The Bunker

The population is 440. There are usually no police employed by Freeport, the fire department is the last 100% volunteer department in the country (not paid), and the school closed in the 60's.

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Between the next two photos, you can see nearly all the commercial/industrial buildings on the main street.


Left side: wooden rake factory, former gas station, former drugstore, and a building of the same design as the Thompson building in Ypsi that last I checked had only a gunsmith. Right side: Blough's Automotive, the grain elevator and elevator store.

Left: Hardware store and a small grocery. Right: Party store, restaurant, post office, and the Shamrock Tavern.

Things aren't quite as bleak as it looks. The party store and tavern were actually pretty busy. There were around 15 cars downtown. I liked living in Freeport when I was 9. There were other kids around and Mom let us ride our bikes to the party store to buy candy.

I lived on the block behind the party store in this house on Cherry Street for a year before moving to Middleville. Dad had the carpets torn out by men wearing gas masks before we moved in. An addict named Angela had lived there. Ragged men used to come looking for her every couple months. We found out from the neighbors that the pink spots in the living room were from a knife fight at one of her parties.

On the way home, we stopped to take this picture of the old church I lived in 4 miles outside of Freeport. The steeple burned in a lightning storm and my parents converted it into a house (and built the addition). It's surrounded by cows, pigs, and field corn. Wild strawberries grow in the poison ivy patch across the street and black cherry trees line the lot on one side. Sometimes, Dad brought a truckload of pallets home and had bonfires in the yard. We lived there 8 years.