Thursday, December 25, 2008

Season's Greetings from Lizzie Borden, Al Mac's and Fall River, Mass.

Lizzie Borden Bobbleheads make great Christmas gifts
Al Mac's of Fall River, justly famous since 1910


That's good eatin', and don't you forget it.

Fall River, Massachusetts, a hardscrabble New England town, is the home of the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast, an inn converted from the house where Lizzie's father and step-mother met their hideous demises by axe-murder in 1892. The home was built in 1845 and was owned by Lizzie's father, a miserable crank who forced his family to eat rotten food and use an outhouse well past the advent of indoor plumbing and very well could have driven Lizzie to commit hari-cari with a sharp-bladed wood-handled instrument. Lizzie was acquitted and lived out the rest of her days wealthy but shunned by the Fall River society she so desperately wanted to belong to. Our tour guide Dee led us around the rooms, beautifully restored to the period of the crime (with no blood stains, however). Tasteful Christmas decorations sprinkled amongst the ghastly crime scene photos and wonderfully tasteless souvenirs in the gift shop add a festive touch. If reliving a notorious double-murder leaves you hungry, I highly recommend taking a short 4-minute drive to Al Mac's Diner, a classic original steel structure from 1954 whose sign boasts "justly famous since 1910." It is our civic duty to patronize local neighborhood diners... you'll be glad you did. Here's the Lizzie Borden B&B website: http://www.lizzie-borden.com/Default.aspx

8 comments:

Holly Hall said...

Hello! Great blog you have here. I'm glad I found you!

Gunnar and Sherry said...

Much obliged. Yours is awesome too!

emikk said...

I feel like having a good hamburger!

Gunnar and Sherry said...

One good burger, comin' up!

Frank Jump said...

Was this trip during the winter break? We were in VA & DC as well! We drove to Florida and back. We're going cross-country this summer. Any suggested routes? We definitely want to go to Yellowstone.

Gunnar and Sherry said...

Hi Frank,
Our outing to Fall River was just a little day trip last December. We were in DC and Va. Sept. 2007. I'm kind of all over the place with my chronology. Yellowstone is THE BEST! It can be a little remote to get to, but its well worth it. A nice way to go is up from the south through Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Grand Teton Nat. Park is there and those two parks are spectacular and about 2-3 hours apart. How was Florida? We're thinking of driving down to Key West. Never been there.

Patty M. said...

I just found your blog, which is very cool, I must say. I was trying to look at your Lizzie Borden slideshow and I can't get it to work. Did you remove it or is it me? By the way, my hubby and I spent the night there Halloween weekend in 2010, and it was COOL! We slept in step-mom's room. Nothing happened except it was so cold that we slept in our clothes, with our coats on.

Gunnar and Sherry said...

Hi Patty, Thanks for stopping by and letting me know about the slideshow not working. Apparently the website I used to create it, slide.com, went out of business last March (I had no idea until you commented). Oh well...maybe I'll repost those pictures as a regular blog post. You're more daring than we are, staying at Lizzie's near Halloween...we get scared just staying at a motel without cable.