February 2025 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

with Kentucky Explorer

College Majors Penned Literary Contest Winners

FRANK X WALKER

joins Crystal Wilkinson, Naomi Wallace, Ron Eller and David Dick as the 2025 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame Inductees

MOREHEA D, KEN T UC KY

Located in the heart of eastern Kentucky, Morehead State University ranks among the best public universities in the South. We’re recognized for our outstanding academic programs including business, education, nursing, and space systems engineering.

See for yourself why MSU is a top-ranked university. Schedule a visit or apply today!

Frank X Walker, one of five

Photo by Mark Cornelison

Playwright Naomi Wallace with Marcus Rediker, with whom she co-wrote the play, The Return of Benjamin Lay.

kentucky kwiz

Test your knowledge of our beloved Commonwealth. To find out how you fared, see page 6.

1. How many states are included in the region called Appalachia?

A. 9

B. 11

C. 13

2. Which Kentucky county is the farthest west in Central Appalachia?

A. Edmonson

B. Pulaski

C. Barren

3. True or False: In February 1964, Fred Hastings, a skydiver from Louisville, survived a 5,500-foot plunge to Earth despite the failure of his parachute.

4. Jackson Whipps Showalter, known as “The Kentucky Lion,” was a fivetime United States champion in which game?

A. Backgammon

B. Chess

C. Texas Hold ’em Poker

5. In February 1981, more than 13 miles of Louisville sewer lines exploded when what chemical was released into the system?

A. Kentucky moonshine

B. Sodium phosphate

C. Hexane

6. When Owen County native Abraham Owen Smoot died in 1895, his funeral was called the “most impressive witnessed in Pioneer Utah.” He was survived by two of his six wives and 17 of his 24 children. He was second mayor of Salt Lake City and an active leader in which religion?

A. Seventh Day Adventists

B. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

C. Jehovah’s Witnesses

7. Abraham Owen Smoot’s greatuncle Abraham Owen (1769-1811), the namesake of Owen County and Owensboro, died at the Battle of Tippecanoe during which war?

A. French and Indian War

B. American Revolution

C. War of 1812

8. Paducah’s Imogene Audette Burkhart, a singer, dancer and actress, played the mother on which popular 1960s television series?

A. The Patty Duke Show

B. The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

C. Gidget

9. Billie J. Farrell, the first woman to command the U.S.S. Constitution, is from which Western Kentucky city known as Atomic City?

A. Hopkinsville

B. Paducah

C. Henderson

10. Jackson County native Ezra Allen Miner (1847-1913)—also known as Bill Miner, the Gentleman Robber or Gentleman Bandit—is credited with which phrase related to robbery?

A. “Reach for the sky”

B. “Show me the money”

C. “Hands up”

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Readers Write

A “True” Self?

Regarding Bill Ellis’ article “What’s in a Name” (August issue, page 57), I have been searching for my “self” as long as I can remember.

Born in post-World War II France of a Huguenot mother (French) and a Jewish father (American). As far as I can tell, I am the only one through my generation who has attended college.

I spoke French at home, with some English on the playground, at school and at my friends’ homes.

At age 3, my father and mother brought me from France to the United States—Brooklyn Heights, specifically—where we lived for a year. We moved to West Babylon, New York, when I was 4 and to Memphis, Tennessee, when I was 10.

Language has always been

interesting and somewhat stressful to me, having been mocked as having a French accent in West Babylon, a New York accent in Memphis, a Southern accent at Harvard University, and an American accent in London. Somehow, I’ve acquired a “standard English” accent, which means that I belong nowhere and everywhere, at least within the U.S. Currently, no one can tell where I come from, a problem I have about others as well. For as a long time, I thought my name was Richard, pronounced “Ree’shar,” as they do in France and as my mother called me.

Is there, or should there even be, a consistent “I?” Aren’t we better off having “selves” that fit different environments (c.f. decoding, for example), or does this come at too high

a cost in the form of an unstable “true” self and the fear that we don’t know who we are or where we belong? Can psychology, through its scienceoriented perspective, help me determine who I am? Or am I fated to have multiple accents and roles reflecting not an “I” but rather a “them” we have labeled Richard—or Ree’shar, if you prefer.

Richard Lewine, Professor Emeritus Department of Psychological, and Brain Sciences University of Louisville

CorreCtion:

The photo of Merle and Cindy Heckman in the December/January issue, page 9, should have been labeled Zimbabwe, as Victoria Falls is located in that country.

We Love to Hear from You! Kentucky Monthly welcomes letters from all readers. Email us your comments at editor@kentuckymonthly.com, send a letter through our website at kentuckymonthly.com, or message us on Facebook. Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

Kentucky Monthly’s annual gift guide highlights some of the finest handcrafted gifts and treats our Commonwealth has to offer.

travel

Even when you’re far away, you can take the spirit of your Kentucky home with you. And when you do, we want to see it!

“I am a Kentucky girl [from Lincoln County] currently living in the [Florida] panhandle,” Yvette (Greer) Maher writes, “but Kentucky Monthly always brings me home.”

orlando

Lauren and Chip Jones of Nashville celebrated their nuptials at Walt Disney World’s Swan Resort, with Lauren’s daughter, Madison (center, with magazine), and friends and family, including the bride’s parents, Sue-Sue and Steve Hartstern (far left), who live in Louisville.

Bill and Karen Mallonee of Owensboro, together with their children and grandchildren, took a trip to Maui to celebrate some milestone birthdays. Bill is shown here taking Kentucky Monthly to the top of 10,000-plus foot Haleakala for the view.

MAG ON THE MOVE

florida

hawaii

germany

Lauren Green, right, who grew up in Mount Sterling and now resides in Texas, is pictured with her mother, Susan Webb, of Mount Sterling. They traveled to Nuremberg, Germany, where Lauren’s dad and Susan’s husband, Jim Webb, was stationed in nearby Bayreuth in 1969. More than 50 years later, Susan enjoyed showing Lauren the sites of the area, including their old house.

china

and

of Lexington visited Shanghai, China, while enjoying a Viking cruise.

Audria and Brian Denker of Louisville enjoyed a snowstorm in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

new mexico

Jaci

David Williams

Chuck Wolfe of Frankfort traveled to London and Vienna with son Zack Wolfe and grandson Harvey, who live in Manchester, Maryland. Chuck and Harvey are pictured with London’s famed Big Ben in the background.

spain

Barbara Schmall, center, with her daughter, Anna Pray, and son Peter Kremer, all of Louisville, are pictured in Seville, Spain, at the Plaza de España.

submit your photo

Take a copy of the magazine with you and get snapping! Send your high-resolution photos (usually 1 MB or higher) to editor@kentuckymonthly.com or visit kentuckymonthly.com to submit your photo.

KWIZ ANSWERS

1. C. Appalachia includes 423 counties across 13 states, from Southern New York to Northern Mississippi; 2. A. Of Kentucky’s 54 Appalachian counties, Edmonson is the westernmost, while Panola County, Mississippi, is the westernmost overall; 3. True. His reserve chute caught enough air to slow his speed to 50 miles per hour before he crashed into a rain-soaked Indiana field; 4. B. The Mason County (Minerva) native won five chess championships between 1890-1909; 5. C. Hexane fumes were ignited by a tailpipe near the corner of 12th and Hill streets and rippled back to the Ralston-Purina Plant, sending manhole covers flying around the University of Louisville; 6. B. The Mormons; 7. C. Owen County, Indiana, also is named in his memory; 8. A. Burkhart, who changed her name to Jean Byron in Hollywood, played Natalie Lane from 1963-1966; 9. B. Farrell, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is from Paducah; 10. C. Miner, credited with British Columbia’s first train robbery, urged his gang members be polite and avoid killing anyone if at all possible.

london

Shape Shifter by Chakaia Booker (top)

GRAPHOLOGYHENGE by Peyton Scott Russell (below)

Raffael by Boaz Vaadia (above, photo by Visit Frankfort)

Newly Accredited College of Art + Design

For the first time, students in Kentucky can pursue careers in jobs like fashion designer and graphic novelist at an art college in the Bluegrass State that has been fully accredited.

The Kentucky College of Art + Design at 505 West Ormsby in downtown Louisville received accreditation status from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges in December to award baccalaureate degrees. The action came seven years after the institution voted to separate from Spalding University with the goal of achieving accreditation.

their degrees more valuable and can help them in obtaining federal aid,” said Moira Scott Payne, president of the private, four-year nonprofit that received $5 million from the state last year.

Tuition at Kentucky College of Art + Design is about $30,000 a year. Twenty-nine students attend the college. Payne expects that number to increase. She said the college plans to secure a new campus in downtown Louisville.

For more information about the college, visit kycad.org

“Accreditation is significant for the students. It makes

Grawemeyer Education Award

The University of Louisville has announced author Mark Warren as the 2025 Grawemeyer Award for Education recipient. The University of Massachusetts Boston professor garnered the award for his book, Willful Defiance: The Movement to Dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline

The book details how grassroots organizing led to important declines in exclusionary discipline and more recent reforms to eliminate policing practices in schools.

“I’m honored to receive this award, and particularly gratified to see community-engaged scholarship recognized with the highest merit,” said Warren. “I thank my community partners, Black and Brown parents, students and community organizers, who worked with me to produce this book as part of a movement for educational justice.”

New Grant for UK College

— Jack Brammer

The University of Kentucky’s College of Communication and Information just received a significant financial shot in the arm. Misdee Wrigley Miller, the owner of Kentucky-based Wrigley Media Group and LEX Studios, has gifted $2.5 million to help expansion and renovations for the college’s future home at Pence Hall.

“These innovative spaces will provide students the opportunity to not only learn but gain real-world experience, strengthening our state’s workforce and potentially boosting the economy of our community,” said UK President Eli Capilouto

The $32 million project will feature five classrooms, an auditorium, a seminar room, two computer labs, and various studios and gathering spaces. Construction is underway with an anticipated completion in summer 2025.

Students work on sewing projects at the Kentucky College of Art + Design; inset, President Moira Scott Payne

Chicken

Tortilla Soup

SERVES 8

1 cooked chicken, boned + shredded (can stew chicken or use storebought rotisserie chicken)

2 tablespoons avocado oil

2 poblano peppers, seeded and diced

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1½ teaspoons ground cumin

¾ teaspoon ground black pepper

1½ teaspoons chili powder

8 cups chicken broth or 2 32-ounce cartons low-sodium chicken broth or stock

1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/3 cup chopped cilantro, plus extra for garnish

6 fresh corn tortillas, cut into strips

Shredded colby jack cheese or cotija cheese, for garnish

Salsa verde, for garnish

1. Stew chicken in a Dutch oven over medium heat until cooked. Internal temperature should be 165 degrees. Strain chicken broth/stock, if desired. Skin, bone and shred chicken and return it to Dutch oven.

