Essays Archives - Ephemera

Into the City – Living in the Shadow of Chicago

I love Chicago. But I would never want to live there (again).

Growing up in Northwest Indiana, you are always aware that you exist in the shadow of one of the world’s greatest cities. All roads lead to it, literally. All the railways lead to it. Sometimes, it seems that all the culture leads to it. Most of our parents either worked in Chicago or worked for people who worked in Chicago. That’s what happens when you are less than an hour from a place. Northwest Indiana is closer to Chicago than most actual Chicago suburbs.

Chicago doesn’t think much about us at all, except maybe in the summer when they come to use our beaches and eat at our restaurants and stay in our hotels for a quick weekend away from the city (or pass through on their way to Michigan).

When I worked in Downton Chicago a few years after college, a rite of passage most ‘Region rats’ go through at least once, and I told people that I drove in from Indiana every day, they looked at me like I was from Mars.

“Indiana?!?!? That’s so far away.”

“Not really, it’s less than an hour.”

“Still”

The cognitive dissonance of someone who spent 45 minutes on the El to get from the North Side of Chicago to the Loop for work.

When I travel abroad and people ask me where I’m from, I simply say Chicago. This pisses off people who are actually from Chicago (and if I encounter a fellow Chicagoan abroad and they ask me where in Chicago I’m from, and I say Indiana, actually, I’m less human in their eyes immediately).

“You’re not from here!”

Well, I’m sorry, but I am. I grew up with Chicago TV stations, watching the Chicago news, watching Bozo on WGN, and cheering the Bulls during their reign in the 90s. Our football team was the Bears (definitely NOT the Colts), our baseball teams the Sox or the Cubs (and let’s be clear, NWI is neutral territory with fans of both teams living in peace). We went on field trips in school to all the major Chicago museums. We’ve all been to the Sears Tower once. We all still call it the Sears Tower for crying out loud. I’m a member of the Art Institute of Chicago. I attended college in Downtown Chicago (briefly).

The only difference is that there’s an invisible line on the map that separates us from Chicago, where the taxes are lower, cigarettes are cheaper, and you can buy fireworks legally (not to mention gamble, but Indiana no longer has a monopoly on that), and has superior beaches once you get away from the industrial sprawl (Chicago’s beaches are fake, not natural. Do you know where they get the sand? They truck it in from Indiana).

I haven’t worked in Chicago in 15 years; it’s not that I’m not willing to work there again, it’s just that commuting 12 hours a day no longer appeals to me. So, I get to live in Chicago the way I choose to. As in, I visit it a few times a month. We don’t really hesitate to go to Chicago, whether it’s for a sporting event, a symphony concert, or the Lyric Opera. Or a special exhibition at the Art Institute. Or if we just need something from a particular store on the North Side. Or the fact that my favorite barber (Truefitt & Hill) is on the North Side. Or we want to visit a favorite restaurant (the best Ramen noodles in the Midwest are in the Fulton Market District).

It’s only an hour away.

There’s power in that.

Chicago is always alluring. We can always go there. But the key thing is that we can choose to go whenever we like.

Then, when I’m done with Chicago, I can retreat back to Mars (I mean across state lines) and return to my home. I live in an idyll in rural LaPorte County. I have a nice-sized house, on three acres of grass and woods. The end of my street used to be a dirt road. It’s practically paradise. Why would I live in a city when I can live here? And then be in that city within an hour, do the thing I want, then return to my idyll. Though sometimes, I question this life choice when it’s midnight and there’s still 45 minutes left of the drive on the Indiana Toll Road until I can be in my bed.

I like this arrangement. The perks of living adjacent to a big city, with none of the consequences (which there are, and this can easily turn into the rant that small-minded locals would make about Chicago).

Locals here in NWI live in complete fear of Chicago. They fear Chicago’s problems coming here (what they really mean is Chicago’s minorities). A few years ago, when the Northern Indiana Commuter Train District (NICTD) spent a huge sum of money to upgrade the South Shore railway lines to Chicago, the number one criticism was that it would bring Chicago’s problems here much faster. This is ignoring the fact that the trainline has been there for one hundred years already, and a train journey taking 30 minutes less wasn’t going to be a motivation for someone weighing the chance to do crimes.

I’ve met people around here who have actually never even been to Chicago, and that’s not something to be proud of. How can you live next to the greatest city in the world (after London, IMHO), and never take advantage of that?

