I’ve seen a lot of changes in the newspaper industry during my 22-plus years as a reporter.

We were still typing stories on typewriters when I was attempting to learn the trade at IUPUI back in the early 1980s. In fact, my first job was at The Banner in Brownstown, and we typed our stories on typewriters for a few months before computers were introduced.

Back in those days, we only ran color photographs for special occasions, and we still used film to record images. The move to digital photography sure was great because you generally didn’t have to worry about whether or not you actually had something when you returned to the office after an assignment. I sure blew a couple before that time by taking photos without having film in the camera.

Another big change came about when we quit cutting and pasting stories on pages and began paginating those same pages on computers. For some of us that led to a move away from reporting and more time working on pages.

There sure where some struggles in the early days of pagination when computers systems were sometimes not up to the task of producing pages consistently.

Now most of the rough spots have been rounded off.

None of the changes I’ve seen may be as big as the one we just went through here at The Tribune.

On Friday, we printed the last newspaper in this building. From here on out, The Tribune will be published at The Republic’s printing center at Walesboro. The Republic already prints many other daily papers and it just makes sense that central printing locations can do a more efficient job.

The move also means a shift in deadlines and a change in the hours most of us in the newsroom work. It also means less people are working at our plant and made for a quite Monday morning as I began my day.

I believe most of the changes over the years have been good. They’ve generally made life a little easier although they’ve meant learning different ways of doing things. They’ve also meant a better end product in my book.

I don’t see any reason why the most recent change would be any different in the long run. Besides that I think the day may be coming when newspapers when only be available on-line. At one point, I didn’t think that would happen before I retired. I’ve now changed my thinking. It may be sooner rather than later.

The financial crisis has a lot of people reeling and left plenty of us confused about the future.

It’s also left us with something we haven’t seen in what seems like years - lower gasoline prices.

There’s not been a lot of talk about it, but the lower gasoline prices are allowing most of us to hold on to a little more money each day. It might not be much of a silver lining, but it’s better than nothing.

And the Trumpster (that’s Donald Trump) recently said the only thing that can keep oil prices from falling to as low as $20 a barrel is good economic news. We sure haven’t had much of that lately.

It sure is nice to see the price at the pump falling although many of us don’t beleive the lower prices will be around for very long.

By the way, one-time Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee added his two cents to the financial crisis the other day. Huckaby said he thinks the country is undergoing a daily terrorist attack on the stock market. His theory is that terrorists are joining the Wall Street fray late each day, buying and selling and making for a reall unpredictability about the future.

When you think about it, Huckabee’s theory seems to have some merit. Why did the terrorists strike the Twin Towers on 9-11? Many beleive it was to ruin the free market economy of not just the United States, but the world.

So maybe Huckaby has a point. Maybe he would be just as good as our present choices for the next president.

I’ve tried to keep abreast of everything that’s been going on in the financial world recently and it’s been hard to do.

One piece I recently read however came from Marie Cocoo with the Washington Post Writers Group. Cocco claimed that 401Ks were never a good idea. She contended they came about back in the 1970s and 1980s as a way for companies to rid themselves of providing their employees with retirement plans.

At first glance, Cocco made some pretty convincing arguments. She said in recent years many companies have frozen retirements for their employees, offering them 401K as a replacement. Freedom Communications took that step with its employees a couple of years ago.

Other companies eliminated their programs completed. Both methods allow the greedy corporate bosses to save money and enhance the bottom line.

I’m not trying to defend greedy corporate bosses here at all because they’re the ones that got us into this financial crisis in the first place.

Because of the crisis many of us have seen the balances in our 401Ks decline sharply. I can tell you mine has dipped dramatically although I refuse to even look at it or the balance in my wife’s 401K for that matter. In fact, I probably won’t take a peek at them again until sometime around 2014.

With that being said, I still have some issues with the idea that 401Ks only benefit employers because they improve the bottom line.

For starters without 401Ks, I would never have been able to save the kind of money I have over the years. Generally if I have a dime, I spend it. If I have $100, I spend it.

Twenty-two years ago I never thought I would have any money saved toward retirement and would likely find myself relying entirely upon Social Security.

