West Baden Springs, Indiana

Note*you can enlarge these photos by clicking on them and then they will enlarge again to read the fine print of the angel pictures*

I got to get my annual fix of West Baden Springs on Tuesday. It was a beautiful day~blue sky, no coat needed. A leisurely drive from Aunt Margie's house. It takes my breath away every time. We go every year~I need to go more often~we toured the hotel again and walked the grounds. Trees were just waking up from their winter slumber~birds were singing their spring song~hawks were gliding in pairs and landing on their nests. The sunlight was perfect for picture taking~just enough people visiting to make it festive but still just few enough to make it feel like we were the only ones. I had to take a photo of one of the restrooms~cloth hand towels, fresh parrot tulips in gorgeous jars and beaded purses and shoes framed in gilded shadow boxes. The pillared pavilion had the smell of the sulfur spring when you stepped inside. The Jesuit cemetery is peaceful and is up a winding stone stair~all of the headstones are engraved with the birth and ingress and death of each priest~all the first names ended in a US such as Josephus, Hermannus, Paulus etc. There is a building at the bottom of the cemetery..it says Billiards- Bowling-Pavilion and it is reputed that a lot of gangsters at the turn of the century used to hang out and hide out here. The building is empty ~supposedly but our photos showed otherwise...looked like spiritual activity to me. Are the priests perhaps playing billiards? There was a secret about West Baden Springs that I had never known before. On the top of the dome~a room 700 ft. above the dome that can only be entered by a ladder from the exterior of the dome ~houses paintings of cherubs painted in the style of 15th and 16th century Italian painters. It is thought they were painted there as a spiritual blessing on the hotel. I could just be happy lying on the top of that dome forever!

Dance Three Times A Week

We drove the familiar favorite trek to visit Michael's beloved Aunt Margie on Monday and Tuesday at her clean as a whistle little house full of pink in southern Indiana. She is so cheerful and full of fun; I haven't laughed that hard in such a long time. She will be 88 next month and when we are all together it is like we are all 16. We were laughing at ourselves so hard that our feet were up in the air! We were trying to call her son who is an Elvis Impersonator and singer and published song writer who is very famous in southern Indiana and neither one of us could get our cell phones to work properly. We called every one we knew to no avail. I don't know if it was the reception or that we couldn't get the phones dialed properly with all the laughing. We looked liked texting teenagers! Well, you just had to be there but it was really funny. Her forgetfulness started rubbing off on me! It is so good to laugh till you scream and can't understand each other 'cause you're laughin' and squealin' so much, ya know!
Aunt Margie has a boyfriend and they go to a dance 3 times a week! Sometimes they go on the "senior party bus"! Believe me we were waiting for her to arrive home one night and the party bus pulled up and you'd have thought it was a bus full of teenagers! There was so much "carrying on" I'd love to be on there to see if anything inappropriate was going on! haha She says no matter how you feel when you get older once you start dancing every ache and pain and stiffness goes away.
"Junior" takes her everywhere for pleasure and errands and they never eat at home. He drives one of the shuttles between French Lick Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel during the day and has for 27 years. He knows every body and every body knows him. It "aggravates" Aunt Margie, as she puts it in her sweet southern Indiana twang, that when ever they call him to work he goes no matter if he planned to take her to church or whatever. They are so cute. She told me the dances they go to are always crowded with Seniors..women looking for men and men looking for women. When one of the women gets a boyfriend the other women gather around her and interrogate her..."Does he have money? No, he doesn't have much money. Well, is he good looking? Well, no he's not that good a lookin', but he can DRIVE at night!" We laughed even harder when she told me that story! Aunt Margie attracts a lot of men but she has decided to stick with the one she has; he's awful good to her she says and always is particular about how he dresses. That's important to her..every woman wants a sharp dressed man! Even though he likes the attention the other women give him, he must have decided to stick with Aunt Margie as evidenced by the framed pictures of himself when he was in World War II that he brought over and placed around her house; especially next to her bed!

