Tobacco Road

There’s probably something in Seymour, Indiana, besides the motel-restaurant-service biz glop near the junction of I-65 and US 50, but we didn’t see it. Seymour was an overnight stop for food, fuel and rest.

On September 3, we headed southeast from Seymour on a mildly cloudy, warm day. In North Vernon and Vernon, two towns along Indiana 7, the thing to do over Labor Day weekend seems to be to hold a yard sale. We stopped at three sales and looked around and bought a few small things. Everyone else in the car wanted to stop at others, but I wanted to drive.

I suggested – seriously – that we return next year and spend more time in North Vernon and Vernon, checking out the sales. Yuriko (and now Lilly) are enthusiasts. My theory about why this might be, for Yuriko anyway, is that the yard/garage/jumble sales are virtually unknown in Japan.

Indiana 7 takes you to Indiana 56/156, part of the Ohio River Scenic Byway. It’s good that the Ohio River gets a little recognition. Long and large, important to the development of the Northwest Territories, but overshadowed by Old Man River. Tough luck, Ohio, you get to be a second banana to the Mississippi.

The road meanders along the river, passing through Switzerland County, Indiana, which has to tell us something about the settlement of extreme southeastern Indiana. In fact, the county seat of Vevay sported both US and Swiss flags hanging in public areas. A minor amount of research tells me that it’s the only county of that name in the several states, though there’s a town near Jacksonville, Fla., called Switzerland. At the moment I’d rather not look into it any further. Maybe Switzerland County is really the 27th canton.

Soon after arriving at Ohio River Scenic Byway, I started noticing fields of tobacco. Not many, but enough to be noticeable. I hadn’t seen tobacco fields in years, not since I used to tool around Tennessee and Kentucky a lot more than I do now. Saw some drying sheds too (or is it curing?).

I mentioned the fact that we were passing tobacco fields to my family, and Lilly asked me how they got it into those little red bottles. I was tempted to make something up, but in the end told her what it really was used for.