Joe Ley Antiques in Louisville

Joe Ley Antiques in Louisville, KY

By Pamela O’Meara

Joe Ley Antiques in Louisville

Joe Ley discusses his antique business.

As an orphan who had no toys and was passed around unwanted from family to family, Joe Ley bought up all the old toys he could find – dolls, carousel horses, sleds, cradles – when he grew up. He bought up junk other people were discarding during urban renewal in the ‘50s and refurbished some of it to sell. All of this and far more – old posters, records, dishes, furniture, jewelry, chandeliers, doors, hardware, musical instruments, military memorabilia-- is now crammed into his 1890s three-story red brick former schoolhouse and yard in Louisville.

“As time passed, what once was junk became very collectible,” he said.

A carousel horse is on display.

His place is now popular for filming movies, for buying special pieces for decorating restaurants like TGI Fridays and for restoration projects.

All sorts of lights are featured.

In business here for 37 years, he buys and sells all over the U. S. though about one-third of his calls are from the Louisville area. He said 100,000 people come through in a year on a recent Saturday, 600 people stopped to look through his crammed rooms of stuff. He said he gets 40 to 50 calls a day to buy things. Sometimes he buys a whole estate, selects what he wants and disposes of the rest. He has bought salvage rights on buildings about to be torn down.

House Beautiful, Travel and Leisure and Southern Living magazines recommend Joe Ley Antiques as a source of unique and special items for a home or garden.

 “You could call me a “buyaholic,” he said. “It’s like surrounding yourself with beautiful things.”

Photos by Pamela O'Meara

For more information go to http://www.joeley.com.

Crawfish in Baton Rouge

A crawfish danced on the table.

Each crawfish makes one bite.

Dancing with crawfish in Baton Rouge

by Pamela O'Meara

Two red-shelled crawfish danced on the table
at Boutin's Cajun Restaurant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The larger one stood on its back legs and waved its front legs in the air. The smaller one rolled onto its back and waved all legs. Then they met their fate in a pot of boiling water.

Out came the server with large dishes piled high with cooked crawfish. The server said to twist off the tail, crack the shell and squeeze out one bite of delicious meat.

Baton Rouge is a big oil town located on the Mississippi River 157 miles north of the Gulf Coast, Every day of my visit, I ate crawfish, served plain or grilled over salad greens or in an etouffee (gravy) served over rice or poached eggs. The area is famous for its delicious Cajun food, music and history.

Crawfish live in the freshwater swamps and marshes of southern Louisiana and
many are harvested from the Atchafalaya Basin, one of the largest swamps in
the U.S. They are also farmed in rice paddies. After the rice is harvested
and the water cools down in the winter, the crawfish rise from the mud and
can be caught. February to May is the height of the season, and crawfish
boils are popular with locals then.

At McGee's landing overlooking Atchafalaya Basin, we ate lunch in a large
windowed room overlooking the swamp. I ordered a salad topped with grilled
crawfish, continuing to focus on the specialty of the area.

Crawfish etouffee served over rice.

Dinner at Randol's Cajun Restaurant in Lafayette included a big dish of crawfish for an appetizer and a traditional Cajun meal of crawfish etouffee over rice with sweet potato pecan pie for dessert. The restaurant raises its own crawfish and crabs.

Wherever you go, the crawfish are tasty in season.

Photos by Pamela O'Meara
 

For more information on great places for crawfish, go to http://www.lafayettetravel.com
or http://visitbatonrouge.com

On the road to Sells (Arizona)

This memorial marks a traffic death 

on the road to Sells.

On the road to Sells

Pamela O’Meara

 

The road to Sells begins in Tucson, AZ and heads about 60 miles southwest, crossing into the Tohono O’odham Indian reservation where Sells is located.

Open range is the norm along narrow two-lane Highway 86 and cotton fields dot the countryside. In the distance, mountains ring the area, including Kitt Peak, which has the most diverse collection of observatories in the world and the National Solar Observatory. Baboquivari Peak, the sacred mountain of the Tohono O’odham people, is just to the south. 

This memorial marks another
unfortunate traffic death.

