Joe Palooka Knows

Just east of the blinker light at the top of the hill stands Joe Palooka. He looms over Main Street in my southern Indiana hometown of Oolitic, a constant presence.

You see, most people nowadays probably don’t know Joe, but in his heyday, Joe was the famous fictional comic strip boxer, a heavyweight champion whose trials and triumphs were chronicled by 900 newspapers for over 50 years. Joe was as much a part of readers’ daily lives as TikTok is today.

Joe is a strange sight. He is 10 feet and 20,000 pounds of solid limestone. Despite his enormity, Joe is less intimidating and more mystifying. His eyes are hollow voids, and the absence of his eyes leaves you wondering whether he is in a trance, either looking back in time or looking ahead to the future, depending on your particular mood that day. He’s obviously strong; his wrapped hands, chiseled jawline, and defined shoulders depict a boxer’s physique, although you would never peg him a heavyweight. His nose was once knocked off, but was lovingly cemented back in place; it feels quite fitting for a boxer to have a messed-up nose, after all.

But that ribcage.

Joe looks emaciated. Each rib can easily be traced. He is reminiscent of a 6-year old boy trying to suck in his belly to flex his abs who, unintentionally, just accentuates his scrawny ribcage. It’s a pretty brutal design flaw in an otherwise perfectly acceptable statue.

Joe Palooka represents this tiny part of anywhere, USA. His statue presides over the ebb and flow of small-town time with a kind of omniscience reserved for things born of the earth and time itself. To make that limestone? Thousands, perhaps millions, of years of calcium carbonate sticking to ancient sea sand grains bound together by the lime in mud.

Under constant pressure.

Small towns- likewise. Over time and space, they weather the forces that could tear them apart, and instead form together to bind into something firm and everlasting.

Under constant pressure.

Oolitic, Indiana is a lot like Joe Palooka. Most people don’t know a dang thing about Oolitic either. If you were to detour off Highway 37 to that blinker light we just discussed (ya’ll know what a blinker light is, right?), you might be underwhelmed. A Dollar General. A local credit union branch, the inside lobby long closed, with one working ATM. A butcher shop next to a liquor store. Some lights strung above the intersection, if you’re lucky enough to be in town for the holidays.

In a lot of ways, the town and Joe’s ribcage share a lot of similarities. Oolitic feels like those bare rib bones. The strength of the whole town is sometimes overshadowed by the obviousness of the flesh it lacks in places. The necessities are met, even if underwhelming in availability.

And, yet… my hometown has probably found its way into your life already, and you don’t even know it.

The Empire Quarry, a gaping, blue water-filled hole in the earth where 18,630 tons of stone used to construct the Empire State Building was mined, sits less than a mile from Main Street. If you’ve ever been to Grand Central Terminal in New York City, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, or the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, you’ve (probably) unknowingly stood surrounded by Indiana limestone, most of it mined in Oolitic’s backyard.

The Limestone Capital of the World.

That’s one hell of a flex. And also, you’re welcome, world.

I like to think those hollow eyes of Joe’s have seen more than probably any collective group of townies could conjure. He knows every single volunteer firefighter who takes a shift at the station on Main Street. And Joe would never tell which of those volunteers suits up as Santa Claus every Christmas Eve to wave from the top of the fire truck for the neighborhood believers.

I’m certain Joe shed a tear, just like the town did, when our neighbor’s barn went up in flames. Two pre-teens playing with fire in a 100-year-old hay loft incinerated 3 generations of history in less than 5 minutes. But, with tragedy always comes the call to add to the collective memory, and we did our best to flood those neighbors with re-prints of the photos so many of us had taken for high school photography classes that featured the old barn.

He’s seen south down Hoosier Avenue to the old Oolitic high school, abandoned for over half a century and constructed of – what else? – limestone. That’s where my mom kicked a lot of guys’ asses (and pride) in every sport from baseball to ping pong in a time long before Title IX. It's where my Grandad coached some of the best basketball teams in the state. If you've seen the movie Hoosiers, you might even seen "Oolitic" up on a scoreboard in one of those montage scenes. Grandad's photograph hung for years in the gym, overlooking all who sought to learn the game that was invented in Kansas, but obviously perfected in Indiana.

Joe also knows that across the street, a small shed with a walk-up window offers the best food served on a bun in the world, hands down. Back in the day, you had to wait for one glorious weekend every month to experience the mouth-watering ecstasy of a sandwich deep-fried in pure grease, in a fryer that surely was not up to code until the “new building” was moved onto the lot. Now, folks have it so good, they can bag a $2.50 pork tenderloin that is twice the size of the bun every other weekend. (Well, until COVID, that is.) The chicken and fish sandwiches stand in as formidable foes in the “get in my belly” race, but nothing beats the unofficial sandwich of the state of Indiana. We can argue about acceptable condiments later.

The “Home of the Bearcats” sign that hangs prominently on the overpass further down Hoosier Avenue marks the school where my elementary years were spent, and where thousands of kids like me learned to play baseball and softball. After every game, the concession stand offered free coke (lowercase) to every player. Oolitic is the kind of place where if someone says they want a coke, you ask, “What kind?” Everything is “coke,” or “pepsi” and you just clarify what variety you actually mean. The school stands, and the ballfields are gone, but Joe knows exactly how many homeruns dipped over the centerfield fences. And Joe’s nose, even in its boxer’s condition, can still conjure the scent of the honeysuckle that grew rampant up the backs of the wooden dugouts.

And Joe knows that “God Bless America” was hung on the school sign so long that the plastic around the black uppercase letters yellowed and probably melted to the back of the sign. Even with the letters finally removed, it’s easy to see the remnants of that sentiment. Joe’s seen the best and the worst of our country since he was birthed out of that Indiana limestone in the 1940s. I would like to think that Joe, hero that I’m told he was, would be just as vehemently opposed to injustice today as he was during his “In the Army now” days fighting Nazis in his comic strip.

The draw of Oolitic, Indiana is the prominence it finds in its inconspicuousness. If you are lucky enough to spend time there, it will feel as familiar as your own breath; you’ve been surrounded by the creations of Oolitic your whole life, and it will continue long after you and I are gone. It is immortal, both in the stone it ships across the world and the memories it guards for those lucky enough to feel its pulse.

To the future, Joe Palooka gazes.