2. Heat avocado oil in a skillet and sauté peppers, onion and garlic.

3. Add sautéed vegetables, cumin, black pepper, chili powder, chicken broth, tomatoes, tomato paste and cilantro to pot with chicken.

4. Bring mixture to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium low, cover and simmer 30-45 minutes for flavors to blend.

5. Serve with selection of garnishes.

Note: I stew my own chicken and use the stock to make the soup.

Heart Smart

In a month where the heart is the focus, these recipes feature ingredients to help keep your heart healthy—fresh fruit, lean proteins, healthy fats, whole grains, fiber, herbs and spices. These dishes prove that you don’t have to sacrifice flavor when eating healthy foods. — Merritt Bates-Thomas

Owensboro’s Merritt Bates-Thomas is a registered dietitian nutritionist (RDN) who has been sharing recipes with a healthier twist on WBKR-FM 92.5’s What’s Cooking since 2017. In May 2023, she joined ABC 25 Local Lifestyles to share recipes and tips for flavorful cooking. She also appears on CW7’s Daybreak Extra ’s “Joe’s Kitchen.” You can follow her on Instagram @thekitchentransition.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Quinoa Pilaf

SERVES 4-6 SERVINGS

1½ pounds pork tenderloin

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil + 2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

½ teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground

2 teaspoons Italian seasoning

2-3 cloves garlic, minced, or 1½ teaspoons garlic powder

Quinoa Pilaf

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup uncooked quinoa

1 large shallot, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, thinly sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 cups water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped

2 tablespoons pine nuts, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the rack positioned in the middle.

2. Trim tenderloin of fat and any silver skin and pat dry with a paper towel. Pierce tenderloin all over with a fork and rub with 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil.

3. Combine salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and garlic or garlic powder. Sprinkle the mixture onto the tenderloin, then use your hands to rub the seasonings into the tenderloin until evenly coated.

4. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat in a large oven-safe pan (cast iron or a Dutch oven will work). Once oil is hot, add pork and brown on all sides (6 minutes total).

5. Bake uncovered for 20-25 minutes, flipping tenderloin over halfway through baking, until the center of the pork reaches an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees.

6. Transfer tenderloin to a cutting board and let meat rest for 5-10 minutes. Slice into medallions.

7. While the pork is cooking, rinse quinoa if instructed to do so on the box. If it recommends rinsing, place quinoa in a large sieve and rinse until the water runs clear. (Some brands don’t require rinsing.)

8. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil on medium-high heat in a 1½- to 2-quart pot. Add shallot, celery and garlic, stirring occasionally until the chopped shallot is translucent but not browned.

9. Add quinoa and cook, stirring occasionally for a couple more minutes. You can let some of the quinoa get a little toasted.

10. Add water and salt. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to low so that the quinoa and water are simmering while the pot is partially covered (enough to let out some steam). Simmer for 20 minutes or until quinoa is tender and the water has been absorbed. Remove from heat and stir in parsley and pine nuts, if using.

11. Spoon quinoa onto a serving platter and fluff up with a fork. Arrange pork medallions over quinoa before serving.

Carrot Oatmeal Muffins

YIELDS 12 MUFFINS

1 cup carrots, peeled and grated

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 large eggs

¼ cup canola oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¾ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup rolled oats

1/3 cup chopped walnuts, plus extra for topping, optional

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a standard 12-muffin tin with paper liners or grease with oil.

2. To a large bowl, add carrots, applesauce, eggs, oil, vanilla and brown sugar. Whisk together well.

3. Add baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg to the carrot mixture. Whisk again to incorporate ingredients.

4. Add the flours and rolled oats to the bowl. Stir until just combined. Do not overmix, as this can result in dense muffins.

5. Fold walnuts (if using) into the batter.

6. Spoon batter into the 12 prepared muffin cups, filling about ¾ of the way. Top with additional walnuts, if desired.

7. Bake until the tops of the muffins are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 20-25 minutes.

8. Allow muffins to cool in pan for 15 minutes before enjoying. Once cooled completely, store in an air-tight container in the fridge for 4-5 days or in your freezer for up to a month.

Winter Fruit Salad with Citrus Dressing

SERVES 8

6 clementine oranges, peeled and separated into segments

2 apples, cored and sliced

2 pears, cored and sliced

1 large pomegranate, seeded

4 kiwis, peeled and sliced

3 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice from 1 medium lime

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice from 1 medium lemon

2 tablespoons fresh clementine juice from 1 clementine

1. Wash all fruit well before peeling and cutting.

2. Mix together oranges, apples, pears, pomegranate and kiwis in a medium serving or mixing bowl.

3. Combine honey and citrus juices until well blended. Pour over the fruit and toss the mixture gently with a spoon to coat evenly.

4. Refrigerate until serving.

HALL OF FAME Kentucky Writers 2025

Naomi Wallace , who was born and raised in Louisville, is only the second American playwright to have a work added to the permanent repertoire of Comédie-Française, the 300-year-old French National Theatre. The other is Tennessee Williams . While Wallace’s work is better known in Europe and the Middle East than in America, that soon may change.

Frank X Walker and Crystal Wilkinson are two founding members of the Affrilachian Poets, an influential group of artists who highlight the often-ignored history and culture of rural Black people in Kentucky. Both have received national acclaim for their work.

Ron Eller was the first member of his Appalachian family to go to college, and when he studied history, he realized that his people’s history had been ignored. His career at the

University of Kentucky and his landmark 2008 book Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 have focused on changing that.

These four writers will be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame along with the late David Dick, who returned to Bourbon County after two decades as a CBS News correspondent to write 14 books, most about his beloved Kentucky.

The ceremony, which is free and open to the public, will be March 10 at the historic Kentucky Theatre in downtown Lexington. All four living inductees and Dick’s family plan to attend.

Learn more about these Kentucky literary icons in this special section, written by Tom Eblen , a former Lexington Herald-Leader columnist and managing editor who is now the literary arts liaison at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning in Lexington.

Photo credits: Frank Walker and Ron Eller photos by Tom Eblen; Crystal Wilkinson photo by Shelly Fryman; Naomi Wallace photo by Gregory Costanzo; David Dick photo courtesy of Lalie Dick.

FRANK X WALKER

Frank X Walker was approaching middle age when he finally acknowledged his calling as a writer.

Walker, 63, had been writing since he was a boy, creating his own comic books. The whole time he was earning a living as a salesman, a visual artist and an arts administrator, he spent his free time writing poems and stories.

“But I never dreamed about being a writer,” he said in an interview. “What little I knew about writing convinced me that I wouldn’t eat, that it was a poor choice of professions.”

Walker eventually changed his mind. He is now a creative writing professor at the University of Kentucky and the author of 13 poetry collections and a children’s book. He has adapted his work for the stage, edited two poetry collections, and helped create educational and video resources for public television.

Walker received the Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry in 2005, and in 2013-2014, he became Kentucky’s first African American poet laureate. He received the NAACP Image Award for Poetry in 2014, the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2004, the Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence in 2006 and many other honors. He is the founding editor of pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture .

Born Frank Wesley Walker Jr. in Danville, he graduated from Danville High School, winning awards in creative writing and visual art. But when he enrolled in the University of Kentucky, he majored in electrical engineering. It seemed like a good career path, but he soon realized he had no passion for it.

Walker sat out a semester of classes because a business he started that sold paraphernalia to fraternities and sororities was doing so well that he didn’t have time for both. When his mother found out, she shamed him into returning to UK. He switched his major to journalism and later to English. His passion was writing.

“I took every creative writing class I could,” said Walker, who studied under then-UK professor Percival Everett, whose novel James won the 2024 National Book

Award, and Gurney Norman, a 2019 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee.

“Gurney was the best writing teacher and humanitarian and community activist model for me that I could have possibly had,” Walker said. “Being in Gurney’s orbit, he had me reading so much. He really invested in my development as a literary person.”

As an undergrad, Walker wore eyeglasses like Malcolm X, whom he once portrayed in a play. “I also had hair then,” he said. “I had a certain political edginess about me, and all my friends just called me X. It was an honor.” He started using Frank X Walker as his pen name and eventually changed his name legally.

After graduation, Walker said the Knoxville News Sentinel wanted to hire him as a feature writer, but he felt uneasy about becoming that newsroom’s only Black journalist. Instead, he accepted an offer to direct UK’s Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center.

“By this time, I had started thinking of myself as a writer—not a poet, but a writer,” Walker said. “And then Nikky Finney showed up.”

Finney, who won the National Book Award for poetry in 2011, came to UK in 1989 as a visiting writer and then spent two decades on UK’s English faculty. She was inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2021.

Finney and several other local Black writers started gathering with Walker at the cultural center on Monday evenings to talk about writing and share their work. The group evolved into the Affrilachian Poets, which took its name from Walker’s first book of poetry, Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000). He coined the word to describe the rich but often-ignored history and culture of Black people in Appalachia.

Walker still wasn’t ready to call himself a writer. The cultural center job set him on a career path in arts administration. He went to Purdue University to serve as assistant director of its Black cultural center, then returned to Kentucky to become vice president of the Kentucky Center for the Arts and director of the Governor’s School for the Arts.

“All that work at the governor’s school helping other

people realize their artistic output … reminded me how comfortable I was in that space,” he said. “I was a good administrator, but it also woke up the artist in me.”

Walker had written two books of poetry by this time, “but I knew I had more books in me.” He also knew that if he wanted a university teaching job, he would need at least a master of fine arts degree. Spalding University in Louisville was then starting what has become an acclaimed lowresidency MFA program in creative writing, and Walker was in its first graduating class, as were

Crystal Wilkinson and Silas House

Eastern Kentucky University hired Walker and House to start a creative writing MFA program there, but neither stayed long. Walker won the $75,000 Lannan Literary Fellowship, giving him enough money to write for a time. Then he took part-time teaching jobs at the University of Louisville and Transylvania University before joining Northern Kentucky University’s faculty.

In 2010, UK recruited Walker to teach in its Africana Studies program. He has been there ever since as a professor of Africana studies and creative writing. His wife, Dr. Shauna M. Morgan, is a poet and associate professor in those programs.

