Oldham County History Center

Encompassing a city block in La Grange, Kentucky, immediately to the west of the Oldham County courthouse, the Oldham County History Center is an impressive collection of buildings and artifacts representing the rich heritage of the local area. Wonderful Wife and I stopped here after spending a nice, if cloudy, afternoon visiting the unique shops of the La Grange downtown business district.

The centerpiece of the complex is the Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum housed in the restored Victorian home once owned by the museum's namesake, a local banker in the early-20th century. His daughter Louise Head Duncan donated the house and adjacent property to the Oldham County Historical Society, who've since done a remarkable job restoring the structure and converting it into first-rate history museum.

Peyton Samuel Head Family Museum

The first floor contains an abundance of artifacts from the area's earliest inhabitants right on up through modern times. Special attention is given to the life and career of D.W. Griffith, who was born and raised in Crestwood (just about 10 miles west of La Grange down I-71). Annie Fellows Johnston, author of the Little Colonel series of books and a turn-of-the-20th-century resident of the Pewee Valley area, is also given special attention by the museum. All of the interpretive displays are of impressive design and each is presented in such a way as to maximize the limited space of the Victorian home. I was struck by the unexpected wealth of information and artifacts on display. Plan to spend upwards of an hour examining all of the interesting exhibits.

Printed word special exhibit

On our visit, the second floor of the museum was devoted to a special exhibit honoring the printed word. Extra space was devoted to the stories of Annie Johnston, with additional exhibits featuring various local history artifacts such as war-time letters and ephemera related to Louisville's Southern Exposition. Although the material was presented in a way that was quite "busy" (the museum staff once again packed a considerable amount of information into tight quarters), seeing it all was a treat.

Next to the museum is a restored 1840's house that is home to the society's administrative offices as well as what is, I am told, a rather extensive research library. I had no cause to look in on the library, but perhaps one of my research projects will one day lead me to examine what they have to offer.

Honestly speaking, I was not expecting much given what are often the limited resources available to local history museums. Needless to say, I was significantly impressed by the Oldham County History Center and certainly recommend a visit to any history-loving visitors to La Grange. There is no admission fee, though donations are accepted - and I would encourage you to help keep this little gem in operation.

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Antiquing in Corydon, Indiana

After spending a short while at the Corydon Battle Park, Wonderful Wife and I ventured into the town of Corydon itself for a bit of lunch and - we hoped - a successful antiquing excursion. Although there are a handful of independent eateries in Corydon to go along with the usual chain establishments, with most of the latter being located in a cluster around the I-64 interchange, none appeared to be gluten-free friendly. As a result, our lunch consisted of a hurried, mediocre meal at Wendy's.

Corydon isn't exactly an antiquing hotspot, but some pre-travel research turned up a couple of shops that looked promising. Our first stop was the Red Barn Antique Mall, located just west of downtown on Walnut Street (Indiana 62).

The Red Barn Antique mall in Corydon, Indiana

The Red Barn has great outside appeal and you can tell the owners have put a lot of effort into making their shop aesthetically pleasing. The interior is no less impressive with a great rustic theme that you'd expect to see in a renovated barn. Boasting three floors of dealer booths, there's plenty of inventory to keep browsers busy! Most items were of mid-range quality with a few higher-end pieces scattered about. Prices tended to hover a bit above normal, in my opinion, though I did see a few things marked very reasonable. Despite the mall's large inventory, Wonderful Wife and I left the Red Barn empty-handed.

When we antique, we typically target specific "wants" so that what little savings we have isn't squandered on potentially regrettable purchases. On this trip my radar was calibrated for pre-Vietnam-era military insignia (patches, DUIs, etc.) and souvenir pint glasses. I did find one grouping of World War II patches that was reasonably priced, but for reasons beyond my comprehension I didn't pull the trigger. Talk about regrettable non-purchases! Wonderful Wife tends to be a little less discriminating than me, though she also left without anything really catching her eye.

Next up for us was the downtown shopping district which, like many quaint old towns, centers on a town square. I really wish I had more pictures to share, since the square is home not only to shopping but the original Indiana state capital building. Next time, for sure. The first stop on our circuit of downtown Corydon was the Old Town Store on the corner of Mulberry and Chestnut streets (how Midwestern are those street names, right?). The store - situated in an old service station - boasts more than 3,000 sq. ft. of antiques, collectibles, and the all-important mantiques. The prices here were by and large very reasonable, but as with the Red Barn we left empty-handed.

