Saddletree Factory Tour!

What's a saddletree? Great question! A week ago, I couldn't have told you. But now I know!

While we were having afternoon coffee in Madison last Saturday, Ryan found information about a little factory in town that offered tours. We love a good story and a bit of local history, so we walked over to check it out! We lucked out in being the only people there at that time, so we got our very own private tour!

The Schroeder Saddletree Factory is no longer in operation, but it provided a fascinating glimpse into manufacturing in another time. Our tour guide compared it to Pompeii, because when it ceased operating, nothing was moved or cleaned up. It all just sat as it had been and gradually fell into disrepair until a grant provided the funds to restore it and make it a part of Madison's history.

Ben Schroeder was a German immigrant who began his own saddletree business in the late 1800s, and his children carried on his legacy after his death. Oh wait...you might still not know what a saddletree is! It's the wooden part of a saddle that you really never see, because it's covered by another material - usually leather.

Ben came to America with nothing and apprenticed in this trade under another local saddletree maker and eventually opened his own shop. He was a bachelor when he started out, so he built a simple house and it served as both home and workshop. He got married, and his wife lived with him amid all the sawdust and projects. After they started having children, she suggested he build a separate workshop area so they could have a defined home, so he did! His home is what you see in the first picture above, and the factory buildings are in the second picture. The tour guide told us his goal was never to make a bunch of money, but just to make quality products. So at the most, his operation ran with about a dozen people.

We got to walk through the actual shop areas and see how they worked!

The bucket to the left of the stove, which kind of looks like a butter churn, is actually a paint barrel still stained with yellow paint. The guide (who is in the back of the picture there) told us the stove warmed up the cans of glue they used in manufacturing.

 If you look closely, you'll see a metal hand (minus a thumb) sticking up off that table. In addition to manufacturing saddletrees, they made a few other odds and ends, including gloves. This was the glove making area!

 The light makes this kind of hard to see, but if you look to the right of the clamp on the table, you'll see how the wood dips a bit from the top and bottom. That's where the guys sat to work, and eventually their *ahem* seats actually wore away the wood! They flipped the whole work plank over and started carving again from the other side. Lots of hours of sitting for a double-carved seat, right?

 More work stations.

This was the blacksmith area. The guide told us this stove was originally the stove that heated the house, but they upgraded to a better (read: less messy) model in the living quarters, so this one took on a new job in the shop. Also interesting: ever seen wooden floors in a blacksmith shop?

These pictures are from the separate building workshop. Lots of saws and belts and boilers in this area!

 The guide told us Ben was kind of a hoarder, so there were all kinds of papers and records left over in addition to the things in the shop!

 A catalog of yore.

 Oh yeah - forgot to tell you they made clothespins too!

 The big tumbler where they combined raw clothespins with walnuts to sort of sand down the clothespins and give them a bit of a stain.

 Trial runs at patterns. He said most were made out of food boxes or other random paper/card products found around the place.

 Tried and true patterns were made from wood.

Always good to know where the bathroom is while you're on a tour, right?

And another classic Ryan:

Such a fun tour. Worth the time and very affordable. ($4.00 per person.) Check it out sometime!

Our Day in Madison

We chose to spend this past Saturday poking around the little town of Madison, Indiana, which as I told you earlier, is a very quaint and adorable little town. Lots of amazing old homes with more character than I can possibly explain, lots of really cute little shops, and a ton of history!

One really nice thing to know (if you decide to visit there) is they have a bunch of public parking lots, and they're all free! That's really nice if you're not into parallel parking (me! me!) and if paying for parking isn't part of your budget. We parked in the morning when we arrived and didn't pick our car up until the end of the day!

We started at a little coffee shop. They have three of them downtown, and we visited all three before the weekend was over. :) The first one we visited actually saw us twice that day. It was called The Red Roaster Coffee and Eatery, although Ryan alternated between calling it the Red Rooster and Kenny Rogers' Roasters all weekend. REALLY good coffee there. (We never had food. Just coffee.) Also a special shout out for the clean bathroom, because let's face it: when you're spending a day in town, you need to know where the clean bathrooms are!

