Story Story

A little more than four years ago, we visited Columbus and Nashville, Indiana, both not far south of Indianapolis. Columbus is a famed architecture town, while Nashville once hosted an artist colony and still feeds off visitors who take away works of art, or at least works of craft, or maybe just cheap items all the way from China.

Yuriko bought a small watercolor at a small gallery in Nashville on that trip. It was a landscape scene of Story, Indiana, a hamlet a few miles south of Nashville, and a pretty little picture. We considered visiting Story on that trip, but dark was catching up with us, or Lilly was hungry, or something, and we didn’t go.

So for all these years, we’ve had a representation of Story around the house, but had never been there. That’s cheating to my oddball way of thinking, though I’m not sure whom or what we’re cheating (best not to articulate these things too much). So this time we turned off I-65 at Columbus and took Indiana 10 past the town of Gnaw Bone—what a great name--to just before Nashville. From there, Indiana 135 covers the ten or so miles to Story.

Actually, Indiana 135 from near Nashvile to about Freetown, maybe 20 miles, was the real treasure. The two-lane blacktop winds its way through the Hoosier National Forest, which would more accurately be called the Hoosier Bit of Forest, Lot of Hills, Some Patches of Corn, and Spreads of Meadows. The road is supposed to be popular in mid-October, and I could see the potential for intense coloration, but I was still taken with the still-hanging-in-there greens, many and lush even now.

On September 2, all the other cars that might be driving that road in October were still waiting for the leaves to change, so we had the road practically to ourselves. In this age of traffic snarls just about anywhere, that’s a fine ride.

As for Story, it was a picturesque hamlet. We got out for about five minutes and looked around. Three or four buildings’ worth of picturesqueness, as far as I could see, anchored by the Story Inn, a retrofitted old country store that now includes a restaurant that has a wine list and for which reservations are recommended. It looked a fine place, but not with little kids. A wedding reception was going on in the yard behind the Story Inn, too, which added a touch of festive background noise.

The Story Inn is also a hotel, and supposedly it has a resident spook. This I learned after our visit. I also learned in researching the Story Inn that there’s an entity called Hoosier Paranormal Research, and that made my day.