Some buildings don’t really disappear. Instead, they just learn how to hold new secrets. Pendleton’s elementary school campus is one of those places. At a glance, it’s a tidy, familiar part of town, reshaped over decades to meet modern needs. If you look a little closer, though, the outline of something older begins to emerge: the roof of the old Pendleton High School gym.

Back when I was in school at IPFW, I took every which way from my parents’ house in Muncie to my crappy apartment in Fort Wayne. I often passed through Petroleum on State Road 1. Once day, I wondered where the east-west crossroads went and passed a boulder marking the site of the old Petroleum school. I was in the area not long ago and went by a second time. 

Late last year, I followed Green Street Road out of Albany toward Dunkirk and was stunned to find the old Green Street schoolhouse reduced to a heap of fallen bricks. In hindsight, the collapse shouldn’t have shocked me since the front gable had been clinging to life for years. Nevertheless, it set my mind spinning about other rural schoolhouses that might be teetering on the same edge. One of them was Niles Township’s old District 9 school, known at different times as Smith or Lowe. Thankfully, it’s still standing- at least for now.

I was busy researching Hobbs’ old Schoolhouse of Educated Wicker when I learned that another building just like it still stood in the nearby crossroads community of New Lancaster. Unfortunately, the school was obscured by trees. It took a while to wait for the foliage to shed, but I finally stopped by to take some pictures. There’s a school back there- I swear! 

I was bumbling through Union County looking for its old infirmary when I spotted a schoolhouse rising in the distance. I haven’t been able to find out much about it, but the place is still intriguing for a variety of reasons. 

A single high school serves Jay County today, but things weren’t always that simple. Not so long ago, eight separate high schools dotted the county, each one anchoring its own community. Time and consolidation have erased them all, but one exception stands in New Mount Pleasant: there, a modest marker commemorates the site of I. P. Gray High School.

I pass the old schoolhouse at the terminus of Muncie’s Eaton-Wheeling Pike now and then. The structure seemed sound when I first encountered it years ago, but it’s been looking worse and worse over the years. I worry it’s only a matter of time before the building falls apart. 

For a city its size, Muncie punches far above its weight when it comes to neon. Our vintage McDonald’s and Arby’s signs are famous from coast to coast, and hometown fixtures like Oasis Bar & Grill and Tom Cherry Mufflers proudly keep the glow alive. Still, if I had to pick a favorite, it’s the one out front of Wise Country Market at 1700 North Walnut Street.

Folks in Indiana might remember expansive and boundless Marsh supermarkets from not so long ago, but the family’s first grocery stood in the tiny Jay County community of Salem. Not long after Wilmer Marsh was shot in the head there by an associate of Al Capone, he did the unthinkable by opening a second store just three miles west in New Pittsburg! I set out to find it.