(mid tempo music) >> Narrator: This week on friends and Neighbors.

>> Jake: We go 65, 70 miles an hour and you think, oh I do that on the highway, but I'm here to tell you it's a completely different 70 miles an hour.

First of all, it's very loud.

You're strapped in extremely tight.

As far as the dirt goes, there's no windshield so it's constantly hitting you in the face.

It's an adrenaline rush for sure.

(mid tempo music) >> Desi: Most of the pollination that's happening in ag systems that like apple orchards and things like that and healthy ecosystems is done by native bees not by honey bees.

One of every three bites that you take of food comes from an insect pollinator.

And so if we want to eat the things that we enjoy eating we need to have pollinators.

(mid tempo music) >> Sam: I drive by these houses all the time and I know that I spent a whole day with that person and made a true difference in their life.

And there's an addictive aspect to that, it's kind of hard to describe which is why anybody that's seeing this needs to come out and join us for a day because then you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's really just an awesome thing.

>> Danielle: The LaPorte County Historical Society was founded in 1906.

At the same time, Dr. Kesling who built this building we're currently in, the Kesling building, he added a three story wing to the back of the building and we were able to move in here with our collection in 2006, our 100th anniversary.

(mid tempo music) >> Announcer: Centier Bank is proud to serve hometown community banking across Indiana.

For over 128 years, Indiana's largest private family-owned bank has been not for sale and promises to keep it that way for years to come.

>> Announcer: Sacred Dunes Integrative Health is your comprehensive, holistic wellness center, specializing in acupuncture massage therapy, functional lab testing, nutrition and herbal medicine.

Sacred Dunes, where wellness grows.

>> Announcer: Local programming is made possible by IBEW Local 697, Northwest Indiana, source for electrical professionals.

Providing certified trained and experienced professionals for residential, commercial, industrial, and solar projects.

>> Methodist Hospital's mission is to provide compassionate quality healthcare services to all those in need.

Methodist Hospital, celebrating 100 years of healing in Northwest Indiana.

Learn more @methodisthospitals.org.

>> Announcer: Strack & Van Til is hiring full and part-time positions for deli, floral bakery, department managers and more.

With flexible work schedules, sign on bonuses paid vacation and benefits.

Learn more at strackandvantil.com.

(mid tempo music) >> Announcer: Additional support for Lake Shore public media and "Friends and Neighbors," is provided by viewers like you, thank you.

(mid tempo music) (upbeat music) (car engine revving) (upbeat music) (car engine revving) >> We go 65, 70 miles an hour and you think, "Oh I do that on the highway," but I'm here to tell you it's a completely different 70 miles an hour.

(upbeat music) First of all, it's very loud.

You're strapped in extremely tight.

As far as the dirt goes, there's no windshield so it's constantly hitting you in the face.

(upbeat music) Close quarters, they say Robin's racing.

It's an adrenaline rush for sure.

There's no experience like it.

There's a reason that we spend all this time and money on it 'cause driving the car is the rush that we all look for.

The talent is incredible.

We're racing against guys that have been racing for 30 plus years and they don't make mistakes and they're so good.

>> Announcer: Please welcome Jake Straka.

>> It's a lot harder than anybody thinks.

I went to a open practice in a four cylinder cart out at Illiana Speedway, and I remember pulling onto the track being just extremely nervous and I thought I was going really fast.

And then I didn't realize that we were still under yellow.

We hadn't even started going yet and I got passed by everybody about a hundred times.

But I had a blast and I was hooked instantly.

It wasn't until the next year that we became pretty competitive.

Little by little you get more comfortable you drive into the corner a little further you break a little later, you accelerate a little sooner.

You just pick up on on that type of stuff.

Track conditions have a lot to do with it.

In a matter of 10 minutes.

You have a drastically different track.

(mid tempo music) >> We started at South Lake Speedway in Crown Point years ago when Jake and his brother was small.

I mean his grandpa had been going there for 50 some years and that's how it started.

And he got into it.

We went almost every Saturday.

He always said he was gonna race and okay kids always say it, but he did.

And you know, he loves it.

A lot of people come for first time and they come back, 'cause you can't beat dirt racing.

Jake started on black cop.

He went on dirt one time and never raced on black cop again in his life.

>> I still get really nervous and then I climb in and I go to staging and then you sit in staging for sometimes 15 minutes or so and you're just sitting there just rearing to go, heart's beating outta your chest.

But it's the strangest thing, the second you drop onto the track, it all goes away.

(upbeat music) Hi dad.

(upbeat music) It's a unique experience, and then after the race it takes a little bit to come back down.

I know I definitely don't go to sleep early on Saturdays after the race.

