Friday

I live on the Indiana border. Our high school cross-country team often runs to Indiana as part of their practices, and I occasionally ride my Schwinn down there. When I sleep in the living room at night, I can hear the traffic from the 80-90 Toll Road, which runs across northern Indiana, just a half-mile away.

But I've never, not once, during my 40 years of living here, visited southern Indiana. I've driven through it occasionally, but south of Indianapolis, I've ventured not.

I've been told that southern Indiana is more southern than the South, but not in the grand plantation sense. It's banjo-on-the-porch country. Indiana in general has the distinction of being the state where the Ku Klux Klan gained its greatest strength, in the 1920s, where over 30% of Indiana's population were members. Its membership was strongest in the south.

Although, oddly, it appears that the Klan was mostly strong in the area just south of Indianapolis, but significantly less strong in the far southern reaches of the Hoosier state. The infamous city of Martinsville isn't even as far south as Bloomington. Maybe the Kentucky-Indiana border counties are alright.

I'm gonna have to give it a try. For a couple of reasons:

First, a TDE reader sent me this link: Saint Benedict's Brew Works will be situated on the grounds of the Sisters of Saint Benedicts in Ferdinand, Indiana. The convent is beautiful and someone thinks enough of it to use it as the lead photo at the Ferdinand Wikipedia entry.

Ferdinand is in Dubois County, which is immediately north of Spencer County, which features Santa Claus, Indiana, a city that, unsurprisingly, promotes Christmas. It also houses Holiday World, which, I'm told, is an excellent amusement park.

And all this is just an hour from Louisville. One of my former law partners has traveled all over the United States, and he told me Louisville was one of his favorite cities to visit. Other than passing through it, I've never stopped, but he assures me I'll be happy I did.