Two weeks after demolition started on the Muncie Mall Sears, crews are making quick work of the cavernous old store. It’s weird to watch a fifty-year institution get reduced to rubble in a matter of weeks, but that’s exactly what’s happening as Hull Property Group clears the way for whatever it insists will make the property viable again.
Continue reading “Making quick work of the Muncie Mall Sears”
The breaded pork tenderloin might be Indiana’s greatest contribution to civilization aside from corn, open-wheel racing, and Axl Rose. You can find one practically anywhere here, usually consisting of an expansive fried pork cutlet far larger than the bun tasked with containing it. The best I’ve ever had actually came from Chubby’s in Sevierville, Tennessee, of all places, but Indiana is its home. In tiny Markleville, the Grill-A fries up a pretty good one.
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I’ve had an Apple Watch for years, but owning one and actually wearing one have turned out to be two different things. My first was a Series 3, which I bought around 2021. A year and a half ago I replaced it with an SE 3 with GPS for $249. I like my Apple Watch a lot! Unfortunately, I’ve always been terrible at keeping the thing charged. Enter this dumb little JOYROOM device.
Continue reading “Random tech review: the JOYROOM Portable 2000mAh Wireless Charger for Apple Watch”
I love it when old buildings find new purposes, and churches seem especially good at making that happen. I’ve written about congregations taking over old Walmarts here and here, a Marsh Supermarket here, and even an Elder-Beerman in this post. Still, I’ve never seen one embrace a building’s past quite as cleverly -or cynically- as this. Look above the entrance: that used to be a Chevrolet bowtie! Add one little downstroke and- presto! It’s a cross. Why should a perfectly good Chevy logo go to waste?
Continue reading “Middletown’s First Church of Christ Chevrolet “
Now that we’re a couple of years in, I’m used to blogging in the AI era. Friends and family might send me a screenshot of their favorite chatbot citing one of my blog posts, or I’ll see a couple hundred random referrals from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Copilot. Sunday, though, I got an unexpected email from what purported to be an AI agent. What?
Continue reading “What, exactly, was this unsolicited AI email I just received?”
If I had a time machine, my sixteenth priority would be traveling back to the turn of the twentieth century to warn East-Central Indiana’s boosters about one thing: stop trying to build resorts around manmade lakes. They make great fodder for history nerds today, but mostly because they almost never worked out. Gas Lake near Yorktown failed. Knightstown Lake near Raysville failed. Then there was Morton Lake near Richmond. It failed too, but there’s some intriguing infrastructure left over.
Continue reading “Richmond built a lake more than a century ago. Here’s what’s left”
My niece came down for Labor Day. Taking her home meant heading through Defiance, Ohio, and I’d heard Reddit rumors of an irresistible dead mall there. Naturally, there was no way I was driving through town without stopping to investigate! What I found, though, wasn’t the retail graveyard I’d expected. Reddit was wrong.
Continue reading “Northtowne Mall in Defiance: Reddit was wrong”
Downtown Muncie’s tallest building is also its most unusual. Every year, incoming Ball State students and Muncie transplants wonder about the 165-foot monolith at 329 East Jackson Street, curious about the unusual shape of the top of its tower. Although the original iteration of the building dates to much earlier, the building’s tallest part was completed in 19701 to house microwave antennas as part as AT&T’s Long Lines network. Recently, I finally found some photos of them in action.
Continue reading “I finally found photos of Muncie’s microwave horns”
Every now and then, I stumble across a building that refuses to reveal its story. For a long time, the gym that remained from the old Cadiz School in Henry County, Indiana, was one of them. I wanted to learn more about it, so I dug through newspapers, plat maps, and public records. I reached out to local historians and even emailed the building’s current owners! Still, it took the commenters on a random social media post by a Henry County historical group to finally answer the questions I had.
Continue reading “At last! More information about the old Cadiz gym”
I came across the hamlet of Boundary City when I was hunting for old schoolhouses in Jay County. Situated at the crux of Boundary Pike and Treaty Line Road, not much of the community exists today. Little more than an old schoolhouse and church hint at the place’s story.
Continue reading “Welcome to Boundary City, Indiana”