Another major benefit of living near Chicago is our access to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Anyone who knows better, reading this, will immediately think that’s not a benefit. Trust me, it is. The airport has seen better days, but they’re rebuilding it into the world-class airport it needs to be. But how cool is it that you can drive to O’Hare and fly practically anywhere in the world, directly? Last time I checked, you could fly to all six continents (obviously, except Antarctica) directly. Personally, O’Hare has been my gateway to the United Kingdom, with almost a dozen daily flights to the UK, and I’ve traveled there more than anywhere. It’s comforting to know that every day, there is a conveyor belt of planes that come from Europe, land in Chicago, turn around, and fly back to Europe.

Northwest Indiana is very disconnected from the rest of Indiana, much like Chicago is very disconnected from the rest of Illinois. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to my own state capitol, Indianapolis. It’s a perfectly nice city, I just rarely have a reason to go there, and there is not much there worth driving almost three hours for. Why would I drive there to go to Ikea? The one in Bolingbrooke is closer!

Recently, the Irish national airline Aer Lingus made news by starting a direct route from Dublin to Indianapolis. It’s always good news when a third-tier airport gains an international connection. What was amusing about it, though, was that the partners involved spent some money on an influencer campaign to send Irish social media influencers to Indianapolis and portray it as this hip, interesting place that would justify an entire trip from Ireland to visit. Anyone from Northwest Indiana would find such a video hilarious. I don’t mean to be mean about Indy, but it’s a boring place, boring but nice. There will be more people flying to Dublin from Indy rather than the other way around.

There’s a movement in Indiana to merge it with some of the more rural counties of Illinois that feel they are being unfairly represented in Illinois because of Chicago’s political power. There’s a concurrent movement in Illinois to do the same for counties in Indiana. Indiana has even gone to the trouble of forming a border commission to explore the idea. If either state lost counties to the other, you know who wouldn’t notice at all? Northwest Indiana and Chicago. Which is probably one of the reasons why our current governor is trying to redistrict Northwest Indiana to neuter our political power.

The United States may be made up of 50 states, but those borders mean very little in practical reality. The real state borders these days are television broadcast area transmission areas. If you were designing the governance of the four states around Lake Michigan again, I doubt you would divide it up between four states. It’d be one state. Chicago. Its border would stretch from Lake Geneva in Wisconsin, around the lake to South Haven in Michigan, and South Bend in the east. It’s Southern Border? Probably US Route 30. Beyond that is Rural Indiana. Aka Mars.

It’s not something that’ll ever happen. But it’s amusing to think about. Until then, Northwest Indiana will continue to be wedged between larger powers, but with its own unique identity. It took me a long time to be proud to be from here, and I hope my fellow region rats understand the privilege we have living here, but also next to Chicago.

We Needed This – Autumn Arrives With The Rain

Autumn arrived this year with the rain. There was anticipation for days as the weather forecasters said the heat was ending, and the cool autumn would begin. The rain brought with it the cool weather we seemed to have waited all September to finally arrive. It was an unusually warm September. Until yesterday, October 6th, we were still running the air conditioner every day. It was almost 90 degrees a few days ago. But now, that should be done. Our Indian Summer has left, and the rain has brought the cold front that will probably stick with us until March or April.

One of the best things about living in a moderate, temperate place like the Midwest is that it does rain, but it doesn’t rain a lot. It usually rains just enough. A few days of wet every month to wash away the dirt and dust is enough to keep these lands green, lush, and suitably moist. We have droughts occasionally. But it’s hard to believe it when you live next to 20% of the Earth’s fresh water. What do you mean there is no water? It’s RIGHT THERE!

So, when the rain comes, it’s a bit of a treat. Sometimes it comes with a storm, which is not so much of a treat (that is, if it brings tornadoes). But mostly, it just comes on its own. A weather front that came from the west, starting as moisture collecting around the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and then pushed east by the Westerly winds and the rotation of the Earth. Sometimes the rain will come from the south or east if there is a hurricane or a big enough weather system to disrupt the normal flow of weather in the Midwest. Mostly, the rain just comes from the west.

The same weather that can seemingly starve the Great Plains of water brings it here, instead, where we have quite enough water. Such is the wonder of weather and geography that is the Midwest.

