“A lot of good people come from Indiana,” said a new friend as our bus crossed the state line. “The better they are, the quicker they come.” There’s an attractive tendency toward self-deprecation among Hoosiers, and coming into Terre Haute, a quiet town of 60,000 on the banks of the Wabash River, it’s easy to see why. The town’s main north-south thoroughfare, U.S. highway 41, known locally as Third Street, presents the visitor with an almost unrelieved tableau of chain motels, Wal-Marts, and a fabulously varied selection of fast-food emporia. Even Terre Haute’s main drag, Wabash Avenue–known as “the Bash” to weekend cruisers–descends into similar attractions as it courses its way eastward after a few blocks of passable downtown streetfront.
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Terre Haute is otherwise a rather difficult place for the adventurous traveler; if you’re allergic to chains like TraveLodge and feel slightly uneasy staying at a hotel whose marquee reads “GOD LOVES YOU,” your only hope is the Deere Run Bed and Breakfast (Route 53, 812-466-3390; it’s about five miles north of ISU). Rooms are $40 for the first night, $35 thereafter. The breakfast is light, according to a brochure; we didn’t stay there. The Cruft House, another B and B listed in local literature, has closed.
The town does have its attractions, and even a few interesting restaurants. The 12,000-student Indiana State University boasts that it’s “within a 500-mile radius of half the population of the United States.” (So is the Love Canal.) If you’re there in April, look out for two end-of-semester events. The first is Donaghy Day, named after a former university administrator who made beautifying the campus a special concern; once a year, in his honor, the university takes a day off for a barbecue (for only $1.50!) and live music in Dede Plaza. After lunch, a large truck pulls up to distribute small trees students can take and plant somewhere. Donaghy Day is traditionally close to the school’s other spring spectacular, Tandemonia (not Tandemonium, for some reason), an annual bicycle-built-for-two relay race that pits pairs of fraternities and sororities (one guy and one girl per bike) against each other in a 100-lap race around Marks Field. (Admission is $1.50, and you get a Tandemonia button too). The various Greek houses get their members out to cheer and chant enthusiastic (if slightly nonsensical) slogans, like, “The team, the team / is burning up the track! / We don’t need the bleachers / To stand and watch the race!”
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Restaurants? Mais oui! Terre Haute has two reputedly “nice” restaurants: Valeria’s Porta Via, which dishes up Italian (423 Wabash, 812-235- 9467), and the Chase (810 Wabash, 812-235-0810), which a town guide describes as “continental”; we didn’t try either of them. Outside of town, there’s the Saint Mary’s Supper Club (39 W. Main, Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, 812-535-4277), a passable steak house romantically encamped in the low rolling hills west of the Wabash, close to the Saint Mary-of-the-Woods women’s college. Standard fare of fish, veal, or spaghetti starts at $6; steaks are $10 and up. The Red Onion (1228 Lafayette, 812-234-0020) is a rather iconoclastic Mexican American restaurant a few miles north of the university. Its walls are covered with Mexican kitsch–pinatas, models of Spanish galleons, velvet paintings of matadors. On the tables, busily colored quilted tablecloths clash winningly with similarly colored place mats. Service is casual but friendly, and the Mexican food is fine; but you have to have the fried porterhouse steak sandwich. Pounded to within a quarter-inch or so of its life and then breaded and deep fried, the meat is then actually served sandwich-style even though the meat’s acreage is roughly twice the size of the bread. Yum.