“Teaching also was something I never dreamt of doing,” Walker said. “But because I had great teachers, I think I passively learned what a good teacher was. Today, I think I’m a better teacher than a writer.”

Much of Walker’s poetry involves telling the history of Black Kentuckians through poetry, a story form exemplified in his latest book, Load in Nine Times (Liveright/ W.W. Norton, 2024). Its poems are narratives about slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction based on historic artifacts of Black Kentuckians. The Frazier History Museum in Louisville is exhibiting 18 of those poems with artifacts that inspired them in its exhibit The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall

For Walker, studying history is a way of understanding the present. He thinks a good poem evokes emotions in readers—and leaves them with a memorable punch at the end. “It’s really important to me that the reader feel something,” he said.

Walker has spent years writing and rewriting a novel he hopes to publish eventually. He also is finishing two poetry manuscripts. One is about a century of racism through the lens of golf. The other is a third book about York, an enslaved African American who accompanied Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their “Voyage of Discovery” through western North America from 1804-1806.

“After decades of believing that I wanted to be something else—even though I was already writing and making art—I thought that pursuing a dream meant it had to be hard, “ Walker said. “Writing was always easy for me. It was pleasure; it was not work.”

CRYSTAL WILKINSON

When Crystal Wilkinson was growing up on her grandparents’ farm in Casey County, there were no playmates nearby. So, she would walk to Indian Creek, talk to the minnows, and imagine what they might be thinking. Or she would climb the knob behind the house, look far into the distance, and wonder if another little girl somewhere was doing the same thing.

“Books became my companions,” she said in an interview. “As I was roaming around, I was thinking about stories. My grandmother always read to me. I could read before I went to school, and I loved reading and loved writing. I was always living in the mind, and I always had a notebook with me.”

Those early experiences have informed Wilkinson’s

career as a poet, short-story writer, novelist, essayist, creative writing professor and poet laureate of Kentucky (2021-2022). She was a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, whose goal was to explore the rich history of Black culture in rural Kentucky that often has been ignored.

Wilkinson’s fifth book, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, made many lists of national best-sellers and best books in 2024. Her 2021 poetry collection, Perfect Black, won her the NAACP Image Award for Poetry. She has received many awards for her 2016 novel, The Birds of Opulence, and her earlier short story collections, Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries

Wilkinson, 62, was born in Hamilton, Ohio, but spent

most of her childhood with her grandparents because of her mother’s mental illness. She loved writing and art but took high school classes in typing and shorthand because it seemed like a good path to a job.

She earned an art scholarship to Eastern Kentucky University, but art history classes bored her. “So, I majored in journalism and took all the creative writing classes Eastern had to offer,” she said.

After graduation and a brief career as an accounts receivable supervisor for a window-replacement company, Wilkinson landed a job writing obituaries and news notes for the Lexington Herald-Leader. She later became a public information officer for the city.

“I always had creative writing on the side,” she said. “I was so fascinated by the Carnegie Center—this idea of going from literacy to literary. I would run over from the city [office] on my lunch hour and sit in on [writer and artist] Laverne Zabielski’s class, do some free writing, and come back.”

Wilkinson became involved with the Affrilachian Poets, attended local readings, and went to the Appalachian Writers Workshop. While working in public relations at Midway College (now Midway University), she was accepted into a prestigious Hurston/Wright Foundation workshop in Virginia. She needed help with transportation there, so the college president loaned her his official Cadillac—“the biggest car I’ve ever driven.”

At that workshop, Wilkinson met her first agent, Marie Brown, who had worked with renowned author Toni Morrison. Brown helped Wilkinson publish Blackberries, Blackberries, which came out when Wilkinson was working as assistant director of the Carnegie Center.

“I always thought success would be if I had a short story published in a magazine I had heard of,” she said. But Blackberries attracted the attention of several publishers interested in future work. “The fire had been lit,” she added.

Wilkinson had always thought she was too shy to teach, but after working at the Carnegie Center, “the teaching bug bit me very hard.” After earning an MFA in creative writing in Spalding University’s first low-residency class, she

taught at Berea College and then joined the University of Kentucky’s creative writing faculty.

Wilkinson and her husband, Ron Davis, a visual artist and poet, started Wild Fig Books & Coffee in Lexington. The store’s name comes from the work of reclusive Lexington novelist Gayl Jones, whom Wilkinson has long admired but never met. Wild Fig closed in September 2018 and reopened in November of that year as a worker cooperative.

Wilkinson sees all of her writing as connected, as if ideas are running a relay race from one book to the next. Her central theme is Black life in rural Kentucky.

“I think one of the preeminent jobs of the Kentucky writer is to hold the complications of our life up to the light, even to pay honor to that in some way,” she said.

“Mainstream America has a homogenized, wrong view about Kentucky. I feel like we’re constantly trying to hold our experiences, or the experiences of our people, up as if to say to the rest of the country, ‘See! This, too, is Kentucky.’ ”

Wilkinson does most of her writing in her home office, on the couch with a laptop, or outside in warm weather. Before she begins, she seeks inspiration from a poem or a passage from a writer she admires. She has a long list of favorites, including Jones, Nikky Finney (her best friend), Joy Harjo, George Ella Lyon and Michael Ondaatje

Wilkinson currently is writing a book called Heartsick about her mother’s mental health challenges, which Crown plans to publish in 2026. After that, she has another novel percolating, along with a collection of short stories. Ideas are never in short supply.

“For me, ideas are like a Rolodex; I’ve got ideas rolling all the time,” she said. “But it’s not until something haunts me that I can write about it.”

Many of Wilkinson’s books are dark, and after Heartsick, her goal is to write something lighter. “I really want to find my funny bone again,” she said. “I want to leave behind a nuanced look at Black people in rural Kentucky. I think what I’ve been put here to do is hold Kentucky up to the light—my Kentucky up to the light— for everyone else to see. Not so much to judge but to say, ‘This, too, is Kentucky.’ ”

NAOMI WALLACE

Naomi Wallace, the daughter and granddaughter of Louisville journalists, knew early that writing was the best way for her to express herself and her values. But she thought it would be through poetry.

After graduating from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Wallace went to the University of Iowa for graduate work with the idea of becoming a poet. “I had always told myself that I didn’t like working with other people, that I wanted to work alone,” she said in an interview.

“And it was so wonderful to discover that I was wrong about myself,” she said. “I may have wanted that, but what I needed was collaboration. I’ve become a better writer through collaboration. And theater is one of the most collaborative arts.”

Wallace, 64, has become one of the most acclaimed playwrights of her generation, the author of more than two dozen plays and a long list of projects on her horizon. Those include finishing a trilogy of plays set in Kentucky and writing the book for two Broadway musicals: Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Loretta Lynn story (co-written with Greg Pierce); and Small Town, based on John Mellencamp’s work, especially his 1982 hit “Jack & Diane.”

Wallace’s many awards include a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1999, an Obie Award (for offBroadway and off-off-Broadway theater), the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Horton Foote Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama.

Her most famous play is One Flea Spare, about a wealthy couple and two intruders quarantined together in 17th century London during the bubonic plague. The play, which explores the clash of social, cultural and sexual boundaries, was made part of the permanent repertoire of Comédie-Française, the French National Theatre. Wallace is only the second American so honored by the 300-yearold theater company, the other being Tennessee Williams One Flea Spare had its American premiere at the Humana Festival of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1996.

Wallace’s other well-known plays include The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Slaughter City and In the Heart of America. In

1995, she published a book of poetry: To Dance a Stony Field (Peterloo Poets).

Wallace was born in Louisville and grew up with five siblings on a farm near Prospect, as well as in Amsterdam, the hometown of her Dutch mother, Sonja de Vries. Her father, journalist Henry Wallace, later became a civil rights activist. Her grandfather, Tom Wallace, spent most of his career in top editing jobs at The Courier-Journal and the Louisville Times. An ardent conservationist, he led a fiveyear effort in the 1920s to prevent construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have destroyed Cumberland Falls. Then he helped preserve it as a state park.

For more than 20 years, Naomi Wallace has lived in North Yorkshire, England, with her British partner, Bruce McLeod, and their three children. Until the COVID pandemic, the family spent every summer at Moncada, the 660-acre Wallace family farm near Prospect, most of which is under conservation easements and can never be developed. Wallace said she doesn’t get to the farm as often now that her children are grown, but “it’s always an anchor, a place of creativity for me. It lives inside me.”

After the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame ceremony on March 10, Wallace will head to New York for the opening of The Return of Benjamin Lay at the Sheen Center in Greenwich Village. She co-wrote the play with Marcus Rediker, an Owensboro-born historian. It is based on his 2017 book, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the first Revolutionary Abolitionist. The one-person show premiered last year in London with the same actor, Mark Provinelli

Wallace said she loves collaborative writing. She co-wrote The Girl Who Fell Through a Hole in Her Sweater with McLeod and Returning to Haifa, an adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani’s 1969 novella, with Palestinian playwright Ismail Khalidi. She and Khalidi collaborated again on Guernica, Gaza: Visions from the Center of the Earth, which was produced last fall in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Wallace’s work can be controversial. After commissioning Returning to Haifa, the Public Theatre in New York refused to perform it. But censorship often happens quietly in theater, Wallace said, when companies simply decide not to produce a play. “While my work has been highly awarded, I’m not a highly produced playwright,” she said.

“For me, it’s not just about art,” Wallace said of her writing. “It’s about art as a part of envisioning a better world, a more just world. Artists have at times been on the front line of what they call speaking truth to power. Artists have also been the shock troops for colonialism and war. So, it really depends on who the artists are and their vision of what the world should be and how power should be shared.”

While she has long had a close relationship with Actors Theatre of Louisville, she said a former artistic director refused to perform a play it had commissioned because of fear that its references to the pharmaceutical industry might offend a corporate sponsor. That play—now titled The Breach, about a group of teenagers in 1970s Kentucky who reconnect in the 1990s—also includes content about sexual violence that she describes as “challenging.”

The Breach’s premiere was in France, translated into French, and it has been performed in London. But Wallace hopes to see it staged in Kentucky someday, along with two other plays—one she has written and another she plans to write this summer—that she refers to as her Kentucky Trilogy.

“Growing up in Kentucky and listening to people talk, that’s what gave me the foundation for the language I use

in the theater,” she said. “Someone was asking me, ‘Kentucky meant so much to you. Why did you leave?’ I said, ‘I’ve never left. I live in England, but I’ve never left Kentucky.’ The most powerful time for me about Kentucky was when I was a teenager. That is right there, all the time, with me.”