I usually can't fall asleep right away.

Think if you run a heat race, green the checkered, you're in the car for about two minutes and the feature you're probably in the car for, I don't know, five minutes, and then we work on this thing, some weeks, it's literally every night after work.

If nothing goes wrong it's definitely still three, four nights.

It's practically a whole nother job if you wanna be competitive.

Thankfully Joe over here does a lot of the technical stuff.

We do have some sponsors but most of the money's coming outta our pockets.

>> This is actually my third time here at the track.

My mom's friend, his name is Charles Boardman.

The 07 car, he races here at Schererville.

It was cool.

I actually got to sit in my friend's car.

It's a really fun time and you have a blast.

Sometimes you'll get the feeling that the racers get.

(mid tempo music) >> This is a good place to come hang out good eat, and watch some good racing.

If you're interested all in racing, your kids like it, bring 'em out on Saturday night, check it out.

(mid tempo music) Shady Hill, probably the most family friendly racetrack we go to.

>> Even if they're not race fans, I think they enjoy it.

Coming out a couple times a year.

(car engines revving) Racing is by far the most competitive thing I've ever done in my life.

It's crazy, it's fierce competition.

But when you're in the pits and you're in trouble or you need a part or you need help the same guy that you were just racing door to door with they'll help you out in a heartbeat.

My parents come out most nights.

My aunt and uncles come out most nights.

My brother's always there.

We're just fortunate to have the friendships and family that's not family that becomes family from racing (upbeat music) (gentle music) >> At Indiana Dunes National Park we have over 200 species of bees.

The reason for that is because of the incredible diversity of habitats.

(gentle music) We have incredible variety of plant species, even soil types.

There's some bees that prefer to nest in the sand.

There's some bees that prefer to nest in kind of more clay type substrates.

So Indiana Dunes provides all of those different types of habitats and all of the needs for all these bees.

(gentle music) Bumblebees are our only native social bee.

Honey bees are actually not native.

So when we're talking about conserving our bees and our pollinators, we're talking about our native pollinators which is the vast majority of diversity here.

Native bees are the ones that are really the workhorses of pollination.

They're the ones that are providing the pollination service for our native plants, but they're actually providing much of the pollination service for our crops as well.

Most of the pollination that's happening in ag systems that like apple orchards and things like that and healthy ecosystems is done by native bees not by honey bees.

One of every three bites that you take of food comes from an insect pollinator.

And so if we want to eat the things that we enjoy eating we need to have pollinators.

Pollinators are keystone species.

They're vital for the entire ecosystem.

I was always sort of that weird kid who was looking at rocks and looking at the little things.

Where a lot of the other kids were seeing an ants and smashing it, I was trying to pick them up and hold them and cuddle them.

And I got stung by a lot of things as a kid.

I was born and raised near the Indiana Dunes.

I ended up doing my bachelor's in science in biology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.

Did a stint in the Peace Corps in Bolivia and which is where I became really interested in entomology.

And then I ended up doing my PhD at the University of Minnesota in entomology.

So I went from the tropics to the tundra to to do my work and came back here a few years ago and sort of feel like I'm coming full circle here at Indiana Dunes National Park.

Doing what I love.

Once you start looking at insects, especially under the microscope, when you start looking at that up close and seeing how intricately it's put together and just all the details, it's beautiful.

(gentle music) Pollinators are a keystone species because they provide that pollinator service, they create seeds.

Many plants can't reproduce without having the service of a pollinator.

(gentle music) There's been some studies that have documented local declines of native bee species and they have corresponded to declines also of plant species that they pollinate.

And so if you remove the pollinators you're not just removing the pollinators you're removing the entire community.

For the National Park Service we wanna play a part in helping to conserve the pollinators.

So we have an opportunity to do that.

But we wanna be able to understand what it is that we can do to best conserve them.

We don't have a lot of control over some of those aspects but we have a control over maybe what type of habitat we can provide for them.

So much of our on the ground work that we do here at the National Park is helping to provide habitat for the pollinators, making sure that the pollinator habitat that we're providing is what they need.

And that's where the science comes in.

At Indiana Dunes National Park and some other parks in the Great Lakes, we're trying to understand that.

We're trying to understand what flowers they need the most.

We're trying to understand what aspects of the habitat best increase their diversity provide for the most types of species.

We're also trying to understand what threats or stressors might be coming down the line and what impacts those might have.

(gentle music) So we wanna encourage people to have pollinator gardens or we like to say, if you can have a little mini national park and provide habitat in your backyard but you don't wanna just provide lunch they like to have their three square meals a day.

If you can have flowers that are blooming in the springtime and the summertime and even late into the fall into October, that's really important.

