When we arrived in Louisville Kentucky six weeks ago, you could see through the trees, tiny little buds on the branches, and daffodils were blooming but little else.
In the past two months, we’ve seen the budding and blooming of Bradford Pear trees (an invasive species, but really pretty), tulips, redbuds, dogwoods, azaleas, lilacs, roses, and irises. The green leaves on trees and bushes are now thick and abundant, and the contrasting colors of the blooming flowers are vibrant and bright. There is no doubt that this is a beautiful city.
I was born in Louisville in 1958, and my extended family all lived here. My Grandmother, whom I adored, was born here in 1909 and lived here her entire life of 87 years. The coursing Ohio River flows on the city’s northern border, separating Kentucky from Indiana. I lived most of my childhood in Evansville, Indiana – a few hours down the river – and with my family crossed that river many times. I lived in Louisville as a young child, in and near my grandparents’ home there. I spent several summers in that home as well. But, despite many visits to family over the years, I have never lived here as an adult.
Paul and I decided to spend three months living here leading to our daughter’s wedding at the end of May; the wedding will take place in the family homestead, now occupied by my aunt and uncle (and site of 2 other weddings - my grandparents in 1932 and my aunt and uncle in 1971). Three months would give us a chance to visit family and help navigate the many tasks related to the upcoming wedding. And, it would allow us to experience the city as adults.
What have we done here? We’ve driven all over the city. So many places remind me of people I’ve loved. I can feel the walk from our family homestead to the little neighborhood park and the other family who lived on "our” street. We frequently pass the Douglass Loop in the Highlands, where my Grandmother recounted stories of taking the streetcar to the end of the line (the “loop” being where the streetcar turned around). We walk to Muth Candy Shop where we buy Grandmother’s favorite candy, Modjeskas, and exquisite bourbon balls. We visit Hadley Pottery, just down the street from where we’re staying, where, during my childhood, we made numerous trips to buy dishes, including, in my mid-twenties, Paul’s and my first wedding dishes. We are constantly driving by places where my loved ones used to live, or go to school, or work.
We’ve eaten at a lot of restaurants. Louisville is definitely a “foodie” town now. Yes, I can still get a good Hot Brown when I want it, but Louisville is all about fusion cuisine these days. I can’t list every place we’ve eaten, but here are a few stand-outs. Chik’n & Mi - a great ramen and “Asian-style fried chicken” restaurant is a block away, and the ramen tastes great even to our palates that still taste 3 months worth of food in Japan last fall. We were told by our waiter that the chefs are a couple who met in culinary school – she is from Laos and he is from Texas. Café Lou Lou is a restaurant which celebrates the history of connection between the French roots of both New Orleans and Louisville. A different restaurant, The Cafe on Brent, is an inviting space with good food; we saw a live jazz show there one night and had breakfast there another day. Caffe Classico is another good, small restaurant with live music. We’ve eaten at several pizza places – Boombozz, D’Orio’s, Café Lupo. We’ve had terrific Mexican food, especially at Noche, which is located inside a beautiful old (deconsecrated) church and La Katrina, across the foot bridge in Indiana, which has fabulous fish tacos. We ate at Pig Beach, a barbeque restaurant on the river, and Feast, another BBQ place on Market Street. We dined at the Captain’s Quarters on River Road, a seafood restaurant. Hamburgers at Grind in Nulu. We have southern breakfasts at the Morning Fork, a few blocks from our place, and Biscuit Belly on Main St., and coffee at Hotel Marty and Heine Bros.
We’ve explored small grocery spots for local foods. Lotsa Pasta, which has homemade pasta and sauces, quiches, Italian cookies, and local favorites such as benedictine and olive-nut cream cheeses, is a favorite place to pick up ingredients for dinner at home. Rainbow Blossom is a good grocery for buying vegetarian, vegan, & other local food, and Kingsley has a good meat counter. There is a Kroger less than a mile away. We buy wine at an amazing wine shop, Total Wines and More, with a huge selection of good wine and other spirits. Maya Bagels, a locally owned small business, makes terrific bagels and serves Peet's coffee.
Paul bought an e-bike from a great shop, E-bikes, on Bardstown Road, near the Douglass Loop. The folks there were extremely knowledgeable and very helpful.
We have resumed walking. After settling into our apartment on the 2d and 3rd stories of a restored older home, we began exploring the neighborhood. We had spent most of our time indoors in the Michigan winter, and it feels good to walk again. We can walk to coffee shops and restaurants in our neighborhood. We can walk a little farther out to restaurants and shops in Nulu and Butchertown. We have walked, twice, a 6-mile round-trip across the river into Jeffersonville. There is a nice walkway from our house to the river, and along the river. The Botanical Gardens – a bit small but lovely – is a ten-minute walk from our place. Having said that, Louisville is very much a car-oriented city. While it has beautiful parks, they are sprawled around the city (many designed by Frederick Law Olmstead), and are not the kind of parks where people pass through on their way walking from one place to another, like you find in cities this size in other parts of the world. There are bike paths, but they are hit or miss. There are buses, but no light rail or subways or trams to hop on and off with ease.
