Bottled Water
Life in America when our parents were young was weird. All of us can say that no matter how old we are. What kid doesn't think so? Our parents enjoyed all manner of things that we, their children, now regard as mundane. Banal even. Our parents roamed the countryside in their Ramblers and Studebakers seeking out quaint and curious destinations: the giant swimming pool shaped like Texas, the albino vermin display at Vermont's taxidermy museum, that place in northern Michigan where things mysteriously roll uphill "defying gravity", the word's largest muskie in Hayward, Wisconsin.
This weekend I came across something in my basement that is, well, unbelievable. I could only shake my head and roll my eyes. My parents went places I could only dream of. But what were they thinking?
Please understand that filing is not my strong suit. Organization is, but not filing. I really hate sorting through all those personal records that accumulate (Keep For Your Records! the bill stub intones), placing them in tidy stacks, putting the stacks in appropriately-marked file folders, and then neatly tucking the folders away in a cabinet. My usual course of action is to just let stuff of a documentational nature accumulate on top of the basement file cabinet. Then, once a year, whether I need to or not, file it all away.
Saturday was that day.
Complicating the job this year was that I had all sorts of papers and records and files from my parent's house, which I cleaned out a year ago after my mother died. So in addition to all the stuff of my own that needed to be filed - 2005 tax returns, insurance documents, health forms, kids' school papers, receipts and instructions - I had to sort through all this paper detritus from my parent's house.
I began with my parent's stuff. I was halfway down the stack when I encountered a folder of my Dad's labeled "Miscellaneous". (Love those miscellaneous folders. I have a couple of those myself as well as one labeled "General" and one labeled "Stuff". You never know what you're going to find in them.) For the most part, there was nothing exceptional in Dad's "Miscellaneous" folder. Except, that is, for a whole bunch of postcards. My parents were apparently real gadabouts when they were young and they kept postcards from places they visited: the locks on the St. Lawrence River, the Roebling Steel Museum, and a spa in French Lick.
French Lick... that's a place? It sounds more like something you get if you pay the lap-dancer extra. I don't recall my parents ever visiting (or doing) French Lick. My favorite postcard is shown. Evidently French Lick is where you go to get "Pluto Water", which according to the back of the card has a curious restorative power. I don't know if Janet and Don went there on their own or if they had a true medical need. (If it was the latter, I'm just glad I wasn't riding in the backseat of the car.) And I really don't care to know. But I do like the postcard, especially the devil. Only in our parent's youth could something so diabolical be allowed to exist uncriticized and unchallenged by the Christianistas. I wonder if the French Lick Sheraton had extra-heavy duty toilets in the rooms for all that... Pluto Water enjoyment?
Seems like Disney has an opportunity here.
K-
Larry Bird is from French Lick. Maybe that Pluto water gave him that extra bounce in his game.
French Lick! Larry Bird's hometown!
When I was about 6, my mom and took us on a driving trip from Chicago during which we visited French Lick -- it's in southern Indiana, at one time a well-known resort in the beautiful hill country down there. In a big pile of pictures somewhere, I'm sure my dad still has the snapshots of my brothers and me climbing on a steam locomotive that I remember parked in town. Never been back, though.
Obviously I've heard of Larry Bird. But not French Lick or that he's from there. I wikied French Lick to learn more. I never would have thought Indiana had any vacation destinations.
K-
I would have never heard of French Lick if not for Bird, Kem. I had never heard it mentioned in any other context until I read your entry.
Heard of French Lick; never been there. I can never seem to get past Gary. But, aren't the Indiana Dunes supposed to be a kind of honeymoon spot?
P.S. Kem, Re the current photo in your sidebar, I don't recall you ever mentioning Bob Dylan living in your house. Very nice!
He likes to play the blues... so he's more like a white Mississippi John Hurt. (With all the anger and despair you'd expect in a 17YO who grew up in an affluent Maryland county.)
K-