Roadtrip II

We came for the restaurant. We stayed for the grocery store.

As Jill and I continue our informal roadtrips for lunch, our next stop was the Iron Horse Restaurant in Ashland.

First, some background. My first paid job in broadcasting, in 1961, was at WIVE, a new AM radio station on Ashcake Road in Ashland. I wasn’t paid much, mind you, but I did get a weekly check for doing what I dearly wanted to do: be a radio deejay. For a time I did the afternoon show while I continued my journalism classes at the University of Richmond. When school let out for summer, I switched to the early-morning shift.

Having a radio station in their back yard was exciting to the people who lived at the Center of the Universe, as Ashland calls itself. WIVE played rock and roll music, mixed with pop standards, so we developed quite a following among Hanover’s teenagers. I made some good friends in Ashland while I was working there.

I learned a thing or two about Hanover tomatoes, too. I spent two days that summer helping a friend pick tomatoes at his father’s farm just outside of town. I did it to help free my friend up for a trip to the beach. Picking tomatoes in the hot July sun is tough work. I gained new respect for the backstory on those fantastic Hanover tomatoes I’d been eating all of my life.

But back to the present day and lunch at the Iron Horse. (The Iron Horse, by the way, was Cox’s Department Store when I first got to know Ashland 50-some years ago. The building sits at Ashland’s main intersection, facing the railroad tracks, on the appropriately named Railroad Avenue.)

I ordered shrimp and grits: four perfectly spiced and cooked jumbo shrimp accompanied by parmesan grits with a piquant sauce and fresh herbs. So simple. So satisfying.

Jill ate lighter. She had a salad. She was also pleased with her choice.

But all through the meal, we kept looking out of a large plate-glass window and across the tracks at the Cross Bros. Grocery store. I thought I remembered it from the 1960s. Our waitress confirmed my memory and suggested that we check it out. After lunch, we crossed the tracks and did just that.

Cross Bros. mixes nostalgia with today. The selection of produce (including Hanover tomatoes), meats and other grocery staples was much larger than you’d expect if you just looked at the store from the street. On one shelf we saw a six-pack of Billy Beer (for display only) and other items that date back to long before the Carter administration. I discovered a package of horehound drops, which are not so easy to find these days. I quickly snatched up a bag. (When I was a kid, they were sold for medicinal purposes, to soothe a cough or a sore throat. Nowadays, they’re sold as candy.) Jill and I spent time wandering the aisles, calling out to each other with each interesting discovery.

I’m a sucker for homemade country sausage. The butchers at Cross Bros. make their own, and I took a pound of it home -- along with a couple of slices (more like slabs) of country ham.

The cheerful, friendly cashier told us on our way out that the store has been in business for about a century. The store is definitely worth a visit, as is the restaurant across the tracks.

Next stop on our summer of lunchtime roadtrips: Michie Tavern on Mr. Jefferson’s mountain in Charlottesville. It’s even older than Cross Bros. Grocery.