Day 5 - Only Rock and Roll at DennyGibson.com

Day 5: October 29, 2018
Rock and Roll Act III
Comment via blog

Prev

Next

I spent last night in this room at the Huggy Bear Motel in Warren, Indiana.

Online research turned up a promising breakfast spot in the nearby town of Markle but it turned out to be closed. It didn't appear to be out-of-business closed but it wasn't open and there was no apparent explanation. I spoke with a passing couple who told me the place was developing a reputation for erratic hours. That should keep the customers away. I headed toward my next planned target, Huntington, and searched for breakfast spots as I got closer. I was surprised when Nick's Kitchen came up on the list. I've eaten at Nick's Kitchen before. It's famous but I thought the only things people ate there were pork tenderloins and pie.

There's a good chance that Nick Freienstein invented the breaded pork tenderloin sandwich, and it's an indisputable fact that the restaurant he started makes one of the best to be found. It's what represented the state of Indiana at this summer's Flavored Nation. (Which I somehow missed.) But there are plenty of other items on the menu including French toast and sausage made on site with trimmings from the tenderloins. Excellent!

While eating at Nick's, I had the pleasure of chatting with owner Jean Anne Bailey. When she asked about why I was in Huntington, I told her that seeing the outhouses was one of the reasons and added "If they're still there." She assured me they were and that I would certainly enjoy them. I should have asked where "there" was.

The location I had came from RoadsideAmerica which is where I first learned of the outhouses. They led me to the site of the first picture. The collection of pit toilets was supposed to be displayed somewhere up tha road but I found nothing. Poking around on line turned up a Facebook page with another address. That address led me to the museum in the second picture. The museum is open Wednesday through Saturday. I was there on a Monday. I returned to Nick's and talked things over with some employees and customers. The consensus was that some or all of the collection was moved to the museum several years ago. Good thing I just wanted to see them and didn't really need them.

That's a light post in the first picture. It's a very fancy light post and it was one of the very first. On March 31, 1880, Wabash, Indiana, became the first electrically lighted city in the world when the switch was thrown on four carbon-arc lights mounted on the new courthouse. One of those 3,000 candle power lights is preserved and shown in the second picture. The plaque mounted below it is here. The attached tag shown in the third picture indicates a an 1878 patent. Minutes from the Wabash Common Council meeting of February 16, 1980, are displayed on the wall beside the light. That's when purchase of the lights was approved. Among the details included is the vendor's guarantee that the generated light would be sufficient for "...people to 'get around' at the farthest point..."

A Charles Keck sculpture of Abraham Lincoln sits in one corner of the courthouse lawn. Beside it, flags fly at half-mast, presumedly for the eleven victims of a shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday. Maybe the statue always looks that sad. Maybe not.

Downtown Wabash has a "liar's bench" and a lot of elephants. It doesn't have a brewery but it does have a brewery's taproom. The bench requires no explanation; The elephants do. As told on this plaque, an elephant named Modoc escaped from a traveling circus and ran loose for five day. One of her first moves was following the smell of fresh peanuts into Bradley Brothers Drug Store. The drug store has been replaced by Modoc's Market where I purchased a very good fruit smoothie. The plaque leaves the story a little open ended and I initially assumed the worst. However, a more complete version I found elsewhere, explains that Modoc was eventually returned alive to her trainer.

All of these pictures were taken just across the street from the hotel where I'm staying. As you can probably guess, I was pretty excited when I thought I would be just a few steps from a brewery. I was naturally disappointed to learn that it was just one of several taprooms operated by Chapman's Brewing from their brewery in Angola, Indiana, but I didn't cry in my brown ale. There's a growler from Cincinnati's Rhinegeist among those displayed above the taps.

I'd reached Wabash a bit earlier than expected so there was a little wait before I could check in. The wait was over and it was now time to settle into my room at the historic Charley Creek Inn. The third picture shows the hall outside my room and the fourth is the lobby as viewed from that hall. Cindy, the lady in the right, is the restaurant manager who I'd met earlier in the hotel bar. I assume that's why she's smiling rather that yelling at me for taking her picture. The last picture is the Green Hat Lounge with the Twenty Restaurant beyond. The restaurant's name comes from its 1920s inspired decor. Don't know about the lounge name unless people wore a lot of green hats in the '20s. They mostly look grey in photographs.

The Charley Creek Inn is about a block from the site of the concert around which this whole trip was organized. Somewhere I'd gotten the idea that the Honeywell Center was a historic theater though it's obviously not. The Center's Ford Theater is a really nice -- and modern -- venue. It was a great setting for a great concert and it's really sad that so many people missed it. Calling the 1500 seat theater half full might actually be optimistic.

Those that did make it were treated to a rock and roll tour de force from the fifteen piece group that Little Steven has assembled. Little Steven, a.k.a. Steve Van Zandt, is a man of many talents who a lot of people know from his work with Bruce Springsteen, others know from his role in HBO's The Sopranos, and others may have become fans through the radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage. He is also a song writer and has frequently voiced thanks to Southside Johnny and the Jukes for "keeping my music alive" while he was bouncing around in his various projects. He repeated that sentiment tonight while keeping his own music alive with a group custom made for it. The Disciples of Soul have it all. There's a drummer, a bassist, and another guitarist. There is both an organist and a pianist with keyboards on all sides. Add to that a five piece horn section, three vocalists, and a percussionist completely surrounded by things to hit and shake. Good Rockin' Tonight!

The group is not just big. It's tight and talented and everybody shares the spotlight. At one point, the horns and two of the vocalists left the stage while the keyboardists stepped forward to play mandolin and accordion on This Is The Time Of Your Life. The third vocalist stayed on to play piano. By the way, the white haired guy who left that piano to play mandolin was Lowell Levinger a member of the original 1965 Youngbloods. How cool is that?

The last picture shows the beginning of the end. Everyone bowed and waved but no one left the stage before the pseudo-encore of I Don't Want to Go Home and Out Of the Darkness. A little more than two and a half hours earlier, the curtain opened on Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul playing a hard driving version of Wabash Cannonball. Nice touch! Some of Steven's comments during the show spoke to not merely keeping his music alive but of keeping all music alive and in particular keeping LIVE music alive. "No drum machine," he said pointing to his right. "No lip synching," he said pointing to his left. "No shit!" I said pointing to the internet.

[Prev] [Site Home] [Trip Home] [Contact] [Next]