Ever since I visited the old gym in Gaston a few months ago, I’ve found myself with one singular mission: go to each historic gymnasium in every East-Central Indiana town named after a fossil fuel. I recently completed the quest when I finally got the chance to step inside Gas City’s old gym.
Continue reading “Inside the 1924 Gas City gym”
Whether you’re craving biscuits and gravy, a three-egg omelet, a western skillet, or warm cinnamon-raisin biscuits buried beneath a blanket of icing, Muncie’s fast food connoisseurs know exactly where to go for breakfast. Around here, the gold standard doesn’t come on fine china. Instead, it arrives piping hot in a humble foam takeout container from Mac’s! For generations, the best breakfast in town has been a Mac’s breakfast.
Continue reading “The best breakfast is a Mac’s breakfast. Lunch isn’t bad either.”
If you weren’t looking for the place, you’d pass right through Reed Station without ever knowing it was there. Like so many Indiana hamlets born of the railroad and sustained by routine rather than size, Reed Station survives today more in memory than in markers. I visited recently and tried to uncover its story.
Continue reading “Welcome to Reed Station”
A schoolhouse serving District 3 has stood at the corner of Old Fort Wayne Road and East Lamont Road in Huntington’s Union Township since at least 1866, when it appeared just north of the Wabash & Erie Canal on land owned by the Silvers family1. The building was commonly known as Whippoorwill2.
Continue reading “Union Township’s Whippoorwill schoolhouse in Huntington County”
I’ve spent the past year documenting the slow destruction of one of East Central Indiana’s most recognizable retail landmarks- Muncie Mall. I stop by to see what’s changed as often as I can! Sometimes the differences are dramatic, like the demolition of old cinema. Other times they’re more subtle. My latest visit found plenty of those transformations.
Continue reading “More updates as Muncie Mall meets its maker”
I’ve written before about Juan’s Mexican Grill & Bar in Chesterfield, the restaurant inside a former Ben Franklin store that’s become my favorite spot. When Juan’s announced that it had purchased another local institution -Gaston’s venerable Mill Street Inn- I was intrigued! The new place was closer to my house, but the real question was whether it could capture the magic of the original. It took me a couple of visits to find out, but I think it did. In fact, it even improved on it.
Continue reading “Juan’s Mill Street Place is better than the original”
I’ve visited five or six Native American mounds and earthworks over the years, but I’ve deliberately avoided writing about them. There’s a lot to unpack, and I’m keenly aware that I’m not an expert on Indigenous cultures. It’s an easy subject to oversimplify or get wrong, but New Castle’s Chrysler Enclosure is too fascinating to ignore: without any exaggeration, it may be 2,000 years old.
Continue reading “The ancient Chrysler Enclosure”
School buildings from the 1800s through the 1920s -or even the thirties- are usually the ones that really grab my attention. Now and then, though, a “modern” school intrigues me too! It’s a little startling to realize that some of them are pushing seventy-five years old, but one is Muncie’s old Sutton Elementary.
Continue reading “Muncie’s old Sutton Elementary School”
As far as I’m concerned, the 2026 Emerging Liberty dime is the best circulating coin the U.S. Mint has produced in generations. I bought my first on a whim for a couple bucks at a local flea market but, almost immediately, they started turning up in my pocket change everywhere I went. Before long, the rest of the Semiquincentennial coinage began appearing too! After months of keeping an eye out, I’ve finally assembled a full set of every denomination, including the three commemorative quarters released so far.
Continue reading “The SemiQ coinage is finally showing up around here”
I was flipping through some new-to-me files the other day when I stumbled across History of the Mt. Pleasant Township School System by Anna Williams. I figured I had a pretty solid grasp on that subject, especially after untangling the whole Cammack brouhaha. Still, one detail jumped off the page as I read: had I somehow overlooked a schoolhouse all this time? I couldn’t have!
Continue reading “A good ol’ schoolhouse wild goose chase”