Amelia and Josiah and Grandmolly arrived from Baltimore a few minutes after I arrived from Denver. Potpie was waiting in the station (airport) to take us home to their house.
So far vacation has been great. We are overwhelmed by the greeness and water... making us pretty homesick for the South.
Yesterday was the first full day of Kentuckyation. We did a "how things are made" tour, starting at Glassworks where we watched artists blow glass and make beautiful vases, etc. Josiah enjoyed it very much.
But not as much as he enjoyed the Louisville Slugger factory and museum. We skipped the full tour, but we watched the men make bats through the windows and we walked around the free parts of the museum. Josiah got to hold a Jackie Robinson bat outside of the bat vault where Louisville Slugger stores the model for each bat they made prior to the computer age.
After hitting a few rounds in the batting cages, we loaded up and drove out to the riverport area, about 15 miles southwest of town. We went all that way to see a music store that I found online. It's truly in the middle of nowhere, but it is great. They are a gibson dealer. I played an F5 Fern Gibson, that is easily the nicest mandolin I have ever played. I did not ask them to open the case to let me play the $ 25,000 gibson mandolin. I wonder if it would sound a lot different than the $8k mandolin? I think it might... the $8k mandolin DID sound a lot different and better even than the $2500 gibsons.
I bought a few picks (wegen mandolin picks) and a set of strings on sale, we got some information about where to hear bluegrass around town, and made the trip back to Eastwood, where the Schmitts live now.
A great first day of Kentuckyation.
1 comment:
I forgot to mention that the music "store" turned out to be the manufacturing site for Sullivan banjos... so even that part of the trip became a tour of a manufacturing process.
In fact, they make the Sullivan banjos and the necks for Gibson banjos, right there in the back of the show room warehouse.
Mr Sullivan, who started the company, started making 5 string banjos necks. People wanted to change their 4 string necks for 5 string necks, so now he has a collection of hundreds of gibson 4 string necks from pre-WW2.
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