INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — It’s a scorcher with temperatures climbing over 90 degrees. One local hardware store says its items are flying off the shelves as customers try to keep themselves cool.

At Fusek’s Hardware in downtown Indy, the excessive heat has brought additional customers.

Steve Fusek has owned the store for more than 20 years. “We kinda knew it was all coming, and as soon as the hot humid weather hits, it has been this constant procession of people keeping themselves cool.”

Lemmecca Polk has come in to get a filter for her AC. “Because it’s hot and they say it’s going to get even hotter.”

Fusek says they are sold out of many items. “The kid pools are gone already, and the heat is just starting.”

Another hot buy are hoses and sprinklers, and of course, everyone is a fan of fans. “We got a few fans in the apartment, and we’re making sure they’re still plugged in,” said Sydney Maciejewski. “I would like to get those personal fans that I could wear when walking around to stay cool.”

And while the Fusek’s hardware store is great for those items that keep you cool, some customers want to add something a little sweet to the mix. “Popsicles for the kids and also making homemade lemonade,” said Polk.

The local hardware store won’t be in this location for long. Beginning July, they’ll be moving to 609 North Delaware Street, just a few blocks away from the store’s current location.

A statewide competition at Indiana county fairs is returning with a focus on fighting hunger as youth participants collect food for local food banks.

The Fight the Hunger, Stock the Trailer contest will again bring together junior fair boards across the state, including those in Carroll and Clinton counties, according to a community announcement. The initiative, organized by Farm Credit Mid-America and sponsored by Rural 1st, encourages young leaders to coordinate donation drives throughout their county fairs.

Participants gather nonperishable food and work with local communities to support nearby food banks. The effort emphasizes youth leadership while creating a direct impact for families facing food insecurity, according to the announcement.

“We’re glad to bring this initiative back to county fairs across Indiana and to see young people step up and get their communities involved,” Craig Carter, regional vice president of agricultural lending at Farm Credit Mid-America, said in the announcement. “The Carroll and Clinton County Fairs bring people together, and this contest gives folks a simple way to come alongside a cause that supports neighbors right here at home. In the end, our communities are the ones who benefit most.”

Record collections highlight growing participation

Youth-led donation drives have expanded steadily since the program began in 2022, with recent totals showing a sharp increase in contributions.

In 2025, participants collected 233,500 pounds of food for more than 70 food banks across Indiana. That total more than doubled the previous year’s 108,000 pounds and marked the fourth consecutive year of record-setting donations, according to the announcement.

Lake County recorded the largest contribution during that period, bringing in 75,122 pounds of food.

Since the competition began, more than 1 million pounds of food have been collected and distributed across Indiana and Ohio.

Financial support and community investment

In addition to food donations, Farm Credit Mid-America provided financial contributions to support participating youth organizations.

Each fair board received $500 for taking part, with additional funding awarded to regional winners. In total, $56,000 was distributed to junior fair boards across Indiana.

The contest is part of broader community investment efforts by Farm Credit Mid-America and its consumer lending brand, Rural 1st, which contributed more than $4 million to programs in 2025. That total included $1.59 million dedicated to youth, college students, and young and beginning farmers.

More information about the initiative is available on Farm Credit Mid-America’s Community Investment webpage.

Last year, the Trump administration asked visitors to hundreds of national parks to report any “divisive” signs or monuments that tarnished the country’s image.

Called “snitch signs” by critics, notices with QR codes appeared in places that included Indiana Dunes National Park, encouraging visitors to report signage that portrayed Americans negatively, or failed to “emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance” of the park’s landscape.

Roughly 35,000 comments poured in from June 4, 2025, to Jan. 14, 2026. The campaign, however, appears to have backfired.

The submissions were released by the agency in May. While a significant number appeared to be non-political, copy-pasted duplicates, jokes, memes or submissions written by the same person, USA TODAY found an overwhelming majority of unique entries were critical of the White House’s effort to rid the national parks of “woke ideology.”

In Indiana, feedback from visitors was nearly all positive, expressing support toward National Park Service rangers and criticizing the Trump Administration.

One person at Indiana Dunes National Park appeared to take issue with a sign at the Bailey Homestead painting what they called “an outdated and overly idyllic picture” of the fur trade.

“There shouldn’t be signs about history that whitewash and erase the centuries of discrimination against the people who have cared for this land for generations,” they wrote, advocating collaboration with local tribal leaders to determine how the history of the land and its people should be represented.

Others submitted comments that took direct shots at the current administration.

“Censoring the ‘negative’ parts of our history is cowardly and un-American,” wrote one visitor to Indiana Dunes National Park who identified themselves as a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.

“Asking visitors to tattle on history because it makes someone uncomfortable is beyond ridiculous, it’s dangerous,” wrote another visitor last June. “What’s next? Rewriting trail signs so we don’t hurt Andrew Jackson’s feelings?”

White House defends president’s order to ‘restore sanity’ to History

The controversial signs contested at U.S. national parks resulted from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March 2025, titled “restoring truth and sanity to American History.”

In the order, Trump directed federal officials to remove any language from the country’s national parks, monuments and museums the portrayed the country as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

The White House defended the president’s order as “honoring our country’s extraordinary heritage and restoring a sense of national pride” in a statement provided to The Courier Journal, which examined similar feedback from visitors at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park.