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Bardstown on the Run

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Last week nine of us from our girls group convened in Bardstown for a two-day visit that I can recommend to you. So I will.


Our pal, Julie, has lived in Bardstown since college and she planned our days with precision and compassion, leaving time for us to acclimate, to eat, and then, you know, eat some more. We gathered at her home to coordinate, but mostly so we could visit her mom.

Nancy Purdy was secretary at Owensboro High School for years, and we knew her, not just as Julie’s mom, but also as our friend and protector as we negotiated the vagaries and angst of high school. She was happy to see us, and we were happy to see her, and she told funny stories and hugged us in that special way someone does when they have known you most of your life. We couldn’t linger, though, because – ice cream.

We caravaned downtown, parking in the city lot — I think that was the actual name, City Lot, a half block behind Hurst Discount Drugs. Hurst is important because of this. It has a lunch counter. In addition to their famous chicken salad (says so right on the menu) Hurst sells ice cream treats of all kinds. Old fashioned shakes and malts, the ones where they pour half of it in a glass and leave the metal cup it got mixed up in. Ice cream sodas and sundaes, generous sized kiddie cones. I didn’t see what everyone got, but we sat there in a row, the straws standing at attention in old-fashioned dispensers as we spun on the red stools like we were eight.


We checked out the cute shops all up and down the street and ended up at the Talbott Tavern. You can eat there, of course, or you can wander around upstairs and look at the historic rooms, see where Abraham Lincoln stayed, check out the bullet holes courtesy of Jesse James, and contemplate that for a minute or two.


We finished up at the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first Roman Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. It takes but a minute to explore but still fascinating. Pick up the brochure with a QR code that will take you to a virtual tour of the cathedral and its history.
Almost next door is the Rickhouse, a nice restaurant that serves, among other things, a huge pork chop, but it takes forty minutes to prepare, and I doubted my group possessed that kind of patience. But I plan to ditch them and return for it at a later date.


Thanks to the popularity of the Bourbon Trail, we had access to a newly built farm house, complete with a pool, hot tub, game room in a barn, and fire pit. We are old now, so mostly we looked at the pool, admired the fire pit from afar, and I never made it to game room. But the house accommodated all nine of us comfortably and I bet there are more houses there just like it.


Julie rousted us out of bed the next morning with fresh doughnuts from Hadorn’s, a family owned bakery and a Bardstown staple, and for reference, it sits just behind the City Lot and a stone’s throw from Hurst Discount Drugs.


We had reservations for a tour of Maker’s Mark, and I’m tempted to say if you have seen one distillery you have seen them all, but no. It was a great tour, and it ended with a tasting for four bourbons, and an exit through the gift shop.


Since I traveled with some who don’t drink, it is possible, by their generosity, I was over- served. But I wasn’t driving and I bought a lot of stuff.


Then we spent the afternoon in the tiny burg of Bloomfield, where Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer have restored what looks like the entire downtown, Linda having roots in Bloomfield. Nettie Jarvis Antiques is named for her grandmother. There is the clothing store, a tea room, Ernie’s Tavern, which is a bar on one side, a bowling alley and ice cream shop on the other.


And by bowling alley, I mean one from the 1950s, with ashtrays and paper scoring sheets. Bring your own shoes, or just stand there and throw your ball at the pins. That’s what we did. Dinner was pizza from Cafe Primo, all brick oven crispy. Leaving the next morning in an autumn fog, we looked like the final scene of a some wistful movie, six cars in a slow procession down the long drive to the main road. Sweet and nostalgic, and a longing to return.

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Killer Hot Tubs

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When on vacation with friends of a certain age, I find we are on different pages in terms of our interests and willingness to take on risk. For some of us–okay–for me, I prefer to pace myself by moseying, always moseying over to the pool. Perhaps a little saunter out to the balcony or deck, or screened in back porch. Shopping, well, yes, but as the sun sets, not during the heat of the day. A nice sprawl in front of the TV anytime.


