Doyel: Memories last forever, old Indiana gyms don't. Immortality lost in Pine Village.

PINE VILLAGE, Ind. – The railroad that was built here in 1875, an artery pumping from Chicago, is gone now. Every spike pulled from the ground, every mile of track hauled away in 1946. That could have finished Pine Village, one of the smallest towns in America — 0.12 square miles — but it survived.

The high school built in 1901 is gone, too. The original structure burned down in 1943 when an electrical wire sparked, but firefighters saved Pine Village's crown jewel, the gym, and the town rebuilt the school. Did it so well, so creatively, the Saturday Evening Post came for a look-see and wrote a story. Even took pictures.

The high school was consolidated in 1973, sending the children of Pine Village 20 miles away to Seeger. That didn’t finish Pine Village, either.

But now, this: The gym will be gone soon. The most famous structure for miles, one of those gyms that define the culture that is Indiana high school basketball, is 80 years old. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration built it in 1940 as America was climbing out of the Great Depression.

That old gym, it’s seen some things, including six sectional championships from a school smaller than Milan. It saw the 1972 Pine Knots take on the world and damn near win, reaching regional against Benton Central, which for years had refused to play Pine Village. With 6-5 Pine Knots star Bax Brutus scoring 23 points, those big ol’ Bison were biting their gums as Pine Village had the ball in the final seconds in search of a fairy tale…

Well, life isn’t always a fairy tale. The old gym, it’s seen that too.

Three months after Benton Central beat Pine Village 71-69 in the 1972 regional, this town filled the 1,100-capacity gym for the funeral of Bax Brutus. He was 17.

Soon the gym will be gone, same as the railroad and high school. Not even a town's love can save those clanging radiators, that honeycombed ceiling or those glass-and-wood backboards. Even if this town — “The Village,” they call it — isn’t going anywhere.

A town of gifts and flowers

“Be ready,” Gail Anderson is saying, “for people to stare.”

Dummy from the big city, I’m confused. Why would…?

“You’re not from around here,” she says.

Sure enough.

We walk into The Windy Mill diner, most tables filled for lunch, everyone talking and laughing, and the place goes silent. The recovery is fast, like it always is at Pine Village, and soon everybody is talking and laughing some more. That includes Gail Anderson, who graduated here in 1971, married 1972 alum Alan Anderson — a 6-4 forward, he played alongside Bax Brutus and scored 14 points in that 1972 regional loss to Benton Central — and came home after graduating from Purdue, located 20 miles east.

By 1983 Mrs. Anderson was teaching at Pine Village Elementary. She became principal in 1999, and retired in 2018. Even now, almost decades later, she’ll hear talk at The Windy Mill about that 1972 sectional.

“It was our Super Bowl team,” she’s saying between bites of a cob mill salad, shaking her head and laughing. “It’ll never be gone around here.”

Some things don’t change, like small-town hospitality. Gail’s insisting on buying lunch — “I invited you!” she’s saying — but the story brought me here, so it’s my turn to insist.

“I got this,” I say gallantly, slapping my credit card on the table like a full house.

“They don’t take cards,” she says.

“You got this,” I say, folding meekly.

Now she’s laughing some more, pulling out a $20 bill that will cover lunch and tip, and mentioning another topic that will never be gone around here.

“People come up and say, ‘You gonna let them tear down that gym?’” Gail says, speeding up her voice and lifting it a few notes to express the frustration of townsfolk.

Now she’s dropping her voice back to normal.

“I’d say, ‘Are you gonna write the check?’”

Gail Anderson is shaking her head and laughing some more. Pine Village is one of those places that get into your heart. Every year for the school Christmas pageant, the town raises enough money to buy a gift from Santa for every kid in school. The kids say thank you each spring with a day of service, planting flowers in pots all over town.

“It’s beautiful,” Gail says.

She’ll never leave.

Jim Thorpe, and Bax Brutus

Even when the Pine Knots had this place rocking, you could hear the radiators clanging in the corner of the gym. They warmed the water coursing through pipes that ring the place, heating it in winter.

