Jet lag didn't let me sleep in much, which suited Suki fine since she usually rouses Tay at 6:30 every morning to feed her. I was in the mood for doughnuts, so I grabbed Tay's car keys and slid behind the wheel for the first time in about 9 months. I drove over first to Long's Bakery, widely regarded as the best doughnut shop in Indy, and bought a half dozen donuts. They were amazing. Some of the best doughnuts I've ever had. Especially the apple cinnamon. And the glazed doughnuts we're a bit like Krispy Kreme's in the way they melt in your mouth, but without the KK donut deflation that I usually find in their glazed.
I'd finished half the box just on the way back home. First though, we needed some food.
I stopped at Tay's grocery store, about a fifteen minute walk away, a Kroger which looked like a typical depressed and impoverished neighborhood supermarket. It was still a treat and contained varieties and foods I'd not seen since leaving the US. I envied the peanut butter aisle. They even had a few local craft beers on sale.
I bought a bunch of staples: tea, coffee, cereal, more eggs, country sausage, bacon, fruits, vegetables. Tay doesn't cook much, he takes the approach of eating foods which are reasonably healthy and can be fixed in five minutes or less. So he usually eats a lot of salads, sandwiches, and things he can throw on the George Foreman grill.
After putting away the groceries and washing the dishes in the sink, I decided to take a stroll to The Circle, located about a mile and a half south of where Tay lives.
Indianapolis was a city by fiat and geometry: when the state was being established, it was decided that a capital city was required, and it was arbitrarily located in the geographic center of the state. There was nothing actually here except a small forest and an unnavigable small and sandy river. The city was designed as a grid a mile square, with a circle in the center and four diagonal streets radiating away from the circle. This was the nucleus of the city.
Indy reminds me a lot of St. Louis- they shared similar boom times and the brick architecture, landscape, and feel of an impoverished, abandoned, and corroded industrial city. Tay's neighborhood, one of the early neighborhoods outside of the city center, was built of elegant and stately houses likely for the city elites and upper middle class. The years saw the neighborhood decline in the predictable way, and it was only recently with renewed interest in the urban cores that the neighborhood began to improve and attract new residents. These resi-dental streets are still gap-toothed, but I get the feeling that this will not last.
There are ton of war monuments in Indy, the center of the city is given over to them, including the giant confectionary white pillar and fountains which take up the entire circle. This monument commemorates the "soldiers and sailors" who died in the wars leading up to the erection of the monument before WWI. The city tarted up the column with string lights as a Christmas tree, a move which I at first found incredibly tacky but then softened the more I read the plaques and memorials. Many of the wars commemorated rank among the most unjust in the history of the US: the land grab that was the Mexican war, wars to exterminate and dispossess the Indians. It is nice, however, to have a central focal point in a city, a landmark for understanding the relation of the other parts of the city.
I stopped at the library on the way back. The central branch is lovely, with restored and elegant reading rooms complete with fireplaces, wood paneling, and coved vaulted ceilings. I checked out a book on the history of Indianapolis architecture and simply read for about an hour.
In the afternoon, I drove out to an Indian grocery store and stocked up on Indian spices and ingredients for an Indian dinner. I also grabbed Tay some quick meal Indian pouches and a big box of frozen chapattis so he could have some more after I left. It was a little strange to think about Indians (from India) in Indiana.
When I got back to the house I dragged up the inflatable bed from Tay's haunted basement and ran a load of sheets. Jet lagged, I took a nap for a few hours until Chelsea brought Tay home from the airport around 1AM. She's very nice, very thoughtful and giving. I suppose you need that kind of personality type for social work.
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