But most noticeable are the many crosses and other memorials along the road marking deaths at those spots. The road has no shoulder and a reputation for many fatal accidents, often alcohol-related, though there is no drinking on the reservation itself. One memorial has three white wooden crosses, others are single crosses decorated with wreaths or colored streamers and flowers. One looks like a church icon and yet another elaborate one has a motorcycle wheel in front, suggesting a motorcycle accident. Many memorials are marked with stones circles. A few have fences around to keep cattle out.

Along the way a couple of stores are selling Indian art along with snack foods and simple meals but it was mostly just the Sonoran desert and thousands of saguaro cactus.



Mexican goldpoppies cover the ground.

Beds of Mexican goldpoppies provide a cheery yellow ground cover between the palo verde and mesquite trees, and prickly pear and cholla cactus on long stretches of the road, probably thanks to a recent rain. What looks like birds’ nests or Spanish moss but actually is mistletoe hangs in many trees.

Near the border patrol station, half a dozen cameras on tripods are pointed at the road. Four border patrol officers stood talking to two illegal detainees sitting on the ground wearing handcuffs. The area is a runway for illegals crossing the border.

Border Patrol cars are visible all along the way, and on the lane heading back to Tucson, they stop everyone driving through. We removed our sunglasses while the border patrol officer peered in the back of the car, checking for any unintended ‘”guests” and then waved us on.

Our destination in Sells was the Desert Rain Café, a non-profit project of the Indian community to promote traditional and healthy Tohono O’odham foods and support their education system. We went there for the delicious Thursday lunch special of tender prickly pear glazed pork ribs, brown tepary beans, a whole wheat tortilla and side salad of dark greens with pieces of apple and strawberries with a touch of cactus nectar.
 

Adjacent to the café, the Desert Rain Gallery sells high-quality Tohono O’odham baskets in assorted sizes, blankets, jewelry, dried food and books about these native people, who have lived in the Sonoran Desert for countless generations, their once-enormous nation artificially divided by the Mexican-American border.

The road to Sells can be lovely and dangerous, but as we left the reservation the many huge ancient saguaro cactus with their arms outstretched seemed to be waving goodbye.

Photos by Pamela O'Meara
 

Urban Bourban Trail in Louisville

A mint julip is featured at the
Brown Hotel.
 

September is National Bourbon Month; Follow the Urban Bourbon Trail in Louisville

by Pamela O'Meara

Louisville, Ky, gives visitors like me a chance to visit some of the best bourbon bars in the world to taste the drink in various forms -- straight, with champagne, in a mint julep. My tour included a mint julep (bourbon with minty simple syrup and mint sprig over ice) at the Brown Hotel, which in 1926 became the home of the Hot Brown sandwich which is  composed of bread, fried green tomatoes, turkey, cheese, bacon and morney sauce. Hundreds of hungry flappers enjoyed them after dancing half the night away, and I had a sample.

Bourbon mixed with champagne
is featured at the Seelbach
Hotel in Louisville.

At the nearby Seelbach Hotel, which F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions in "The Great Gatsby,” I had a glass of the hotel’s classic bourbon with champagne. The story goes that Fitzgerald wrote part of Gatsby on napkins there, and characters Tom and Daisy were married in the ballroom. Listed on the National Historic Register, the hotel is also famous for a secret back room where Al Capone would regularly meet with associates during Prohibition.

Bucks Restaurant and Bar is filled
with flowers.

Bucks Restaurant and Bar, set among Victorian mansions, was filled with vases of white flowers and glittering candles against a dark green background. We sampled 12-year-old bourbon and a meringue dessert while listening to a young woman play a piano.

The Brown Hotel serves mini
Hot Brown sandwiches.

These bars and restaurants are among the 27 listed on the Urban Bourbon Trail, which includes bars that stock 50 to 150 different brands of bourbon. Collect a stamp from six bars and you’ll earn the rank of official Bourbon Country Citizen and be awarded a special Urban Bourbon Trailblazer T-shirt. Trail passports (but not the drinks) are free at any participating establishment and at the visitor’s center.

Photos by Pamela O'Meara

For more information go to http://www.bourboncountry.com/things-to-do/urban-bourbon-trail/index.aspx.