The Pine Village School Gymnasium was full as often as not when the brash young coach from Indiana State, 27-year-old Bill Barrett, had the Pine Knots going 17-7 in 1972. With an enrollment of 149, Pine Village was the smallest school of the final 64 in the single-class 1972 Indiana boys tournament.

“We’ve been trying to play Benton Central for 2-3 years, but they turned us down. Guess we’re too small for them,” Barrett, whose son Dave coaches Lafayette Central Catholic, told the IndyStar in 1972. “Now they’ll have to play us.”

Like so many great teams in Pine Village, the 1972 bunch had a Brutus on it. Bax’s father, Glen Brutus, had played on the Pine Knots’ 1939 sectional champ. Uncle LeRoy Brutus was on the 1941 sectional champ, the last until 1972. Go back to 1915, when tiny Pine Village fielded the first professional football team in U.S. history. Jim Thorpe played on it. So did a small end named Lee Brutus, LeRoy’s father.

Bax Brutus was going to be the best of the bunch. A 22.5-ppg scorer as a junior, he had leaping ability and long arms and college coaches taking notice. After Pine Village won the Fountain Central sectional in 1972, beating North Vermillion 76-68, the town rejoiced. Someone had a little fun with two of the biggest businesses in town, writing “Gas ‘em” on the Marathon station on Ind. 26, and “Shock ‘em” on Gray’s electrical shop across the street.

Bax Brutus scored 23 in the regional against Benton Central — enrollment: 1,100 — but fouled out in the final minutes. Without Brutus on the court, the Pine Knots were unable to get off a shot in the final seconds, and their season ended.

A few months later Bax Brutus was working alongside his dad on the family farm. It was June 30, 1972, and they were pumping soybean from the bin into a truck when Bax touched an iron pipe and was electrocuted. The town filled the gym for the funeral.

“People were just devastated,” Gail Anderson says. “My husband said he cried for a year.”

Baxley J. Brutus is buried north of town at the Pine Village Cemetery. His nickname is chiseled into the back of his tombstone – Bax – between two basketballs. Below that it says:

The Year of the Village

1972

And then consolidation closed the high school.

Saved by two quirks of fate

We’re standing outside the Pine Village gym, near the words “Pine Village” and “1940” carved into its concrete, when a Chevy Impala pulls up.

“Are you alumni here?” the driver, Debbie Johnson, is asking. “We’re just passing through. I had to see if the old gym was still here!”

Debbie, a 1970 graduate of Lafayette Jeff, taught at Benton Central of all places before retiring to Florida. She’s back in the area on this sunny day, happily discovering the gym is still here, then frowning when Gail Anderson tells her it will be torn down soon to make room for a new elementary. Debbie slowly pulls away as Gail shakes her head and laughs some more.

“That happens all the time,” she’s saying.

Well, this place burrows itself deep. But there was a time when townsfolk feared the elementary school would close. This was a while back, after consolidation claimed the high school, and the population of Pine Village had shrunk to 134.

But a few things happened, the quirks of fate required to save a school, maybe even a town. Two local farmers left their farms to the elementary school — not to the district, but the school itself — providing a monthly income of rent. Also, the Wee Care Preschool opened across the street and began attracting kids from nearby towns, kids who tended to stay in the Pine Village system. From a low enrollment approaching 100, Gail Anderson says, the elementary school now has about 165 kids.

“Now the town’s growing so much,” she says, “there aren’t any vacant homes.”

But nothing can save the old gym. Lord knows, they’ve tried. Ask the superintendent yourself. Just call the main number of the Warren County school district. The day I called, Dr. Ralph Shrader answered.

“We’ve invested $3 million over the last 20 or so years,” Dr. Shrader says, “and you look around and think, ‘Where did that money go?’”

Indeed, upkeep isn’t cheap on an 80-year-old gym with fading paint, weeds growing out back and no ticket sales. The gym isn’t even up to ADA code. It was time.

“People understand,” Dr. Shrader says. “We’ll carry the history forward as much as possible into the new gym.”

In a town that refuses to die, they’ll always have their stories of an old gym with its clanging radiators, honeycombed ceiling and glass-and-wood backboards. And its last hurrah in 1972, when a boy named Bax Brutus led The Village to regional, a story of immortality lost.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana high school basketball: Pine Village historic gym tells story of immortality lost