We have driven around to look at dogwoods and azaleas. These are the biggest dogwood trees we have ever seen, and the azaleas offer huge bursts of color. We traveled to a wooded azalea extravaganza located in Southern Indiana, about a two-hour drive and less than a half-hour from my parents' old home. It is well worth the drive and I'd highly recommend a trip. The Azalea Path and Arboretum and Botanical Garden, a family-owned and operated garden-in-the-woods, is located at 1502 N Co Rd 825 W, Hazleton, IN 47640. It's a little hard to find but well worth the search.
It's been a music-filled time. We’ve seen live opera, live jazz, and a rock band. We’ve watched the Oscar & Hammerstein anniversary special, followed by watching lots of musicals. I grew up in a musical family. My mother and aunts sang a lot of folk songs, popular songs, songs from musicals. Some of my family members are avid opera fans. I've had a lot of songs stuck in my head. We also saw singer Renee Fleming speak to author Richard Powers about a book she edited of essays related to the science of music and well-being, hosted by Louisville Orchestra conductor Teddy Abrams. This is a city that loves and supports its music.
The Ohio River is a constant, reassuring presence. The rapids here (Falls of the Ohio) created a portage stop which resulted in the founding of the modern city in 1778. The falls were controlled by locks in 1830, but by then Louisville was established as a navigational hub along the river. We can see the Big Four bridge from one of the windows in our apartment, and the fireworks from the river events that frequent this time of year (Thunder Over Louisville being the largest such event). There are many festivals and music events along the river in April, May and into the summer, especially now as the city is leading up to its biggest annual event, the Kentucky Derby. Crossing over the footbridge, you often see big barges or logs floating along after a Spring storm. This almost 1,000-mile long river was once a super-highway carrying supplies and passengers to and from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, where it emptied into the Mississippi nudging its cargo on down to New Orleans. Residents of New Orleans often rode steamboats up to Louisville for the summer (although for the life of me, recalling insufferable hot, humid summer days here in pre-air-conditioned Louisville, I can’t imagine why they would summer here!) You can see the icons that connect these cities – Louisville & New Orleans – in the fleur-de-lis that represent the French House of Bourbon, and the bourbon drink that is frequently consumed in both cities. Even a casual glance at the smallest liquor store in Louisville reveals shelves of varieties of bourbon. The river also served as an entry for African-American men (and some women) to earn money working dangerous riverboat jobs, helping some of them buy their freedom or jump off at one of the northern ports to escape to freedom. The river was also important to the Underground Railroad, as both Indiana and Ohio were free states, and used to help enslaved people travel north to freedom.
The city has been a cross-cultural location for a thousand years. A thousand years ago, it was home to an indigenous population. They were known for the burial mounds located in this region. When Europeans began settling in the area in the 18th century, people from Cherokee and Shawnee Indian nations hunted in the region. You can still see remnants of the old “Buffalo Trace” near the city, most notably in the winding knobs across the river. French settlers moved into the region in the 17th century, followed by American explorers like George Rogers Clark and Daniel Boone. Lewis & Clark launched their expedition West from Clarksville, just across the river in Indiana. In the 19th century the city saw an influx of English, German, and Irish immigrants. My grandmother’s family were from working class Liverpool, and her father was a grocer here. My grandfather’s family were from Scotland. My dad’s family were from Germany, and his mother’s family spoke German even in the early 20th century. These immigrants brought a mix of religions – Catholic, Lutheran, and Judaism, among others. Immigrants from the American South brought in Baptist religious practices. Modern immigrants hail from Cuba, Mexico, China, and a variety of other countries in Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Asia. A growing number practice Islam. The city has been a mix of languages and cultures from its inception.
We have spent a lot of time with family here. We watched the eclipse with my aunt and uncle. My aunt and uncle are the last of my mother’s generation (really, a generation younger than my mom since there was a 16-year gap between my mom and my youngest aunt); and, I have cousins and their families, and a cousin on my dad’s side I keep in touch with. We are enjoying getting to see them and to know them a little bit better.