Out on the ranch: Singing Wind Bookshop in Tucson, AZ

Out on the ranch: Singing Wind Bookshop
Pamela O'Meara 

Who would have imagined that Winn Bundy, 82 in July, a graduate of West High
in Minneapolis, who hiked in White Bear Lake, canoed on the St. Croix River
and worked on the Gopher yearbook at the University of Minnesota would own
and operate the Singing Wind Bookshop located in her ranch house on a dusty
road a few miles north of Benson, Arizona, and her book signing events would
be listed in the Wall Street Journal?
Dressed in jeans, gray-blond hair in a long braid, the petite Bundy says she
specializes in books about the Southwest and is interested in women authors.
"I particularly have a fascination with what women have done," she says, and
she has a special section on women.
Books are arranged by size and subject, and there are sections on Indians of
the Southwest by tribe, Native American art and language, cowboy and cowgirl
poetry and humor (Her cowboy poet neighbor Baxter Black occasionally stops
by.), Jewish pioneer history, men and women of the Southwest, nature,
science, cooking, food, quilting, fires of the world, birds, architecture,
guide books, journals, history and fiction ‹ classics not bestsellers ‹ and
an inviting room of quality children's books with a child-size bench and
antique chair for sitting down to read.
³Many children come here, and we also have programs for kids at different
schools,² she says ³It¹s not true that kids don¹t read any more.²
Bundy and Kathy, her assistant of 20 years, know all the books and can find
anything visitors might like. Books are floor-to-ceiling and every little
nook and cranny is filled in the front rooms of her 1939  ranch house near
the San Pedro River.
Four times a year, Bundy invites authors in for book signings, sometimes
with music and munchies as well. In January she held a cowboy/cowgirl
round-up, February was flora, fauna and food of the Southwest and March
features a quilting trunk show.
In November, she will host a Thanksgiving fiesta  featuring ³Gabby: A Story
of Courage and Hope,² a book about U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her
astronaut husband, Mark Kelly. Gifford¹s mother, Gloria, will read from the
book. The Ronstadt Generations, led by Michael J. Ronstadt, brother of
singer Linda Ronstadt, will provide musical entertainment.
When I asked if we could talk more, she invited my into her comfortable
living room so she could check incoming orders at the same time. Her dog,
Chester, a combination labrador and dalmation, wandered in and so did her
husband, Joe, who takes care of their 640-acre ranch and sells their
grass-fed beef.
³We still raise quite a few Œbeeves,¹² he says.
A former librarian at the University of Arizona for a brief period, Bundy
found the long commute tiring. With master's degrees in library science and
history, she opened her bookshop in 1974. She regularly reads reviews of new
books and goes to book conventions, while salesmen stop by her place. She
sells heavily to university and public school libraries in Arizona as well
as to individuals.
She doesn't have a computer, a website or an email address, and all books
are lovingly card-indexed by hand. She doesn¹t accept credit cards, just
checks or cash.
So how do people find her?  Word of mouth followed by articles in local and
national publications do the trick. There also are reviews about her unique
bookshop online.
Word of mouth is how I found out. Two friends, formerly from Minneapolis,
parked their RV in Benson and spent an afternoon there browsing and visiting
with Bundy. They told me when I stopped to see them on my recent trip to
Arizona.
So I went to Singing Wind, where I met Susan Hood and her husband from
Boulder, Colo., who had heard about it from friends in Tubac, AZ. Hood sat
with a lapful of books to look over while talking with Bundy about women
pioneers of the Southwest.
Bundy says she has had visitors from Japan, Russia, England, Wales, Ireland,
France, Italy and Germany as well as the U.S. because she is featured in
international travel magazines.
³And a lot of Minnesotans come here, especially in the winter,² she says.
Bundy still maintains her ties to the Twin Cities by attending her high
school class reunions.