Everything gets a sheen of wet, including the dogs, who don’t much like the rain, that’s for sure. The thick rain clouds create an overall gloom that suddenly switches the brain to a thoughtful and ponderous mode. There will be more of these gloomy days to come in the next six months than there will be sunny days. That will be hard for many people, but it’s not hard for me. You have to balance sunny and gloomy, like a weather yin-yang. It also changes the tone in my house; no longer are the large windows bringing in copious sunlight. The hallways are dark and cavernous, and the library is a gloomy as it is outside. It creates a feeling of coziness, of the walls closing in for the long winter ahead.

It’s certainly autumn now. All the furniture needs to come in. The citrus plants that live outside in the summer need to come in. The pool needs to be closed. The wood store needs to be filled. The water lines need to be winterized. The garden has started to die off, giving off the last of its bounty, leaving a weedy mess to look at all winter. There’s always a long list of things to do with the seasons changing so starkly like this. When I spent a year living in California, it was so strange that when the seasons changed, we didn’t need to do any of these things. The furniture stayed outside. We could stay outside. It never got below freezing. It was unnatural. My body rejected the lack of four seasons quite forcefully.

So, I’m happy to be back here, in the autumn rain. It’s washing away the hot summer. Everything is getting a cleaning it has needed for months. The trees are drinking up what they need left before they start dropping their leaves. The tulip tree growing behind my house that started growing the year we moved in is always the first tree to turn its giant leaves. My favorite golden color. Though the walnut trees tried to cut in line this year, it wasn’t their fault. They were infested with gypsy moths this year, which ate almost their entire foliage. All that was left were the green walnuts, which fell almost all at once in the strong winds we had a few days ago. They say sturdy trees like walnuts can take one infestation of gypsy moths, so I hope the trees will be fine next year. In the meantime, it will look naked all winter.

The dense undergrowth has started to retreat, and I’m only now realizing how much lawn we’ve lost in recent years to the forest around us creeping back into the yard. I think we will be doing some clearance work this autumn. Too much mulberry. Too much honeysuckle. It’s not native, and it eats everything. We cleared a lot of vines last year, and overall, I think the older trees in the forest were healthier this year. But there’s still much clearing to do. I like to act like we can tame these woods, but one thing is true after living here for 10 years: there is very little we can actually do to tame them, other than get them to recede a bit. This property WANTS to be a forest. We’re the only ones keeping it a bay, trying to keep our patches of grass green and healthy.

It’s time for the forest to take its long nap, and for us to huddle up for winter. This is my most favorite time of year.

Note: Photo is of the newest addition to the Thomas household, my Irish Setter puppy Hudson. New life in the house during autumn is the perfect way to spend an autumn in Indiana!

An Opinionated Guide to Building Your Own Library

A smart person’s house should have a library. It is the duty of any literate, ponderous type person to have a library. But not just any library. A library that covers a wide range of knowledge and disciplines. It should exist for entertainment, but also for growing one’s own knowledge about subjects they know nothing about and possibly never really thought they’d want to know about. It’s also important to have a reference for a wide range of subjects.

The existence of Wikipedia and ebooks can make it seem like it’s no longer necessary to have a wide range of printed books in your own library. But let me ask you this: if Wikipedia went away tomorrow, would you be able to find out what you want to know? You can if you properly build out your own library.

So, as someone who has spent ten years building a library, here are my opinionated tips on the matter. Your mileage may vary; this is not gospel, but it is MY gospel.

First, your library needs its own room. Your library needs a dedicated space, and I don’t mean a corner in your living room or sewing room. No, the books need their own room entirely. The only purpose of the room is to store books and for you to read them. There should be places to sit (and they should be decorated like a library). Ideally, the room should be free from the distractions of the outside world. I will permit a smart speaker or a simple radio to listen to music while reading. The room also needs to be big enough to store a few thousand books.

How big should your library be? There is no upper limit. You should have as many books as you can fit in the room. There should be so many books that you have stacks of them on the floor because you ran out of shelf space. The books should be spilling out the door (but you should be able to shut the door occasionally).

To build in or not build in bookcases? This is up to you. Any shelves will do. I bought Billy bookcases from Ikea. They’re cheap, and they last forever. Yes, the shelves will bow if you don’t organize your books properly, but that just adds character. My biggest tip would be to decide on the color you want for your Billy Bookcases and buy all the bookcases you’ll need at once. Otherwise, you will have a schism like I do in my library. One side is Cherry Veneer, but by the time those were filled, and I started filling out the other side of the room, they had discontinued it and only had a brown veneer.

