RABBIT HASH, KENTUCKY — When someone, who knows you well, gives you a list of sites to visit in and around his hometown and one of them is a place called Rabbit Hash, chances are, if you have the time and any curiosity, you’re going to give it a look.
And so it was early afternoon Friday after a two-hour drive on narrow, winding roads along the Ohio River, I descended via a one-lane road into this hamlet with the irresistible name.
I’d hoped to find here an undiscovered backwater, not tourists taking selfies in front of a country store with two shelves of craft beer in its cooler, one of them Rabbit Hash General Store Premium Lager.
The Rabbit Hash General Store (est. 1831) is the centerpiece of an array of buildings of rough-cut wood that houses a tasting room for a nearby vineyard, a stained-glass maker’s studio, an antiques store and a barn where once a month there is a community hoedown such as the upcoming “Bluegrass Bash in the Hash” scheduled for the first weekend in October.
To the left of the store a wooden platform affords a view of the river and the town on the opposite shore, Rising Sun, Indiana, with its waterfront mural depicting, well, a rising sun. A casino housed in a large paddle-wheeler sits moored about a half-mile upstream from the town.
The day is cloudless and a soft breeze blows upstream toward Cincinnati, 40 miles away. Between the platform and the river, monarchs and honeybees dance over the yellow blooms of fall sunflowers. Beyond the tall flowers, sycamore, willow and locust compete for space along the water’s edge.
Apparently, the place is irresistible to motorcyclists, scores of whom come and go throughout the afternoon. Entering the store, I pass a tattooed 60-something-year-old biker wearing a Def Leppard wife-beater.
Gary, another biker, who happens to be a 73-year-old, semi-retired photographer from Chicago is here with his wife, Mary. They brought their Honda Gold Wing here on a trailer and will spend the weekend driving the roads along the river.
I tell them about Madison, Indiana, a charming river town downstream. Turns out they ate at a fish house there the night before. We discuss the virtues of film verses digital.
Later he comes over and gives me his email address. He photographed me as I worked on this column.
“Send me an email and put ‘Rabbit Hash’ as the subject line and I’ll send you a picture of you working,” he says.
According to a brochure in the general store, the town took its name “by the rising waters of the Ohio River chasing scores of rabbits into the skillets of hungry farmers.”
Originally the village was called Carleton but steamboats carrying the mail confused it with the larger Carrollton downstream, thus a name change in 1897. One hundred and twenty years later the move has proven to be a brilliant marketing strategy.
The store offers an extensive selection of Rabbit Hash merch, including t-shirts, sweatshirts, denim shirts, playing cards, half a dozen different types of coffee mugs, ball caps, lapel pins, playing cards.
Even so, the pull of the place is undeniable. No one is in a hurry here. The bikers and their partners lounge on picnic tables under the trees drinking beer or linger around their Harleys, Kawasakis and Yamahas.
Later, after Gary and Mary leave, I move to their picnic table. Shortly afterward a large yellow lab named Poppy lies down in the dirt beside me and goes to sleep.
A cool breeze wafts in off the river causing the water to lap against the shore. Overhead the trees whisper their secrets. Poppy wakes up long enough to snap at a fly.
The temptation to stay here until sunset is strong, but the longer you stay in a place like this the more difficult it is to leave.
Home is more than 500 miles away, a number that won’t change until I get moving. Maybe I’ll drive along the river a bit before returning to the racetrack realities of the Interstate.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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