Pier, inshore and gulf fishing

1/26/2012 3:37:00 PM

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Skip from Sailaway Charters pulled up his shrimp net on our eco tour along the Intracoastal Waterway bayous. Two dolphins hover beside our pontoon boar waiting for scraps of fish. Pier, inshore and gulf fishing Pamela O'Meara staff writer            reprinted with permission from                             Lillie Suburban Newspapers Legs wide and pressed against the side of a 62-foot boat for balance, it took all my strength to reel in two 20- to 24-inch red snappers and two round triggerfish, which weighed between five and seven pounds, on a six-hour fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico, 12 miles out with no land in sight. As soon as we tossed in our lines, we had bites, including grouper and amberjack. A few dolphins cavorted in water near the boat, hoping to catch the out-of-season reds we threw back. At the end of the afternoon, we dropped off our catch at Shipp's Harbour Grill, which cooked and served it. It was a memorable feast. With over 100 charter-fishing boats, the nation's largest artificial fishing reef program and one of the gulf's longest fishing piers, Orange Beach-Gulf Shores is a very popular place to go fishing. Our tour was through Necessity Charters with Capt. Ben Fairey. Another day I went out fishing with Capt. Robby Walker. Fishing inland on his 24-foot boat, my friends caught red snapper and bluefish, but I didn't catch any. According to local lore, anything banana - food, suntan lotion -- means bad luck for fishing. I was wearing Banana Boat suntan lotion. Pier fishing is another great way to catch fish or watch others do it. The Gulf State Park Pier is 1,540 feet long and 20 feet wide with an octagon-shaped end that offers plenty of space for people to fish. A license for the day is just a few dollars, making it the most economical way to fish. Many of the regulars had innovative carts on wheels with a row of fishing rods and a cooler for their catch. One had a 35-pound fish hanging over the edge. Captainrobbywalker@gmail.com

