Yesterday I attended a benefit for God’s Pantry, a 55-year-old food bank started by Mim Hunt in her basement. It has no religious affiliations and only one mission—to feed the hungry.
I looked it up because I was supposed to donate nonperishable food items as admission to the event. I wondered if God’s Pantry served pets as well as people. It doesn’t. (But then I came across this lovely little story about a young man who started a pet-focused food bank here called The Critters Cupboard.)
The benefit included a wine tasting and was held out in the country at Equus Run Vineyards. It was a perfect way to spend a crisp and sunny autumn afternoon. A creek wended around the property—with vines growing on one side and horses roaming the sloping meadows on the other. I’m not sure which horses purportedly managed the operation.
The vineyard’s newest offering is Holiday Blush, a rosé sporting a picture of Secretariat (the movie is still playing at the historic Kentucky Theater) on its label. It’s sure to be a popular gift this season.
I’m not much of a drinker, so the highlight of the event for me was the setting and the company.
A few days ago, we drove out to the country for lunch at a charming restaurant called Wallace Station. They served sandwiches made of local foods on homemade breads, sold fresh baked goods at the counter, and featured racing memorabilia on their walls. One group of photos especially drew my attention and I heard the cashier tell another customer that the horse pictured was Wallace Station. A former racer and grandson of triple-crown winner Seattle Slew, the old gent was now retired at Old Friends—a sanctuary for racehorses.
Funny. I’d just read about Old Friends in The Greatest Horse Stories Ever Told. And now I’m hearing about it over lunch. Guess I HAVE to go there.
Funny, too, that decades have passed since I was horse-obsessive, and now the fever has struck me again. But what did I expect? I’m living in the “Horse Capital of the World.”
“If my particular passion ever kills me, it won’t be because I was on a horse’s back. It will be because I was gaping out my car window at some horse standing innocently in a field or backyard when I was supposed to be paying attention to the road.”
—An anonymous woman quoted in Dark Horses and Black Beauties
[Pictured are a Kentucky road from Genuine Kentucky magazine and residents of Old Friends on Facebook.]
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