RON ELLER

Ron Eller’s German and English ancestors were in Appalachia by the mid-1700s, and his Cherokee ancestors were there for millennia before that. As the first member of his family to go to college when he studied at the College of Wooster in Ohio in the 1960s, Eller was puzzled by his Southern history class.

“We haven’t studied anything about my people,” Eller told his professor. “My people didn’t own plantations and slaves.”

Instead of a paper on the plantation system, the professor assigned him to find out what had been written about Appalachian history. “I went to the library and could find absolutely nothing,” Eller said. Well, except for references to hillbilly stereotypes, many of which he had been hearing since his West Virginia family moved to Akron a decade earlier.

Then, on a shelf of new library books, Eller saw Harry M. Caudill’s Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. “It was the first book I ever read straight through,” he said. “Stayed up all night.”

The next morning, Eller took the book to his professor, who echoed many historians’ criticisms of Caudill as too anecdotal and not “academic” enough. Night Comes to the Cumberlands became a foundation for Eller’s paper—and an inspiration for the rest of his career as an author, historian and Appalachian studies pioneer.

“Harry was writing about the relationship of people and land and how that land has been used over time,” said Eller, who later would

replace Caudill as a professor in the University of Kentucky’s history department.

“I wanted to write the history of the region from the perspective of someone from the region,” he said. “History has always been about telling people’s stories. In my case, it has always been countering those popular national images of the mountains.”

Eller was born in 1948 in Annapolis, Maryland, where his father was in the Navy. He and his younger five brothers and sisters grew up in Akron and near Beckley, West Virginia, where their grandfather had walked from his North Carolina farm at the turn of the 20th century to work in the coal mines.

Eller benefited from good public schools in Akron, where his father operated a barbershop. He earned an academic and basketball scholarship to the College of Wooster. But the year he started college, the rest of his family moved home to West Virginia—a place they had driven back to every other weekend, nine hours each way, the whole time they lived in Ohio.

That Southern history class inspired Eller to change his major from physical education to history. He taught school for a couple of years to earn money for graduate school and enrolled in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His professor and first writing mentor was George Tindall, who won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 1969 for The Emergence of the New South: 1913-1945

Eller met his second writing mentor at Duke University, where UNC history students could take classes. Larry Goodwin had been a writer for the Texas Observer before starting Duke’s oral history program. It attracted many Black and Appalachian students, whose people had been largely ignored by traditional history programs.

“Larry taught me to write from the gut and to express what I really felt and to tell stories,” Eller said. “I could identify with the stories my fellow students were telling

about political power, inequality, poverty and social justice. I learned so much.”

Eller’s first book, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, won the 1982 Willis Weatherford Award from the Appalachian Studies Association and the 1983 Thomas Wolfe Literary Award from the Asheville Museum of History.

His second book, Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945, is a history of how economic development, exploitation and government programs both helped and failed the region. It also won the Weatherford Award as well as the Southern Political Science Association’s V.O. Key Award for the best book about Southern politics.

“For me, history was my window into understanding why things were the way they were today,” he said. “History has to be re-interpreted by each generation in their own context and their own set of experiences. That’s the way we progress and move ahead.”

Eller also has written more than 70 scholarly articles. He served for 15 years as director of the University of Kentucky’s Appalachian Center and was a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar. He chaired the Governor’s Kentucky Appalachian Task Force, was the first chair of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission and was a member of the Sustainable Communities Task Force of President Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. He has won many regional leadership and service awards and was inducted into the University of Kentucky Hall of Fame in 2020.

“Most of what I have written has been an effort to correct the historical perspective,” Eller said. “The mountains were never as isolated as some have suggested. Appalachians were never pure Scots-Irish; they were always a mixed-ancestry people, just as the nation as a whole. Appalachia is not the other America. It is, in fact, America.”

David Dick spent nearly two decades as a globetrotting CBS correspondent during the golden age of television news. Then he moved home to Bourbon County and launched several new careers.

Dick became a sheep farmer, the founder of two weekly newspapers and a University of Kentucky journalism professor and department head. He also published 14 books that attracted loyal readers across Kentucky and beyond.

DAVID DICK

Beginning with The View from Plum Lick in 1992, Dick wrote 11 books on his own and another three with his wife, Eulalie “Lalie” Dick. The topics ranged from his adventures covering wars in Latin America to his 17-year battle with prostate cancer.

Most of the books were about Dick’s beloved Kentucky, including Kentucky: A State of Mind (2005), Rivers of Kentucky (2001), Home Sweet Kentucky (1999), Let There Be Light: The Story of Rural Electrification in Kentucky (2008) and Jesse Stuart: The Heritage (2005).

“I think David’s contribution was his writing and language and how he applied it to the state … what his senses told him,” the late Carl West, editor of The (Frankfort) State Journal and founder of the Kentucky Book Fair, said after Dick died at age 80 on July 16, 2010. “He’ll be remembered for his literary effort.”

David Barrow Dick was born Feb. 18, 1930, in Cincinnati. His father, Samuel, a physician, died when he was 18 months old. His mother, Lucille, moved home with her three young children to Bourbon County, where five generations of her family had lived.

Dick, an Eagle Scout, graduated from North Middletown High School in 1948 and majored in English at the University of Kentucky. His studies were interrupted by United States Navy service during the Korean War. He completed a master’s degree in English literature at UK in 1964.

Before joining CBS News in 1966, Dick worked six years for WHAS radio and TV in Louisville. He was posted at CBS bureaus in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Dallas, and spent a year as the Latin America bureau chief in Caracas,

Venezuela. He won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the 1972 assassination attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace, but he is perhaps best known for his coverage of the 1978 mass suicide of more than 900 cult followers of the Rev. Jim Jones in Guyana.

“We met one another in airports for a long time, and all we could think about was moving back to Kentucky,” Lalie Dick said. “It was the dream that kept us going.”

After retiring from CBS in 1985, Dick joined UK’s journalism faculty, which he led from 1987 to 1993. He was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 1987 and UK’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 2000. Dick started newspapers in Montgomery and Bourbon counties that won many awards but didn’t survive long against established competitors. For 22 years, he wrote a column for Kentucky Living, the magazine of Kentucky’s rural electric cooperatives.

Dick was married to Rose Dick from 1953-1978. They had three daughters—Deborah, Catherine and Nell—and a son, Sam, a longtime broadcast journalist in Lexington. In 1978, David Dick married Lalie, a Revlon sales executive from Mississippi whose family had Bourbon County roots. The couple had a daughter, Ravy

Soon after returning to Kentucky, the Dicks took up residence on a farm one of his ancestors bought in 1799 and lived in a pre-1850 house built by a great-great-uncle. On several hundred acres along Plum Lick Road, the couple raised a large flock of sheep.

When Dick wrote his first book, the University Press of Kentucky told him it would take two years to publish, Lalie Dick said. He couldn’t wait that long. So, the couple started Plum Lick Publishing Inc., which produced most of their books. “We started putting cartons of books in cars and going places,” Lalie said.

The University Press published Dick’s historical novel, The Scourges of Heaven, in 1998.

“He was always in love with words and how they went together and how descriptive they were and what they meant. It was just in his DNA,” Lalie said. “He loved Kentucky with his whole being.”

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PENNED

WINNING SUBMISSIONS

FICTION

Nancy Gall-Clayton

Kacie Lawrence

Marie Mitchell and Mason Smith

OPENING

0F A NOVEL

Judith Hoover

Shirley Jones

Kacie Lawrence

Virginia Smith Logan NONFICTION

C. Ed Bryson

Vicki Easterly

Sheree Stewart Combs

POETRY

Alex Berg

Timothy Kleiser

Mike Norris

Robert L. Penick

Catherine Perkins

Amy Le Ann

Richardson

George E. Robertson

Jack Stallins

Jessica Swafford

Eric Nance Woehler

POETRY

Wilting Through

Milkweeds ripple the face of the hill in a rash. If you claw deep, the dirt bleeds out a white powder. It is July now, and you know the next time you climb this hill you will be alone, and the hill will be either taller or shorter, and the sun –depending on the month –will be closer or farther away. If you were any type of religious, you’d take this to mean something or nothing. But you’re not. So you let the powder filter through your eyelashes and blink away what comes through. And thank God it comes through.

Jack Stallins

LOUISVILLE

OPENING PARAGRAPH OF A NOVEL

[Untitled]

Kacie Lawrence | KIRKSEY (CALLOWAY COUNTY)

Summer in the South commonly hangs on like a tick in a dogfight, and that summer would prove to be the hottest since 1934. Several major weather events had occurred that year, and by the first calendar day of fall, September 23, everyone and everything was over summer. The heatwave had been followed by drought, and in Kentucky, where livelihoods depended upon fertile fields, all anyone could talk about was the need for rain, until the body was found.

The Pendant

By Virginia Smith Logan | STANFORD

Budapest, Hungary

March 1944

In the weeks before my parents sent me away, I heard them arguing. Few words penetrated the wood between the second and third floors of our house in Budapest, but their tones seeped upward to invade the tiny bedroom I shared with Miklos and brought with them a palpable tension that twisted my stomach into knots. A discernible phrase occasionally echoed up the steep wooden stairway. I wanted to cover my ears to hide from the terror of their disagreement as I lay huddled on the corner of my thin mattress. Most of the words made no sense. What does a 4-year-old girl know of government and politics? Names like Sztójay and Lakatos meant nothing, though I shivered at the fear that saturated my mother’s ragged whispers.

Beyond Monongah

By Judith Hoover | RUSSELLVILLE

December 1907

Both of her babies were down for their naps, and Clemente was at home with a bad cold that day, but the terrible tremor sent all four of them out the door headed toward the mines. Bessie grabbed little Orie, hitched up her skirt, and ran, repeating, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” all the way. Clemente sprinted ahead carrying Ivy, appealing all the while to “Madre di Dio.” Startled from their sleep, both children began to wail, a sound soon heard throughout the small town of Monongah, where every family had a miner missing behind the inferno of flames roaring from both mine entrances. Wives, mothers, sons and daughters appeared from all directions, held back only by the heat and smoke coming from these portals.

River of Grace

By Shirley Jones | BOWLING GREEN

Itiptoed across the front porch, shivering in my thin denim jacket, while balancing a heavy suitcase in one hand and a purse on my shoulder. Summer had lingered longer than usual this year, but tonight, the air held an autumn crispness that made my breath rise in soft billows. Above me, the full hunter’s moon bathed the sky in a warm glow that illuminated the gravel driveway leading from the house to the road—all the better for making my escape. As I reached the edge of the porch, I paused to scan the yard for wandering coyotes. A pack recently had moved into the area, driving Pa crazy with their constant howling. The thought of them roaming nearby made my heart race, fearing they might start yipping and wake Pa. I had come too far to have them foil my escape. Thankfully, they were still tonight.

