Embrace glorious stories with a visit to LaGrange, Ga.

Guess who cooked my lunch on a jaunt to LaGrange, Georgia? The great-great grandson of the legendary town philanthropist, that’s who.

   He’ll cook yours too, and so will his dad. It happens at a stylish downtown Main Street restaurant named C’sons which is pronounced “seasons.”

   Clever once someone local and friendly explains it: Charles is the name of the father and Chase the son, hence the letter C. Plus the exquisite menu is seasonal, changing daily with what’s fresh.

   Here’s why I found that significant. LaGrange has much more going on than most towns of 30,000 that I visit—art and history museums, fine culinary, handsome downtown facades and urban forest treescapes. Storytelling and art festivals.

   Symphony, ballet and theater, with audiences to fill them.

   Gardens and historic homes too, plus ancient artifacts in an antiquity center.

   The patriarch and matriarch of the family, Fuller E. and Ida Cason Callaway set the tone, perhaps as early as 1895, and their notion of sharing abounds to this day.

   Linger in LaGrange if you’re curious about the sweeping touch a foundation can exert on a community. Certainly creates excellent opportunities for travelers.

   Textile mills were the family business, at least 20 of them joining the first mill opened in 1895. At least 5,000 people labored in the Callaway mills in an era when jobs were not abundant.

   Magnate this mill owner who died in 1928; Ida died in 1936 and their two sons carried on the home and businesses, each forming a foundation touching LaGrange in major ways today.

   I recommend spending the day in their home and gardens. Hills and Dales Estate they named it, and 35 acres today are in the—guess what?—Fuller E. Callaway Foundation.

   Protected, preserved, beautifully maintained and filled with original family furnishings.

   That means something since the Italian villa has 30 rooms. Enormous but not pretentious. Docents guide the tours but neither velvet ropes nor plastic barriers stop visitors from walking throughout the rooms.

   How special is that? Trusted in a historic home. Such was the request of Fuller Jr. and Alice Callaway who lived there until 1992 and 1998 respectively.

   Hills and Dales Estate filled me with a sense of belonging, not gawking as is often the case with grand homes.

   Connect with all the contented gardeners you know by allowing plenty of time to stroll the boxwoods, trees and flowers. Continuously cultivated for 180 years these garden paths, first by original owner Sarah Ferrell from 1841 – 1903.

   With 23 garden highlights noted on the tour brochure, you might want time to breathe the fragrances and to muse awhile.

   If so, leave the estate and go to lunch at nearby Katie’s Too on Lincoln Street, then return to the gardens. The day’s $15 admission allows coming and going.

   I recommend some time on the curved stone bench where Ida and Fuller fell in love. Hear their story in the “Living Legacy” documentary in the visitor center.

   Such a special moment the bench is mirrored with a custom sofa in the same shape, lined up in the living room.

   Such is the allure of storytelling at Hills and Dales and throughout LaGrange. Seems to me that’s why this modest-size community is anticipating its 17th annual storytelling festival in March. Azalea is the name.

   “Listening to stories brings back our own memories and reflections,” says Joyce Morgan Young, one of the Azalea Storytelling Festival founders. “People love to say, ‘Let me tell you my story.’”

   Tellers in LaGrange Mar. 1, 2 and 3, 2013 include Donald Davis, Carmen Deedy, Eric Litwin and Ed Stivender. Tickets are $35 for all events, or $15 for individual sessions only.

   Transportation from the Callaway Auditorium at LaGrange College is provided to downtown for restaurants and to Bellevue, an 1850 Greek revival home with a story of its own to tell, for a crock-pot soup lunch and tour.

   Bellevue’s story goes hand-in-hand with the Nancy Harts. Know about them? I didn’t until I visited here.

All-female militia formed in LaGrange, credited with preventing Federal soldiers from destroying grand homes in the town when they marched through Apr. 16, 1865.

   Forty women drilling twice weekly with Capt. Nancy Morgan halted the forces with Col. Oscar H. LaGrange. How ironic that was his name?

