A torrent of water cascades into a bathtub the moment Jack Chaplin turns a faucet handle. Hot and steamy the water is, and clear, too, but a fellow`s nose squinches from its famous odor.
”This here is called Pluto water. Got 22 minerals in it. Invigorates the skin. Some people say it even helps with arthritis and rheumatism,” says Chaplin, laconically uttering a testimonial that likely has been uttered at the same porcelain tub in the same marbled spa on thousands of occasions since 1901. That`s when the second French Lick Springs Hotel was built–over the ruins of an even earlier hotel spa–to capitalize upon alleged medicinal attributes of a malodorous spring.
History also records that in 1811 a pioneer wagoneer, catching a whiff of that legendary sulphuric water, remarked, ”Drive on, son. Hell is not more than a quarter mile from here.”
Chaplin is unperturbed. People pay good money to bathe in these hot southern Indiana waters–and even better money to relax afterwards on massage tables, where the country`s original ”good hands people” amortize body knots like erasers rubbing out debt.
”Best way to enjoy a massage is to lie there like dead. Some fellows talk a lot. But you won`t enjoy it as much as if you acted dead,” says Chaplin, rubbing more rosemary oil into a foot that five minutes earlier was immersed in hot Pluto water.
Ah, quite right, sir. Now excuse me if I slide into a wholly undeserved doze. . . .
PAMPERING IS a way of life in a good spa. I try to imagine a more masculine word to describe this sensuous bounty, but I can`t. It`s
”pampering” all right, through and through. After a massage (from my tiniest toe to my uppermost vertebrae) comes an ointment-laden facial (yes, for men, too, and perhaps even more relaxing than a body massage), then herbal body wraps ”to extract the toxins,” salt rubs, sauna and steam room sweatdowns, manicures, pedicures and, finally, another massage. Oh, sweet bliss, my life is in your hands.
Not everything in a good spa is passive entertainment. Nowadays there are aerobics classes. These are somewhat humiliating to the average male, who may be endowed with muscles made for Nautilus but encumbered by a sense of rhythm better suited for swinging bats. There also are low-calorie meals and grueling sessions in ligament stretching.
All of this is designed to make a fellow (or woman) all the more grateful when the next round of massages comes due. Depending on the plan, you can get massages occasionally during the day or, if you can endure all the touching, almost without abatement. You can book them on a package plan or a la carte as an overnight hotel visitor.
At least seven spas offering varying approaches to rejuvenation lie within a gas tank`s drive of Chicago. They include the Olympia Spa in Oconomowoc, Wis.; the Wooden Door near Lake Geneva, Wis.; the Heartland in Gilman, Ill.; and the Kerr House near Toledo, Ohio. Pheasant Run Resort in suburban St. Charles opened a spa last April for men and women. Lake Geneva`s Interlaken Resort officially opened another just a few weeks ago. The nearby Americana Resort meanwhile is said to be on the brink of creating a spa to augment its health facilities and capitalize upon this resurgent Midwest trend.
THEIR DIFFERENCES are marked. All are considerably newer and most boast vastly more modern exercise equipment than French Lick`s, where an old wooden rowing machine veritably creaks among scant exercise equipment. The Kerr House, meanwhile, can lay claim to being the Midwest`s poshest spa, with breakfast in bed and candlelight dining to the accompaniment of live harp music. The Kerr House is unaffordable to most Midwesterners, however, and none of the others can match the sheer breadth of old-fashioned delights found at French Lick Springs Golf and Tennis Resort–grande dame of Midwest spas and home of Pluto waters.
La Costa or the Golden Door it is not. But common? Hardly.
”There`s a little bit of the Gatsby down there,” says Lorraine Grau of Oak Brook, who spent five days there last spring. ”I very much enjoyed that place. The meals were delicious. If only I had someone prepare food like that the rest of my life, then I finally could lose the weight I should.”
