We left Auburn on Sunday, turning southwest, toward home. We spent a couple of rainy nights in Terre Haute, Indiana, where we found the Clabber Girl Bakery and Museum.
Like me, you may be asking “Why Clabber Girl?” I know Clabber Girl is a baking powder that we’ve been using forever but why a museum?
It turns out that the Hulman family developed Clabber Girl and much more than just baking powder. Immigrating to the U.S. from Germany in the mid 1800’s, they are the ideal of those who came to America to find huge success. In every sense they were in the right place at the right time and made the right choices.
This is a letter that I love, from one brother to another, who is still in Germany. It is filled with such hope, a little naiveté, and says so much about the goodness of America.
An interesting bit of trivia is; why the name Clabber Girl? Turns out that clabber is actually milk that people sour and put into batters for leavening. The Hulman’s used the name Clabber Baking Powder so people would easily understand the purpose of the product. Somewhere along the line, the government started paying attention to the ingredients in foods. As it turns out, there was no clabber in Clabber baking powder. By then, the brand had been around for several years and the name was well recognized. So the Hulman’s simply added Girl to comply with regulations and receive their patent. Hence Clabber Girl Baking Powder.
The Hulman’s owned many brands and products.
I was surprised to learned they actually invented the dry sink known as a Hoosier. Before visiting Indiana, I would never have put two and two together to figure out it’s called a Hoosier because it’s from…Indianna. 
The museum has displays and artifacts from the original buildings, including this beautiful staircase. It seems like an era that had so much elegance. At least for those of means.
An original time clock to keep track of their employees.
I love this magazine cover illustrating the many roles women played during WWII. I think most women still do.
Here’s a sign we’d never see in a SoCal museum!
It seems the Hulman descendants have kept the family businesses running quite successfully. The Hulman family has owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 1945.
As well as visiting the museum, we had some very tasty sandwiches at the café.
We just can’t resist local cuisine.
We also visited the nice little quilt shop, Wabash Valley Fabrics. Bought a couple of things…just to help keep them in business.
On Tuesday we left Indiana for Paducah, Kentucky. The National Quilt Museum is a place I’ve really been looking forward to visiting. Paducah has the official title of “Quilt City.”
The National Quilt Museum is amazing. There are no photos allowed inside the building. Otherwise I’d have dozens and dozens of them
To tell the truth, the museum doesn’t look like much from outside. Mainly just a brick building. But inside, my oh my! The quilts owned by the museum come largely from the prize winners of The American Quilter's Society Annual Quilt Show & Contest. Exhibitors who win cash awards for their quilts have agreed to donate the winning quilts to AQS. Historically, AQS has then donated those quilts to this museum. So, it’s a fantastic exhibit of some of the best quilting from around the world.
The day we visited, there were two temporary exhibits as well. One was from the extensive collection of historical quilts owned by Pilgrim/Roy. This exhibit was primarily to show examples of variations on traditional themed quilts. They were wonderful, mostly from the mid 1800’s.
I am so happy we were there to see the third exhibit. It was a presentation by SAQA, Studio Arts Quilt Association. Each year this group has a challenge for it’s members. This year, the challenge theme was Food For Thought. It was amazing. The work was very diverse with many representations of actual food. I loved every single piece.
This totally makes up for all the car museums. Just sorry not to have photos of all the beautiful work.
After a morning of quilts, I needed to find some local cuisine for my chauffeur.
A very unique bakery in old town, with really good sandwiches.
So…after looking at all those amazing quilts, I needed to look at some fabric. Hancock’s of Paducah is very well know for mail order quilting fabrics and notions. And…since we’re in Paducah, we went looking for their store front operation. Not much to look at but just about any fabric you could be looking for. And they have discounted prices.
When we entered the store we saw quite a few people with shopping carts and thought business looked pretty brisk. Turns out most of those were employees picking fabric from the shelves to fill catalog/internet orders. We may have been the only real shoppers in the store.
This photo is such a small sample of the warehouse style showroom. It’s maybe…maybe a fifth of the area. Maybe even less. There was no way to get a realistic photo. LB quilters, think M&L on steroids!
Jim said I probably didn’t need to “help” them stay in business so I just got a couple of sale items.
This morning we went looking for some of the other quilt shops in town. I had about six on my list. Some were not so great, others no longer existed or were quilting services rather than shops. But we did find this little treasure. Very nice shop, very nice ladies, very nice visit. And yes, we did help them with a little business.
And we went back to old town for lunch. More tasty local cuisine.
This time, we were served something new-to-us. Instead of bread or chips and salsa, we were served crispy wantons with a chili queso dipping sauce. Sounds a little strange but yum! We’ll be trying this at home.
Old town Paducah is much like other quaint old Midwest towns with charming architecture.
Paducah lies right along the great Ohio River. Actually at the point where the Tennessee enters into the Ohio. So, there have been years of flooding. Consequently, the city has a flood wall that runs along the downtown river area. Murals have been painted along the city side of the wall to depict the history of the town.
It’s a very long wall and it was a very hot day for walking. So we walked along the river side of the wall for a while and then just took a long shot photo of most of the wall.
On our way to the Homemade Ice Cream parlor, we visited the River History Museum. The Ohio has been such a major influence to this area, it actually shapes the culture here.
The museum had some really nice models of river boats.
We learned quite a lot about the importance of the Midwestern waterways and we both got seasick trying to steer the speedboat simulator. 
After our ice cream we found the Paducah International Raceway. Nothing happening today. Drat, we’ll be gone tomorrow for the Friday night dirt track races.
Anybody a Jim Croce fan? Remember Rapid Roy That Stock Car Boy? This was totally Roy’s track!
Jim Croce was one our family’s traveling tapes whenever we went on vacation. Along with Bill Cosby and John Denver. Good memories.
We’ve had a good, dry, couple of days enjoying Paducah.
Tomorrow we head south to Tennessee.
Wishing you a great day!
Pat
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