Page 90 - Demo

88Researching a PastAmerican Bearing, Indianapolis%u2014Marion Co. (056.12)There was nothing in this factory to indicate what it had been before being abandoned, so I asked at a neighboring business if anyone could remember. I was told %u201cIt might have been National Lead.%u201d But they weren%u2019t sure. So I contacted a reference librarian in Indianapolis, who looked up the address in an old City Directory, and she told me the building had been occupied by the American Bearing Corp. for several decades.With a name like American Bearing, it sounded like a rather mundane operation. But an internet search revealed that it had done work for the government%u2019s Nuclear Weapons Program. Well, that perked my interest, so I delved further and learned that the property had been inspected and, according to guidelines published by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it posed no danger from radiation. Lynn and I had spent about an hour there on two different occasions, so that was certainly a relief.A last bit of library research indicated that American Bearing had been owned by National Lead Corp. I could find no reference to either company after 1971, when they were apparently involved in a pollution-related lawsuit. I still don%u2019t know what they did there%u2014and I%u2019m not sure I want to.