3/23/2012 8:24:00 PM

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photos by Pamela O'Meara/Review Snorting bison milling around on the road in Manitoba’s Riding Mountain National Park. A picnic breakfast at Lake Audy featured local cheese, cinnamon rolls, croissants and blueberry-rhubarb jam. Ukrainian families in Dauphin hand-built this Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Resurrection in the shape of a cross with four domes. Riding Mountain's Angela Spooner discusses managing the bison herd and maintaining the mixed fescue prairie where they live. Savor the food -- Aditis Touch Greenhouse in Onanole. -- Poor Michael'sin Onanole serves cheese and spinach quiche with fresh strawberries and a fruit smoothie on a patio surrounded by flowers. -- Wilson's Place in Neepawa is famous for its variety of homemade pies, including cottage cheese and raisin pie and Saskatoon berry pie. -- Siesta Cafe in Clear Lake (also called Wasagamig) serves up short ribs with green and yellow beans, and a Chilean sparkling fruit wine. -- T. R. McKoy's in Wasagamig features pizza and veal rolls with vegetables. -- At Pho No. 1 in Winnipeg, try shrimp and pork dishes, barbecue beef, a chicken vermichelli spice soup with chicken, coleslaw with chunks of chicken breast and a hint of mint, and strong, slightly sweet Vietnamese coffee. -- Bistro 7 1/4 in Winnipeg serves duck confit with risotto topped with slices of yellow beets. -- Velvet Glove restaurant in the Fairmont Hotel in downtown Winnipeg offers a healthy breakfast before returning home. Savor the flavor of Riding Mountain National Park Pamela O'Meara staff writer                                                       reprinted with permission from Lillie Suburban Newspapers Though they are wild and dangerous, the snorting bison milling around our car in Riding Mountain National Park seemed friendly enough as we spent about 45 minutes taking photos of mothers with calves, a big bull rolling on his back with feet in the air and another with an earring of weeds dangling down the side of his head. Riding Mountain, a large wooded plateau rising on farmland about three hours northwest of Winnipeg, Manitoba, is a vacation hot spot with hiking trails, campgrounds, boating, fishing, special events, wild animals and interesting small towns on the way. Manitoba is our neighbor to the north and Winnipeg is an easy eight-hour drive through rich farmland and northern forests, but sometimes we forget just what a pleasant place it is to visit - much like the U.S. but with a slightly different flavor. Our Riding Mountain tour began at 5 a.m. with a spectacular lightning display across the entire sky and then rain and wind. A few friends and I watched from our rooms at the Elkhorn Resort before heading out on a scenic drive through the park to look for moose, elk and deer. No luck; they must have bedded down during the rain. At a park shelter, Angela Spooner told us how she manages the 50-animal bison herd and then took us to a minty-fragrant mixed fescue prairie section of the park to tell us how to maintain that. She said the ground needs to be disturbed - by fire, vehicles or bison - to force open and spread plant seeds. Birds use bison hair to make their nests warmer for eggs and babies, she added. Overhead, loons were calling and the sky was full of billowy gray clouds. Along the edge where the prairie met the woods, a whitetail deer ran by. By 9:30 a.m., we had worked up an appetite and headed to a shelter at nearby Lake Audy for a delicious picnic catered by Sparrow artisan bakery and featuring local cheese, cinnamon rolls, croissants and blueberry-rhubarb jam. Behind the scenes In the park's wildlife lab, coordinator Ken Kingdon told us how the park controls bovine tuberculosis in deer and elk by getting blood samples and putting on monitors so the animals can be tracked down again later by helicopter if the tests prove positive. Out of 100 elk, 11 to 15 will test positive and be killed but only two will actually have the disease, he said. Later, sitting at an unexpected lovely English garden beside Clear Lake in the center of the park, Kingdon told us how finger-length slimy sculpin fish are monitored because they are temperature-sensitive and give an early-warning signal like a canary in a coal mine if something is amiss. He said Minnesota is also looking at changes in water temperature. The fear is that water won't be as cold in the future so there will be more algae growth. Along with the slimy sculpin, whitefish and trout will also be affected by changes in river and lake temperatures. We missed our sunset cruise on Clear Lake, due to rain but we stood by the water admiring a double rainbow over the sailboats and cottages and then as the sky cleared, watched the sunset in brilliant pinks and oranges over the lake. The Ukranians Part of the fun of this trip was stopping in small towns between Riding Mountain National Park and Winnipeg. In Dauphin, volunteers demonstrated bread baking in an outdoor wood-fired clay oven the way Ukrainian immigrants did it decades ago, explained Kay Slobodzian, a director of the Trembowla Cross of Freedom Historic Site and Museum. While the bread was baking, Slobodzian and several passionate volunteers served us a traditional Ukrainian meal of borscht, a lovely deep-red soup with beets and onions, along with beet leaves wrapped around pieces of bread topped with a cream and cheese sauce, handmade sausage and perogies in the adjacent old one-room schoolhouse. The historic Trembowla site commemorates the Ukrainian pioneers who arrived in the 1890s and includes a schoolhouse, St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church and two pioneer homes. People of Ukrainian background come from all over Canada and Europe to visit. At the height of the Great Depression, the 29 Ukrainian families in Dauphin hand-built the magnificent Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Resurrection in the style of Eastern Byzantine architecture of Kiev - a cross with four domes. They brought in a famous iconographer to paint Bible scenes on the walls and ceilings so illiterate church members could follow the stories, explained our guide, Jan Sirske. The beautiful church has been designated a national and provincial historic site. Other small towns In the small town of Onanole, just outside Riding Mountain, Aditis Touch Greenhouse owner and chef Jason Kelly has turned part of his grandfather's homestead into an a large organic garden with herbs and flowers and farm artifacts. After walking around his gardens and seeing his artwork inside, we sat in a flower arbor to enjoy colorful salads of freshly picked leafy greens and flowers, purple carrots, heirloom tomatoes, berries and organic cheese topped with poached pickerel (walleye). Dessert included fig ice cream garnished with fresh berries. Poor Michael's Bookshop Art and Café also in Onanole offers a large selection of treasured old books and local and world gifts owners Murray Evans and Lei Anne Sharratt collect during their winter travels. Frequent concerts and book readings are also featured in the summer. The town of Neepawa is the home of one of Canada's most honored authors, Margaret Laurence. Her childhood home is open to visitors, as is the cemetery with a stone angel monument upon which her novel, "Stone Angel," is based. Our trip combined outdoor activities with history, ecology and good food in the small towns along the way to Riding Mountain, which itself offers hiking trails, campgrounds, beaches, boating, fishing, wild animals and special events for a summer vacation to our friendly northern neighbors in Manitoba. For more information, go to travelmanitoba.com