The name, French Lick, derives from the confluence of two elements, one foreign, one native. The area`s first white settlers were Frenchmen. They were continually harassed by Indians and finally left the neighborhood altogether when Napoleon ceded the land to Thomas Jefferson in 1803. A prolific mineral spring provided a natural salt lick for deer and other animals of the wild.
The hellish scent of the spring (not unlike that of Gary) turned out to be a blessing in disguise, at least for the southern part of Indiana.
BY 1837, THE first hotel had been built near the spring to capitalize, undoubtedly, on that unquenchable suspicion among humans that ”if it hurts
(or smells bad), it`s good for you.” A fire that razed the hotel and spa 60 years later did nothing to extinguish that fancy; the three-winged, seven- story phoenix built on its ashes survives today as the French Lick Springs Golf & Tennis Resort and spa.
The name ”Pluto water” was coined in the 1890s by two doctors from Louisville, presumably to shift attention from the odor. ”It tastes as bad as it smells, too,” grins Gail Spencer, spa director, encouraging me to pause outside at an elaborately tiled hotel gazebo, dip a cup into the rippling spring beneath its dome, and taste the contents. (A legend on the wall for this natural laxative reads, ”When Nature Won`t, Pluto Waters Will.”)
For the first half of the 20th Century, this Indiana resort was nationally famous as a curative nest for rich Easterners, most of whom probably returned home expurgated. Folks with surnames like Vanderbilt and Roosevelt came here regularly. Traveling in private railcars from the East which they left on private rail sidings near the hotel, they took the cure in Pluto waters and played roulette in this playground for bigwigs–in a hotel largely built and protected by a bigwig in Indiana politics throughout most of those years, Tom Taggart Sr.
Those who rode in railcars now fly toward fun. And except for Derby Day or the Indy 500, jetset fun isn`t in French Lick, a town of about 2,500 that hides in the rolling foothills of the Cumberlands about 60 miles northwest of Louisville and some 300 miles southeast of Chicago. The community probably is better known today as the hometown of Larry Bird, the basketball star, rather than for its mineral waters.
FRENCH LICK nonetheless remains a vacation magnet for thousands of Midwesterners. From honeymooners and young families to couples celebrating silver anniversaries, they come for rest and relaxation in a resort hotel rooted in another decade. Not the early century–more like the late `40s or early `50s, before Presley, but after Dorsey and Gatsby, I think. Should Garrison Keillor ever remove his Prairie Home Companion from Lake Wobegon, he`d head for a place like this.
”A couple years ago the president of Rolls-Royce stayed here. He told me, `Frank, you know what makes this place different? It`s not plastic, that`s what. You know how difficult it is to find a hotel that isn`t plastic these days?` ” relates Frank Maloney, general manager of French Lick`s 503-room hotel, which is operated by the Cox Hotel Corporation of New York.
The hotel still boasts two golf courses, tennis courts, a bowling alley, horseback riding and a pool with a retractable glass dome. A couple can stay in a decent room here for $125 a day, including breakfast and dinner on a modified American plan. Even more alluring are a spacious veranda overlooking the dogwoods and a staff accented by subdued politeness of the Old South. Chaplin, who has worked in the spa 13 years, considers himself something of a newcomer.
”Some of these people have worked here 40 years or more,” he says.
AS RESTFUL as the hotel is, French Lick`s spa is the reason the hotel gained popularity in the first place. It also is how I came to subject myself to so much immodest pleasure.
Characterized by a high-sweat coed steam room and separate saunas in a decidedly low-tech atmosphere, an abundance of body pampering (even for men)
and its famous Pluto waters, the spa undoubtedly is the grande dame of invigoration in the Midwest.
”There`s no reason why you can`t work hard and get spoiled at the same time,” says Spencer, who oversees a team of 10 masseuses, masseurs, pedicurists, manicurists and cosmetologists. ”We strive for a European touch here. I think it works pretty well.”
Spencer also coordinates aerobics classes and a low-calorie, low-salt and no-caffeine diet for those who buy a spa/hotel package of two days ($260) or five days ($875). Both plans run proportionately less for double occupancy.