My Favorite Women

My favorite women in my circle of friends are the 70-90+ year olds. They really have interesting views on life and love and still know how to dress up and they love jewels on their shoes. I love their sense of humor too. When I asked Aunt Margie if she was still going with the guy she was seeing last time I saw her which was about 3 years ago, she said..As of last night I was...she cracked me up! Not only great senses of humor but also style. Maybe this love stems from when I was a little girl and I spent a lot of time with my mom and aunts..having coffee and cookies and listening to their talk about hair, and makeup and nails and clothes and cooking and cleaning...women's topics of conversation~however what I found interesting at an early age was not so much their conversations as their mannerisms. I watched every move they made and watched how they applied their lipstick, put their jeweled eyeglasses on and off, how they used their hands to gesture during their conversation or pursed their lips to sip their drinks. They had their almond shaped fingernails painted with rosy iridescent color, their hair fixed just right, wearing sundresses and cork heeled wedge shoes with fruit on the top and always purses to match in the summer months. The winter brought out the mink stoles or little joined foxes around their shoulders~again with a purse to match. Oh my how good they smelled too. I could always tell my aunts had been to grandma's house because their expensive perfume lingered in the air. My Aunt Pauline served the best coffee(they put a splash of coffee in my milk in a tea cup) and those cookies that were vanilla wafers with pink marshmallow puffs on top sprinkled with coconut. I thought those were so elegant. These she served under a crystal chandelier that I would lie on the chair and stair up at..getting lost in the sparkly crystals. Aunt Pauline also had a huge diamond ring that I thought was a big at the chandelier crystals...probably not far from it, now that I think of it. There was a mural on the dining room wall of a far away place...I wanted to just go into the wall and follow the lane, maybe there would be houses filled with crystals just like on the chandelier. I hope I can live as long as my friends and be as humorous and stylish as they are at this age.

Pluto Water and My Favorite Indiana Destination

Today we are going to visit Aunt Margie! Aunt Margie lives in a friendly little town nestled in the hills of southern Indiana just a few miles from French Lick, the popular health resort established in 1845, burned down and rebuilt even grander in 1897. It attracted the very well-to-do and the who's who of society. It was sought for its health giving "miracle water" sulfur spring water..bottled later as Pluto Water. I really don't know how they drank it~the smell alone would cure any constipational (is that a word?) condition you experienced. French Lick is still active today with a gorgeous huge hotel and a casino. Just up the road from that is West Baden Springs Hotel, also built at the turn of the century for competition. You are captivated once you step foot inside this National Historic Landmark (NHL) built in 1902. With its one-of-a-kind domed atrium spanning 200 feet, it has been called the "Eighth Wonder of the World." Rooms rise in six tiers around the dome, and balcony rooms provide a panoramic view of the atrium. It boasts the world's first unsupported roof, suspended on rollers over the rotunda. It is magnificent.
West Baden Springs Hotel has gone through many transformations in its lifetime. It was a grand hotel, a war hospital, a seminary for the Jesuits, a college in the 1960's to 1980's called Northwood Institute and then it fell to ruin. It was restored to new rejuvenated life in the 1990's and it is my favorite. In the very early stages of being restored, at Halloween time they gave haunted tours of the building courtesy of the Floyd County Drama Department. Each October we'd make the trek down after work to participate in the wonderful dinner and tour they would give. As I said in my last post I love buildings that are not "finished" and this one had so much soul to it. Down long corridors of empty, gutted rooms we were led, just catching a glimpse of a turn of the century couple dancing in a darkened corner making you wonder if it was your imagination..when you looked again, the apparitions were gone. They led us past the barber shop of the old hotel and you could swear you heard the steely snipping of hair..again a glimpse and the spectre was gone. They took us to the cemetery by the light of the moon where the Jesuits were buried and we saw the wonderful pools and gaming buildings and were told about a raised bicycle racing track that was several stories high. Pavilions for fountains with greek goddess statues that were being restored..Oh how I loved the bare bones. I love it restored now but I miss the raw not-yet-ready for the world's eyes elegance of decay and I miss the sulfur smell of the Pluto Water...somehow they eleviated that cure-all-your-ills rotten egg smell!
By the way, Aunt Margie is 88 next month and she never misses the senior dances every Friday and Saturday nights at the "big hotel" as they call it! I guess it does have healthful qualities!
http://www.frenchlick.com/hotels/westBaden/index.jsp

Happiest Room

Do you have a "happiest" room in your house? Our sun room is our happiest room in our house...not that all the other rooms aren't happy but this one is in particularly "happiest". It is the reading room where no television invades the atmosphere; it is a conversation room, a squirrel and bird (an occasional opossum, raccoon and skunk) viewing room...a get-back-to-nature room. It is a homework room for my niece who stays with us during the school week. It is a great napping room and listening to music or books on cd room. It's a good place to eat your breakfast or dinner or study your genealogy. I hope every one has a "happiest" room. If not..make one happy!

Before the Dressing

Maybe I'm silly, but I love the look of a room that is unfinished, just starting to unfold~bare bones showing... an old house just getting ready to wear it's finery again. I had to capture the moment before the dress and bonnet were donned.