A Friday Diary
September 16, 2022
Muncie, IN
First, to answer the question, when does your day begin. I have a delivery job in the early hours of the morning. The major point of interest this morning was the moon, now at the end of the third quarter, and smatterings of fog, which likely will settle in more as daylight approaches.
I sleep poorly once I get home. When I finally quit wrestling with it, I do succumb for a few hours and wake just in time to ready myself and walk a few blocks uptown to listen a lunchtime jazz band out on the county building plaza. Which could have been yesterday, since no band is playing when I arrive. The weather is perfect, so no chance of a cancellation. I figure I have my days wrong.
A perfect excuse to get some steps in. Many days I fail to achieve even a modest target number. Uptown has come alive over the years, waking from a long snooze. But today I notice few people out and about and few cars. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the roadways have been less crowded. And now it continues, perhaps the new order of things. Even around campus seemed lacking in the numbers of students yesterday as I drove back from lunch. When I stop at the bank, the teller says since Covid their traffic inside has drastically reduced. Even the drive thru, which she often mans when I choose that option. Which is almost always now. This is my first venture inside in quite a while. She always calls me Mr. followed my first name. Sometimes she misspells my last name or drops a consonant or two. Which I consider part of her charm.
Before the bank, I went up to the second-floor suite of the county board of health. Today has become a day of dropping in somewhere as I pass by to ask a question I might otherwise have called on the phone for an answer. I want to know the current advice on boosters and flu shots. Naturally, since it is lunchtime, the person who knows is gone. Later I hear the answer on the radio as I drive to an auto parts salvage yard. It is safe to combine two at the same time. Probably something our great great grandchildren will be doing each autumn.
I stop in the Muncie Map store, because I have been wondering how in the 1800s they were able to make picture maps of cities from an elevation, like a hill or a tall building. But neither would exist then. Today, we would use a helicopter or drone. Probably then they viewed the city in hot air balloons. A map of Muncie shows the White River splitting. One fork goes by an old mill, and on one map I saw it called a race. Down by The Elm Street Brewery is Race Street, for which I now understand how it got its name. The map store can make custom maps of most cities. One example I was shown was of two maps of the cities a couple each were born in, each map surrounded by snippets of their wedding vows. Pretty cool.
I am wending my way down to Canon Commons just in case the jazz band his playing there, but nothing is going on. So instead of sending a message, I stop at the Rose Court to verify an October gig for First Thursday night art night. More steps, back to Canon Commons, over to High Street and up to The Caffeinery. I start chatting with a woman from Europe who is sitting outside. She and her husband come to Muncie each month for his business, which has started up recently on the edge town. I ask her if she likes movies, which of course nearly everyone does. I mention a Jimmy Cagney movie, One, Two, Three. Directed by Billy Wilder about a Coca-Cola executive in Germany in the 60s. He runs a tight ship at the office and fires off orders 1, 2, 3, accompanied by the score from the Sabre Dance. She says her husband is like that, but we laugh that he may not recognize himself in the movie. And then it’s time for her to go pick him up.
I’m glad to see The Caffeinery is still open, but I want something more to eat for lunch than they offer, so I order fish tacos from Casa del Sol. While waiting I walk down the street and decide to check out Accutech and the restaurant they have opened. Accutech’s mission is to keep the downtown a vital place, having recently purchased Vera Mae’s, which consistently has been rated as one of the top ten restaurants in the state of Indiana. I have worried often what would happen when K and S would decide to move on. Something I knew it was a possibility since they love spending time in New Orleans. And now they have. I spoke with them two nights ago, and they reassured me they still would keep a presence in Muncie, just not running the restaurant.
Inside Accutech I am greeted by an 18-hole micro golf course, obviously designed by a demented a person who enjoys playing games and seeing people struggle. Each hole has a named scenario. It looks like a lot of fun. I am talking with a Ball State senior who bubbles with enthusiasm while talking about the place. She’s a great ambassador. She and her husband are living here, serving a two-year ministry engaging in the community centered at their apartment complex. One night a month, a fun night, and one night a month, a Bible study night.
I pick up my street tacos, make notes for my daily diary, and walk home. I have promised someone to look for a for an inexpensive vehicle, so I drive to a junkyard. A trip complicated by all the railroad crossings being torn up. Muncie is plagued with a dearth of rough or closed crossings. The rails on one line have been replaced with new while the old rails have been laid in a rut the workers have carved out. As cars go over the filled-in gravel, the rut gets deeper. This was the most horrible way they could have done it instead of cutting the old tracks as they went and removing them. It’s certainly been a challenge lately getting from point A to point B. Some of the closures have remain barricaded for days, some are open and closed and opened and closed so often we can’t keep up.
The junkyard changed hands a few years ago. I heard it was bought by some Mexican, when in fact it was bought by a man from India. He is related to a family whose last name is known in Muncie. Several doctors, I think. He has bought property around his yard, establishing his own little fiefdom. He is away and I spend over half an hour talking with a mother and daughter who are waiting as well. We talk about travels in California, up and down Highway 1 along the coast. San Diego to LA. Reminisce about road atlases and how we loved marking our routes on them in colored markers, circling cities we have visited. Talk about observatories and “maps on a ball.” Once the owner comes back, we tell him to go away, we are having too much fun talking.
More driving to help a friend and then finally home. A short nap, and work on my diary entry. I check emails and find the jazz group was on the schedule to play today. I know someone in the band and will have to ask if the schedule was wrong. He once said, repeating some famous musician, I think, if you have a gig, show up. No matter the size of the audience, play.
Later I walk over to the Second Story Lounge above The Downtown Farmstand. I remember the old days of my youth when merchants would hose off the sidewalks each morning and give the street scene a fresh sparkle. Downtown itself now is certainly cleaner than twenty, thirty years ago, but away from Walnut Street, the sidewalks need a good sweeping. My move to the Old West End meant I thought I’d walk around downtown much more often than I do, but dust and rocks from the street make for a less than ideal experience. Still, the walk tonight is pleasant enough. The sun begins to set as I look back west down Jackson Street, the orange fireball framed between the overhanging tree limbs. It’s like an old painting of Muncie, looking down the pike near the river.
Super Cosmic, a band based out of Indy and Greenfield, is on the menu tonight. A blend of songs from The Band, The Grateful Dead, The Stones, and other tunes from that era. Plus, some original cuts. The two guitars in the group take off on some extended jams, playing off each other.
One of the wives of the band mates and I joke about the drummer. How he follows his own drummer, so to say. I mention how I saw him on the street as I was coming in, and he asked if I was here for the music, and I had to lead the way for him to find the place. Like a lost puppy. (This really isn’t true.) The first set ends with a good twenty-minute long Pink Floyd homage.
Today is the left-handed guitarist’s birthday, so the second set leads off with a happy birthday song. Cake is being served, but I must leave, keeping to my daily schedule. D and S have created a great space there on the second floor. I wish more people were aware of it. One street over from Walnut on Mulberry could be one street too far away, but two women did come up tonight, having heard the music while walking by.
The computer at home beckons, and I tidy up some of the diary I wrote earlier, and then look to see if One, Two, Three is available to stream. Find it on a site I never quite know is safe. The fast-paced humor holds up well, but I do wonder if it strikes the same chord with a generation that has grown up after the Cold War. The heel clicks from the ex-Nazi’s in the movie morph into the red slippers from the Wizard of Oz, and a swirling wand from the good witch from the North, and I nod off into the land of dreams.