A lot of those species are trying to gather as much pollen as they can to have in their nests to gain enough fat stores so that they can make it through the winter.

(gentle music) (gentle music) >> Our primary focus is to help revitalize homes of people in need in the Duneland community.

We do homes and we do community centers.

That could be a park that could be a nonprofit organization that needs a hand.

It takes nothing of us to give of one day of our year to come out here and do this.

The feeling is you just can't beat it.

(mid tempo music) We're a nationwide organization.

We're the largest nonprofit volunteer organization that's focused on helping people rehab their homes.

It all started in, in Midland, Texas.

And in the early seventies a group of neighbors got together and decided that they were gonna help some of their neighbors because they had the capability to do that.

In 1988, it became a national organization and it took on the name Rebuilding Together.

And then in 1997, our Duneland affiliates started and that's when we started helping people in this area here.

So to date, as of this year I believe we've done like 320 projects.

I think 212 of those have actually been homes and the rest have been community centers.

Our primary focus is to make sure that someone's home is warm, safe, and dry.

There's no cost to a homeowner whatsoever.

The whole point is we're trying to help them.

We do things such as install ramps, widen doors, install grab bars, we do roofs, we do windows like we are at this house, we're taking care of her porch.

We're painting inside, we're doing landscaping.

We took down a shed.

Basically anything that might be a safety issue we're an accessibility issue, we'll focus on those kind of things.

(mid tempo music) The last Saturday of April is our primary national workday.

That's the day we focus on.

There's certainly exceptions.

Take this homeowner for example, she applied in the fall and then in November come to find out her furnace stopped working.

So we helped her, we replaced her furnace and now we're out here today doing the rest of the project.

But we accept applications year round and we understand that some people have a need that just can't wait until workday.

So we will certainly try to help them even if it's not on this particular day.

Our volunteer applications, they open up April 1st and we need people, everything from skilled tradesmen to people that literally know nothing but they know how to spread mulch or use a paintbrush or pull weeds.

So we truly have a need for all capabilities to help us because when we come out we're doing a lot of structural work.

We're also going to beautify the property as well.

So we've got people out here that are pulling weeds and trimming bushes and we're gonna basically get all capabilities on every site so that we can do both things.

(mid tempo music) >> I think the volunteers are great.

Everyone's here to have a good time and help out.

And I just feel like in the last 12 years like you can't find a better group of people helping out.

I don't know if it was Mother Teresa or my dad that said "God gave us two hands "one to help ourselves and one to help others."

But it just makes..

I think it makes everybody feel good giving back and helping out others.

The homeowners are great too.

Like I said, they're so thankful and they always feel so blessed.

All the giving they get, they feel the greatness and friendship.

So it's really been nice.

(mid tempo music) >> So Duneland School Corporation provides a facility, one of their schools.

They provide the buses the bus drivers volunteer their time.

The people in the cafeteria volunteer their time to come in and prepare the food for us.

So the whole community is truly a part of this and everybody kind of bands together to make this whole thing happen.

So it is well organized.

Nothing's ever on autopilot but it just continues to work year after year because they understand like, this is an amazing thing that we're doing and it's a huge impact.

I got hooked over a decade ago by seeing the direct impact from people that live in this very community where I live.

So if that doesn't hook you I don't know what will.

But at the end of the day, I feel that it's my duty as a citizen of this community to come out and try to make a difference for somebody.

I drive by these houses all the time and I know that I spent a whole day with that person and made a true difference in their life.

And there's an addictive aspect to that, that's kind of hard to describe which is why anybody that's seeing this needs to come out and join us for a day because then you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's really just an awesome thinking.

(mid tempo music) Believe it or not, one of our biggest challenges is just attracting homeowners.

So my biggest encouragement to anybody that is watching this is if you know somebody in the Duneland community that needs a hand, that truly needs a hand, have 'em reach out to us please.

Because we're just itching to help 'em out.

♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ (mid tempo playful music) >> The LaPorte County Historical Society was founded in 1906 and then come 2003, the county wanted to give us a new space and we were really lucky at the same time, Dr. Kesling, who built this building we're currently in, the Kesling building, built it in 1993, he was looking to sell the building.

With the money that he received from this sale of this building to the county, he added a three story wing to the back of the building and we were able to move in here with our collection in 2006, our 100th anniversary.

(mid tempo music) >> Back in 1993.

This building was built by Dr. Peter Kesling for his automobile collection his personal collection.

He had about 50 automobiles.

Some of my favorite automobiles right here.

This is a Cord, and the Cord was built in Auburn, Indiana over by Fort Wayne.

And next to that is my very favorite car which is the Dusenburg.

