File:Former Dew Drop Inn Tavern.jpg

English: Now the production office of Groundwaters magazine, the Dew Drop Inn once housed the community's only tavern in the 1930s-1950s...

       Charles C. “Chancy” Davis built Lorane’s first and only tavern (not counting the Mountain House Hotel) in approximately 1935. It was called the Dew Drop Inn and was located in the small building next to the Jerry Keep home on Territorial Road and adjacent to the Lorane Family Store. When he first opened the tavern, Chancy ran a “name the tavern” contest. Bud Mitchell was thought to have won, but we don’t know what his prize was.

Beer was sold from pump kegs. The business also sold a few items of groceries such as bread and ice cream, and sported its own Shell gas pump. In the early days, it had its own light plant which supplied electricity to the building. Walt Hayes remembered that Chancy used to carry his change to and from the tavern in a woman’s purse. He walked from his home to the tavern with the purse under his arm. One day, he thought that someone was planning to rob him. So, armed with a shovel, he went to the woodshed behind the tavern and buried the purse with the change inside. Afterwards, when he decided to dig it up, he wasn’t able to remember where he had buried it. Apparently, he never found it. Lloyd Counts remembered that there were a lot of poker games played at the tavern. A lot of the millworkers played on a regular basis and when Lloyd was asked if they played “high stakes” games, he said that they would frequently joke with one another, saying, “Be prepared to jack your sawmill up. I’ll be down in the morning to pick it up!” It bothered him that so many parents patronized the tavern and left their children in the car outside. He remembers that Otto Swanson, known in Lorane as “The Old Swede,” frequently bought soda pop and took the bottles out to the children during the summertime afternoon heat. Lowell and Gene Davis remembered hearing that more than one paycheck was lost in not only the well-known poker games, but also in the craps games that were held in the woodshed out behind the tavern. They said that frequently the patrons would do some grocery shopping before coming to the tavern, leaving their groceries in the car while they downed a brew. There was more than one time that they returned to their cars to find that some of their groceries had supplied someone else with dinner that night.

Chancy Davis retired in the late 1950s and the tavern was closed down permanently by the family. Jerry Keep, who owned the house next door, bought the tavern and property so that no one else would reopen it. He sold off the bar and used the building for storage for years until Jim and Pat Edwards bought it in 2005. From Sawdust and Cider to Wine by Patricia Ann Edwards, Nancy O'Hearn and Marna Hing