The difference is imperceptible, but I know it’s there.

Building in gives you more book space, yes. However, I like putting random things in the little space between the top of the bookcase and the ceiling. My ceilings also are not plumb or level anymore due ot the age of the house. Building in shelves would be a carpentry nightmare. There are social media ‘hacks’ that can help you turn your Ikea bookcases into ‘built-ins’, but these are a lie and won’t last the test of time. There should be no lies in your library.

As the number of books gets into the hundreds or thousands, the question of organization will arise. I’m sure some people are perfectly happy to use the Dewey Decimal System, but that’s perhaps a little too far for me. My organization is rather chaotic, and I’m not sure I like it, but I have so many books, I’m not about to reshelve them all again. I organize my books by subject/interest. As in MY favorite subjects and interests (I’m sorry, lovely wife, who must conform to my terrible system).

Examples:

British stuff (this is 1/3 of my library)
Science and science fiction
World War II
General World Non-fiction
Fiction
Fancy books – signed or leather-bound Easton Press editions (for display, not reading anyway)
Winston Churchill (he has an entire bookcase).
and so on

Beyond that, they are not organized any other way, certainly not by title or author. Like I said, it’s chaotic. And I do sometimes struggle to find a particular book, but in general, I know where a specific book is, because I bought it and put it there.

Under no circumstances are you permitted to organize your library by color. This is complete madness. Anyone who does this is a secret serial killer. The same goes for the new trend of turning the books around and only showing the white pages. That’s a particular kind of insanity that only Hannibal Lecter would appreciate.

I mentioned needing somewhere to read in the library. We have a couch and a wingback chair (plus an ottoman to put your feet up on). We also have a desk, where anyone can sit and work or write if they’re so inclined. In fact, that’s where I’m writing this little essay.

A library should not be limited to works of fiction. There should be more non-fiction than fiction in a library. A library isn’t just for entertainment; it is for learning and reference.

What should you put in your library? Well, whatever you want, but also what you SHOULD have in a library.

They’re getting hard to find these days, and are mostly outdated, but it doesn’t hurt to have a set of encyclopedias. Good for general knowledge. Buy them, put them on the shelf, and forget about them until you need to look something up. You should also have a good dictionary, bonus points if you manage to find a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but this is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. You should also have a set of ‘Great Books.’ There are several options for this, and they’re relatively easy to find in bulk at a Half Price Books or used bookstore. They will give you the most important books that everyone should read at least once.

Personally, I’ve been collecting the Harvard Classics Easton Press Editions, the ‘five-foot shelf of knowledge’ that gives you an excellent overview of the entire Western Cultural Tradition. My set is almost complete. I pick up a few volumes every year. It’s a multi-year-long quest, made easier by eBay, but I’m not in a hurry because it would take me years to read them all anyway once I set out to do so.

Then you should collect your favorite series of books. For example, I have the entire Master and Commander set by Patrick O’Brien. Have I read them? No. But I will one day. One should have the complete works of their favorite authors – I have all of Hemingway. Most people should also have Jane Austen, Dickens, Twain, etc.

You should also collect the most notable books in your favorite subjects. For example, I have a great interest in World War II, so I have iconic titles such as the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer, Richard Evans’ Trilogy, but also singularly important titles like Stalingrad or The Battle for Spain (which should be read with For Whom the Bell Tolls). I also think it’s important to understand other cultures, so I recommend having the major religious texts of all the major religions and books about them (I have the Koran, Bible, etc). You might as well have Marx as well as the major Capitalist thinkers. It is important for us to understand each other.

It’s also important not to think of your library as a to-do list. You will never read all of these books. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never read all the 2,500+ books in my library. But I could read them all. They are a promise of future knowledge. When curiosity strikes me, I’ll have the book I want. I can just go down the hall and get it.

How can you do all this affordably? Books, it turns out, are a remarkably cheap hobby to pursue. Don’t just build your library from Barnes & Noble. Books are surprisingly worth little after they’re purchased. Regularly raid the secondhand/used bookstores in your local area. They will have books for only a few dollars a title. Some are almost free. It’s a great way to build up the ‘classics’ part of your library. I generally avoid library sales, as the books are in too bad of shape. Don’t get me wrong, I have bought far too many books ‘new’ from the bookstore. But I’ve bought way more from my favorite used bookstores (my favorite of all is Lowry’s Books and More in Three Rivers, Michigan). I’m also very lucky as the editor of an online publication that I get sent lots of books for free to review or talk about on my podcast. Those are very welcome additions to the library!