At the wedding, the friends and families of our daughter and her fiancé will mingle in this beautiful place, celebrating in the space that honors a favorite son of this city, Muhammed Ali, the famous athlete and humanitarian. I drive through the cemetery and arboretum, Cave Hill, where deceased family members going back generations, lie amongst beautiful plants and a pond full of ducks, geese, and swans. My family’s resting places are alongside those of Muhammed Ali and Colonel Sanders amid beautiful statues and memorials. I made many trips there when I was a child, with my grandparents, great-aunt Ruth, and my Aunt Cathy, and the cemetery brings me warm memories.
There are aspects to the history and culture of this city - my city - that I find challenging. People in Kentucky enslaved other people. My Grandmother told me that my grandfather's maternal family had slaves. The city has a historically large African-American population, and is 23% African-American today. Those of us my age and older remember Jim Crow in our lifetimes. One aunt, along with my cousin's dad, marched for equal housing in 1967 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the city. Another aunt has worked on improving dialog between races here and a cousin has worked with immigrant communities for 20 years. This was the home of Breonna Taylor. I want to sing songs about the Ohio River to accompany this post. One song, “Dance, Boatman, Dance” (“…Hey ho, away we go, sailing down the river down the Ohio….” I discover was written for a minstrel show, sung by white men in blackface. Even though the song was later elevated by Aaron Copland and sung by celebrated African-American opera singers such as soprano Roberta Alexander (you can hear here https://youtu.be/1ocKqiLxe2U?si=nXdJ2QvI0QvWGtOv) and tenor Barron Coleman (you can hear him here https://youtu.be/y8k9Ok_6tcM?si=TbIJFbN6LZXLT_H8) I am not comfortable singing it and choose not to. It reminds me too much of the Kentucky State song, “My Old Kentucky Home”, that other minstrel song written by a white northerner that trivialized the pains of people who were enslaved. I sang that song frequently when I was a child, a symbol of the state I was born in and visited often, our only nod to modernity in those days was our refusal to sing the word, “darkies”, pretty much just mumbling on that line. (to read about the song, see Emily Bingham, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song). The Kentucky Derby itself, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary this week, is challenging to me. It feels wrong to use the horses for this type of entertainment, and last year 7 horses died during Derby Week. I don't have the answers, and I approach these issues with humility. I think we need to dig deep to understand what we can learn from our past to shape a better future.
I turn to the most beautiful Ohio River song I know, one I heard sung by my harmonizing aunts, “The Banks of the Ohio” and learn it was a murder ballad. This folk song tells the tale of a man who kills his lover because she refuses to marry him. First racism, then domestic violence. But, at least this song doesn’t minimize the horror of what he has done. The tune and the words perfectly express a mournful and beautiful expression of remorse. Justice is attained at the end. Johnny Cash has a beautiful rendition of this song here. I can sing that, at least to honor the pain and suffering that created such a beautiful song. I recall children’s songs like “Down the River we Go” and “We’re floating down the river” (which is part of a children’s game). Maybe they are an important part of my Ohio River.
Everywhere here I am surrounded by memory. Memory of loved ones who are no longer with us. Memory of the kind of long, lingering Springs I experienced as a child but have not had either in our twenty years living in Michigan or our 2-year nomadic lifestyle. Memory of difficult and challenging history. And, memory of living alongside this majestic river that runs from Pittsburgh to St. Louis – alongside cities I spent much of my childhood in - Louisville, Evansville, and Cincinnati.
I love this city. I love its people, who look strangers in the eye and say a hearty “Hello, how are you?” when you pass them on the street. I love the good-natured laughter and the impulse to help. I realize, living here, why I have found some of the cities we have visited a bit stark. I realize I love this interaction between strangers. Louisville is a mix of North and South; a mix of tradition and innovation; a mix of big city and small town where everyone knows everyone else. A mix of big money and working class families. A mix of town and gown, with the University of Louisville, Bellarmine University, Spalding University, Jefferson Community College, religious seminaries, and other educational institutions central to its intellectual life. People here don’t even say the name of the city the same way. My grandmother taught me from an early age to call this city (phonetically) Looey-ville, just as she had always said the name of her hometown. Now, more locals are apt to call it (phonetically) Lou-uh-vul, and I’m ok with that. To each their own. Just don’t presume to correct my pronunciation (as people seem to do all over the world. (Even in New Zealand and Japan I’ve had people “correct” the way I say my own hometown!) I am reminded that when you live in a place with so much diversity, you have to learn to talk to each other and, more importantly, you have to learn to listen. This is a lesson I hope to keep after we leave this place.
To hear Kim sing about the Ohio River, click here.
Great post! I loved reading about all the restaurants. Kate and I will have to try that Ramen place when we come down. In a couple weeks!
We love you being here. Such a beautiful homage to Louisville. Here's another Louisville song to enjoy:
https://youtu.be/4UHt4U949YE?si=t97PRni_vQaoWdwq