In Lafayette for Beers Across the Wabash on Saturday, August 24.

Saturday began with the Lafayette Farmer Market, downtown. The variety of produce on sale seemed to be a bit more diverse than New Albany's, but Lafayette arguably has fewer total booths.

Set-up for the beer festival began early on the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge between Lafayette and West Lafayette, the latter lying beyond the trees in the photo. As a beer festival organized by veteran brewers, Beers Across the Wabash simply is nonpareil; only Hoosier breweries are present, and the crowd well-behaved and knowledgeable. Next year, the event will take place again, but not on the bridge itself, owing to renovation work. It will return to the bridge in 2015. No matter. We'll be there.

What we did in 1907, we cannot do now.

In 1992, we drove to Indianapolis and took the train to Chicago just for the fun of it. I had an ill-fated job interview in the Windy City, and what I remember about the ride was that we went very slowly owing to tracks rated for freight, not passengers; the only beer on board was Budweiser; and in Lafayette, Indiana, the train halted right in the middle of a downtown street to let passengers on and off.

At some point since then, Lafayette redirected its train tracks to a corridor right alongside the Wabash River, and the eastern approach to the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge (site of Saturday's superb beer festival) is constructed to move walkers over the rails first, and then across the river itself. The station and plaza in front of it both gleam, local buses stop there, and there were people in the vicinity at most hours of the day.

It's a very urban, European tableau, at least until one realizes that only two passenger trains stop at the station each day, one going to Chicago and the other coming back, and then ... outside ... (sighhh) ... it's America, again.  

Bridging the craft beer gap in Lafayette.

The John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge connects Lafayette and West Lafayette, spanning the Wabash River. On Saturday, it was the site of the first Beers Across the Wabash craft beer festival. Above, the bridge is pictured in its everyday guise.

The Hilton Garden Inn lies on the West Lafayette side of the bridge (Lafayette's Amtrak station is on the other end), and on Saturday, the most familiar clue to a coming event was spotted on the street below our window, because where there are Port-a-Potties, there's going to be beer.

Early in the festival, the bridge was filling with samplers. Soon after I took this photo, there no longer was any time to take photos. First-time events are notoriously hard to stage, but the organizers had it mostly right, and it will take place again next August on the same weekend.

Meanwhile, we thoroughly enjoyed what's being offered on both sides of the Wabash. Two hours after the beer event ended, a jazz and blues festival revved up in downtown Lafayette. There was music, street food, and a few civilized pints of Bitter at the Lafayette Brewing Company.

online.com/article/20120825/NEWS/308250048/beers-across-the-wabash">A Beers Across the Wabash fest account in the Lafayette newspaper is here