How to keep track of it all? Why bother? I used to use an App called Libib, and I meticulously scanned every book in my library. But I realized it was only useful in the sense that I could make sure I didn’t buy a book twice. I stopped scanning the books years ago. I can remember who I lend my books out to, if I do at all. I can also generally remember if I already have a book. I’ve only bought a book twice, a few times in ten years of library building. Double books make good gifts for friends (or a contest for my publication).

Most of all, you should never treat building your library as work because your task will never be done. I’ve been building my library for ten years. The walls are all filled with bookcases, all the bookcases with books, yet every week, new books magically appear in the library. They are stacked on the front of the shelves. Stacked on top. Stacked on the floor. It’s only going to grow. It’s all right. There is actually virtue in having too many books. It shows you want to learn about things, and understand things.

Your library is your own personal island of knowledge, safe away from the world. No one is ever going to take it from you. They’d have to burn down your house to take it away. Besides, who’s going to move 2,000 books anyway? That’s a problem for your heirs.

Rotation is also important. You’re going to hate books you kept in your library for years and finally read. Don’t be afraid to cast them out if you no longer think they deserve a place in your library. You shouldn’t be afraid of knowledge you don’t like, but if you’re never going to read it again, let it go. There are also books that, once you read them, you realize are fluff you’re never going to read again (like a celebrity memoir). You can let those go, too. Perhaps you could have a Little Free Library in front of your house for cast-offs. I keep an ongoing box of books going to the second-hand bookstore that I can trade for more books.

In today’s practically post-literate world, the most important virtue is to want to understand and learn rather than just have a blind opinion based on ignorance or a lazy desire to just believe everything you see on social media. So, start building that library. It’s your duty as a citizen of a literate society. It is the only thing that will protect you from lies, incorrect facts, and ignorance.

I’m Go Glad They Saved Michigan City’s Old Train Station Facade

For years, my wife and I would drive by the abandoned 11th Street South Shore line train station in Michigan City, Indiana, and dream. It was a big, beautiful old building, made up of crumbling white tiles. It was the kind of building that we used to build in America all the time when we still appreciated things like classical architecture and design.

The station has been out of use for decades, it was falling down, and it needed rescuing. Located in a part of Michigan City desperate for regeneration, the station was one of those beautiful old buildings, long empty, that was abandoned in plain sight. Ignored by the people who owned it, and ignored by the people who lived around it.

I always thought the old station would make a perfect secondhand bookstore. It was big enough that it would be a massive store; you could have shelves and shelves of thousands of books. You could call it South Shore Used Books or something to that effect. It would attract people to the area, like Lowry’s Books attracts people to Three Rivers. You could ride the train right to it from Chicago!

Time and tide wait for no one. When NICTD announced its plans to redevelop the areas around the South Shore Line Station on 11th Street, the plans included tearing down most of the buildings around the station and building a new development. But in honor of the beautiful building that once stood there, the facade of the station would be saved and integrated into the new development.

I was sad to see the station building go, but I was pleased that they wanted to at least save the facade and protect a little bit of heritage. During construction, they painstakingly took the facade down and put it into storage.

Fast forward a few years, and construction has continued on the giant building. The new parking garage for the station is complete, and crucially, the new train station is complete. Well, more of a waiting room. The station is still outside, but they’ve taken the facade and made it the new entrance to a massive new waiting room for passengers to stay warm (or cool in the summer). You’re able to park your car and walk right to the station platforms through the new waiting room.

The waiting room is airy, clean, and has bathrooms. There’s also a ticket machine to buy tickets for the South Shore Line (there’s no ticket office; none of the stations along the line have those anymore since most people buy their tickets electronically these days). There’s some beautiful new art they commissioned that shows off the history of the South Shore Line (and there’s a timeline showing the history of the rail line). It’s all really well done.

Generally, I’m against ‘facadism’ – taking the front of an old building and then building something completely new behind it. But in this case, when it was either use the facade or throw it out, I’m fine with it. My only real complaint about the whole thing is that because of the placement of the actual train station, you can’t get a good view of the facade or photograph it properly without the new station being in the way.

