I hope everyone had a great weekend. I spent the weekend in Indiana. I stayed at the Story Inn in Story Indiana and visited friends nearby who showed me a wonderful time. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Brown County, Indiana, you should. And you might consider staying at the Story Inn:
The entire town of Story, Indiana is now a country inn/bed & breakfast, offering fine dining, catering, and lodging. The second floor of the Old General Store (briefly a Studebaker buggy factory in the 1920’s) has been renovated into four quaint bed & breakfast accommodations notable for their year-round occupant, the “Blue Lady.” The Blue Lady is a mirthful albeit innocuous apparition with flowing white robes, whose cheeky behavior has been observed by Story Inn employees and recorded in guest books since the 1970’s. (Current management notes that the frequency of her appearances increased markedly after 2001, coinciding with the arrival of a complementary bottle of privately-labeled wine in each room.) The Treaty House, Doc Story’s homestead, the Alra Wheeler homestead, the Carriage House, the Old Mill, and other historic buildings around town have each been tastefully and authentically renovated into guest cottages, many with kitchenettes and hot tubs.
Story’s Old General Store, replete with its creaky wooden floors, pot-bellied stove and long-retired Standard Oil Crown gas pumps out front, is now a celebrated gourmet restaurant known as the “Story Inn.” The restaurant is open year-round, serving for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Dinners are by reservation only.
I recommend it (even though I didn't see the Blue Lady). Even if you can't stay there you should go to dinner there. And have desert. The homemade peach cobbler I had was almost as good as my grandma's.
Here is a photo I took on my i-phone of the old General Store building where I had breakfast each morning and where we had dinner on Saturday night:
It really is a magical place, stuck in another time.
On my drive home I listened to the CD that my hosts gave me to remember Brown County by: Liar's Bench. I listened to it three times I enjoyed it so much.
Architect Stephen Miller grew up in Brown County...grew up hearing tales about "Aunt Mollie" Lucas, who was sweet and cheerful, and her sister, the legendary Allie Ferguson, who was fiery and fierce; Sheriff Sam Parks, a drinking man who raided Republican stills, while overlooking those belonging to his Democrat friends; Wash (pronounces "Warsh") and Mary Barnes, the husband and wife who had a falling out of affections and divided their cabin down the middle, with neither ever crossing to the other's side (when Wash died, the undertaker had to take him out the window, which was on his side of the cabin, because Mary wouldn't hear to his goin' out the door on her side), and many others.
Miller happened to relate some of these stories to a musician friend of his, Slats Klug
And the CD was born. If you open the link you can sample the music.
