"I don't know what to tell you about Muncie, but it's a dying town," says Ron Cantrell, working the cash register of a dusty liquor store on the south side of town, where things are bleakest. "It's almost dead. It's like a cockroach lying there with its legs in the air."
Muncie looks okay from certain angles, kind of like America. North of the White River, which bisects Muncie, things are pretty good. There's Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital, both large employers. There's Muncie Mall and the big-box stores, aMiddletown, Teetering On the Dividend -- why would anyone shop in Muncie's historic downtown anymore? How could those little shops possibly compare with Wal-Mart?
South of the river is the industrial part of town, and this is where you see the frayed seams of the Rust Belt. Here are the slumped houses, the abandoned fast-food joint, the wreckage of a leveled auto parts plant. Manufacturing jobs, long the backbone of the city's economy, have been leaving. Muncie has lost more than 10,000 people since 1980, and the population is now 66,000.
Yeah, I recognize the Muncie I know. Meanwhile, here are the Muncie Star-Press' headlines for Local News,
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