FICTION

The Central City Incident

By Marie Mitchell and Mason Smith | RICHMOND

Friday night fun in Central City, circa 1972, usually started with a high school basketball game and ended with Jackie and me driving around Muhlenberg County looking for adventure—whenever her mom let us borrow her 1968 Chevrolet Nova.

We often ended up at “the strip pits”—a large area that Peabody Coal Company had surface-mined and left looking like the radiation-blasted plains of Mars. But that was more entertaining than watching our equally dull classmates circle the drive-throughs in their parents’ cars, checking out who else was cruising around.

At first, there was nothing special about this one November night. After we reached the pits, we raced up and down the wide roadways designed for the giant, highcapacity dump trucks we called “ukes”—the yellow ones with the oversized 6-foot-high wheels.

It’s hard to believe, but driving at high speeds across the rough, gravely roads in total darkness between deep, water-filled, coal-spoil pits eventually lost its thrill. Before long, we grew bored—and low on gas. So, we started back toward town, planning to loop around Burger King a few times before our midnight curfew.

As we passed by a pit nicknamed Anchor Lake, so called because its shape resembled a ship’s anchor, I noticed something glowing in the water, or rather, under the water.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.

Jackie slowed from her normal 70 miles an hour—as fast as her mom’s Nova could manage on a level straightaway with a tailwind—to a sedate 45.

“Where?”

“In the lake.”

“Just a reflection, Artie,” she said dismissively.

“No,” I argued. “It’s a light. There’s no moon tonight.”

Jackie eased her foot off the gas, causing the car to sputter and slow from inertia and Muhlenberg County’s weird gravity anomalies. She leaned forward, gazing past me across the surface of the lake that now glittered with a soft yellow aura.

“Maybe someone missed a turn and plunged into the water?” Jackie guessed, suddenly slamming on the brakes and nearly flinging me into the windshield.

We climbed out into the nippy night. The Nova’s hot engine slowly ticked like a nearly wound-down grandfather clock. Nervously, we walked over to the pit. Kentucky’s Fish and Wildlife folks had forced Peabody Coal to stock the heavily polluted pits with fish, so an eyewatering stink of dead sea life filled the air.

As we stood there staring into the black water, the light shifted from yellow to green and then to rose.

“Whoa,” Jackie marveled, “that doesn’t look like submerged headlights.”

“It’s probably too late to rescue anybody, anyway,” I said. “Remember driver’s ed class—you only have about 60 seconds to get out.”

Our breath made puffs of condensation, and sleet stung my cheeks. Ice pellets that missed my face popped against my nylon windbreaker and baseball cap.

“Maybe the lights are from some sort of mining equipment,” Jackie suggested, pulling her parka more tightly around herself.

“Why would Peabody put a piece of equipment underwater?”

“Could be a testing device,” Jackie said. “Like the State sampling the water to see why all of their fish had died.”

That sounded reasonable at first. But why would an automatic sampling doohickey need lights? And how was it powered?

“More likely, someone’s pranking us,” I suggested.

We looked around for the jokester but saw only darkness.

“No one else is out here,” Jackie emphasized.

“Then what’s causing that?” I asked, motioning toward a huge, illuminated circle.

We remained mesmerized by the glowing water for a few more moments before my danger detector started to tingle.

“Let’s drive back to Riley’s Chevron and call the cops.”

“Right. Once they’ve had a laugh, they’ll make us take

breathalyzer tests. If Mom found out about that, she’d kill me.”

“You have a better idea?” I asked.

“We could toss rocks into the water and see what happens.”

“Seriously? Why don’t we just shoot at it?”

“Spoken like a true Kentuckian,” Jackie said. “But where’s your gun?”

So, six rocks later, including one near-boulder that Jackie heaved in with an underhanded toss, the pit’s water rippled. But the light remained stationary, quivering through the murky water.

“Well, that was disappointing,” Jackie lamented, a bit out of breath.

Just then, the object not only changed color again, but it nearly doubled in size while moving toward the surface—and us.

“Looks like we got its attention,” I said.

The light now formed a circle maybe 50 feet across, nearly filling the pit. The surrounding rocks reflected its flickering red color. The water’s surface started to boil as a massive, saucer-like metallic object surfaced.

“Let’s get out of here!” Jackie yelled as she raced to the car with me trailing behind.

Luckily, the Nova started right up.

Unlike most supernatural stories, though, that thing— whatever it was—didn’t follow us home. But as we peeled off, we witnessed a reddish-orange spacecraft streak into the sky from among the high walls of the mine, then vanish into the low clouds.

We drove in stunned silence to the police station without incident, Jackie gripping the wheel like a lifeline. We were too terrified to talk.

The cops called our parents to assure them we were okay. But here’s where things get wackier. Their clock read 2 a.m., while my watch indicated midnight. We’d lost two hours of time. Where did they go? What did we do? Neither of us could remember.

After the police had a laugh at our expense, they did

investigate but discovered nothing except our tire tracks and footprints. Case closed—for them.

But “the incident” and trying to account for the lost two hours after our sighting stressed us out. Plus, our classmates teased us mercilessly for months, which strained our friendship.

Neither of us returned to the strip pits again. By graduation, Jackie and I had drifted apart.

In college, I’d planned to major in business administration, maybe even go for an MBA, but my interests changed after that night. Instead, I became a college English professor. I read, researched and lectured on many topics, mostly dealing with paranormal phenomena. But I never managed to solve the mystery surrounding our eerie encounter, which radically changed my career trajectory.

Years later, our Alumni News magazine featured Jackie, who’d become one of the first women ordained into the Episcopal priesthood.

Jackie, a priest? Who’d have guessed? She’d excelled at math and science and was planning to study engineering, maybe join NASA and become an astronaut. How did she get from aeronautics to the priesthood?

Probably the same way I got from business into an English classroom—by wanting to make sense of our uncharted experience.

Our encounter was weird in the Old English sense of wyrd—that is, having great occult power, i.e. the power to control “fate, destiny or doom.”

Those lights have never been reported since that night, at least not in Muhlenberg County, although I’m sure teenagers still go looking for them. In fact, most nights before bed, I step outside and study the sky, seeking answers—especially on cold, cloudy November nights.

I’d be willing to bet that after she recites the evening office from The Book of Common Prayer, Jackie steps outside and does the same.

FICTION

Nameless Old Graves

By Kacie Lawrence | KIRKSEY (CALLOWAY COUNTY)

McDougal Cemetery sits on a hill in the woods 10 miles outside of Murray. The single-lane road that one must take to get there is cut into the hill and is known to often wash out after a hard storm.

There are many ghosts here for Ellie. She remembers coming here with her parents as a child. Once, she had enjoyed how the cows in the field would come and watch them when they were there, standing in a row side by side chewing their cud like people eating popcorn in a movie theater. Behind them the land would roll for miles.

Now, the cows are gone, and there is a house that blocks the view. Ellie wonders if the people inside are watching her visit her family. She wonders if they are standing around chewing like the cows did.

There was a time that her family came to the cemetery about once a month. Mama would clean the graves of those they knew, pulling weeds, sometimes putting out silk flowers, but mostly, she’d just sit quietly. Daddy seemed unable to stand and watch, so he’d walk around. Ellie would follow, and together, they would make their way toward the back of the cemetery, where the graves became smaller, almost fading into the woods. Daddy would read out the names as he walked, noting whether or not they were relatives of someone she knew.

Now, Ellie walks through, noting some of the newer stones where a newly paved drive bends between a few old oaks. There are several covered in sprays of flowers, some with wind chimes, and two with stone benches for those who must come to visit long enough to need a place to sit. Now, in her 30s, Ellie recognizes many of the names much

more than she did as a child.

Ellie decides to wander around before visiting her family’s plot, the way she remembers doing when she was young. It doesn’t take long to reach the edge of the woods, where the stones are so worn by time she must wonder if it’s a grave or just a rock stuck in the mud. Some obviously were once smoother stones, but many are conglomerate red rock, reminding her of the gravel driveway that leads to the single-wide trailer she grew up in. There are no silk flowers, no benches or ornaments in this part of the graveyard. Ellie wonders when was the last time someone pulled weeds here.

“Which grave is the girl’s?” Ellie always asked Daddy as they wandered.

Daddy didn’t have to ask what girl. He just smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“Probably one of the unmarked ones in the back. Those are the oldest graves,” he said.

Ellie thought so, too.

“Tell me the story again,” she would say.

It was the story she asked for every time they came to McDougal.

Daddy always made sure they were far enough away that Mama couldn’t hear them. Mama didn’t like Daddy’s ghost stories, especially when he told them at the cemetery, which she said was disrespectful.

“Back a long time ago, when your grandma’s grandmama was about your age, there was a church here,” he began.

He told her it was where a pavilion with the wooden picnic tables now covered in chipping white paint sat.

“When they’d get out of church, the grown folks would

talk, and the kids would play. Annie—that’s your greatgreat-GREAT-grandmama’s name—started playing with a girl about her size. The girl didn’t talk; she was real quiet like, but they ran around for a bit. Then Annie’s daddy told her to get in the back of the wagon ’cause it was time to go home. So, Annie jumped into the back of the wagon, and the little girl jumped up into the wagon too.”

“Did her mama and daddy not see the little girl or know she was there?” Ellie always asked, even though she’d heard the story more than once.

“Nah,” Daddy said. “Anyway, they started to pull the wagon away from the church, and Annie turned to tell her mama and daddy they’d picked up the little hitchhiker, but for some reason, they didn’t hear her, and they kept driving. When Annie turned around again to look at her new friend, she was shocked to see that the little girl no longer had a head.”

With this, her daddy always turned and looked at Ellie, his eyes going wide.

“Annie was too scared to talk or scream, but then, the little girl’s body just jumped off the wagon and waved goodbye. They say ever’ now and then, when people leave this place, they look in the mirror and see a headless little girl in the backseat.”

Ellie thinks of the story now as she looks at the nameless old graves. She wonders if there is really a small headless child underneath any of the stones here. The thought sends a chill up her spine and makes her nervously laugh out loud. She can’t help but peek over at the new house to see if she’s been caught—a woman laughing in a cemetery, alone.

While walking back toward the small area where a few stones carry her maiden name, Ellie spots a small white grave with a lamb on top of the stone, and she remembers another time here.