Mornings I search for clues of the rapture, because by the time I arise the place is empty and devoid of human life except my own, as I slink — inside I slink–to the coffee maker, retrieve a mug, as long as it is sitting shoulder height or lower. My friends are out walking, biking, I don’t know what all, but more power to them.


Often on vacation there will be a hot tub, either attached to the place we are staying or in the lovely commons area out by the pool. One particular friend loves a hot tub about all things, especially at resorts and she keeps hitting the button–that one there, just below the red warning sign indicating the need to limit time in the hot tub. As wanton as a hussy she ignores the admonition and overcooks and why don’t I join her, what a great way to chat with people and find out good restaurants? No. I am pretty sure hot tubs kill.


And now we have proof, this cautionary tale from out to the east of us.
Two women, both in their eighties, were enjoying the hot tub at the cabin where they were staying with friends for a girls’ trip. When they tried to get out, they couldn’t. Mobility issues, pre-existing conditions, every news outlet reported. They became overheated, as you do, and then became unresponsive. Their friends couldn’t retrieve them either, but managed to jump in and hold their unconscious heads above water until help arrived — at their remote cabin in a remote area of Red River Gorge, and both women came close to succumbing to their relaxing dip in the hot tub.


Trips to the hospital packed in ice revived them, but still.


What were they thinking?


What are my buddies thinking when they keep adding time to the hot tub when the big red signs say not to. I joined them once, and when I got out on the trembly legs of a new-born fawn, I walked three feet and thought I might faint. Explain to me the appeal. I won’t even sit with my feet dangling over the side, anymore.


And I am not eighty.


But I am not a spring chicken, either. And since last December I have had a horrifying glimpse of what it is like to have “mobility” problems, what with a hip flexor injury taking its own sweet time to heal, and all the accompanying aches and pains that come with it–the over-stressed knee that has never caused me problems, until now. The knotted up rhomboid in my back that reacts to my bad posture and my ungainly gait, the one that likes to kick into spasm just as I drift off to sleep.


So, I am not without sympathy, but surely some common sense might be in order.


In exactly one month I will be on my own girls’ trip, in a large house somewhere near the Bourbon Trail, with its own hot tub, I imagine. There will be discussions about who should have what bedroom because this one can’t do stairs, that one wakes early and needs to be close to the coffee pot, another one hardly sleeps at all and needs to wander the premises all night long.


Not to be a spoiled sport, but I would rather not be called upon to hold one of their heads above water until the squad arrives. I would do it. But I would resent it. Because, forget about the temperature for moment, what about the quality of that water and all those flesh eating bacteria?

What about those?


No, I believe I will continue to mosey, to slink and to sprawl on fat furniture. I will swim in the big garden tub in my room, I’ll relax, sitting on my spine, reeking of Tiger Balm, and catch up on Netflix.


Y’all have fun out there in that tub, and keep 911 on speed dial. I’ll let them in if I’m getting up for snacks.

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Townsizing

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I am happy to report my first townsized get away is in the books and oh, you all. It was perfect.


Townsizing, you may remember, is the new trend of vacationing in smaller places, places we might drive to, where the emphasis is on slowing down, immersing in the local culture, relaxing and piddling with only the flimsiest of agendas.


Which is exactly what I and three of my friends did last week, at the West Baden Springs Hotel. West Baden is three miles down the road from French Lick, both are grand old hotels that had once seen better days and now are all gussied up to their previous splendor, with a casino to punch things up.


My friends and I opted for West Baden, the more grown up of the two, no casino, no activities for young families. The idea of West Baden suited us much better and we chose wisely, I think. Not only was the place beautiful, the staff was friendly and attentive, but with a nice midwestern charm, nothing snooty or off-putting.


We were looking for calm spa experiences, lollygagging around in the spectacular atrium at West Baden, and moving languidly from one overstuffed chair to another, then out to the rockers on the veranda, and back again for afternoon drinks. We acquitted ourselves nicely. We took a scheduled tour of the West Baden Springs Hotel, learning all about its history that took it from hotel and spa to boondoggle to seminary and back again to hotel.