A minor gripe.

But I’m so very glad they saved this little bit of heritage. So much is going to be changing in Michigan City in the coming years; a lot of blight is going to be swept away, so I hope this stands as an example of a sensitive reuse, respecting what came before while still doing something new and innovative. It will be so easy to just sweep everything away and build anew. It takes effort to preserve something, anything.

I’m glad this got preserved, even if I can now never open that bookstore inside.

Farewell to the Michigan News Agency in Kalamazoo, Michigan

On a recent visit to Kalamazoo, Michigan, I was sad to learn that an icon of Southwest Michigan letters had closed. Whenever I was up that way, I was always sure to stop in at the Michigan News Agency; it was a lovely place to pick up newspapers and stock up on magazines (it was also a nice bookstore as well).

If I were in Kalamazoo, I would always do two things: pick up some donuts at Sweetwater’s Donut Mill and visit Michigan News Agency.

So, when I knew I was going to be in Kalamazoo on other business, I planned to stop in and pick up some new magazines (I have been making an effort lately to read more magazines, and my phone less). When my son and I showed up, there was a handwritten sign that said closed, and “thanks for everything, Kalamazoo.”

I peered inside and saw that all the magazine shelves were empty, but the books were still there. A single light provided sad illumination.

When we sat down for lunch, I opened up my phone to find out what happened and was sad to learn that the owner, Dean Margaret Hauck, had died, and her business died with her, as her children weren’t interested in running a newsstand. Dean Hauck died in February 2025 at age 86, which is a ripe old age, and it was surprising to realize she ran the place practically until she died. In pictures, I recognized her; she was always the one to check me out when I bought magazines. I didn’t realize all this time that she was the owner.

Her children have plans for the storefront, but they don’t appear to involve running a newsstand.

Which is a real shame. There are very few real newsstands anymore in the Midwest. In fact, Michigan News Agency was one of the last. According to my cursory research, the last ones left are the Chicago Main Newsstands in Chicago and Evanston (which I have been to and love as well). There was a time when every town and city had a news agency. Even LaPorte, Indiana, had a news agency where you could buy newspapers from all over the world (but it closed shortly after we moved here).

It’s blindingly obvious that we currently live in troubling times, and one of the fundamental, wonderful things about America is its vibrant print media tradition. Many people don’t read print magazines today, preferring their phones over everything else, but they’re still being printed and not just about politics. There is quite literally a magazine for every interest – whether it’s tattoos, model trains, airplanes, geography, or even British country life. Newsstands are a treasure trove to discover these wonderful niche publications that are still going at it, despite all the forces against them.

I’ve recently started reading print magazines again. Like most people, I’m obsessed with my phone, but I’ve found that it’s broken my brain in ways that I’m only starting to understand. It’s destroyed my attention span when I used to love reading long-form writing in the media. So, for the last few months, I’ve been going to bookstores and newsstands and buying up stacks of magazines, and reading those instead of reading my phone. It’s really done well to repair my brain a bit, and it’s lovely to have the tactile feel of a magazine with the printed word on the page.

So, I was very excited to go up to Kalamazoo to stop by and get another stack of magazines.

Oh well.

Chicago Main Newsstand is just as close as Kalamazoo for me, so I guess I’ll just go there more now. There are also a few regular bookstores around that have decent magazine selections – like Reader’s World in Holland, Michigan. Even my local Barnes & Noble has a passable collection. But the nice thing about Newsstands, is they keep old magazines on the shelf until they sell out, so it was a good way to get, say, a stack of a month’s worth of Economist magazines at a time.

I feel sorry for Dean Hauck; her life was dedicated to her newsstand, and it’s now closed for good. Like I said recently on another matter on Ephemera, once we lose these things, we won’t get them back. People aren’t opening new newsstands these days. I can’t imagine why anyone would bother, which I suppose explains the thought process of Hauck’s heirs.

Goodbye, Michigan News Agency. Goodbye, Dean Hauck. You both will be missed dearly.