Daddy stopped in front of a small, rounded stone. He got down and tried to read the writing.

“This one here is a little kid’s grave. Do you know how I know?” he asked her.

She didn't. The letters and dates on the white stone had been impossible to make out.

“This little lamb on the top,” he said as he patted the lamb as if it were real.

Behind him, Ellie repeated his gesture and softly patted the lamb before following.

“You know, I think that might be Annie’s sister’s grave,” he said. “She died young. Her name was Americus. That’s a weird one, huh?”

Ellie looks now, many years later, but the name is even more faded and even less legible.

She continues to the spot where her mother used to pull the weeds around a small gray block. It’s much smaller than the ones around it, but the words are still clear.

Ellie sits down on her knees and pulls the tall grass that has grown up around the small stone and the ones around it, which have become more numerous with time. Before she goes, she makes sure to pat the small lamb yard ornament she once insisted on bringing to her brother’s grave, years ago, and she leaves a fresh bouquet of red silk flowers for Daddy.

She checks her rearview mirror over and over before she makes it home.

A Blue Subaru

By Nancy Gall-Clayton | JEFFERSONVILLE, INDIANA

Nancy lived in Louisville from 1969-2009

Why did he have to stand right there, right in the doorway tapping his foot? Didn’t he realize we were in the middle of a poetry reading? Couldn’t it wait, whatever it was?

The instant the intent young woman finished reading her prize-winning poem about a child buried in a stillticking Mickey Mouse watch, the man stepped out of the doorway and into the room.

“Does anyone here have a blue Subaru parked out front?” he asked.

There was no response until a full minute later when I flung my white wool scarf around my neck, grabbed my coat, and pushed my way out of the crowded room.

“I apologize,” I said, trying to walk in step with him, “but I’ve lost my keys. They may be locked in the car.”

“Oh, great!” he exclaimed in dismay, lengthening his strides as if he were racing to reach the car before the sun disappeared into the horizon. “Do you belong to the auto club?”

“No,” I said, stopping abruptly, forcing him to turn back and face me. As he did so, I took one of his hands into both of mine. “And neither should you,” I added. “Auto clubs, why, auto clubs are …”

My voice drifted off as I tenderly stroked his hand and recalled my Brownie troop sitting cross-legged in a circle as we listened to our leader describe how to make name tags from macaroni and tree bark. In my vision, each Brownie in the circle was gradually replaced by one of those sleekly curved, oversized sedans from the 1940s.

“This auto club will now come to order,” honked the head auto, prompting the others to stop flapping their hoods.

“What?” the man asked me, withdrawing his hand.

“What did you say about auto clubs?”

“Just this,” I replied. “Don’t you think life is too short to spend any of it fretting?”

“But you’re blocking my car, and I’m late for a meeting!”

“Of?”

“Of?” he repeated the word as if I had addressed him in Swahili.

“A meeting of what?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, understanding. “The Daniel Boone Club.”

“My point exactly,” I said. “How far would Daniel Boone have gotten if he had fretted?”

“Interesting,” he admitted after a pause.

Just then, we arrived at the Subaru. Living only blocks from the site of the poetry reading and not owning a car, I had walked over. My purpose in joining the man had been to teach him about tranquility and spontaneity, both of which he obviously lacked.

“You think that car is blue?” I teased.

“What color do you think it is?” he asked, a slow smile forming under his tidy mustache.

“Turquoise,” I said without hesitation.

“You’re obviously color blind,” he advised.

“Or perhaps you are,” I countered. “Say, why not skip that Daniel Boone thing and buy me a cup of coffee?” I tilted my head toward a rectangle of yellow light across the street.

“Well …” He sounded unsure.

“Haven’t you ever done anything on impulse?” I asked.

“I run a high school computer lab. What kind of example would that be?”

It turned out he hadn’t done anything on impulse during his first 27 years, but he began that night when he playfully touched my nose after Ellie, proprietor of the Irish Hill Café, brought us bowls of steaming mint-carrot soup and glasses of dark beer. When she shooed us out a couple hours later, we walked to my place and sat on opposite sides of a rickety kitchen table drinking coffee until the sun came up.

We called in sick and proceeded to the hall of justice, where we stood witness for a couple we’d never met, and they did the same for us. Later, he bought me a pearl ring, and I gave him huge jars of finger paint in primary colors. After supper, we packed my books and clothes into cardboard boxes and threw everything else in a dumpster. I moved into his apartment, of course.

We were good for each other, he and I. To my surprise, he cooked rather well and enjoyed it. I kept our home tidy, and after we found an ancient sewing machine at a yard sale, festive pillows and curtains brightened the place, often in shades of blue.

Most evenings, we walked in the neighborhood holding

hands, sometimes stealing a kiss, and once taking home a scrawny, ownerless puppy. We kept a game of chess going at all times, went to a lot of movies, and read The Wind in the Willows to one another. Our gentle lovemaking was like two clouds gracefully gliding through one another.

My husband soon resigned from the Daniel Boone Club and began attending poetry readings with me. Our lives seemed interwoven perfectly when, just days after our third wedding anniversary, he told me that he was considering an unsolicited job offer from one of the largest corporations in town.

“But you’ll have to wear suits,” I exclaimed miserably. “And navy-blue socks. You’ll have to work late and wear a beeper and start eating meat again and read computer magazines.”

“I already read computer magazines,” he reminded me.

“But you won’t have time to read anything else,” I said.

“It won’t be that bad,” he insisted.

“It will,” I predicted.

The theme at the next poetry reading was “our universe.” An earnest young man was halfway through a sonnet laden with alliteration and double meanings when I noticed a fretful woman standing in the doorway. She wore a navy-blue suit and had long red fingernails, the kind that are glued on, and she was unconsciously tapping them against the wall in a jittery rhythm.

“It’s all right,” I whispered, leaning over to kiss my sweet husband goodbye.

“Does anyone here have a blue Subaru parked out front?” the woman in the doorway asked.

Nudging him, missing him already but knowing that our destinies must diverge, I whispered, “Honey, that’s your cue.”

NONFICTION

Tapestries

By Sheree Stewart Combs | PARIS

July 1967

Grandma Hettie and I settle in on the porch to break green beans. Neighbor women stop to visit, grab beans from the pan, and work alongside us. The rhythmic creak of the swing’s chains and the grind of the glider’s metal rungs create a cacophony to accompany the work. We swat sweat bees and dodge the dive bombs of dirt daubers. Dogs pant in the shade of the porch. Their thick tongues drip raindrops of slobber. Haunch-thin cats sway past them, tails raised, to rub against our sticky legs. Sweat glistens on the faces of the women and pools inside my shirt collar.

The mountains echo the ladies’ voices as I listen to familiar stories and the latest gossip. Sometimes, a racy joke sends them into peals of laughter, and I catch a glimpse of the young girls they once were. Girls who climbed mountains, rocked baby dolls and splashed in the creek, like me. I’ve seen them young in faded black-and-white photos but found it hard to reconcile the pictures with the women they have metamorphosed into. Their faces carry a more hallowed beauty in lines etched from years of hoeing corn in the sun, worried about their men working dangerous jobs in the mines or logging in the woods. When their faces bloom in glee, youth kindles old fires in their eyes. They are fierce, bent by hard times, but never broken. A shy, awkward girl, I yearn to be like them.

Grandma and I linger on the porch after night falls. I curl up in the glider. She sits in a chair so near I can touch her. Her white hair is twisted into a bun above the nape of her neck. The wildroot cream oil she rubs into it each morning perfumes the air when the wind rustles the leaves in the apple trees. My brown hair hangs like a curtain down my back. She’s 60, and I’ll soon be 12.

Raindrops plop onto the porch roof as Grandma weaves tapestries of her memories and wraps them around me, her first-born grandchild. She tells me of creeks she waded, babies she tended, her mother’s smile and Grandpa Obie’s grin. Her voice grows husky when she talks of the man with pools of brown in his eyes. She met him in 1927 in a boarding house, where she cooked meals for miners. A man of the deep earth and ancient mountains to whom coal dust often clung. I sense her mouth widen into a grin, eyes glaze with old desire, as she whispers, “Your grandpa sure was pretty.”

In a voice soft as snow, she speaks of burying their firstborn in a Caretta, West Virginia, coal camp cemetery, sorrow and longing for the baby trapped in her voice 40 years later. “He looked perfect, but he was blue and so cold,” she says. “I held him against me to try to warm him. He never drew a breath.” Her breath catches in her throat.

Grandma entrusted me to carry her stories into a future she’d never see. I know this now, but on those nights, I couldn’t imagine a world without her in it. She’s been gone since 1979, but I see us there, our hearts swollen in contentment. Generations of our people, conjured back to life by her remembrances, dance around us in the shadows.

The Red Christmas Gift

By Vicki Easterly | FRANKFORT

It was 1962. We were in first grade, and it was Christmastime.

On Monday, Miss Moberley printed our names on slips of paper and placed them in a green basket. She walked the aisles between the desks, pausing at each desk for us to draw a piece of paper. Finally, she announced, “OK, children, you can look.”

I drew Tammy Baxter’s name. Tammy was a blue-eyed girl who wore her long black hair in braids with ribbons on the ends. I knew just what I would buy Tammy—a box of sparkly silver bows!

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I wondered who had drawn my name and what they would buy me. I imagined the baby doll with real hair I had seen at Woolworth’s or a colorful tea set. How could I wait until Friday, the day of the party?

Tuesday morning at recess, Miss Moberly asked me to stay behind after the others had filed into the gymnasium. When she began by calling me “sweetie,” I knew I wasn’t in trouble, but what came out of her mouth next was worse. Billy Joe Hill had drawn my name, she told me with pity. Billy Joe—the poorest kid in class, the boy without milk money, the boy with no hat or gloves. I understood what it meant to have Billy Joe Hill draw my name. My present might be something old, or I might not get a gift at all.

On Wednesday morning, Billy Joe rushed up to me, his ears stinging from the cold. His icy hands cupped my ear as he whispered a secret. “I got you a present, and it’s red!” he told me, barely able to contain his excitement. He ran to his desk, sat with his dimpled chin in his hands, and grinned impishly. I told Miss Moberly the secret about the red

present. With an air of condolence, she warned me not to be disappointed if it was something used. I felt like crying.

Every day, the girls whispered with joy about their gifts. I wasn’t feeling much joy. The boys teased Billy Joe mercilessly, especially since he forgot his lunch money every day that week, but he just kept on smiling.

