Remembering Gary, Ind.

ALAN’S ANECDOTES

I grew up in a small town in northwest Indiana, not far from Gary. I wasn’t old enough to understand economics, but I heard about how the city was devastated by the collapse of the steel industry. Foreign countries, like Japan, flooded the market with cheap steel and our factories closed. A thriving city (relatively) quickly became a place of poverty.

More recently, in 2008, just ho…