The next two stores that we visited - Little Texas Consignments and A Place In Time - were also busts. The inventory of both shops was more of the flea-market variety. By now, it seemed that our chances of having a successful antiquing excursion were slim to none.

So Dear 2 My Heart Vintage Jewelry in Corydon, Indiana

As it would turn out, the last shop on our list - So Dear 2 My Heart - would salvage the trip. For Wonderful Wife, anyway. This particular shop specializes in vintage and antique jewelry, which is right up her alley, and sure enough she scored this largish owl necklace.

Although we didn't add much to our collections, antiquing in Corydon was a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon. The town has plenty to offer for history lovers, making for a pretty well-rounded experience.

Battle of Corydon

On July 9th, 1863, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and his more than 2,000 cavalrymen met less than 500 "home guards" of the Indiana Legion just south of the town of Corydon in Harrison County, Indiana. Needless to say, Morgan's men carried the day and continued to push deeper into Union territory in what would become known as the longest cavalry raid of the Civil War.

The town of Corydon holds a reenactment celebration each year to commemorate this event, which also happens to be the last battle fought on Indiana soil, but due to our travels to Gettysburg we missed the 150th anniversary festivities. Nevertheless, I was determined to visit the site of the battle and get in some antique shopping!

Although the forecast threatened rain and storms, fantastic weather accompanied our trip westward on I-64 through Louisville and across the Ohio River into the Hoosier State. Once in Indiana, I elected to slip off the interstate and take in the scenery along State Road 11. It's definitely an indirect route to Corydon, but allows for a hilly, curvy driving experience that easily dispels the "flat" Indiana stereotype - not to mention passing along the point where Morgan's Confederates crossed the Ohio at Morvin's Landing.

View toward Brandenburg, KY from Morvin's Landing Road

A day before the fight in Corydon, Morgan crossed the Ohio at this point by utilizing two captured steamboats. Men of the Indiana Legion attempted to oppose the crossing with musket fire and the rather ineffectual bombardment from one piece of artillery set atop a nearby ridge. A direct hit on the gun from one of the Confederate artillery pieces silenced the Federal cannon, killing its crew, and all opposition to the crossing faded away.

Brandenburg's Riverfront Park seen from Morvin's Landing

Even though the Matthew E. Welsh bridge spans the Ohio a short distance downstream from Morvin's Landing, standing on the muddy bank of the river one can still get a sense of connecting with the events of that hot July day in 1863. The town of Brandenburg, Kentucky, lies on the opposite shore and will most definitely be a stop for us on a future excursion.

Brandenburg homes overlooking the Ohio River

State Route 135, the old Mauckport-Corydon road, lies just to the west of Morvin's Landing and was the route used by the main thrust of Morgan's invaders. The road in service today has been greatly "modernized", but the old road runs parallel at several points and offers a bit of a glimpse into the original scenery passed by the Confederate troopers.  About 10 miles after joining Route 135 we turned off on Old SR 135 for the remainder of our trip to the battlefield site since the new road veers to the west of town.

Corydon Battle Park is a rather unassuming bit of land just outside the southern city limits on Old SR 135. You need a sharp eye to catch the entrance when approaching from the south, but a nice sized sign serves as an adequate guide when coming from the direction of Corydon. Fully wooded now, the five acres comprising the park was an open ridge where the small band of Union defenders positioned their artillery in the hopes of halting or delaying the Confederate invaders. The dense foliage thwarts any attempt to get a good feel for the terrain as it might have appeared to either the invaders or the defenders, unfortunately.

Replica Civil War cannon at Corydon Battle Park

A replica cannon stands near the access road, as does a recovered mooring post and anchor chain from the steamboat Alice Dean (sunk by Morgan after his cavalrymen reached the Indiana shore). A short, paved path takes visitors past a monument inscribed with the names of both the Union and Confederate men killed during the brief battle to a replica log cabin. The cabin was shuttered on our visit, but I from what I understand it serves as a sort of living history display on special occasions.

Anchor chain and mooring post from the Alice Dean

I also expected to see a monument dedicated to Jeremiah Nance, one of the men killed manning the artillery piece at Morvin's Landing. He was buried at a farm cemetery just east of Laconia, but his grave marker was moved to the Battle Park in 1986 when the cemetery ceased to exist. At the time of our visit, his marker, and the iron fence that had been surrounding it, were completely gone. There was nothing to explain its whereabouts, so for now the situation is a bit mysterious.

