An Old, Forgotten Factory Town

"Nothin' beats an Indiana sunset!"

That's what every Hoosier said to me. My grandparents, my parents, their friends, my friends' parents, my teachers, my neighbors... everyone. I heard it time and time again, but I never really understood the appeal of it. To me, it was just a sunset, and I had certainly seen prettier ones. I was a senior in high school counting down the days until I could leave it all behind.

I lived in an old city full of buildings that wouldn't pass any type of inspection and people that were mostly the same. Everything was falling apart at the seams, and hope was a distant dream. The booming automobile factory had long since been relocated out of the country, and illegal drugs and desperate behavior had taken its place.

It was a forgotten city. It was a city whose name when uttered brought a grimace to the face of all who were familiar with it.

"Oh, you live there?"

Yes, yes I did. I lived on a road filled with potholes that would never be filled next to people whose souls would likely never be healed.

And the politicians didn't care. Sure, they would talk about how the city's best days were ahead of it! They would try to entice companies to build there with enticing tax breaks, but it would almost always fail. Nobody wanted to set up shop in a city whose best days were behind it. People didn't want to invest in hope, because they feared they would sow nothing but failure and debt.

And, really, I couldn't blame them. If I were a booming business, I wouldn't place all my eggs in that basket. That basket was flimsy at best, and had a gaping hole in the bottom at worst. I would've taken a paper sack over that basket!

I hadn't known the city in its glory days. My parents talked about spending hours at the mall downtown and catching movies at the theater just around the corner. Every building looked new, and the people did, too. Most residents were middle-class, and poverty wasn't a huge issue in the area. The churches took care of the poor and destitute, and everyone had what they needed.

It sounded like a utopia to me. I worked at a small family-run store downtown at the time, and I could hardly walk a block without someone harassing me, intimidating me, or asking me for money. It never angered me, though; it just made me sad. Everywhere I looked, I saw decay and ruin. I tried to imagine what it must have looked like before, but I just knew I could never get it quite right, never could do it justice.

So, I spent as much time in nature as I could. The park was a nice escape from the faded facades and graffiti. Even in the wintertime, I would bundle up and go on a walk. I could pretend I was in a nice suburb somewhere, or even in Central Park! I could pretend I was anywhere but that old factory town in the middle of Indiana.

Now that I'm older, I think I understand what all those Hoosiers meant about the sunsets, though. There is something special about an Indiana sunset. And it doesn't really have anything to do with the pink and orange and yellow ombre that's painted across the sky or the way the light illuminates barren tree branches dancing with each other on a windy winter evening. In fact, it doesn't really have much to do with appearance, at all.

Nothin' beats an Indiana sunset, because nothin' beats the way it feels to belong somewhere. Those crumbling buildings were my crumbling buildings. Those graffiti-covered bridges were my graffiti-covered bridges. Those potholes were my potholes. That poorly-maintained public park was my poorly-maintained public park. And that sunset? That was my sunset. That was my home.

And nothin' beats home.