Freedom still contributes some money to my 401K so they are helping me pay prepare for retirement in 17 years when I reach the age where I can receive Social Security.

Many small employers such as the one my wife works have never had and couldn’t afford to implement full-blown retirement plans for their employers. The implementation of 401K plan and other retirement plan options allows those employers to help their employees out to some degree.

Cocco’s article about the uselessness of 401Ks had some other good points including the fact that many 401Ks do not or never will contain enough money to help retirees live comfortably.

The median balance in 401Ks was only about $60,000 for people 54 to 64, Cocco said, and that works out to about $400 a month. That might pay for fuel costs.

The recent financial crisis hasn’t helped 401K balances especially those who are near to retire age.

But could the crisis been predicted? Probably not anymore than the 9-11 terrorists attacks.

I think it time the stock market will recover and people will begin to see their 401K balances rise. Will it be enough for people to live comfortably after they retire? Who knows.

Cocco seems to think a new system, perhaps called Social Security-plus, needs to be put into place because she contends government needs to help shoulder some of the burden of pensions. Companies can’t do it alone, she adds.

She contends many other countries all ready help with pensions. What other countries are doing has never been a convincing argument to me.

People also need to help out with their own retirement needs because they can decided what they need in their golden years.

I think the government needs to help less instead of more. I don’t mind providing a safety net for people who truly need a lift up. The problem is when government puts out any kind of safety net, a lot of people quickly come to around to the idea that they need that help as much as the next guy.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of drive-through windows at all those so-called fast food restaurants.

For one thing, I just don’t have the patience it takes to wait in line for very long and for another, they never seem to get the food to you very fast. If they do, they’ve probably messed it up.

The idea was get your food fast, but it seems to me the wait in those lines keep getting longer and longer each year.

And with the cost of gasoline now, it just seems stupid to sit in your car waiting for your food to arrive when you can go inside and be served just as fast.

The only time drive-through windows are convenient in my mind is when it’s cold outside and a person doesn’t want to leave the warmth of their car.

I think this country could save a lot of fuel by doing away with drive-through windows.

I know its probably not an original idea (I haven’t had one of those in years), but when it comes to talking about America’s dependence on foreign oil I don’t think anything should be left on the table or at the drive-through window at the fast-food restaurant.

And here’s another idea that could save us some fuel. Let’s eliminate Saturday mail delivery. Canada Post doesn’t deliver mail on Saturdays.

Most of what I receive in the mail any more is junk mail anyway so why do I need to receive it six times a week instead of five.

The good thing about the high cost of gasoline this year is that its making many people take a new look at how they do things.

Here’s something kind of neat I found during a visit to Methodist Hospital a week or two ago. In one of the restrooms, they have installed flushless toilets. The hospital claims each flushless toilets saves 44,000 gallons of water a year. If true, multiple that amount by the number of toilets in the hospital and the savings in water must be fantastic.

There’s plenty we can do to conserve resources, and nothing should be sacred.

There are very few traffic fatalities in Jackson County each year (the average is less than 8 a year over the past decade), and I suspect without Interstate 65 we would have even fewer here.

The recent death of Seymour teenager Amanda Stahl, however, really hit close to home for me.  For one thing, my son knew Amanda to some degree although they weren’t close friends or anything like that.

But Amanda was just 16, and my son recently turned 16 as well.

I also saw Amanda during the ceremony when she was crowned 4-H Royalty as well as at the 4-H swine show later on the day before her fatal wreck.

Like Amanda, my son Colin will be out driving on his own soon, and I know I’m going to be up some nights waiting for him to return home safely. I’ve already had several of those kinds of nights, laying in bed wondering if he’s going to make it home safely after a late night at the movies or is out just hanging around with his friends.

I know I can’t spend the rest of my life worrying about him while he’s out late.

I also believe God must have had some kind of plan for Amanda, and that’s why he took her. You can’t buck the big man upstairs.

That, however, doesn’t make it any easier on my wife or myself or any of the other parents with children the same age.

I already have two grown children who have been driving for years now so I know some day I will worry a little less about him, but not much because parents always worry about the well being of their children to some degree.

I also know that I can’t keep him safe by not allowing him to drive.

