Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1902 — Suuday's Indianapolis Excursion. [ARTICLE]

Suuday's Indianapolis Excursion.

The Monon’s first Sunday dollar excursion to Indianapolis, Sunday, .was a great success. One empty coach had previously been set off here, and no doubt the railroad people thought it would hold all the Rensselaer contingent and have plenty of room for the delegations from the Ridge, McCoysburg, Leue and Monon. But 40 minutes before the train arrived so many people had crowded into this car that when another pushed in at one end, some one else fell out at the other. Enough Rensselaer people went into this car to have more than filled all the seats of two oars, and enough others got on the train when it came to have filled still another car. When the train reached here

about 8:15, and nearly an hour late, it already had 16 or 17 passenger oars, all loaded to the platforms. Some 783 of these excursionists were from Hammond, and the jolt of stopping the train shook off several dozens of the dryest of these Hammondites. They were dry with the perennial drouth of the sand-hills and they began a vain inquiry for an open beer saloon. Others began asking for a restaurant, for they had all been on the train since 6 o’clock, and “they sever had done such a thing in their lives” as to get up that early before. Both the hungry and the thirsty made a simultaneous rush for John Thornton’s pie, pop, and piokle emporium and in just 49| seconds they had cleaned out his whole stock, even to his last bottle of pepper sauce. The number of tickets sold here whs 188, at Lowell 179, Fair Oaks 28, McCoysburg, reported 50, and a proportionate number all along the line. At Monon two more oars were hooked on and the train was divided into two sections. Large numbers bought tiokets at Montioello and Delphi, 'but they oould not be taken and their money was refunded.

The return train reaohed here a little after 11 p. m. The excursionists, for the most part, seem to have spent the seven hours in our beautiful capital city very pleasantly and profitably, and especially so as the largest proportion of them bad never been there before