Whitestown is booming. About 15 years ago the tiny Indiana town annexed a large parcel of land to its south and, through developers, started building shopping centers, homes, and apartments. It was making a solid bid to become the next Indianapolis suburb. It is succeeding wildly.
When I moved to Indianapolis in the mid 1990s, Whitestown was just this dying railroad town in the middle of nowhere. It was so much in the middle of nowhere that people used Whitestown as the butt of middle-of-nowhere jokes.
I also heard it said that Whitestown was aptly named because that’s the color your skin had better be if you found yourself there. I’ve heard that said about a number of small Indiana towns. I don’t know if it’s true, but racism is alive and well enough in Indiana that it’s plausible.
As Whitestown expanded, nearby Zionsville realized it had better expand, too, or it would soon be surrounded by Whitestown. Over the last 15 years, all of southeastern Boone County has come to be part of either Whitestown or Zionsville. It’s how the home I live in is part of Zionsville despite being 4½ miles away from its downtown. From my front door, I can walk to Zionsville’s border with Whitestown in just a few minutes.
The only reason Margaret and I ever go up to old Whitestown, about 3½ miles directly north of us, is because there’s a nice brewpub up there in the old school building. Really, the heart of Whitestown is now the modern shopping strip on the main road by our house. They’ve even moved the town hall to that strip.
But I’m forever looking for fresh things to photograph, especially since I’m stuck working at home thanks to COVID-19. I loaded some Kodak Verichrome Pan (expired 6/1981) into my Yashica-12 not long ago and drove up to Whitestown on my lunch hour.
After I photographed the Jeep Cherokee in front of the brewpub, I soon encountered it parked on the main road with its driver inside. He was very obviously watching me shoot the rest of this roll of film. Everywhere I walked, if I turned to look at the Jeep I found its driver looking directly at me. Because you never know if a middle-aged man making photographs with a 50-year-old TLR is going to suddenly bust a store window and start looting.
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