Teetering

Libby Copeland: MUNCIE, Ind.

In the 1920s, two amateur sociologists went searching for a city that was singularly unexceptional. They wound up here.

They made a study of Muncie, asking its children how often they read, and its women how often they ironed. Then more sociologists came, and market researchers and documentarians and journalists, poking and prodding over the decades, measuring Muncie with the calipers of their trades.

And the people here took it with characteristic good humor, except for the rare occasions when they wanted to run some pointy-headed jerk out of town. They understood why people came. America was nostalgic for a city like this, for a solid Midwestern community that called itself "America's Home Town."

Only now, Muncie is nostalgic for itself.