Once We Lose These Things We’ll Never Get Them Back

Michigan City, Indiana, has several notable landmarks along its Lakeshore, and most of them are industrial or institutional. There’s the cooling tower that everyone thinks is a nuclear power plant (it is not). There’s the NIPSCO generating station. There’s the State Prison, with a history going back to the Civil War. There was a lot more industrial heritage in Michigan City, but most of it has been swept away (for example, Pullman rail cars used to be made here). We’re about to lose something else, and I’m afraid that no one seems to be cut up about it, and that bothers me. I’m talking about the Coal Tower over the railroad tracks along Route 12.

It is not exactly what many would call beautiful. It’s a hulking mass of concrete sitting over some railroad tracks. It has been out of use longer than it was ever used. But it has been part of our built landscape since it was constructed about 100 years ago. It was purpose-built – and state-of-the-art technology – to drop coal into steam engines quickly and efficiently. But by the 1950s and 60s, steam was a thing of the past, and it wasn’t needed anymore. But because it was built of reinforced concrete, it wasn’t going anywhere, so it was easier to just leave it than do anything about it.

So, the structure has rotted in a way that concrete crumbles, bit by bit, but never in any real danger of falling. But in the time it became redundant, until today, it has become a landmark, and not just for locals. It’s no secret that this area is enjoyed by people who aren’t from here, especially those from Illinois who come to Indiana and Michigan to spend their summers along our lakeshore (this is primarily because Illinois doesn’t have the good beaches, while we do). The coal tower was a way marker. Since everyone had to pass by it, everyone knew where it was. If you were going up to, say, St Joseph or Holland, Michigan, from Chicago, then the tower would be your halfway point. If you were staying in Beachwalk in Michigan City, you could tell people to turn before the coal tower.

This hulking mass is now a part of the built landscape of this area. It’s been made beautiful by many artists who have painted it or photographed it in the right light. It’s been romanticized in a way that can only happen when something has just been around and is not going anywhere. We don’t really build things to last in this country, but this coal tower has survived a century, even while being completely useless for half a century.

And now, it’s being torn down.

It’s a simple math equation. The nature of the concrete structure meant the authorities that own the tracks (Amtrak), could ignore it. But the condition of the structure is getting worse, and with several passenger trains a day passing underneath it, Amtrak has a choice. They can either start maintaining the structure to arrest any further decay – a structure they don’t use or need at all, or they can tear it down and never have to worry about it again. They’ve chosen the latter. I don’t expect the people who run Amtrak in Washington, DC, to understand what a landmark the structure is. But I wish they did.

It’s coming down. Soon. This week, I saw the demolition crews surveying the scene to plan how they were going to take it down (and I’m very curious as to how they intend to do it – will they just blow it up?). It’s a major operation to remove the coal tower. They will have to close a critical cross-country rail line for five days to bring down the tower and clean up the mess it’ll cause. I suspect they’ll be working around the clock to make it happen. And then, in a few weeks, there will be no sign at all that it was ever there.

In the United Kingdom, a country I admire greatly, partly because they go to great lengths to protect heritage and the built landscape, if something was torn down and was considered a historically significant building, they would require whoever tore it down to rebuild it brick by brick. We don’t have laws like that here. Once something is gone, it is gone forever.

No one is ever going to build a coal drop tower over the railroad tracks again. There will be a lot of change coming to the Michigan City lakeshore in the coming years. The NIPSCO plant will be shutting down and demolished. The State Prison should be shutting down (though recent policy changes indicate that might not happen), and new buildings are being constructed with funding from Chicago developers. I hope that in the process of this new renaissance in Michigan City, we don’t completely sweep away the heritage and landscape that made this place unique.

Did you know that Lighthouse Place Mall used to have a restored building from the Pullman Factory? It was a gorgeous and smart reuse of an old building that respected the heritage of the place while coming into new use. Then one day, practically in the cover of night, the owners of the mall deemed it unprofitable and tore it down before anyone could object. There’s only a field of grass now where that beautiful old factory building stood. It’s been a field of grass for twenty years now. Once these things are gone, we never get them back.

Consider this your warning, Michigan City.

The Indiana Landscape That Went to War

Rural Indiana is a place that evokes two things: flatness and corn. And, for the most part, you would be right. Indiana is indeed a very flat place (at least in the big middle). And corn is the preferred crop, though that has given way somewhat to soy. So, it’s not a place that evokes being the engine of war.

For a brief period in the 1940s, it was the engine of war.

