Some new photos from Fort Wayne

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Thursday afternoon, I visited Muncie, Indiana. This 1951 Buick Eight with Dynaflow transmission was sitting in the drive-up lane of an abandoned bank on Elm Street in downtown Muncie.
 
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Wilshire Home Furnishings has a banner over the door advertising a Memorial Day Celebration. The store is on State Street (US-33 and State Route 49) in the small town of Willshire, Ohio. It shares this yellow brick building with the town's American Legion post.
 
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This is one of the entrances to the old trailer park on the south side of Sandpoint Road, between the railroad tracks and Arbor Avenue, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The people living in the trailer behind the fence hung this string of metallic mylar American flags for Memorial Day. I photographed them about a week later.​

When I was a kid, this trailer park had signs saying that it was called Cozy Acres, but I don't know if that is still the name of the place.​
 
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Saturday afternoon, my son and I had lunch at Magic Wand, a locally owned restaurant in the small town of Churubusco, Indiana. This car was parked outside.
 
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Huge signs advertising a going out of business sale cover the windows of Party Wizards, a locally owned store on McGalliard Road in Muncie, Indiana.

According to the local newspaper, the store closed at the end of last year because of competition from the internet.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
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This is one of the entrances to the old trailer park on the south side of Sandpoint Road, between the railroad tracks and Arbor Avenue, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The people living in the trailer behind the fence hung this string of metallic mylar American flags for Memorial Day. I photographed them about a week later.​

When I was a kid, this trailer park had signs saying that it was called Cozy Acres, but I don't know if that is still the name of the place.​
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Just wondering Chris, are most of the residents of trailer parks permanent? Over here many trailer parks are being sold off to developers, and the (usually low income and pensioner) residents are faced with eviction with nowhere else to park their trailer.
 
lynnb said:
Just wondering Chris, are most of the residents of trailer parks permanent? Over here many trailer parks are being sold off to developers, and the (usually low income and pensioner) residents are faced with eviction with nowhere else to park their trailer.
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Yes, most here are permanent. Because housing is extremely inexpensive in Fort Wayne (You can buy a nice house in a middle class neighborhood for $100,000 here, and $300,000 will get you a gigantic house in a rich neighborhood), the only people who live in trailers are the EXTREMELY poor. Most are white, which is why poor whites here are often called "Trailer Trash."
 
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This graffiti was on a desk in a computer lab in one of the middle schools where I teach. It says:​

You know your screwed when the Asian says "F**k."​

I have to admit that I had to think about this one for a few minutes before I understood the message, though obviously at least one other student 'got it,' as evidenced by the comment under it (true).​

Fort Wayne has a large community of Asian immigrants, most of them from Burma. The Burmese kids rarely curse, unlike the White, Black, and Hispanic kids, many of whom curse like sailors. The writer of this graffiti is saying that something really bad has to happen to get one of the Asian kids to say the F-Word!

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Here's a close crop of the image so you can see the words.
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This giant inflatable Riccar vacuum cleaner caught my attention because it, like many advertisements, uses the American flag to sell a product. In this case, it is legitimate; Riccar's sweepers are made in the United States, unlike most others.​

The giant sweeper stands in front of T&H Sweeper Company, a locally owned store on McGalliard Road in Muncie, Indiana. It is right next to the former Party Wizards store that I also photographed on the same afternoon.​
 
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This large, beautiful, whitewashed brick house was built in the 19th Century on the west side of Winchester Road, north of Airport Expressway, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The yellow motel chairs and their matching table are modern versions, but they look like they've always been there.​

I went back to this house three times over a week trying to get the light I wanted. Ironically, this photograph from my first visit turned out to be one of my favorites after I had a few weeks to 'live with' the photographs that I made over those three visits.​
 
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This house is on Huron Street, in the working class West Main Street area of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I stopped to photograph it because of the large American flag that covers the side of the house's front porch.​

The owner, an old man with a big beard, was sleeping in a chair on the porch when I arrived. I had a hard time waking him to ask permission to photograph as he was a very sound sleeper, despite having loud rock music playing!​

When he woke, he invited me to sit and talk, and told me that his name was Bill. The flag belonged to his father, a World War II veteran.​
 
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This old house is a well-known landmark in New Haven, the small town on the eastern edge of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The house, located on State Road 930 (Lincoln Highway), was built in the 19th Century to look like a medieval castle.​

As long as I can remember, it has been used as a business location, rather than a home. The area where it is located became heavily industrialized in the mid-20th Century, and the house is surrounded by car dealers, trucking companies, and factories.​

It is currently a used car lot called Castle Automart. The owner is an Iranian-American named Tony who came to the United States to go to school in the 1970s. He loved it here, and decided to stay after finishing his education.

Tony spent a lot of time talking with me about the Castle's history; he bought it because he loved the old building's distinctive architecture.​
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
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Yesterday evening was the opening of an exhibit that included two of my photographs at the Artlink gallery in downtown Fort Wayne, Indiana. This 1949 Cadillac sedan was parked in the lot next to the Auer Center, the building on Main Street where the gallery is located.​

Every square inch of this classic car's body is covered in thousands of pennies! Only the chrome parts and the nameplates and emblems were left un-covered.​
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I was on a Boy Scout outing back when I was much younger, and we had stopped in a gas station in Pendleton. At the next pump was a vinyl covered Cadillac, a brand new '64 Sedan de Ville. And it wasn't just any old vinyl, but had multi-colored metal flake in it. I got to talking with the owner, and he said he took it to car shows as a marketing tool for his business. I remember thinking I didn't want to live in a vinyl covered world.

PF
 
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The day before my son's high school graduation, I had to take him to the Allen County Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne for the graduation practice. All of the high schools in Fort Wayne Community Schools have their graduation ceremonies at the Coliseum.​

Instead of having the ceremony in the Coliseum's main arena, South Side High School used part of the Expo Center, the huge convention hall attached to the Coliseum. Temporary stands with blue plastic stadium seats were set up around the sides of the room for the graduates' families to watch.​

The stands are empty in this photograph because few parents were there for the practice ceremony; many of the kids drove themselves.​
 
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Here's another photograph from the small town of Willshire, Ohio. This furniture store on the main highway through the town was decorated for the Memorial Day holiday that was a week before I made this photo.
 
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A pair of expired parking meters adorn Archie Arnold's tombstone at the Scipio Cemetery in rural Allen County's Scipio Township.

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Mr. Arnold, who was born in 1920, and died in 1982, certainly had a sense of humor! He was dying from liver disease when he damaged two parking meters in a traffic accident. After paying to replace them, he asked to keep the damaged ones, which he repainted and kept for his grave.

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He wrote them into his will, requiring his family to mount the expired parking meters on his headstone! The back of the tombstone, shown in my photograph, has a quote engraved upon it: "Fear the Lord and tell the people what you want."

Below is a close crop from the image showing one of the parking meters:

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