And it was built in Indianapolis about the 1920s and 1930s.

And another car that we have back here is the Studebaker which of course was built in South Bend.

The other maroon one in the distance there is a Tucker.

And it just so happens that this year is the 75th anniversary of the Tucker Automobile.

There's a huge celebration going on in Hershey, Pennsylvania next month a whole weekend celebrating the Tucker automobile because there are only 50 of them that are made and only 47 of them still exist today.

And this is number 12.

(playful music) Another of my favorite collections here in the museum is the William Adrian Jones Gun Collection.

These guns in this collection were collected by Mr. Jones from all over the world.

He traveled the world three times.

Mr. Jones had a foundry, a machinery company in Chicago.

And when he became semi-retired he spent his summers here in La Porte.

In 1916, he decided to write his will and in his will he said he was going to donate all of the gun collection to the City of La Porte.

He was very good friends with Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt had a ranch in the Dakota Territory which is now North Dakota.

They would go hunting with each other at their ranches.

There are about 800 weapons at least 800 weapons from all over the world.

Some of my favorites of the ones from the Middle East.

(playful music) My family history, my ancestors all settled here in LaPorte County from Sweden back in the 1860s.

The really special exhibits that we have that bring out the history of LaPorte County, for example the Miriam Benedict Display in our pioneer room.

She's the first settler that was here in LaPorte County in 1829.

When people come in and say they want to know whether the oldest objects that we have on display here in the museum, the mastodons this area just on the south edge of Le Port County had the Grand Kankakee Marsh.

Over 20,000 years ago there were mastodons living in this area.

They would go down to the Grand Kankakee Marsh to get a drink, and then because of the huge weight they would get stuck sometimes and then sink and they couldn't pull themselves out.

And then 10,000, 20,000 years later farmers here in LaPorte County, in the southern part down near the Kankakee River area, were digging ditches and all of a sudden find these ancient mastodons.

My main goal is to teach people about local history about these stories that they didn't know.

(playful music) >> So my most memorable exhibit when I came here as a third grader, I remember seeing the perm machine.

It was in the basement at the time, and I remember thinking like that was the craziest thing I'd ever seen in my whole life.

So that's like my most memorable artifact is definitely the perm machine.

Of all the period rooms, my favorite is the dentist's office just because I've always loved going to the dentist.

I wanna say the reason that I got into museums in the first place was because I visited this museum when I was in third grade.

So I remember it like it was yesterday.

Having the ability to provide that for other people in the community is like the greatest thing I could ever do.

I really love being able to get people excited about not just history as a whole but specifically their history if they're from LaPorte County.

And I love that we're able to connect people with the great things that happen here in their own county.

(playful music) >> Announcer: Centier Bank is proud to serve hometown community banking across Indiana.

For over 128 years, Indiana's largest private family-owned bank has been not for sale and promises to keep it that way for years to come.

>> Announcer: Sacred Dunes Integrative Health is your comprehensive, holistic wellness center, specializing in acupuncture massage therapy, functional lab testing, nutrition and herbal medicine.

Sacred Dunes, where wellness grows.

>> Announcer: Local programming is made possible by IBEW Local 697 Northwest, Indiana source for electrical professionals, providing certified, trained, and experienced professionals for residential, commercial, industrial, and solar projects.

>> Strack & Van Til is hiring full and part-time positions for deli, floral, bakery department managers and more with flexible work schedules, sign on bonuses paid vacation and benefits.

Learn more at strackandvantil.com >> Announcer: Methodist Hospital's mission is to provide compassionate quality healthcare services to all those in need.

Methodist Hospital, celebrating 100 years of healing in northwest Indiana.

Learn more @methodisthospitals.org.

(gentle music) >> Announcer: Additional support for Lake Shore public media and "Friends and Neighbors," is provided by viewers like you, thank you.

(gentle music) >> Announcer: Did you know that you can find all of your favorite Lakeshore PBS shows online?

Visit video.lakeshorepbs.org.

You can stream a large selection of shows including "Eye On The Arts," and "Studio" and "Friends and Neighbors."

Missed the last night's episode?

No problem.

Lakeshore PBS has got you covered.

Search for your show and find your episode ready to watch at any time.

Visit video.lakeshore pbs.org to stream your favorite local shows >> Announcer: As you travel across Northwest Indiana and into Chicago.

Take Lakeshore Public Media 89.1 FM along for the ride.

With our newly expanded signal, we're with you from the Southern corner of Michigan and into Chicago, and of course across Northwest Indiana.

From the Dunes at Lake Michigan to the windmills of Wilcom, Lakeshore Public Media, 89.1 FM is along for the ride wherever you call home.

(mid tempo music)