Indiana is blessed with geography. It’s at a crossroads in the USA – of the roads and of the railways. This makes it useful in times of war. And during World War II, a small town just outside of LaPorte, Indiana became one of the biggest munitions factories in the world: The Kingsbury Ordnance Plant. Driving through the Indiana landscape, if you didn’t know it was there, you would never notice it. But it’s there.

Here you had a vast open space, well connected to the rail network with close access to the Great Lakes (and thus the Atlantic Ocean). It was in the middle of nowhere but close enough to major cities that finding labor would not be hard. It was located thousands of miles from the nearest coastline, so it was safe from foreign bombardment and air forces. And it would be easy to disguise the operations within the landscape. It’s remoteness also made it safe: if there was an accident, it’s damage could be contained.

Kingsbury, Indiana became a wartime boomtown. The American war economy was a boom time, which, despite wartime, was most welcome after the austerity of the Great Depression. There was a labor shortage, and thousands of people had to be lured to rural Laporte County Indiana, then only home to 16,000 people (today, it’s population is still rather small at around 110,000).

Thousands of workers, at one time over 21,000, were brought in from all over the country and lived in a newly constructed town called Kingsford Heights. It was one factory, one-industry town. Shrouded in secrecy. Many employees were women since the men were sent away to war. It was dangerous and dirty work. Many had health issues for the rest of their lives.

The Kingsbury Ordnance Plan sprawled across 13,000 acres. There were dozens of factory buildings, each connected to the railways, separated by safe distances in case of accidents. An entire infrastructure was put into place to support the factories. Machine shops. Water towers. Warehouses. Canteens. Offices.

And here, they made the bombs, shells and bullets that fueled the ‘arsenal of freedom’ that was sent over to Europe. That supplied our allies. That leveled German and Japanese cities. That led us to victory.

Kingsbury did its job. And when the war was over, it wasn’t needed anymore. It was briefly reactivated for the Korean War but has been abandoned since 1960. And by abandoned, I mean that it’s mostly still there, rotting away in plain sight.

While the security cordons and military patrols are long gone, the infrastructure is still largely there. Many former factory buildings, built with reinforced concrete are now warehouses, and there’s a vibrant core of businesses that operate in them. Other, less useful buildings have been left to rot and are falling down, leading to the picture of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You could film The Walking Dead here and not need to dress the set.

Much of the area was returned to farmland or given to the state of Indiana, who set it aside as the Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife area. In these places, you can wander around in overgrown fields, dotted with former munitions stores, steel doors long broken into. These ghostly bunkers, a remnant of a war long gone, sit there, abandoned in the landscape. They’re too difficult to demolish. Too dangerous to demolish. So, they’re still there. And will probably be there for hundreds of years.

There are dozens of them. Inside is the detritus of decades of teenagers up to no good. Garbage. Graffiti. Drug needles. If you grow up in Kingsbury, it’s a cool place to hang out in the dark nights of rural Indiana. When you walk amongst these silent sentries, you only hear the wildlife and the occasional gunshots of the people there to kill it.

It’s a scarred landscape. But a landscape where the wildlife has returned and is thriving. Even where the signs warn you that the land is contaminated and never to enter, they grow corn where they can, on land that one hopes isn’t still contaminated. There are large areas where nothing grows but grass. In the winter, when the land freezes and unfreezes, local farmers have reported hearing explosions as long-forgotten buried munitions manage to still explode.

When you approach by road and see the former factories, now working warehouses, it’s a chilling sight. It’s very reminiscent of a concentration camp. Railway lines go to each building, the complex is still surrounded by barb wire and is guarded. What are they doing in there? A few hardy people live out here, in mobile homes or industrial buildings converted to homes. It’s a muddy, dirty place. Many work the land that surrounds them.

In the areas that are no longer fenced off and part of the Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife Area, you’re free to wander and explore – at your own risk. You can walk along the streets that are now mostly grassed over. Peek inside the former munitions stores. Listen to the birds and the silence of rural Indiana. Despite what the place represents, it has a harsh beauty to it. And I love it.

It feels like walking through a town that was abandoned and razed. It’s weird walking through a cornfield surrounded by paved roads. This was industry. This was war. Now, it’s nature. And this is life.

The most chilling thought when you visit this place is that when you realize that most of the infrastructure is still there. The roads are still there. The rails are still there. The fences and buildings are still there. The electricity and water towers are still there.

It could all, quite easily, be spooled up again to manufacture death and destruction.