Missing grave marker of Jeremiah Nance

After a brief stay at the park we headed into Corydon for a bit of antiquing (the subject of a future post). The time available to us for exploration was severely limited due to having to be back home to take The Youngest to work. As a result, a number of spots that I had hoped to see had to be saved for our next visit to the area. Both Indiana Caverns and Squire Boone Caverns are in the immediate vicinity of Corydon, so there's at least one more trip on the horizon!

View some more photos in my Flickr album.

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Gettin' It Together

Judging by the woefully small number of posts on this blog, and the vast periods of time that exist between them, I'd have to declare this endeavor a failure. I hesitate to throw in the towel, though. I'd like to believe that the major factor in my having let this blog slip is simply a matter of spreading myself thin. There's a valid school of thought that blogs - successful ones - should be specialized in terms of content. A movie review blog should have only movie reviews, a gardening blog should only contain gardening-related posts, and so on. To that end, I've tried to dedicate a blog to each of my many varied interests and, as a result, all have suffered pretty much the same fate as Blades of Bluegrass. Instead of giving up blogging entirely, or continuing to fail at a number of specialized outlets, I'm going to throw caution to the wind and focus my wildly disparate interests in one place. I know I'm not running the risk of alienating any readers, since I have none, so there's nowhere to go but up! Right? Let's hope so.

As a little bit of fanfare to coincide with the resurgence of this little slice of the blogosphere, I've updated the background image to one that I took while Wonderful Wife and I toured the Gettysburg battlefield on horseback. I don't think that I will go back in time to blog about that mini-vacation, but if you're curious about the sites that we saw please visit my Flickr album.

Gluten Free Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast

One of my many goals for 2013 is to introduce more variety into our dinnertime meals. Like most things in life, meal planning can easily fall into a rut. Toward the end of the year, The Youngest subtly hinted that he would like me to change things up a bit in the food prep department. So, in order to quell the rising familial unrest, I put together the following gluten free (and pork free) recipe.

Ingredients
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
12 slices turkey bacon
12 slices Swiss cheese
BBQ sauce

Coating
1/2 cup gluten free breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Prepare your cooking vessel (I use a shallow, rectangular casserole dish) by lining with tin foil and coating with non-stick cooking spray. Pam Olive Oil is a gluten free product that I use regularly.

Combine and thoroughly mix the coating ingredients. I like to do this by adding everything to a Ziplock bag then shaking it vigorously to mix. Dredge both sides of each chicken breast to achieve a thorough coating. Place one slice of Swiss cheese on the inner side of the breast, rolling moderately tightly and securing with toothpicks. Next, wrap two slices of turkey bacon (Jennie-O is gluten free) around each rolled breast. Use the toothpicks to secure the bacon to the chicken.

GF bacon-wrapped chicken breasts before baking

Place the rolled breasts into the casserole dish and bake at 400° for 25 minutes. Remove the breasts from the oven and top each one with a dollop of your favorite gluten free BBQ sauce (I use Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory & Brown Sugar). Place one more slice of Swiss cheese atop each breast and return to baking for another 15 minutes.

The cheesy, delicious finished product

This simple recipe was bursting with flavor, though the medley was perhaps a bit too much for The Youngest to fully appreciate. Wonderful Wife and I, as well as The Daughter, enjoyed it very much and so this dish will definitely make a repeat appearance.

Update: The next time we tried this dish, Wonderful Wife experimented with pineapple slices as filling for the rolled chicken and was very pleased with the results - The Youngest even gave a thumbs up!

A Tale of Two Tablecloths

Last weekend, Wonderful Wife and I spent a rainy day exploring a couple of antique spots in the Cincinnati area. One of the spots we stopped at was Venice Pavilion Antiques in the hamlet of Ross, which is just to the northwest of the Cincy metroplex. We'd not been here before, but since the day was such a washout I didn't bring along my camera. You can still get an idea of the look of the place by visiting their website. What their site doesn't tell you, though it should, is that the building was once an entertainment hall back in the early 20th century. Housing a bowling alley and dance hall, the three stories now hold the wares of a fair amount of antique dealers - which are priced a little on the high end.

Nevertheless, Wonderful Wife did uncover this pink tablecloth for our recently purchased (second-hand, of course) dining table. I am most definitely not a fan of pink decor, but she was really fond of it so... why not?

