Read time: 9 min.

Trips through Fort Wayne demand that I slow down. Between the city’s magnificent courthouse, towering steeples, and century-old high schools, I can hardly pass any of its landmarks without craning my neck for a better look! My last trip found me drawn to something much less impressive, though: the old Subway I worked at in college. To my surprise, the sign was gone, the windows were dark, and the place was empty. 

Subway was my first job. I started working there because I wanted to buy stuff for my new girlfriend. Topping off the old full-size Chevy my stepdad let me drive wasn’t cheap, either! Once I became truly desperate, the sub shop in Yorktown was the closest place to home that might hire me. I filled out an application and became an official sandwich artist. 

It didn’t take long to master the art of the hinge cut, slicing cucumbers, and firing up the TurboChef toaster. Soon, though, I had to move on to college. Test scores got me into Hillsdale and Hanover, but I ended up moving to Fort Wayne to study political science. The city was halfway between my parents, I had family in town, and some friends were heading there, too. A scholarship covered half my tuition. Mom and Dad chipped in for the rest of it. Everything else was up to me. 

I was pretty sure I’d find another Subway to work at when I set out on my own. Three stood within a couple of miles of my new apartment, and each was owned by a different franchisee. My heart was set on the North Anthony store, and I was thrilled when they offered me a position as assistant manager! Unfortunately, it turned out that the role was at another Subway across town in a part of Fort Wayne I’d never been to before.

Before I reported there, my new employer shipped me off to a Subway inside a Walmart to learn the ropes. College classes were two weeks away, but the “University of Subway” came first. Despite my experience running the night shift back home, I had to conquer a clunky computer course before I was qualified to slap a single slice of ham onto a loaf of Honey Wheat in Allen County. Over and over, I dragged and dropped toppings over countless digital footings until I was finally trusted behind the counter.

The experience was stupid. How hard could it be to make a sandwich? As it turned out, very. If I hadn’t picked it up from the hours behind a computer screen, the higher standard of my new employer rapidly became apparent. Every quarter, we had to build a fully-loaded Italian BMT -salami, pepperoni, and ham, all run through the garden- as the general manager timed us with a stopwatch.

One tiny mistake, like stacking two slices of pepperoni instead of laying six of them down on their own, was enough to blow the whole thing. It was intense, and balancing full-time work with college was overwhelming at first. Work meant skipping a banquet that honored fellow scholarship winners. It meant cramming for exams as I shoved Seafood Sensations down my craw on my dinner breaks. Subway meant missing out on extracurriculars and time with friends, but the pressure started to ease after I settled into my regular shift.

Once I switched to running nights, I learned that being an assistant manager wasn’t all that different from my time as an ordinary sandwich artist back in Yorktown. The day-to-day duties -cleaning, prepping ingredients, dropping cash into the safe, counting the drawer, and locking up at night- were basically the same. My title had changed, but the tasks were familiar.

The biggest difference between the two Subway stores was their locations. The one I worked at in high school was a modern location in the quiet suburbs. My new store stood in an outlot of Fort Wayne’s Gateway Plaza. Built in 1958, the center dated to a time when nearby Goshen Road was US-33. Back then, the plaza was truly a gateway to Fort Wayne! Locals flocked to Miller’s Department Store, filled prescriptions at Haag’s, grabbed groceries at Marsh Supermarket, and caught a movie at the plaza’s very own three-screen cinema.

Unfortunately, Gateway Plaza was well past its prime by the time I began working there. US-33 had been rerouted years earlier, which turned Goshen Road into just another surface street. Without as much traffic heading towards the heart of Fort Wayne, the plaza became a shadow of its former self. When I worked there, it limped along thanks to a bowling alley, a pool hall, a Dollar General, and a Save-A-Lot grocery.

Vacant storefronts stood everywhere you looked, but my little stretch of the strip was full. Along with Subway, there was Papa John’s, a check-cashing joint, and Low Bob’s Discount Tobacco. Still, the area was rough: after I hired on, I learned that my Subway had been robbed a time or two. In an unsettling twist of justice, one of the bandits was still allowed inside so long as he kept up with his restitution payments! He came in to order a footlong Meatball Marinara with extra black olives every now and then. 

A security guard rolled in each night to keep an eye on the door. Police were a regular presence too, grumbling about their overworked Chevy Impalas as they stopped for a six-inch Subway Melt. Outside, suspicious transactions went down in plain sight after the cops left. It was crazy for a kid fresh out of the suburbs, but none of the insanity stopped me from having a blast with Megan, Halie, Ashley, and the rest of my night shift crew.

Some of our regulars became characters in their own right, too, like the “salad guy” who pointed at lettuce when he really meant spinach, and the turkey haggler who’d always try to trade his cheese for extra meat. Then came the outraged regular who never quite grasped why his double-meat, extra-everything “$5 Footlong” came out to $9.72, and the die-hard Quiznos fan who still showed up every Tuesday and Thursday.

Between our colorful customers, my coworkers and I chatted with our peers at the little strip. My favorite was the guy at Low Bob’s who had worked his way right down the row of stores. If he kept going, his next stop was Chaps, the country-western bar where Fish of Stroh used to be! He’d swing by for a sub, I’d stop in for a smoke, and we’d always trade a laugh about Chaps and where he might end up next.

Working at Gateway Plaza was chaotic, exhausting, and frequently ridiculous, but my new friends and I had a ball. Between our in-jokes and camaraderie, though, real life kept pressing in. Increasingly, I worked forty or fifty hours a week at the same time I was juggling a slate of advanced coursework. The pace eventually caught up with me, but it wasn’t due to burnout: a heavy, creeping fog had settled over my mind, and my doctor back home finally put a name to it: Bipolar. 

Medication helped, but it left me sleeping twelve hours a day just to keep up. Things unraveled from there. My academic advisor didn’t mince words- I had to decide whether to stick with making sandwiches or fully commit to studying political science. Unfortunately, a dismal D in trigonometry made that choice easy: I lost my scholarship, packed up, and moved back home. I switched to another Subway in Muncie and lost touch with my old colleagues.

It’s hard to believe that fifteen years have passed since then. It’d been another four or five years since I had much reason to visit Fort Wayne. From what I’ve heard, my old Subway shut down around 2021. The rest of the outlot was hanging on, but Gateway Plaza was an empty shell. Pro Bowl West was busier than I’d ever seen, but the place was otherwise deserted. At least the big bowling pin still stood out front.

A wave of sadness hit me as I saw my old Subway. It wasn’t just that the store had gone dark; Subways have been vanishing for years. What caught in my throat was different- it felt like a part of me was still inside. As I drove by the shuttered storefront, I could see myself behind the counter, trying to hold it all together with a stack of sandwich wrappers and a spiral-bound notebook from PSY 350.

Even now, I remember struggling as a student who couldn’t scrape a C in trigonometry but could whip up the best Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki you ever tasted. I remembered locking up each night, never knowing what might happen as I cautiously crossed the parking lot at 11:00. As I idled past, the pressure, the late-night laughter, and the quiet fear that maybe I wasn’t cut out for adulthood all came rushing back.

The old Subway in Gateway Plaza belongs to a chapter of my life I rarely revisit: the early days of trying to make sense of everything, stumbling through my freshman year of college, and struggling with bipolar disorder before I even knew what to call it. All these years later, seeing the empty storefront hit me harder than I expected! I wouldn’t go back, but I still miss those days of early adulthood. They were confusing and chaotic, but they were mine. Seeing the abandoned Subway took me back to that time in my life and reminded me that even the most ordinary places can leave the most lasting impressions.