Shakin' All Over

Our second-last stop on the road trip was in Kentucky, just south of Lexington. You've already heard about the splendid liquid refreshments (even though we stayed in a dry county). Look at these poor barrels, locked up against their will:

But there was also beautiful rolling country:

Old houses that must have had stories to tell:

And black barns. Black seemed to be the norm for barns and fences (though fences also came in a lovely shade of white):

Not to mention stone:

We stayed in a national historic site, the old Shaker Community of Pleasant Hill. This is another of our road trip traditions: Utopian communities of the US Midwest. (There are a lot of them.)

The Shakers, a Quaker sect that shook in the presence of the Spirit, had established over a dozen comunities in the United States by the mid nineteenth century. At their height, there were 6000 Shakers. (Today there are 4, who live at another of the historic communities, Sabbathday Lake, Maine.) They had a little trouble hanging on, seeing as how they were celibate and all.

The last of the Pleasant Hill Shakers died in 1923, having passed the title to their huge farming estate on to a local merchant some years earlier in return for his promise to look after them in their old age. The farm and its buildings were rented out and fell into disrepair but in the 1970s local preservationists and historians stepped in and saved what was left, including about 20 communal buildings, many of them with their original early 18th century plaster, paint, and glasswork.

Several buildings were turned into an inn; others a living history village. This usually means that people walk around in period dress and talk to you, in character, in an approximation of period dialect -- thankfully all we got here were frocks and smocks, no bad accents. But lots of good interpretation. One of the things the Shakers did here (and still do at Sabbathday Lake) is raise vegetables for seed.

Pleasant Hill was a wealthy place, and it showed in the size of the buildings, and in the grandeur of their simplicity. The buildings were wide, so that the people who lived in them (about 100 or so in each of the 3 dormitories; men on one side and women on the other) could follow certain rituals, such as lining up in pairs the hallways (again, women and men separate) and processing in to the dining room for meals. (Thankfully, this was not a behaviour that we were expected to emulate.) Here is such a hallway:

The wide hallways, high ceilings, and many large windows were also part of the air circulation system. The glass was a huge expense, given the cost of transportation -- it all had to come from out East, so you ordered twice as much as you needed, assuming you'd lose half to breakage. Those Shaker windows might have been about respiratory health but they were also a status symbol, and showed everyone nearby just how wealthy this community was.

The kitchens (three of them the one dormitory we visited) were large and airy, though I imagine they got steamy with twenty or more women putting up pickles and preserves, not mention every-day cooking for 100 people.

Clearly, the Shakers appreciated beauty:

Which paid off for us. Our hotel room was nice digs.

We had a much more comfortable mattress than the straw ones used by Shakers. There's a Swedish Tempurpedic Mattress factory up the road, and I guess the hotel got a deal.

The historic site, the surrounding landscape, the bourbon and the history were all wonderful. The Inn was a little odd; we expected it to be a small inn with highly personal and personable service but in fact, save for the architecture and furnishings, it was not much different than the Days Inn in Chicago or the Best Western in Nashville.

We did however, on our first night, have the sweetest most engaged waiter I think we have ever encountered. We had a grand chat with Drew, who stands out a bit here for both his political as well as his sexual orientation, and who ought to be a guest on Rick Mercer's show just to show him that some Americans do know an awful lot about Canada, and would like to know more.

Plus he gave us a free piece of oatmeal pie!