Only in Indiana: Story's "village idiot"

Every town has a village idiot, but only Story, Indiana elects one. In fact, the town has elected one every year for the last 16 years.

Brown County is known for its beauty. While the rest of us rush from here to there, folks in Brown County can drive for weeks and never see a traffic light. They don't need one. There are only three in Brown County and they are all located in Nashville.

But they do have something here that most folks don't have.

"The village idiot," Mike Ford stated when we told him we were headed to the Story Inn.  Ford stopped his two-horse carriage on the road into town to ask us what we were doing here.If you want to be nominated for that title, you need to visit the famed Story Inn and the Story Still below it, which is where this tradition was actually born. 

"Like all good ideas it started over a glass of wine or beer," Rick Hofstetter, who owns both establishments, revealed. He was elected village idiot in 2006. His fellow idiots like to say he owns one bar and is a member of another. 

Lou Melillo, who can't remember what year he won, does remember why Rick did. 

"Here is a man who owns a restaurant and a bar and he's down there bartending one day and someone asks for a gin and tonic. Rick says, 'How do I make that?'" Melillo said, while trying to stifle a laugh, but he's not trying too hard. 

"What's on that ham and cheese?" we suggested.

"I don't make mixed drinks," Hofstetter said in his own defense.

Eleanor Haltom, 93, won in 2014 for biting or, as she says, pinching ankles underneath the table to get their attention. Her daughter Holly interrupts her to say she has not won yet. 

"I am in training," she blurted out to loud laughter. But her mom, she says, could have won for any number of exploits over the years. 

"She whistled and when she went like this her gown fell down," Holly shared as her mom laughed. 

Today we call that an equipment malfunction. What was it then? "It was a chest malfunction," Holly's husband Lou belted out. "It was topless dancing at the Waldorf Astoria in 1955 in the ballroom," he continued.

Eleanor comes from a more metropolitan background from New York and New Jersey. She says she tried to teach her Hoosier children to be more sophisticated, she said. 

"We tried to keep them at our level, but they sank," she admitted. 

Which brings us to the reigning Village Idiot who has decided to remain anonymous by wearing a paper bag over his head with holes cut out so he can see.

Why the paper bag? "Because you probably have not read the book," he answered. And he is right.Justin Case, his pen name, coauthored a book. Those in Story, who read it, filled out the proper paperwork and he won Village Idiot for 2015 hands down.

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What did you think when you won?" we asked. 

"I was elated," he said in as understated a fashion as a man wearing a grocery sack could muster. 

"It's the second proudest thing I have ever done," he went on to say. 

"That is an idiot," Eleanor Haltom added stating the obvious.

"What's the first?" Holly Melillo inquired. "I'm saving that for next year's election," he said hopefully, even though there has never been a two-time winner. 

Dani Ham works as a bartender at the Still. She is also the tenth idiot, having won the award in 2010.

"I was going to light a cigarette on my way to work and my hair was too close to the lighter and it just swoosh. I saw the flame in the rear view mirror. I had to smack myself in the head until it went out," Ham added.  She still went in to work because she was scheduled to tend bar for a wedding. 

Read all Only in Indiana stories from Kevin Rader.

There are only two requirements to be nominated. You have to have been a customer and you have to have done something stupid. 

"It's a very small town. It's difficult to hide stupidity," the unknown village idiot adds. The irony of a man sporting a grocery sack on his head while saying this was not lost on the crowd. 

"We are now up to 16 of us and our population is just not that big. The gene pool is really shallow here," Hofstetter said."I love them. I really do. Idiots or no. I love them," Eleanor Haltom interjects. 

It sounds like a lot of fun. 

"It is. It is. You never know what they are going to do," she observed."Here is to idiots past, present and future," Hofstetter said as the group shared a toast back in the basement of the Story Still. 

They have never had a reunion, at least, not an official one. They get together every Friday night which is pretty much how the word spreads but now that they are closing in on 20 years they are starting to talk about an official one.

The best thing about all of this is if you do something stupid in Story, they don't hold it against you. They celebrate it. Voting for the Village Idiot takes place all year long and you can vote as many times as you like. Besides bragging rights, winners also receive a $100 bar tab at the Story Still.

Read all Only in Indiana stories from Kevin Rader.