It was a pleasant way to spend an hour before an afternoon tea, each of us with our own generous pot of a personally chosen tea, our own little tier of sandwiches and sweets and scones. There was a harpist. Our pal who opted not to splash out for the tea settled into a little corner of the atrium where she ordered a hoagie and then texted us throughout with the names of the songs our harpist supplied. We were in another corner of the atrium, all fancy-like and pinkies out, knowing what she was really doing was making the point she got harp music, too, for a fraction of the cost.


We didn’t care. We were joined at our table by a delightful woman who was also on our tour. Her husband and twenty three of his friends were playing golf, and had come all the way from Texas to do it. Every year they look for a new place to play, the only non-negotiable thing is the proximity to a casino.


They golfed by day, gambled by night, and returned to West Baden to sleep in old world charm. Perfect, because West Baden and French Lick make it easy to sample all there is on offer without ever having to drive. Trolleys and little buses run in a loop and they will take you anywhere you want to go–the other hotel, to restaurants in town, arcades and grocery stores.You can even summon them from out in town, if one isn’t on the horizon.


You will need your car for some things, but we parked on Tuesday afternoon and didn’t move it until Thursday morning, when we stopped by Nila’s Place on the way out of town. Perfect omelettes, by the way.

Nancy and I had massages scheduled as soon as we arrived at the hotel, and it was there I fell in love. With the spa robe.


The gigantic, soft and luxurious spa robe. I had to have it. Or one just like it. Sadly, they haven’t stocked them since COVID, but the always friendly staff helped me find the maker and with just a few clicks of the keyboard, I have one just like it on the way. What makes them so wonderful? My research tells me spas provide you with humongous robes, at least 4X, maybe 5X. So perfect for the drape, the weight, the cozy, the decadence of it all.


We did just about nothing. We did some things together, some things alone. Some of us got up early to walk. Some of us had breakfast at 10. It just worked out. Now, it wasn’t an inexpensive get away, but it was perfect for us and I could go back right now. I had forgotten how relaxing it is to have no expectations.


And the best thing? The very best thing? Getting there, getting home, was completely no stress. No Nashville traffic. No airport. We lingered at Nila’s, and still got home before 1:30pm. Can you put a price on that? No, you can’t so don’t even try.

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French Monasteries and shhhh….No Talking

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Toward the end of September I met up with nine of my high school friends in Florida, a week ahead of Helené, most of us in one big house, and I am hear to tell you, my ears are still ringing. I don’t know that we were overly loud, although we were certainly chatty. It’s just that my life for a long time now, is very quiet.


If I want noise, I head to my niece’s, the mother of toddler twins and a three-year old. They giggle, they cry–real tears or fake ones–the dog barks, sometimes at nothing, although she may be begging passers-by to rescue her from the madness. She is old and seems thinner than normal. I worry about her, until I see that both twins quite enjoy her kibble, and they walk around with it on their breath or soggy bits stuck to their shirts.

I like noise and activity for a little while, and then I need to read a book.
When you read this I should be just back from a quick trip to Canada. I wanted to hear a foreign language spoken, but I wasn’t up for a transatlantic jaunt. I talked one of my high school chums into going with me. It was back last December and we had to make a quick decision, and our calendars were pristine and free from obligation for October.
That was before the Florida trip came up. And for my pal, Nancy, since summer she has run from the Lake of the Ozarks to Philadelphia to keep her grandchildren, to Florida, and a day after returning from that, a road trip to Hilton Head, with a three day space before we were to leave for Quebec. On most days, trips or at home, she plays early morning pickleball. She says she is tired and overwhelmed.


Well, I reckon.


So, I found accommodation in an old 1600s monastery, right inside the old city walls of Quebec, and there we will stay in our separate monk’s cells–the updated ones–and we will toddle down each morning for a silent breakfast.