Earlier in the day we had stopped in at one of our favorite Cincinnati-area antiquing spots - Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy. This little hole-in-the-wall store has a lot of nice inventory that's very reasonably priced (hence the reason it's one of our favorite haunts). We picked up several items on this particular excursion, which I'll blog about a bit later, but one of our purchase left an awfully sour taste.

Wonderful Wife's mission on this trip was to find a tablecloth or two for the dining table, which I mentioned earlier in this post. Here at Covered Bridge, she found a nice-looking one for the reasonable price of $9.00. After we got back home and she spread it out on the table, she discovered the very obvious repair pictured below.

Now, I'm down with the whole "as-is" and caveat emptor aspect of antique buying, but I'm also a firm believer in full disclosure. Here's how the tablecloth was tagged:

Notice that there isn't a single mention of any damage or repairs. So in the end, for $9.00 (more than we paid for the fully intact pink tablecloth at Venice Pavilion) we are the not-so-proud owners of several yards of scrap fabric. Lesson learned. Always fully inspect any item, no matter how large, and be sure to avoid Booth #4 at the Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy, Ohio.

Antiquing - 21 July 2012

After attending the dedication of a memorial on the Richmond Battlefield commemorating the troops of the 1st Michigan Light Artillery that fought and died there during the 1862 battle (read more on my Kentucky War Memorials blog), Wonderful Wife and I set out to explore a few antiquing destinations in central Kentucky that were new to us.

First up was to be Collector's Paradise Antique Mall on US 27 between Lancaster and Stanford, but upon pulling into the tiny parking area we discovered that the business had apparently been shuttered. It was to be just the first of many disappointments (sorry for the spoilers). Just a bit further on down the road we stumbled upon a shop that hadn't shown up in my pre-excursion recon - County Line Flea Market and Antiques. Occupying a somewhat worse-for-wear structure that looks to have been a hardware or appliance store, County Line has a considerable number of booths brimming with what mostly amounts to yard sale bric-a-brac. There were a few moderately interesting items of an antique and vintage nature, but nothing compelling enough for us to buy - so we left empty-handed.

County Line Flea Market & Antiques

Next up was the historic downtown district of Stanford. I had three shops on my list so was pretty amped about what me might find - never expecting to discover that all of the shops were closed. We passed through town in the early afternoon on a Saturday, which you'd think would be prime time for these shops, but closed they were. Unfortunately, my list contained no further destinations since I expected browsing these three to take up most of our afternoon. We decided to make our way home via Danville, with the hopes of coming across an unexpected shop or two.

Upon entering Danville on US 127, we came across one of the Peddler's Mall flea market locations. As it turns out, we arrived on the very last day that the Danville location would be open - closing it's doors forever later that afternoon. Now, in our experience we've found the Peddler's Mall franchises to be largely hit-or-miss experiences, with most being of the miss variety. Excepting the Georgetown and Middletown (Lousiville) locations, these outlets are stuffed mostly with flea market and yard sale quality merchandise. The Danville store was no exception, though it contained much less due to most of the booth owners having already packed up their wares. I took this poorly framed picture of the store from the hilltop parking lot of McDonald's just across the US 150 Bypass.

Danville Peddler's Mall

On the way out of Danville, along Lexington Ave (KY 34), we ran across Not Just Antiques In Danville in an aging strip mall. This shop was very much what we expect to find when out hunting for antique stores - numerous booths with quality antiques and just a bit of primitive and country decor. We really didn't find much that caught our attention, though, which is all well and good since the prices here seemed a little on the high end.

Not Just Antiques In Danville

After a quick stop for refreshments, we made our way back to Lexington through Nicholasville on US 27. Just north of KY 1980, on the east side of US 27 (Nicholasville Rd), is an old brick church housing ClaireBourne Antiques. It's never been open when we've happened by in the past, but this time we were in luck so we swung in and had a look around. Bargain hunters beware - ClaireBourne is very much a fine antiques dealer specializing in upscale items such as furniture and artwork. Needless to say, our modest budget didn't stand a chance. Still, it was nice browsing the excellent pieces they had to offer. I'd hoped to at least snap a shot of the building, but the driveway and parking situation is rather tight so getting a good angle between the huge trees on the property proved impossible.

And so our antiquing trip ended with Wonderful Wife and I left empty-handed. We ended the day with a meal at BW3's and then picked up a few dorm items for The Daughter, who starts college life next month. Here's to better antiquing luck next time!