”The plan is open to men and women alike,” says Spencer, an Englander who was trained as a massage therapist in London. She also managed a woman`s spa in Liverpool, the Belfry Hotel Spa in Sutton, Coldfield, and plied the backs of soccer players and patients with spinal disorders near her hometown of Birmingham.
Men opt for facials more often than for pedicures or manicures, which is understandable. A full facial takes about an hour. Offering layers of sweet-smelling ointments applied with lingering, sensuous fingers, a facial arguably is the best-kept secret of a woman`s spa treatment. ”A man once told me afterwards I had made love with my hands. I took it as a compliment,” says Edeet Burks, who also clips toenails and fingernails.
THE FRENCH LICK spa also offers skin care and makeup treatments, a process about which I decided to remain ignorant (I did learn they use the Dr. Babor cosmetic line from Aachen, West Germany). Manicures and pedicures, on the other hand and foot, proved to be as enlightening as a facial. If a fellow doesn`t object to a certain polish with all the pampering, they also can be a source of arched eyebrows in a McDonald`s on the way home. (Unless one belongs to the East Bank Club, where polished nails are in keeping with gold necklaces and fancy wristbands on men, one might wish to buy a vial of nail polish remover before reaching for the french fries.)
”We get more men in for pedicures than you might think. All the successful businessmen have them now,” says Burks, smiling sweetly while her male client sits somewhat uncomfortably in a burgundy velvet chair. As my bare feet slosh in a tub of warm soapy water, I consider her enthusiasm, and surmise that the sunglazed stained-glass windows to my side probably have reflected vocal vibrations of alto considerably more often than bass over the years.
Burks has been a manicurist, pedicurist and facial(curist?) at French Lick since leaving her home in Bremerhaven, West Germany, a few years ago. She scrapes at my feet, calloused and scrunched by years of racquetball and running, with the seeming enthusiasm of an equestrian preening a colt.
Recalling a confidence from another pedicurist at a Wisconsin spa that pedicures were her least favorite way of earning a buck, I inquired with Burks whether she ever loses interest in cutting away all that cuticle and other useless growth from humankind`s ugliest appendage. She responds with a laugh. ”Oh, of course not. When you think about it, the feet are much cleaner than the hands. Yours are looking very pretty now.”
WHAT BURKS might say to a query about manicures I didn`t have the foresight to ask. But her agreeable comment does bring to mind a clarification from Spencer, who screens hirelings for conviviality as much as expertise.
”A spa is a spa is a spa. What makes our spa different is the expert help and the friendly atmosphere,” Spencer says.
Sometimes when people say things like that, it pays to look at what isn`t said. And Spencer doesn`t say anything about the spa and hotel`s modern amenities, Marriott-like rooms, Westin-like bar or space-age elevators–for good reason:
They don`t exist.
”It`s not a 5-star hotel, but I would give it a 3 1/2,” says Tom Slone, a patent attorney with Procter and Gamble`s Cincinnati research center.
”Marjorie and I have been coming here for six years now. I expect we`ll keep coming back.”
A similar refrain comes from Lorriane Grau of Oak Brook, who didn`t let a few rough edges keep her from falling in love with French Lick`s ambiance.
”Obviously the hotel has come a long way in the last few years. But it has got a long way yet to go, too,” she said, referring to tourist putoffs such as spring green wallpaper with crusty purple floors, towel hooks missing from shower walls near the pool, or a mineral pool that was a depository for paper cups (and a badminton birdie).
SPA AND hotel at French Lick clearly are enjoying a rejuvenation after several years of neglect, according to longtime hotel employees and several guests who have been coming for years. Sold by Sheraton hotels in 1979, the place was run by a franchisee for two years before the current owners bought it.
Spencer says, ”The spa was in terrible shape when I came here three years ago.”
Whether there really is that much further to go, as Grau contends and Spencer readily agrees, actually depends upon one`s outlook.
If you come to French Lick anticipating good food, nice people, expert spa attendants, comfortable beds in clean rooms–and a sensation, maybe, of Dorsey–what more could you ask?
