08/18/2026
scroll down the page for communitywide meals, giveaways, and events to help all of us impacted by last week's storms.
This is what community looks like!
"Once upon a Tuesday afternoon, a derecho came roaring across the Midwest with a very high opinion of itself.
It had spent all morning getting bigger.
“I’m historic,” it bragged to the clouds.
“I have winds over a hundred miles an hour.”
The clouds were impressed.
The trees were nervous.
Somewhere in Northwest Indiana, a lawn chair simply gave up and blew toward Michigan.
By the time the derecho reached the Region, it was feeling unstoppable.
It charged into town like a monster in a cheap disaster movie—howling through neighborhoods, throwing branches across streets, knocking out power, tipping trees onto garages and scattering everyone’s garbage cans into completely different ZIP codes.
“HA!” shouted the derecho. “LOOK WHAT I HAVE DONE!”
For several minutes, nobody answered.
The derecho smiled.
Then a garage door opened.
A man stepped outside holding a chainsaw.
Another garage opened.
Then another.
Across the street, somebody dragged a grill into the driveway.
“Well,” a woman said, looking at her powerless refrigerator, “we better cook all this meat.”
Within an hour, the derecho began noticing something strange.
The people weren't surrendering.
They were having a barbecue.
Neighbors who had barely waved at each other for ten years were suddenly dragging tree limbs together.
Teenagers hauled branches.
Old guys appeared with chainsaws they had apparently been waiting their entire lives to use.
Someone owned a generator.
Someone else owned three extension cords and somehow became the most important person on the block.
Kids carried bottled water from house to house.
A woman made coffee on a camping stove.
A man yelled, “WHO NEEDS ICE?”
And from somewhere down the street came the answer:
“EVERYBODY!”
The derecho became irritated.
“I KNOCKED OUT YOUR ELECTRICITY!”
“Yeah,” somebody yelled back, “but Gary’s got a generator.”
“I DESTROYED YOUR TREES!”
“We needed firewood.”
“I BLOCKED YOUR STREET!”
Four men with chainsaws looked at each other.
One smiled.
“Not anymore.”
The derecho tried harder.
It knocked down more limbs.
Utility poles leaned.
Traffic lights went dark.
Crews from NIPSCO, fire departments, police departments, public works and towns all across the Region began moving through the wreckage.
And every time one of their trucks appeared, people waved.
Some cheered.
One little boy stood at the edge of his driveway giving every utility truck a thumbs-up like they were entering the Indianapolis 500.
The derecho couldn't understand it.
These people were supposed to be miserable.
Instead, lawn chairs appeared in driveways.
Coolers opened.
Hamburgers hit grills.
Somebody brought potato salad that probably should have stayed refrigerated, but nobody wanted to discuss that.
By sunset, entire neighborhoods looked like accidental block parties held in the middle of a lumberyard.
People compared damage.
“You lose your fence?”
“Yep.”
“Tree?”
“Two.”
“Shed?”
“Technically it's in the neighbor's yard now.”
They stared at it.
“His shed?”
“Nope. Mine.”
And they laughed.
That made the derecho furious.
It could knock down trees.
It could tear shingles from roofs.
It could shut off air conditioners on the hottest possible day.
But it couldn't figure out how to knock down people who responded to catastrophe by asking,
“You guys need anything?”
Eventually the derecho exhausted itself and wandered away toward somewhere else.
Behind it, the Region was battered.
Trees were broken.
Roofs were damaged.
Power lines were down.
The cleanup would take days.
Some families had suffered real losses, and there was nothing funny about that.
But Wednesday morning, the chainsaws started again.
Neighbors came outside.
Utility trucks rolled through.
Coffee appeared.
Someone fired up the grill.
And high above Indiana, the remnants of the derecho looked back.
For the first time, the great storm realized something.
It had misunderstood the assignment.
It thought the battle was between wind and buildings.
It wasn't.
It was between destruction and community.
And unfortunately for the derecho...
it had picked the wrong damn Region.
FINAL SCORE
Derecho: 0
The Region: Still Here."
Shared from Chesterton Happenings.