   Businesses burned, homes saved and the militia women served dinner.

   Learn more about the Nancy Harts and other LaGrange history in downtown at Legacy on Main. Handsome corner building, built as a bank in 1916.

   Big sunshiny windows extend museum history exhibits to murals on the building next door: education on the plantations, cotton picking and the impact of railroads, all painted by Dothan, Al. artist Wes Hardin.

   “The oldest cotton bale in the world,” is here says Kaye Lanning Minchew, executive director and archivist. 1870 is the date and it’s under glass.

   Covered bridges are all gone in the region, Minchew said, but walk through the replica of those built by former slave Horace King who lived in LaGrange for 13 years in the late 1800s.

   Ask about King again when you go to nearby Columbus and the Civil War Naval Museum because he figures in their ship’s displays too.

   Quilts in Legacy on Main stitched me back to Fuller E. and Ida Cason Callaway and their textile industry. Obvious, perhaps, but thoughtful notion.

   Wealthy women were the quilters, the exhibit suggests, in an era when fabric only came your way with spinning and weaving.

   When textile mills like the Callaway’s created cloth, quilting was more available to other women too.

   These LaGrange fabrics continue to influence the arts, so I learned from Karen Anne Briggs, executive director of the LaGrange Art Museum.

   “Textiles require design,” she said, “ and the mills sent people to Europe to study fine design.

   “This community has a disproportionately large population of people interested in art, in design, in creative expression,” Briggs said.

   Seems the Callaways believed in art, music, dance and gardens in all the mill communities

   I went to the museum Briggs guides specifically for the folk art exhibit that runs through Jan. 19, 2013.

   American Folk Hero: Outsider Art of Georgia and Alabama is the title. Whimsical, thoughtful, colorful and personal sort of describes the gathering of 300 works.

   These are the expressions of 40 people drawing and painting, carving and shaping within 200 miles of LaGrange.

   Untrained they are, not academic artists. Sometimes their work is called naïve or vernacular, sometimes folk or primitive.

   One dozen collectors of outsider art living in LaGrange shared these with the museum. Musing yet about the legacy of Callaway textile mills fine-design studies in Europe?

   Among the many names to look forward to seeing are Nellie Mae Rowe, Mose Tolliver, Thornton Dial, Willie Jinks and Howard Finster. Many more like Archie Byron, Linda Anderson and Annie Wellborn.

    Perhaps all these connections also fuel the reason Israel chooses to share ancient artifacts for display in the LaGrange Explorations in Antiquities Center.

   This interactive history museum describes itself as daily life in Biblical times: shepherds, farmers, villages, Roman market streets, dining experiences.

   The new antiquities gallery, LaGrange officials say, will be one of only 20 outside Israel and only six in America. Spring, 2013 is the projected opening.

   Which month and which festival to choose seems to be a LaGrange dilemma now that I’ve experienced the calendar.

   Feb. 7 – 17 are alluring too when For Love of the Arts showcases a broad variety of art, from a performance by Floyd Kramer’s grandson Jason Coleman and the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra to performances of Hot l Baltimore, art exhibits, lectures and more.

The festival is a collaborative among the city’s arts organizations including LaGrange College, LaGrange Art Museum, Lafayette Society for Performing Arts, Legacy Museum on Main, Azalea Storytelling Festival and others.    

2013 dates to know

American Folk Hero: Outsider Art of Georgia and Alabama

LaGrange Museum of Art

Through Jan. 19, 2013

For the Love of Arts

Feb. 7 – 17, 2013

Multiple venues

Azalea Storytelling Festival

Mar. 1 - 3

LaGrange College, Callaway Auditorium

When you go:

www.lagrangechamber.com

706-884-8671

www.hillsanddalesestate.org

706-882-3242

www.lagrangeartmuseum.org

706-882-3267

www.legacymuseumonmain.org

706-884-1828

www.lagrange.edu/azalea

706-882-9909

www.csons.net

706-298-0892

www.explorationsinantiquity.com

706-885-0363

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