5-17-2026: Anderson to Indianapolis; a Day of Futility

 I finally figured out how to get the images off my camera. It was time to catch up with my travails and troubles of this past Sunday.

Anderson's Applewood - Target is gone.

I stopped for lunch here close by IU

I had the chicken shwarma, and it was good. The Chinese restaurant I went to after my sentencing with CC and Ray S is gone. Perhaps it was an omen of things gone. It was the last time I saw Ray.

Then I got to the IU campus:

 I think I knew there was to be a fair at Military Park across the street from the McKinney Law School. If I knew, I had forgotten. The day being hot and not being able to find a parking spot, so I headed towards the closest parking garage I knew of. It cost me $20.

Walking from the garage to the law school, I passed across the canal. It looks like a bit of Venice dropped in on Indianapolis, or so it is probably hoped.

 When I got to the law library, it was closed. Sweating, tired, and put out with my lost time. The event at the park looked like it would cost money. Between that and my inflamed temper, all I wanted was to get out of the area.

 Some views of the area then:

 

 

I headed east looking for K's 2-in-1. I stopped at Irvington Plaza, or what there was of it. When I was a kid, more than 53 years ago, there was life and business here. 

The building in the background was a bowling alley. I remember going there with my cousin Paul. It had to be 1971 or 1972, when he was at Purdue. I associate The Loggins & Messina song “Your Mama Don't Dance” with the visit, so most likely 1972. The red-roofted building was the Dairy Queen my mother would take us to; she had a milk allergy and it seems to me she could eat at DQ.

In the second photograph, there was a Haag's Drug Store at the corner. Here was where I first saw Vampirella and Creepy comics. There was an S & H Green Stamps store further up the buildings. Mom collected stamps, I recall putting them in the books and a couple of shopping trips there. Haag's and S & H are long gone.

 

All is empty, as decayed as the pavement.

Continuing east searching for an office supply store, I found a Karma store. Once our most wide-ranging record store. This is at Post Road and Washington Street. I recall buying my copies of Mott the Hoople's Mott, Graham Parker's Squeezing Out the Sparks, and Stiffs Live there. All three records are now long, long gone. 

 

Also decayed was Washington Square. Memory says it was to be built after my family moved back to Anderson in 1973. It forced the closing of Eastgate, the mall we most often shopped at when I was a kid and the first enclosed mall in Indianapolis. 

 I did not find the store I looked for, so I went searching for my great-aunt's grave. 

 

 

I falled in that, too.

 

Then I headed north to another Staples. I had some old woman start to sideswipe me. Driving regresses me into a foul-tempered, cranky old man. No luck finding what I searched for, so I came home with my nerves frayed and my temper throbbing.

 

Everything hoped for went unaccomplished. Futility, all was futility. But it was a bright, sunny day.

 

sch