Pam Hess, whose son C.B. Hess died in a wreck during a spring break trip several years ago, laid it out pretty well for me when she told me that parents can’t keep their children from doing the things that go along with growing up no matter how worried they might be.

It wouldn’t be right.

For the past several years, we’ve published a morning newspaper on the Fourth of July. That means that some of us find ourselves working in the newsroom on the night of July 3.

This year was different because the Fourth was on a Friday, which means some of us had to work the night of the Fourth to put out Saturday morning’s newspaper.

As a rule, I’m usually in the newspaper for our nation’s birthday and that means I miss out on the fireworks, which is not that big of deal. I’ve seen a lot of firework shows both here in Jackson County as well as Indianapolis and Louisville.

On Friday, however, we took a break from putting out Saturday’s newsaper and ventured out on to the roof of the Tribune  just prior to the fireworks show at Freeman Field. That was a good show, but before the main event there were a lot of other people putting on their own firework shows around the city.

From what I can tell people must spend a lot of money on fireworks because from our central point in downtown Seymour you could look any direction and see spectacular displays. There was a constant barrage of fireworks from points all over the city during the brief time that I and a couple of other staffers were on the roof.

The celebration reminded me of the time that my mother and I took my two older children to New York City on our nation’s 200th birthday back in 1976. That city celebrated the bicentennial in style. We stayed at my brother’s apartment in Queens, but traveled to Battery Park in lower Manhattan and wound up watching the show from a perch somewhere near the World Trade Center and not too far away from the Statute of Liberty.

It didn’t really matter where you where in the Big Apple that night, because the firework show was repeated from key spots around Manhattan and everyone had the chance to see the same show.

Our local celebration didn’t match that event, but it was a pretty good show anyway.

I woke up early Sunday morning to take the dog for his morning walk. Little did I know what kind of day I had staring me in the face.

As the dog and I headed into downtown Ewing, Brownstown Police Officer John Long stopped me and said it looked like I had a long day ahead of me.

I asked him why and he said he had just heard a report on his scanner that they were evacuating Little York because of flooding.

I said something to the effect of “great” and walked on, but a few minutes later, Long caught up with me again and said he had told me wrong.

They weren’t evacuating Little York, they were evacuating Little Acres.

I still haven’t decided whether I need to thank John or not for making my day.

His information however, changed things dramatically for me because Little Acres is in Jackson County whereas Little York is in Washington County.

The dog and I quickly finished our walk and I woke my wife to tell her I was leaving.

I also tried to wake my 15-year-old son to see if he wanted to tag along, but that was a futile effort.

By the time I made it to Little Acres off Indiana 11 north of Seymour, most of the evacuation was completed although flood waters completed covered Indiana 11 just east of the Interstate. I did have the opportunity to take some photographs of a frightened deer caught in a fence along the road. The poor thing was able to free itself after a few minutes. I hoped it survived.

That’s a sight I’ve not seen in my 22 years living in Jackson County.My day, however, was finished. After speaking with my wife and my editor, I learned that evacuations were in progress in areas on the northwest side of Seymour.

I headed that way and spent most of the rest of Sunday morning and afternoon taking pictures of and talking to people leaving their homes because of rising flood waters from the East Fork of the White River.

About 4 p.m., I headed home to take a break, but later in the evening, my wife, son and I headed to Medora to check out the situation in that small southwestern Jackson County town.

The scene there was amazing. The first thing we spotted other than the normal roadblocks were a large group of people of all ages filling sandbags.A walk down Perry Street revealed that flood waters were beginning to creep into the business portion of the town. The population of the town also looked like it was more than doubled.

There was almost a festive atmosphere as children and adults rode their bicycles around viewing the rising flood waters. 

At one point, I even saw a couple of kids playing in flood waters along a sidewalk on Perry Street.The things I will remember about the June 8, 2008, flood, however, is the how everyone pitched in and helped out their friends in neighbors.

In Seymour, I saw many people helping others remove furniture, televisions and other items from homes that looked to be in the path of flooding. 

I saw similar actions by others in Medora, and interestingly enough many of those involved in the sandbagging efforts in that town there were teenagers, who spent hours working to help others. No surprise there becuase as the parent of a teenage, I know what they are capable of doing if they feel the need.