In the morning, we just grabbed our coffee and left, but in the afternoon, we actually sat for a while in the comfy chairs, used the free WiFi, and took a break. Lots of college students in there studying, so it was nice and quiet!

When we left the coffee shop, we started our day by walking the entire riverwalk. It is really nice. It's all bricked and paved and gives a great view of the Ohio River. (It rained on us while we were out, so we paused to check out an antique mall until the rain passed, but then we resumed our walk and finished the whole thing!)

 You have to look closely to see it...it looked like a noose to us!

Awkward!!!!

 Ryan was flipping through an old National Geographic when the guy a few booths over let a string of super colorful words fly in his phone conversation. Always interesting while hunting for treasures.

The antique mall was three stories tall. Books? Okay! I'll climb!

 Three cheers for HUMIDITY. (Read: watch Bekah's hair grow.)

When on vacation, you dig out quarters for ridiculously short amounts of viewing time.

Found a pretty fountain!

We paused for lunch at a 50s style diner called Hinkle's Sandwich Shop. I'd read good things about it, so we wanted to try! It wasn't my healthiest meal of vacation, but it was TASTY! They had slider burgers, so at least my sandwich was small! :) Good fries, and my favorite: a little chocolate peanut butter milkshake that was 100% worth every single calorie. It's hard to find a good milkshake, and this was good. Ryan even got one, and he's not a huge milkshake lover like I am. His was chocolate mint, and he said it was delicious! Super friendly people in this shop, and super busy. It wasn't very big, and we actually got the last table when we walked in. We never saw an empty table for more than about 30 seconds the whole time we were there.

Oh, and yes. The hair was in a pony by lunch. SO HUGE!

We resumed our shopping and touring after lunch, and of course, had one more stop at the Roosters. I mean Roasters. :)

Ryan found a sword. No, we did not buy it.

 Back at the fountain!

 Yeah, this reminds me a lot of our yard too. I mean....

The yards all through town were spectacular, but I felt like a creeper taking too many pictures. :(

BEAUTIFUL courthouse.

 And a bell!!! (I used to collect bells, so it felt appropriate to get a picture with this one.

After this, we went on our big adventure for the day, but I'll tell you about it tomorrow! :)

Hello, Jefferson County!

Well I thought the podcast was going to be a day late again this week because of our little birthday trip, but we powered through and have a brand new episode for you today! All the stories that are too detailed to tell on the blogaroo are right here for your listening pleasure!

Listen here!

Our main destination for our birthday trip was the darling little town of Madison, Indiana, and we arrived there Friday afternoon following our Ripley County tour. Madison is the county seat of Jefferson County, so of course we just made this our county tour there as well!

This county is right on the Indiana/Kentucky line and was named after President Thomas Jefferson. There is so much history in this little town, and we barely scratched the surface!

For the record, I chose this location for us because I'd heard so many wonderful things about how quaint and cozy this little town is. (I also hear it's really cute at Christmas!) I'd also heard many things about Clifty Falls State Park, which is right next door to Madison. We went hoping to hike there, though the weather made us nervous!

Loved the big beautiful bridge that crosses from Indiana to Kentucky! There were barges traveling up and down the river all weekend long!

Before we left for the trip, the forecast said it was going to not just rain, but STORM the entire weekend, and the rain did indeed come in Friday evening. It started just about the time we headed to the town next door, Hanover, to drive through the college campus and see this scenic point Ryan had heard about. It was probably not as scenic for us as it could have been (rain, you know) but it was still pretty!

 It's really hard to wrestle an umbrella AND a selfie AND a scenic point. We tried.

We came back to Madison for dinner, and if you've heard the podcast, you will know THAT turned into quite the debacle. Just so you can see, here's the first of our four restaurant stops in an attempt to find one where we could eat dinner! This is the one that ended up being destroyed by a flood, even though Facebook still said it was open. (I took one of the pictures a couple of days later, hence the change in weather.)

We finally found some dinner at this really delicious restaurant called Downtowners. YUMMY!

I was going to tell you more stories, but I think that may be enough for today! I'll be back tomorrow!