Road Trip DISASTER 2018: Brownie's Bean Blossom Family Restaurant
June 18, 2018
As a bit of backstory, nearly 26 years ago my wife and I had actually honeymooned in Brown County Indiana. We had not made it a military surplus tent adventure however. And though we had made every effort to this time, we hadn't made this one a military surplus tent adventure either.
We survived the stay at the ratty motor inn, (we left very early after only a few hours sleep), and then we went out on the search for sustenance.
This was a strange discovery... nothing in Brown County opens until 9:00 in the morning! I don't know if this is a county directive or Nashville City ordinance, but we could not find a restaurant open anywhere. So, I got online and found a few Yelps about a restaurant in a neighboring county called Brownie's Bean Blossom Family Restaurant. I have to admit that the name threw me off a bit because it sounded like a place for hippies to me. My wife pointed out that it was located in "Bean Blossom" Indiana, and then I was alright with it.
I'm glad I changed my mind, because Brownie's was one of the restaurants that used to be around when I was a kid but which has been disappearing over the past few decades.
Typically referred to as a "diner", this style of family owned restaurant has "specials" , usually listed on a blackboard or a dry-erase board. The drinks are bottomless and the coffee is brewed in the common area where guests can get their own if the waitress doesn't come around enough to suit them. Old men come in with their wives just to learn the news and discuss local philosophy. Strangers and tourists are included in the group conversation and new contacts are made.
I got into a discussion with an ancient sheriff deputy from the northern part of the state who had once had to help clean up a mess that was created on a county backroad by some criminal gang that roamed back then. "Not Dillinger because he had been long dead", according to my source, but more than likely someone from the "State Line Mob" of the 1960's. The conversation drifted to the John Dillinger Museum that was a main attraction of "Little Nashville" when my wife and I had honeymooned there in 1992, and my informant then relayed to me a tale of mystery and woe that turned the coffee creamer a bit sour, and left the eggs and bacon I had just eaten sitting a bit heavy in my stomach.
It seems the proprietor of the John Dillinger exhibit, (a man I can remember "joshing with" back in 1992... I was a young sheriff deputy myself back then... in Ohio), it seems that this man was found murdered next to his mailbox, shot to death as he retrieved his mail. The wife was a suspect my informant told me with a meaty wink, but she had a rock solid alibi... she was in bed with her lover at the time of the murder.
And so, with this murder mystery fresh in my mind, we set out yet again, this time towards Jack's Camera Shop in Muncie, Indiana to see if we can find any deals on 2nd hand camera gear.