Oh, yes, in the best contemplative fashion, no talking at breakfast, and I couldn’t be happier. She’s surprisingly open to it, too. The reviews for the place are outstanding, except for the complainers who didn’t read the fine print. The guy who booked it for a father-son getaway, for example. The party boy who was put out by the quiet hours from ten at night until the next morning.


Some missed the fact that for the traditional rooms the bathrooms are down the hall. I have stayed in monasteries before, so you better believe I knew to check, and we snagged contemporary rooms, with our own baths. We can have a tour of the monastery, but really, the whole place is like a museum, and I look forward to starting each day in silent reflection and walking through stone passages on my way to find poutine and t-shirts.
I plan to buttonhole my friend, too, and see what all this activity is about. It isn’t just that I feel slothful by comparison, but I don’t get a sense she loves it, or even likes all this activity very much. We have another friend who was also on our girls’ trip to Florida and she goes all the time. I mean, all the time and if by sea, all the better. If she could take a cruise ship to St. Louis or Chicago, she would. She’s on a ship right now. She seems to thrive.


So, with luck, Nancy and I will get to poke around Quebec and Montreal, find a maple leaf toque and a Detroit Lions hat for her husband. He’s put in a request. We will probably shop for ourselves, too, and pick up something for our various little ones. And maybe, with the help of serene surroundings and a meditative atmosphere, I can figure out how to make myself get up and get moving and she can figure out how to let herself stop.

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Prairie Love

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There are studies, I suppose, on the ways our physical environments shape us. I don’t mean the obvious environment psychologists talk about; the neighborhood, the house, the presence of books or harsh words. I mean the environment outside the window, the creek, the mountain, the wide open sky, a fence row that goes on forever, the next house a speck on the horizon.


Or no house on the horizon, and sometimes no horizon, either. Where I live, where I have always lived, I must go in hunt of the skyline, and it is a drive.

South Dakota is a land of horizons, of prairie, a place where standing on a second floor balcony the rain comes in from off, signaled by darkening sheets of rain too small to cover the whole horizon, just a part of it. The rain moves back to front, or left to right, and it will reach you some time, but leaving you plenty of time for speculation and a chat.


I want to drive across Nebraska. I am told this is because I have never driven across Nebraska. That the wheat and road are incessant, a trial to be endured, not enjoyed. But I don’t know. I think that sounds like a wonderful thing to see and do. Drive and drive, scenery unchanging, but new to me, and therefore, exciting. The prairie grass rolling like waves, and what it must be to see a rise in the landscape, to see the change coming but not able to judge the distance, not quite yet, and if at all.


I asked people I met out in South Dakota what it was like growing up with the Black Hills for a backdrop, to drive an hour and be in the Badlands. To have so much sky. They smiled and said it was nice, and didn’t quite get the question, as I wouldn’t quite get the question if put to me. One woman said her father, who was a rancher, never looked at the sky all that much. His grandchildren asked why his walked with his head down, always down.


“I raised cows,” he had said. “I have to watch where I step.”


But this must be the exception, surely.


I don’t realize how flat Daviess County is until friends from Eastern Kentucky point it out. They find they can only be away from their mountains for just a little bit before they miss them, the “sheltering hills” James Still wrote of. I can only be in those same mountains for a few days before they begin to close in on me, make me work a little harder to breathe. So, not sheltering to me, but oppressive.


Give me the same mountains farther south, in Tennessee. Then I am tenderhearted toward them. But that is because they roll differently there. Towns and bergs are nestled in broad green valleys, valleys we can look down into from overlooks or the high winding roads. A vista of sorts.


My mother’s people came here from England. I can almost prove it on paper, I think, but I can prove it for certain when I travel there. That green and pleasant land. The gentle landscape that is broad and human-scaled. The fields and meadows, the hillocks that ring a village, the ones with the benches at their crest, inviting us to sit and gaze out on the houses below, and watch the sky change from blue to gray to navy.


I have sat on such benches and feel, in a visceral way, that it isn’t the first time I’ve sat there, and not in this century. I do a lot of sighing then, content, and warm with affection, as I catch my breath.


