TABCO Design-Print-Promote, now turning 32 years old, is a case study in the realization of a small business dream.
Tom Bilyeu, a former employee of Moore Business Forms, founded the company at a desk in a bedroom of his Terre Haute home in 1978. It soon expanded into his garage, and in 1980, into the former Texaco station at 34th Street and Wabash Avenue. The station was remodeled and three additions added before the current plant and offices were built on three acres at 1100 S. State Road …

With a soft gurgle of bubbling water and a puff, conversation fills the air along with an aromatic blend of tobacco in the hookah lounge of Smoke-N-Peace.
The newly opened 421 Wabash Ave. shop’s become a sanctuary for those who’d still like to smoke ‘em if they’ve got ‘em, a haven of hookahs in a country where smokers are drawing increasing fire.
Doug Horton, Dustin Allen and husband-and-wife Patrick and Mary Feild gathered around the hookah one January evening, their laughs and conversation filling the air quicker than the smoke.
The lounge, opened …

Gourmet magazine may now be a thing of history, but the only Terre Haute restaurant ever featured in the legendary food bible is still going strong.
George’s Downtown Cafe, on the south side of Cherry Street near Sixth Street, is in its third decade of serving up comfort food to a broad array of people who grew up with very different ideas of just what comfort food means.
To Abdullah “Albert” Issa, who cooks and runs the restaurant for his brother, George Issa, the food he fondly remembers Grandma making is falafel, …

To the uninitiated, mushroom hunting is a scary proposition. We’ve all heard about people dying from ingesting poisonous mushrooms, right? Folks from other parts of the country, or even from a bigger city are sometimes afraid to eat wild morels. The doubters ask things like, “Well, how do you know it’s not poisonous?” We know, OK? Like our fathers before us, we have been raised to know the difference, we’ve done it all our lives, and lived to tell about it. Indeed, I have taken my own daughter mushroom hunting …

Steve Connelly’s life reads much like a novel.
The Indiana State University English professor rides unicycles for fun, and once was scouted as a shortstop by Major League Baseball.
He’s been among the vanguard of Pop Culture studies, trading letters with Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and famous cartoonists.
He withstood the glare of racist Southerners just after the Civil Rights Movement, travelling to New Orleans with his friend, Terre Haute’s Olympic gold medalist and long jump champ Greg Bell.
He’s been a strong promoter of the legacy of Eugene Debs, a Hoosier politician …

My childhood memories are often anchored to holiday celebrations. Christmas is the biggie, of course, but the hoopla of Easter comes in at a strong second place. There’s the brand new outfit, complete with ridiculous bonnet that will never be worn again. And there is the novelty of coloring Easter eggs. But for foodies like me, that stuff has always taken a back seat to the real treasure of Easter: the big basket of candy. Like Diana Ross, I didn’t need no cure for that sweet Easter hangover, and the …

Findings from the National Gardening Association’s new survey, “The Impact of Home and Community Gardening in America,” indicate that food gardening in the United States is on the rise.
Seven million more households grew their own fruits, vegetables or herbs in 2009 than in 2008, constituting a 19-percent increase, according to the survey. The reasons range from increasing recognition that homegrown produce is often higher quality and therefore tastes better, to cost savings. On average, the survey reports, a well-maintained food garden yields a $500 return, when considering a typical gardener’s …

Unquestionably, 2008 was a dark year for the members of Cuba, rife with losses both personal and universal, a slow creeping sadness seeping in like the floodwaters that temporarily sank parts of the city that June.
Now, a year and change later, the band’s buoyed up and bounced back, lyrical sorrows reflecting the roughness of that troubled time even as the joyous ranging sprawl of its music demonstrates the rebounding strength of playing at top form.
“Disease in the family, divorce and a surgery, flooding in the backyard and it’s haunting me,” …

In a cozy home a stone’s throw from Sarah Scott Middle School there lives a woman who carries within her a sizeable chunk of Wabash Valley history. Though she would be the first to say her life is rather unremarkable, it is hard to take her at her word. Not knowing how much she has witnessed as a lifetime Hautean. Not knowing the things that I know about her.
For the record, coming into this interview, here is what I know: I know that her name is Claudia Fitzsimmons Fulwiler. …