Friday, October 9. 2026 Issue #384

From Dubois County

Hey Reader,

Yesterday I set up the connection I had with Jennifer Pharr Davis and her frozen PowerBar on the Appalachian Trail. You can read it here if you missed it. ​

Here's my story.

My friend Terry Hasenour and I were off about the same time while we were stationed in Naples together in 1996, so we decided to take a train south and explore a part of Italy we hadn’t been to. We had no plan at all and chose our destination, Cosenza, by closing our eyes and simply placing a finger on the map.

The trip from Naples to Cosenza took most of the day, and we arrived in the dark. We wandered around the city until we heard a passing car blasting Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing.”

We flagged them down and complimented their music, to which they revealed a CD case full of American Blues.

They offered us a ride, and for a pair of Navy guys with no responsibilities, plenty of hubris, and no true destination, we decided to jump in and hang out with our new friends.

They drove us around Cosenza, extolling the virtues of various American singers. Besides Dire Straits, they liked B.B. King and John Lee Hooker; at the time, we were enamored with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, who had put out “From the Cradle” around then.

Eventually they asked us where we were going, and we told them we wanted to go into the nearby mountains to camp. They obliged, drove us into the pitch-dark night for a while, and dropped us off on a country road next to a rocky hillside.

Terry and I climbed onto a level ledge, a quick scramble up from the road, and, laying our military-issued rain ponchos on the ground, went to sleep under the stars fully clothed, wearing our coats for warmth and using our backpacks as pillows.

I remember waking up shaking uncontrollably sometime later. I tried to stand up and saw Terry attempting to do the same across from me. Shivering, we could do little more than curl into a stooped, quivering cradle as our bodies tried to conserve heat. We both realized we were likely on the verge of hypothermia in the drastically cooler night.

The stars were beautiful and unobstructed by trees because we had camped on a fairly barren side of the mountain. But no trees meant fuel for a fire was scarce, so we both started stumbling around the barren scree with a flashlight, looking for anything that could burn.

Eventually, I found a pile of old fence posts and rails nearby. The dry wood was old and brittle, but there was enough for some warmth, so we carried the pieces to our gear in our cramping arms and got a fire going.

As we sat there waiting to warm up, we figured that with the uncontrollable shaking and cold, we probably needed some calories to boost our metabolism.

And we had PowerBars.

Well, frozen PowerBars.

Rather than licking them like a popsicle, as Jennifer did, we both pulled the wrappers about halfway down and held them over the fire to soften them into something we could gnaw on.

Hours later, with our PowerBars gone, in the dark gray of early morning, we set out to hike back down the country road. Several miles later, in the warm sunshine of a beautiful morning, we made it to a café where we had the best cappuccino of our lives while we laughed about our folly.

I still wonder what our Italian Blues connoisseur friends thought about us.

Have a good weekend.

From Dubois County with love.

Matthew and Amy Crane

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​Little Saigon Pho: Couple looking forward to bringing Vietnam’s national dish to Huntingburg​

​Ireland Lions Club donates special Liberty Tree to Ireland Elementary​

​Hauntingburg brings music, trick-or-treating and a free movie downtown tonight​

​Dubois County Rotary teaming up with McDonald’s to fight polio​

We have a community calendar full of great activities and events happening in Dubois County.

If you have an upcoming event you'd like the public to know about, please add it to our calendar.

​See it here.​

​Keith Traylor, 68, Velpen​

​Roger A. Eckert, 79, Stendal​

​Nancy Clare Sherer, 84, Denham Springs, La.​

​Versteel seeking Quality Assurance Manager​

​NECS seeking Client Support Associate​

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