I feel the same in Ireland, where every rock-bound field sits not too far above sea level. They have their mountains, I think of the Wicklow Mountains, but they are gentle and promise, as one travel books said, “sweeping views and plenty of space to sit and have a cuppa.” Stand at Cumberland Gap and wonder how this could have been the best spot to cross into the West. Then meander up and down Sally Gap Drive in the Wicklow hills for comparison. And there is no comparison, none at all.


Willa Cather, American writer, was born in the Shenandoah Valley, but grew up in Nebraska. She knew something about about mountains, and also vistas, and open sky. She says, this, about that:


“Anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.”


What soul I have for landscape, sits beside Willa Cather’s.

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Wall Drug and Then Some

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Our first outing was for ice water. Free ice water and sixty miles away. We giggled the whole way there. My pal, Donna, and I had arrived in Rapid City, South Dakota and on our first morning we decided it was too overcast to rush over to Mount Rushmore. We would go to Wall, SD, first and stop in at the drug store for some free ice water.


And cheap coffee.


And donuts.


Last December I found myself with some airline credit that had to be used up so Donna and I headed west to make up for a driving trip we had cancelled during COVID. I had a package to mail, so I brought it with me, and we headed to Wall Drug, with intentions of mailing that package, seeing what all the fuss was about, besides ice water, and then to head into the Badlands.


Well. I have to say, kitsch though it may be, Wall Drug was a favorite, starting with the Burma Shave-like signs that began showing up, twenty miles out. The story goes, Ted Hustead and his young family bought the l drug store in the tiny town of Wall, population 326, in 1931. Giving themselves five years to make a go of it, the timeline was almost up, when his wife, Dorothy, lay down for an afternoon nap one hot and miserable Sunday.


She got up fairly quickly, with an idea of how to entice all the travelers rolling down highways 14 and 16, just outside Wall. Those people are thirsty, she said. What do they want? Ice water!


She had even dreamed up the little jingle that would bring the travelers in. 
 “Get a soda…get a root beer…turn next corner…just as near…free ice water…Wall Drug.”

And that, my friends, is how you do it. After the homemade signs went up out along the prairie roads, the cars started coming and they haven’t stopped since.


Now, Wall Drug is just about what you would expect. A sprawling enterprise that takes up an entire city block, one can envision an Old West wooden sidewalked city block, and it has so many little shops and emporiums it is hard to locate the original Wall Drug store. But it is in there somewhere, and I bought some fancy sea salt lotion, just to prove it. They have old timey picture studios, with hat and bonnet props, gem and rock shops, any one of several souvenir shops, and stations out back for all that free ice water.


On the day we visited the water was dispensed from a regular soda fountain, but it was very cold. I know I am suggestible, but I defy you find colder water anywhere. Donna generously treated me to that five cent coffee, which I couldn’t drink, but she enjoyed because, you know, a nickel. I would have gladly paid a dollar for someone to take it from my lips.


But the donuts!


Oh, my, the donuts were wonderful. And I don’t usually like this kind of donut, but these were warm and cakey, but also a little yeasty, and I have no idea why we didn’t buy an entire bag of them–they were sitting right there on the counter–but now I want to see if they can ship them.


It is a roadside attraction of the most American kind. The coffee and donuts were added to the tradition when they installed the Minuteman missile silos in the area. The Husteads figured the military personnel would want cheap hot coffee and donuts on their travels to and from work. And, it turns out, so did we.

We spent an hour wandering around like good tourists do, and headed out for the Badlands, a place I have heard of forever but couldn’t have described to save my life. There is much to say about them, and I will, but for now, two words: prairie dogs. Okay, three words: prairie dog villages.

Ask anyone and they will tell you, I am not much of an animal lover. But, you all. I have never seen anything cuter than those little praise dogs. And they really do live in villages, and they, along with my donuts and ice water, were my first introduction to South Dakota and I was smitten.