By John Carlson—
Indiana’s fabled Story Inn is situated south of Nashville, amid thick woods and steep hills where driveways angle skyward at trajectories more commonly found on amusement park thrill rides.
Following State Road 135’s twists and turns, every mile seems to take you farther and farther into the past until suddenly you enter the town of Story, population three. You spot the funky old inn, its metal siding stained orange with rust, plus some scattered cabins. Just beyond the inn there’s also an old house topping a hill. With its flight of curving, wooden stair steps, come nightfall this dwelling could be the one crazy Norman Bates’s fussy mother occupied in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “Psycho.”
That will likely be your darkest thought visiting Story, though.
Not that this place is for everybody …
The town and its inn are one heck of a throwback. If you can’t imagine a night away from that boxy contraption filled with pictures of obnoxious people doing stupid stuff – you know, your television set – forget it. They don’t have ‘em here. And a related warning: If you’re not visiting with someone you like a lot, pick somebody else, because you’ll be relying on each other for entertainment. But if, as Nancy and I did, you look around and smile, the Story Inn and one of its eighteen rooms and cabins might be right for you.
The morning view from the porch of a Story Inn cabin reflects peacefulness. Photo by Nancy Carlson
The worn-looking inn is intriguing, harkening back to the year of its founding (Motto: One inconvenient location since 1851). Walking through the inn’s main floor, it appeared to be an old store. The act of shopping being anathema to me, I kept my eyes squeezed tightly shut and walked back out. Beats me if you can buy something in there or not.
We did, however, make our way down to the Story Inn’s basement tavern, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Here again, if your taste runs to glitzy, glamorous joints, avoid the Story Inn’s tavern at all costs. For me, though, it was a down-home delight so thoroughly Hoosier, I’d have broken into “Back Home Again In Indiana” if my singing didn’t sound like doomed animals being eaten. Entering to The Band’s cover recording of “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” Nancy and I sat at the bar in butt-coddling metal seats salvaged from ancient farm tractors. One after another, songs flowed from top Americana artists like John Prine, Townes Van Zant, Jason Isbell and Lucinda Willams
While again there was no TV, the walls were filled with framed black-and-white photos of long-gone patrons and townsfolk. Incongruously, there were also a couple more modern-looking pictures, including one of a beautiful young lady with ‘80s prom hair who seemed familiar.
“It’s Laura Palmer from ‘Twin Peaks,’” Amy the bartender explained, citing that oddball murder drama to which Nancy and I had been hopelessly addicted. Amy explained she and another employee had gone ‘round and ‘round about hanging Laura’s fetching photo in the bar. She’d take it down when she worked. He’d put it back up when he worked. Then one day she arrived to find he’d screwed the picture to a heavy wooden post.
Guess he won.
As for the second picture, it needed no introduction, being IU superstar and Bob Knight protégé Damon Bailey, photographed for a magazine cover back in his basketball prime.
I told you this place was Hoosier to the core.
Anyway, between the dim atmosphere and ranks of whiskey bottles, Clint Eastwood wouldn’t have looked out of place had he stepped in to smack the prairie dust off his cowboy hat and down a quick snort.
So, how is the Story Inn’s food?
Pretty great, I imagine. Three days a week its chef whips up gourmet meals for its guests. This includes a Sunday brunch, the menu for which looks fantastic. As for the other two days, Friday and Saturday, can you imagine an out-of-the-way place like this serving egg arpege and matsutake sabayon? I know I can’t imagine it, mostly because I have no idea what the hell that stuff is. It was a moot point anyway, since we weren’t there those days.
But the lowly bar’s menu? It rocked, too.
Between sips of Wild Turkey I ordered a double-cheeseburger, and Nancy ordered a single-cheeseburger. Jotting it down, Amy listened, grimaced and shook her head.
“You don’t want a single,” she told Nancy. “Order a double.”
So Nancy ordered a double.
Fifteen minutes later we were munching two killer double-cheeseburgers with fries on the side, plus apple poppy slaw served in a compostable container marked, “No trees were harmed in the making of this bowl.” The gourmet touch was evident even down there in the bar, where eight bucks bought you a hotdog made from Japanese prime Wagyu beef.
After supper we could have headed back into Nashville for some fun, I suppose. Better yet, we could have traipsed around the inn looking for the “Blue Lady,” said to be the ghost of the late Dr. George Story’s widow. The inn, you should know beforehand, especially if you are numbered among the spectrally challenged, calls itself “one of the most haunted places in Indiana.”
Or had we picked a warmer evening to visit, we might have placed a couple folding chairs outside our cabin and watched the sun fade from this beautiful backwoods spot. Besides that, bringing along a couple books and a game of Scrabble would have been smart. Instead we killed some time studying the generous breakfast/snack basket that had greeted our arrival. We’d start the following morning with good coffee, two tangerines, a couple banana muffins, two yogurts, a plastic cup of halved hard-boiled eggs and packs of Nature Valley crunch bars.
It seemed a nice gesture, true Hoosier hospitality.
By the way, while the Blue Lady never showed up, another unexpected visitor, of sorts, did. There on a battered old table in our homey cabin rested a copy of Indiana Artisan magazine, highlighting the work of our state’s most creative souls. Flipping through it on a hunch, I found mention of Lathay Pegues, my dear friend and former partner in food journalism before he earned his artisan status by launching JohnTom’s Barbecue Sauce.
The smile it left me with seemed an appropriate end to our day.
John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.
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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three. John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.
