It has been announced that beer will be brewed in Georgetown, Indiana at an establishment to be dubbed Rails and Ales Brew House. There’ll be a restaurant, too.
This is a visceral development for your daily correspondent, who was born and raised in Georgetown back when men were men, sheep were skeptical and beer came from Louisville, St. Louis or Milwaukee.
My mother’s first teaching job in the mid-1950s brought her from Henderson, Kentucky to Georgetown High School, where I entered the 1st grade in 1966. It was the final hurrah for the Bearcats, and grades 7 through 12 departed for consolidation at Floyd Central High School in 1967.
The new FCHS was seven miles away from my house, but it was only three miles to Lanesville, across the county line from Floyd into Harrison, a place marked by the end of pavement and the beginning of gravel.
The distance was so short that the winos who lived down the road were able to walk to Lanesville for booze when their car wasn’t running. Later I occasionally did the same, for beer, even when my own car was fully functional.
My father explained it to me: Lanesville was populated by Catholic folks of German ancestry, and if they weren’t Catholic, they were most likely Lutheran, which was somehow different in theological terms, but meant almost the same thing when it came to drinking.
Conversely, Georgetown had “too damned many” (his words) Baptists and Methodists, some of whom were teetotalers. For the ones who didn’t abstain, refuge for discrete tippling could be found in places just like Lanesville.
The fact that Lanesville had a high school at all was testament to stubbornness, pride and grit. Famously, the town resisted the push to consolidate, and its school remained a community focal point. The older I got, the more Georgetown seemed to fade from view, especially when I realized there were Lanesville taverns ready and willing to serve me prior to the celebration of my 21st birthday.
Eventually I got into the business of beer and made a career out of it at a variety of professional venues in New Albany, where the “big” city’s Bulldogs were ancestral rivals of the small-town Bearcats.
But the primary reason why I’m relating this back story to you, my loyal readers, is that I always imagined there’d be a brewery in Lanesville long before one ever opened in Georgetown.
I’m absolutely delighted to be proven wrong. Here’s more from LBI.
Rails and Ales Brew House under development in Georgetown, by David A. Mann (Louisville Business First)
Off the Rails LLC has chosen a location on State Road 64 in Georgetown Indiana’s downtown, for a new venture called Rails and Ales Brew House, according to a news release. The location, which is adjacent to Georgetown Park, will feature an upscale microbrewery and restaurant, with its design and theme coming from the railroad tracks that travel through the historic portion of town, a the release said.
The two-story building will house two bars and a self-service restaurant. Customers will also be able to order food to go using their drive-through.
