Lunch with Lauri

We had a delightful lunch at Creekside with our bestest friend Lauri.

We chose the daily special, lasagna with a choice of lobster bisque (they spell it bisk on the menu board) or salad. Lauri took the salad and Maria and I went for the bisque.

Lauri seemed pleased to see us and we, of course, were delighted to see her. We’re spending the evening with her and her husband Jim and their boys tonight.

I’m using the Wifi at the Thorntown Public Library this afternoon, and I’m writing under the same mural that I could gaze at from my desk in the City Room of The Indianapolis News more than 40 years ago.

The mural (in the upper left corner of this photo) is a photomontage of famous Hoosiers up to about 1965 or so. Consequently, it doesn’t include later generations of famous Hoosiers like Larry Bird, John Mellencamp or Michael Jackson or David Letterman. The mural and others of a similar nature went into storage when The News City Room was remodeled in the early 1970s. It made its way to the Indianapolis Press Club for a few years, but when the Press Club folded a few years ago, longtime Newsie Gerry LaFollette bought it and donated it to the newly expanded Thorntown Public Library. Gerry’s parents were from Thorntown.

The original library building was one of the thousands of Carnegie Libraries built throughout the United States. When it was expanded, the addition was designed to carry out the same design elements so that the central section and the new south wing match what remains for the old building. I’m in the main reading room and you can see the afternoon winter sun slanting across the sturdy oak tables and chairs. It reminds me a lot of the Delphi Public Library when I was a kid. It was a Carnegie Library too.