JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

I have a nasty habit of starting series of entries and never getting around to concluding them. Tales of roadtrips that stop mid-vacation, profile of local streets left hanging for several years…I’m sure I’ve annoyed a few readers over the years waiting for resolutions to cliffhangers that may never arrived. There are no guarantees this won’t happen in the future (I am a busy guy), but maybe a few of the missing pieces can be filled in. Prime example: a roadtrip down south I took with Mom and Amy a few summers ago . We last left the intrepid travellers on the outskirts of Nashville after a leisurely drive along the Natchez Trace Parkway . Someday I promise to tell tales of Music City. Someday. But not yet. Today's tale was inspired by a conversation at a party last week with fellow Torontoist writers about train travel and southern adventures. I mentioned a large event my family had accidentally stumbled upon…

We all agree that Bowling Green, Kentucky was one of the low points of the trip. Perhaps we should have taken a derelict motor court on the outskirts of the city as a sign. The Everly Brothers may have thought Bowling Green had the prettiest girls they ever saw , but nothing went right for us inside the city limits. We were looking for a place to grab a quick lunch, but every road I took led into residential neighbourhoods or out to the middle of nowhere. Downtown was a dusty construction zone, the university a haven for monster speed bumps. Nary a pretty girl wandered by. On our way back to the freeway, we came upon a Waffle House . Never having been to one before (the closest locations to Detroit are in Toledo), we figured it was worth a shot. We stepped in the doorway and Mom's jaw dropped to the floor. Imagine the messiest diner you have ever been in and multiply the dirty dish factor by five. The Toronto Board of Health would have had a field day with the state of the ki...

Day two began with buffet breakfast at the hotel. While additional entrees were available for free, the spread was fine by us. The tub of grits on the steam table was a sign that we were departing the Midwest. We also had our first serving of biscuits on the trip, though none of us tested the sausage gravy. The latter is treated as a family joke - Mom always conjures images of people shovelling away giant bowls of white sauce speckled with black pepper and bits of breakfast sausage, twisting her face upon mere mention of the dish. I didn't feel like causing her any pain, so I resisted trying the gravy (I'm indifferent towards sausage gravy, but will sneak a spoonful if it looks fresh). After checking out, we drove into downtown Louisville. All I expected to see was the world's largest baseball bat, leaning on the Louisville Slugger Museum. Main Street proved to have a few surprises... The West Main District boasts the second-largest concentration of cast-iron ...