Indiana’s Nashville is as famous, at least among us Hoosiers, as that town down in Tennessee. It’s a popular day-trip destination. In recent years it has billed itself as an artist’s colony, and is filled with shops where you can buy things made by hand.
It’s cliche to say “nestled,” as in, “Nashville is nestled in hilly Brown County.” But indeed, Nashville lies on a rare flat spot in a part of Indiana that the ice age’s glaciers somehow missed. A town doesn’t get more nestled than that. Most of Brown County looks like the photo below.
My sons and I visit Nashville and the nearby state park for the day about once a year. This year, I even booked us a cottage in town so we could stay overnight. It was a relaxing couple of days for us. We visited the shops and galleries in town on our first day, and hiked through the state park on our second. I had my Nikon F2AS along the whole time, shooting Kodak Ektar 100 using my 50mm f/2 AI Nikkor lens.
Sadly, a photographic slump befell me on this trip. I shot the whole roll in Nashville, but felt uninspired and forced it the whole time. The results show it.
But I’m sharing the photos anyway because (1) Nashville’s a fun visit, and I hope these photos entice you to go, (2) I decided long ago that this blog is about the journey, and this slump was definitely part of my journey, and (3) if I only ever posted perfection I’d write six posts a year, not six a week.
But at least these photos give you a flavor of what Nashville is like. I took the shots above and below at about 6 p.m., after most visitors had cleared out for the day.
Like so many Indiana small towns, most of Nashville’s buildings were built in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unlike many Indiana small towns, every single one of them is in use thanks to the tourist trade.
The Methodist church is very, very white.
This bench’s inscription is attributed to Abe Martin, but old Abe is a fictional character. Created by cartoonist Ken Hubbard in 1904, Abe Martin cartoon panels were The Far Side of the day, widely read and clipped. Many of the panels were captioned with cynically wise sayings like the one on this bench.
I like pottery, and I’m always on the lookout for the perfect pottery coffee mug since breaking my favorite one a few years ago. You’ll find pottery in several of Nashville’s shops. I did buy a mug and have been using it lately, but it’s not quite as perfect as my old one. I didn’t, however, buy any of the wooden wonders that were for sale.
It was a relaxing trip for my sons and me, despite the lackluster photography. Maybe I should have just left my camera in its bag.
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