Friday came. Miss Moberly served us Hawaiian Punch and cookies. She invited my mother to come and help, perhaps to soften my disappointment. Wild-eyed from punch and sugar sprinkles, we wiggled in our chairs. At last, Miss Moberly took one gift from under the tree.

“When I call your name, you may come and get your present. Debbie, Jimmy …” Then I heard my name. I trudged to the front and took my present from Miss Moberly. She smiled at me compassionately. The girls were squealing with delight. I waited until last to open mine. With dread, I peeled back the used paper until my present was visible.

It was red! A red porcelain poodle with a feathered hat that twisted off! Inside was perfume, and it was not used! I twisted off the hat and applied a generous dab behind each ear. It smelled like sugar plums! It was the best Christmas gift ever!

I looked over at Billy Joe, who seemed anxious. Along with my happiness was a certain sadness.

I walked over to Billy Joe, put my arms around his skinny shoulders, and blurted loudly, “Thank you, Billy Joe, for the best Christmas present ever!” He smiled with pride and relief.

Then I looked at my mother, who was also smiling with what looked like pride and relief, except she had tears in her eyes that I didn’t understand.

NONFICTION

Kairos, A Moment in Time

By C. Ed Bryson | NICHOLASVILLE

My wife’s elderly mother came to live with us near the end of her life. After she died, we wanted to give her hospital bed to someone who needed it. I called Rachel Powell at the local community center, and she knew a graduate student who had asked about one just the day before. I called Latasha that afternoon.

The famous sociologist Max Weber was intrigued by the New Testament Greek word kairos—a moment in time, the right time, just in time. If we seek them, those moments make us more fully human.

“Oh yes,” Latasha gushed. “My mother is 60 and under hospice care. She wants badly to come home, to die at home. We really need a hospital bed to make that happen.”

Before I knew it, I had committed to delivering the hospital bed on Sunday afternoon to Georgetown, 45 minutes away. That was not what I had planned. My expectation was to help someone load the bed at my house and wave goodbye. Besides, I had an appointment every Sunday afternoon—a standing appointment to take a nap during the football game. I was seething a bit at the inconvenience, wondering why Georgetown couldn’t take care of their own.

My neighbor, Chris, helped me load the bed and mattress into my FJ Cruiser. I punched the address into the GPS and followed the automated, composed voice instruction as I pulled onto the highway. Still, mine was a sullen attitude. I would need the 45-minute drive to mellow.

Moral theologian Jim Keenan defines sin as not caring

enough to bother. I had cared enough to bother giving away the hospital bed, but I knew I needed to deliberately bother to step into this family’s life at a critical moment to look for the kairos.

The calming GPS voice directed me into a cul-de-sac. Gathered there was a gaggle of waving children and a smiling middle-aged woman who had to be Latasha. Together, we unloaded the bed and carried it into the cleared living room. “We want it here,” Latasha said, “so all who come to visit can gather to sing and tell stories.”

Chris had helped me break down the bed, so I suspected Latasha and the children would not be able to put the parts together again. Reversing the process, I had the bed up and ready in 20 minutes. I’d long since forgotten to feel bothered.

“You can never know what a blessing you have been to our family this day,” Latasha said as tears spilled from her dark eyes and dripped from shiny wet cheeks. “Mother has suffered for so long, and she doesn’t have the strength to keep fighting. Here, in her home, we can gather around her, make a family again, and see her off to eternity.”

Latasha hugged me, and children danced around us. I finally crawled back into the driver’s seat of my SUV. I hardly heard the GPS voice on the way home. Gratitude enfolded me like a weighted blanket, for I had been invited into a family’s pathos, their sweet suffering, and I had done nothing more than show up. Latasha had given me a kairos moment, that moment in time when I might be made more fully human.

POETRY

Circles

I need to do my physical therapy exercises because I’ve lost my ability to move fluidly, but don’t because the floor needs vacuuming, but don’t because vacuums are dangerous— busted shins, pulled muscles, plus the chance of elevated blood pressure from cleaning—cleaning up after people capable of cleaning up after themselves who don’t because they think it’s my job or maybe they’re just lazy. I haven’t figured that one out yet. Then there’s the issue of time and how long it takes to clean one room improperly— meaning not dusting because the dust in my house is never ending—never ending meaning always there— but just to be proper about cleaning I should pick up food that’s out of place—out of place meaning food belongs on a plate or in a mouth not scattered in the chairs and on the floor beneath and around my husband’s TV watching and eating place, but now under mine which indicates I’m missing my mouth more and more and then there’s barn and yard dirt which belongs outside, but comes in with my spouse and the hair down there not from the animals because they’re dead instead, it’s the hair falling off my head which means I’m losing it, not my mind, but I could be and chances are I wouldn’t know because delusional thinking and denial are two ways that help make my life more pleasing. Too bad there’s no time left to do my PT.

Catherine Perkins LEXINGTON

The Carpenter

Forty years I worked with fools, Who measured wrong and mislaid tools, But now my making days are done, And soon Elias Grey will come To measure me and notch a stick, For just so long and just so thick. Of all who know the saw and nail, Not I, not one, could build as well. They think that it will comfort me, To rest in such high quality. But my bent frame and his fine work Will disappear into the dirt, And one more year I’d take in trade To sleep in something less well made.

Mike

Norris LEXINGTON

Canaries

POETRY

Grown weary of watching for chest movement, I lay on the floor next to his sickbed.

I monitor his health by the darting about of his feet in bright yellow socks, canaries warning of dangers yet to come.

Jessica Swafford GEORGETOWN

POETRY

Mettle

Daggum goats got out the paddock again. Busted a picket and squeezed right through, stared me down as if to say, Mr. “Big Shoulders,” huh? And you want hogs next?

I let them browse and hop on the mower. Not but one pass across the acreage before rubber burns and the belt snaps.

Well, if the old pusher kicks it, then I’ll take a whetstone to the scythe, after some growth, and stack that fescue for winter straw.

Toil never ends on this hillside, but among this hardwood, “the land’s sharp features seem to be” jutting only from the cities

where hollow towers wreck a man’s view of the water and make his work all about the wrong end; about the wrong ideal of wealth.

And yet the corporate winch, with foundry hook and rusted wire, still drags me back from a day’s reprieve. pulled from the bourgeoning coop; from the teeming garden beds; from the raucous pond as ducks splash and shake in the glimmer of the day,

and into the plastic American market to be ambassador to lies like “natural light in 5000K,” “authentic appearance,” and 2”x 4”. This, under a canopy of LEDs for bug eyes to dazzle over cheap, frail freight.

Give me back my hickory helve and wrought iron billets of the bloom; tear me from concrete aisles and make me dig into the hillside

in search of the temperate earth. Store me like boiled glass jars, slipknots around fetlocks and crates of spuds of all kinds.

And in late fall, let fog roll from the bottom field, hover over the oak cord and cash box at the front; up to the road, swept by traffic to and from the lake, and disperse to unveil the matte morning.

Alex Berg BENTON, KY

Dead

One day you find your first true love in an online obituary and you realize she hasn’t been gone these past forty years.

She has been beneath your skin, under the tattoos, scars and scabs that you thought were forgetting.

She dwelt, like a cicada, under your feet and beneath your delible heart, waiting for an anniversary to split the wounds anew.

Now you are rewound, back four decades, beneath a cold Kentucky moon.

Everything has changed, after all these years.

Nothing has changed.

Robert L. Penick LOUISVILLE

“For Thine Is The Kingdom”

“For thine is the kingdom,” I was praying when distracted by the early bird

Rob-bob-bob-in bobbed down a neighbor’s drive and offered a chipper tweet (cute!)

But then I saw the worm, Writhing in fear, on the barren, concrete expanse. Undulating. Rolling away madly for its meager worm life (futile!)

Peck, stabbed the robin

And the injured worm twisted, throbbed, folded Peckpeck, stabbed the robin

And the pierced worm seemed to loose a silent wail Peckpeckpeck, stabbed the robin

And the resigned worm surrendered, skewered on the beak

The bird gurgled and swallowed, and you could see the worm slither down the rob-bob-bob-in-red throat. Food.

(Was that a burp?)

Done, the early bird caught me looking and cocked its head “I am what I am.”

Eric Nance Woehler MADISONVILLE

(reprinted from the 2014 Madisonville Community College Gadfly)

SAFE DRIVERS SEE CLEARLY.

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A Year of Haiku

Robin on plowed ground

Turns his head to listen for The tasty earthworm.

Raindrops on roses, Like pearls from a shattered strand, Gleaming in the sun.

Red dogwood in bloom, Hurry! Look! before it turns To a summer green.

Sunlit spider’s web Shimmers in the summer breeze Like water flowing.

Garden needs weeding. While waiting for evening shade, I fell fast asleep!

All the frogs waited For me to run to the pond. Then, they all jumped in!

Beneath the maple Gleams a brilliant crimson sheet. Please forgive my rake.

On the forest path

Shuffling through the browning leaves Of the fallen oak.

Under harvest moon, Shadows on the silent pond. Oh, the years gone by.

Song of the chainsaw Drifting through the locust grove. Winter already?

Garden under snow, Still white sheet makes me wonder What goes on beneath?

White tipped vulture wings

Soaring through ice-laden limbs, Drawing life from death.

George E. Robertson FRANKFORT

POETRY

He Didn’t Know Anything

He didn’t know anything; he loved everything

He didn’t know why the birds flew when and where they flew

He kind of got it logically that a bird would fly south as it got colder and north as it got warmer

But it sure looked to him that sometimes birds flew north in winter and south in summer

And sometimes some of them seemed to be flying first one way and then the other, most any time they wanted

So he didn’t know what the strategy here was; he wasn’t at all clear on the plan

And, frankly, he didn’t much care

He could see well enough that the birds flew

He could see well enough that they had a plan

And he loved watching them

He loved knowing that plans were being executed

And he loved knowing that quite often those plans seemed very, very good

Eric Nance Woehler MADISONVILLE

Leave Only Footprints

I think about the train whistle echoing down the tracks, the stone wall in the front yard, and the pawpaw tree Papaw planted from seed,

rocking chairs on the front porch where evenings were lazy with neighbors stopping by for gossip and cake as I played running up and down the sidewalk.

I go there now to stand in the level field along the creek bank clusters of trees that were our orchard the only physical marker,

but I still see those houses who held the roots of my childhood, the gardens now filled only with memories where the highway leads out of town.

