburgh is not a closed town. It’s a kid town. It sports a menu of half a dozen “big town” events round the calendar. There’s a giant parade, several street festivals, a festival of lights show, a gigantic fireworks display, a flower show, an herb festival and a ghost walk and we welcome people; we even tolerate their parking “foxpaws.”

People come to town frequently to shop, walk and sit by the river on the wonderful corniche, and buy and ice cream for the kids. It’s not much of a tourist town because there’s not much to tour, but people still come and visit and we’re glad to have them, and they feel safe because of who we are as a town.

And who are we? A level headed and progressive community that is geared for families with children and apparently not ready to put on a disaster show. It’s a safe town with marvelous schools, playgrounds and recreation facilities. The children still play in the streets and ride their bikes to the pool, play baseball right in town and eat frozen ice treasures on one of the main drags.

The main streets of Newburgh cross at one four way stop. You can legally drive the length of the town in about three minutes. But on Memorial Day all safety rested. The downed trees and blocked streets were a hazard. Too many people made too many possibilities for tragedy following tragedy.

We have an outstanding service team and because of our team effort, Newburgh will be ready for visitors soon. Right now we have to depend on people like Chief Dennis Patton, to keep Newburgh a crime free town. You can walk any street in Newburgh any time of the day or night and be safe. And decisions like Monday afternoon’s decision help keep it that way.

I know there was a lot of bellyaching about the closing of the town. It was “dosed” by a lot of palaver about civil rights and freedom of speech. Doesn’t anyone take the time to think that civil rights are the product of civil responsibility? And freedom of speech should be looked at as a duty not a license?

The world is not the playground for the whiners. It’s the workplace for those of us who are serious about our lives. Newburgh is a great place to raise children because the people who run it are serious about our lives too.