I don’t know how many times throughout the day that I heard people telling others to let them know if they needed help.

It seems people are always voicing those words although the sincerity often doesn’t accompanied them. The sincerity was there Sunday.

I don’t think the people of Jackson County are any different than those anywhere else or any better when it comes to helping out their family, friends and neighbors.

But it sure is nice to see people pull together in time of needs instead of arguing over issues that really don’t amount to a hill of beans.

I’m not real big on writing about the death of someone I know.

I’m going to do it at least this one time though because I attended the funeral of former Sheriff Jerry Hounshel’s wife, Linda, on Wednesday morning.

I knew Linda to some degree, but not near as well as I know Jerry.

One thing that was said during her funeral was that Linda often went out of her way to help women prisoners during her eight years as matron there.

I know that to be true because one time she told me about a poor woman in the jail whose mother had just died.

“She wanted to go to the funeral,” Linda related to me.

The problem was the woman, who was from Indianapolis had nothing to wear, but her orange prison garb.

“I wasn’t going to let her go to her mother’s funeral like that,” Linda told me.

So Linda told me about how she went about finding something for the woman to wear to her mother’s funeral and then talked about taking her to Indianapolis and waiting for her until the service was over.

I don’t think Linda was telling me that story because she wanted a pat on the back for her efforts. I think, that despite the fact that the woman was in jail on a cocaine charge, Linda thought enough of her to find something for her to wear that wasn’t going to be embarassing.

That’s just the way Linda was.  Like most matrons, she spent a lot of time at the jail and she also spent a lot of time taking female prisoners here and there.

She was always showing me artwork male prisoners had drawn for her or other staff members. She was proud of a lot of the work and loved showing it off.

You could tell Linda thought a lot of the artists and others in the jail and thought it was just a shame they were sitting there wasting their lives away.

I also had to talk to her on a couple of occasions about the meals she fed the prisoners. She was always quick to point out that a dietician had to approve every menu, and she wasn’t skimping just to save money for her and Jerry for their new house.

I believed her because I know she was one of those rare people whose lives cross your path every once in a while.

She meant what she said and didn’t pussy-foot around about it. I think she was one of the more honest people I know.

I think many people felt that way about Linda.

A recent outing to Indianapolis proved to me the economy is not in near as a bad a shape as we’ve been led to believe by the media.

My family and I traveled to Greenwood to have dinner with my mother and father and some of my siblings on Mother’s Day. We had decided before hand to meet at 4 p.m. and thought we would have little trouble finding a place to eat at that time.

So imagine my surprise when I’m told by the hostess at one fine establishment that it would be a three to three and a half hour wait for a table of eight.

We quickly checked another restaurant and my wife was told it would be four hours before the could rustle up a table.

We were told it would be two to two and half hours at another restaurant.

I don’t know about you, but with the high gas prices dining out at the more expensive restaurants since last it would be the first thing to go. We finally settled on a cafeteria-style restaurant were the wait wasn’t near as bad.

For one thing, you have to buy gas no matter what else you do because if you can’t get to work you won’t be able to afford anything else - period.

If the economy is as bad as we’re being told, where is everybody finding the money to eat out.

As a side note, if those Indianapolis restaurants are that busy maybe they need to consider opening up restaurants out here in the sticks.

It will, however, be a long time before I visit any restaurant that tells me I’m going to have to wait more than a hour to be seated. It’s just not good service and the one thing people want and expect is good service. In an economy that is supposedly so bad, good service is often the only thing that sets one business above another.

Friday will be an historic day for my family.

That’s the day we return home after spending nearly six weeks living with my mother-in-law and father-in law while our house was being remodeled.

As the old saying goes, It’s been real. It’s been fun. But it’s not been real fun.

My in-laws are great people and I appreciate everything they’ve done, including feeding us, washing our clothes and cleaning after us, these past few weeks. They’ve just done a lot for us, but I’m sure they want their home back to themselves as much as we want to go back home.

I know our invasion of their home has been as hard on them as it has been on us.

I knew when we began talking about this project that it wouldn’t be easy and it hasn’t been.

But the improvements to our 70-plus year-old home have been great and it’s been well worth the many inconveniences.

I’m counting down the minutes, however, that I can go to sleep in my own bed.