It's almost time for the Old Homes Tour! This is one of my favorite weekends of the whole year, when a few of the beautiful old houses in Lexington open their doors to tours and we can all walk through to ooh and ahh over them. This year the tour is Saturday, September 18th and Sunday, September 19th. For the low price of a $12 ticket ($14 the day of the tour) you get to see five homes, the Catholic church, and the Anderson House at the Battle of Lexington State Historic Site. For "official" tour information, to order tickets online, and to see photos of the houses, please click here. If that link doesn't work, please go to http://www.visitlexingtonmo.com/ and click on the Old Homes Tour button on the right side of the page.
For my un-official but enthusiastic gushing over the Old Homes Tour, keep reading...
You know why I look forward to the homes tour every year? I'll tell you, straight out: because it's fun to go and look at other people's stuff. George Carlin was right. Everybody's got stuff and it's fun to compare your stuff to their stuff, get new ideas for what you can do with your stuff, and gawk at the really nice stuff other people have. There. I admitted it.
The folks who pick the houses for the Old Homes Tour do a great job. If I was on that committee, I'd be saying, "This one. And that one. And those two over there. And this whole block," and pretty soon there'd be 47 houses on the tour and you'd get to spend like 30 seconds inside each one so that the whole tour could still be done in a reasonable amount of time. (Incidentally, the tour takes about two hours and you can either ride the bus or drive the tour yourselves.) This year the Tour Committee picked two Greek Revivals, a log cabin from the 1830s, a Neoclassical, and an English cottage-style house from the 1920s. I'm really excited about seeing all five of them.
And then there are the two "bonus stops": the Anderson House and Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. The Anderson House is part of the Battle of Lexington State Historic Site and was used as a field hospital during the Civil War by both the Union and Confederate armies. It's likely that my great-great-grandfather, a Confederate soldier wounded during the 1861 battle, received medical care at the Anderson House. Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was built about 1897 and was restored in 2009. The interior is jaw-droppingly beautiful, especially when you understand that the colors and decorations were all chosen to honor the Virgin Mary.
Five houses, a historic site, and a church, all for 12 bucks. It's a great deal. So buy a ticket and come visit my little hometown. Look me up—I'll probably be at one of the tour houses as a guide. We'll talk about stuff.