Thursday, June 28, 2007

Historial tour of Gallatin

For almost a year now I have wanted to discover downtown Gallatin. So this morning, in this heat and humidity Ya-Ya and I went off and visited the Gallatin Museum. Three floors of interesting artifacts, even back to early American history.

The best parts for me was a hand drawn map of Gallatin and surrounding area by a civil war soldier. It measures about 4' by 4'. It has very tiny printing; names the owners of the different homesteads; has little hand drawn trees with the shadows for the forested areas; it marks the little streams, etc. It also was supposed to have the location of the Union army encampment marked but I couldn't see that.

The second best was the display of Randy's Record Shop. Now do any of you remember DOT records? If you look on your old 45 rpm records that have the DOT label you will see they came from - GALLATIN, Tennessee! It started in Randy's Record shop on Broadway in Gallatin. He was the very first mail order record business. The Pat Boone fan club (to which I did belong as a pre-teen) was headquartered at DOT records!

So I mentioned to the ladies there about it being too bad that Randy's Record Shop was torn down and it was just an empty lot on The Square. They looked at me puzzled. I said you know where the historical plaque is to Randy Records Shop. They said "Oh no, they just moved that sign there because it kept getting hit on on Broadway Street!"

I thought only in Tennessee would they move a historical plaque away from its place of significance! We drove by the original building after lunch (I will tell you about that in a second). It is an abandoned building now, pretty shabby looking, where a Mexican restaurant used to be. It would be great to mark it and fix it up.

We went to Lariviere's Restaurant on the Square. It is a huge store, with the original brick walls exposed and beautiful hard wood flooring. The food was excellent. The place was very busy but the best part - they will accept no tips! Maybe that is why their business is booming.

That was enough for one day. A couple more places we want to discover on another cooler day.

Love to all
Grandma

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