Amy Le Ann Richardson OLIVE HILL

mUsic

A Sow-Sized Legacy of Loss

What teeth are clinging to my jaw my mama gets the credit for. She liked to whoop me any time I went to bed before I brushed. Some nights, she’d play Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” My toothbrush was my hammer of the gods, she’d say, and if I stopped my hammering before Robert Plant stopped his, she had a hammer of her own and she would plant it on my backside. That made brushing fun. I didn’t know what half those lyrics meant, like “peace and trust can win the day despite all of your losing.” But that didn’t much matter to the boy I was. And keeping all my molars didn’t particularly matter either. I had a hammer and a horde of germs to fight and that was all I needed. Mama needed something different. She needed peace of mind, the kind that comes from knowing that you gave your children something better than what you got. She didn’t want me carrying the curse, she’d say whenever I’d complain about this thing or other. Hell, if I don’t know today what curse she meant. I figure that’s the point—not having to know the things I might’ve carried. I’m guessing it’s to do with stories she liked to tell about our roots.

We come from immigrants who settled down here because land was cheap. They made an honest start, but never reached what you might call prosperity.

I know them more for what they lost: lost homes, lost loves, lost reputations. The way that mama used to put it, if losing was a game, they’d beat a suckled sow at feeding time. She knew, because she inherited that legacy of loss and wore it in her mouth. She’d lost her teeth.

POETRY

Yeah, every single one of them. When I was just a suckling runt myself, she’d had the last ones pulled. We had so little in those days, she liked to say her dentist was a sturdy twist of twine, a wellswung door, and a woman’s constitution. That wasn’t really true, but still, it put a healthy worry in my belly, just the way she wanted. She didn’t want me ending up like her. But now that’s all I want— not losing teeth like her, but losing whatever things I lose the way she did. After her stroke, when she was laid up in the hospital, my uncle brought some pictures from my childhood. I told him it was funny how my mama used to keep her smile closed in pictures. He told me then that she’d been nursing a mouth of cavities for years but couldn’t keep it up when I was born. It cost too much to fix them and it hurt too much to keep them, so she had those suckers pulled and learned to gum her food. It took some years to get her dentures because she couldn’t save and raise a boarish boy at the same time. Uncle said that Pawpaw sold his hunting rifles to get his girl some dentures. Then, some random neighbor left a thirtyaught-six on Pawpaw’s porch. From time to time, I think about these things, the life I’ve had, with all the peace and trust that I have known, and wonder what things I’d do for those I love, and how much it would look like losing.

Timothy Kleiser LOUISVILLE

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SA MAJOR DECISION

Colleges and universities across the Commonwealth offer a plethora of majors

BY DEBORAH KOHL KREMER

tudents heading off to college have decisions to make that can set the course of their lives. Selecting a major sometimes comes first, resulting in a narrowed list of colleges and universities. If the college has been chosen first, then the student must decide on a major.

Kentucky’s colleges and universities offer hundreds of majors—some that are common and some that are unusual or even unique to a particular school. Kentucky Monthly contacted institutions of higher learning across the Bluegrass State about which major is their most popular, and, just for fun, we’re including some unusual or lesserknown majors, too.

In the town of Pippa Passes in Knott County, biology is the most popular major at Alice Lloyd College (alc.edu). With enrollment hovering around 600 students, it offers bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees in various disciplines. The school recently added a bachelor of arts in interdisciplinary studies program

degree, which focuses on liberal arts, with an array of courses offered in many disciplines.

Asbury University (asbury.edu) offers a specialized degree in equine assisted services, an area of study that focuses on the use of horses in therapeutic settings for human patients. The most popular major among Asbury’s 2,100 students is media communications.

As Kentucky’s first co-ed, racially integrated school of higher education, Berea College (berea.edu) was ahead of its time when it was founded in 1855. The most popular major is computer and information science. Berea, which has an enrollment of 1,500, charges no tuition and has a mandatory work-study program. Most students come from an Appalachian background.

At Brescia University (brescia.edu) in Owensboro, the most popular major is psychology. This Catholic liberal arts school offers both bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and has an enrollment of 800 students.

The major of economics and finance attracts the

highest number of students at Centre College ( centre. edu) in Danville. The school, which was founded in 1819, boasts 1,400 students.

The 15,000 students at Eastern Kentucky University (eku.edu) in Richmond have a wide range of majors to choose from, and psychology is the most popular. Eastern is the only school in the state to offer a degree in fire, arson and explosion investigation.

Frontier Nursing University (frontier.edu) in Versailles got its start in the mountain community of Hyden in 1939. The graduate school, with an enrollment of 2,600, offers a master of science in nursing program with the option to complete a doctor of nursing practice degree. Students can specialize in nurse-midwifery or become a nurse practitioner. According to Brittney Kinison, director of marketing, this master’s degree is the only program of its kind in Kentucky and the largest such program in the United States, graduating approximately 43 percent of the nation’s certified nurse-midwives.

The 1,100 undergraduates and 250 graduate students at Georgetown College ( georgetowncollege.edu) have more than 40 options when it comes to majors, but the most popular is psychology. The college was founded in 1829 and was the first Baptist college west of the Appalachian Mountains.

With 16 colleges and 70 campuses throughout the state, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System (kctcs.edu) has an annual enrollment of more than 100,000 students pursuing academic and technical degrees, diplomas, technical certificates and career training. KCTCS offers associate in arts and associate in science degrees. Graduates then can transfer to any of Kentucky’s public four-year institutions to further their education toward a bachelor’s degree. The most popular areas of concentration systemwide are business administration, health-science technology and nursing. Each campus has specialized offerings to meet the needs of its students. Big Sandy Community and Technical College in Prestonsburg

Cybersecurity and network management is a popular area of study at Murray State University.

offers collision repair technology, and the Jefferson (in Louisville), Maysville and Somerset locations offer aviation maintenance. Other colleges within the KCTCS system feature courses such as sonography, hospitality management and medical massage therapy.

“KCTCS is education for everyone because we meet students where they are, whether they’re just starting out as a dual credit student, pursuing an associate’s degree, or returning as an adult to jumpstart their career or changing careers,” said KCTCS President Ryan Quarles

Kentucky Wesleyan College (kwc.edu) in Owensboro sees business administration as the most popular major

among its 860 students. With more than 40 majors offered, KWC officials like to say they offer majors ranging from accounting to zoology and everything in between.

At Lindsey Wilson College (lindsey.edu), 24 percent of students pursue a bachelor’s degree in human services and counseling, and 22 percent follow a path in business administration. The school, located in Columbia in Adair County, currently has 1,775 undergraduates and 2,179 graduate students enrolled.

Business administration has the highest concentration of students at Midway University (midway.edu). But the school’s 2,003 students have many options, including an unusual major of game studies and design, in which students learn the science and art of virtual game development plus other skills, and a perfect-for-Kentucky minor in bourbon studies. Midway University is perhaps best known for its equine program.

Students interested in exploring the final frontier can major in space systems engineering at Morehead State University (morehead.edu). Morehead students have built

Above, Lexington’s Transylvania University dates back to 1780; left, Frontier Nursing University offers post graduate degrees.

a satellite and have assisted with communications and data for the Artemis I Moon Mission. The Space Science Center at Morehead is the only non-NASA node on NASA’s Deep Space Network. For students more interested in earthrelated careers, nursing is the most popular among the school’s 8,700 students.

In far western Kentucky, the 10,000 students at Murray State University (murraystate.edu) have their choice of 148 programs to pursue. One major that is both popular and unusual is aimed at protection from the growing risk of online threats. “Cybersecurity and network management are essential for protecting our digital world, making them popular choices among students,” said Dr. Michael Ramage, director of the Murray State University Cyber Education and Research Center. “Our program offers handson labs and practical projects that provide valuable learning experiences, equipping students with the skills needed to protect businesses and communities from cyber threats.”

Founded by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1814, Spalding University (spalding.edu) in Louisville is home to 1,700 undergraduate and graduate students. The most popular majors are education and business. The school also offers an occupational therapy doctorate, the first entrylevel OTD program in the state designed for students without a degree in occupational therapy.

Thomas More University (thomasmore.edu) in Crestview Hills sees the highest concentration of its 2,300 students majoring in business administration. The private Catholic university in Northern Kentucky offers a minor in marine biology. While Thomas More is not located near an ocean, it operates a biology field station on the Ohio River. Along with a partnership with the Newport Aquarium, the field station allows for biological research and STEM (science, technology, engineering and

math) educational outreach.

Dating back to 1780, before Kentucky had achieved statehood, Transylvania University (transy.edu) became the 16th college in the United States. This private liberal arts school in Lexington has an enrollment of about 1,000 students. Although the most popular major is business administration, Transy offer 46 majors plus the opportunity to design the major of your choice.

The University of Kentucky (uky.edu), a public landgrant research university in Lexington, was founded in 1865. The most popular major at UK, the largest university in the state with enrollment of 36,000, is nursing.

With 24,000 students, the University of Louisville (louisville.edu) sees the highest concentration of students in education and engineering majors. A new and unusual major is the master of science in artificial intelligence in medicine, which launched in the fall of 2024. UofL is one of the few universities in the nation to offer this interdisciplinary degree in a 100 percent online program.

Information technology is the most popular major at the University of the Cumberlands (ucumberlands.edu). The Williamsburg college has an enrollment of 20,374, made up of 6,103 undergraduate and 14,271 graduate students. UC was the first school in the state and one of the first in the nation to launch a degree in global business with blockchain technology.

In Bowling Green, Western Kentucky University (wku.edu) is home to 16,300 students. Although the most popular major is a bachelor of science in management, the most unique is the bachelor of science in military leadership. WKU also offers certificates designed to complement an existing major in a related field in brewing and distilling arts and sciences, game design and esports management. Q

Left, a University of Kentucky College of Fine Arts studio class; right, six colleges in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System offer lineman training.

FUNDING KENTUCKY ARTS REWARDING EXCELLENCE INSPIRING AMBITION

SAVE THE DATE!

2024 Book Award Book Launch

Thursday, May 22 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Lexington Kentucky

To learn more about the Foundation’s Mission and initiatives and/or to make a donation, visit the official website at www.jamesbakerhallfoundation.org or contact Jeanine Triplett at jeanine@jamesbakerhall.org.

OUR SUPPORTERS

James Baker Hall, 1935-2009 was known for his work as a writer, educator and mentor to the next generation of Kentucky writers. He was a Poet Laureate of Kentucky and the author of many essential works of Southern literature.

JAMES BAKER HALL BOOK AWARD

Wesley Houp (center) with Lawrence Pemble (left) and Greg Pape. His book Strung Out Along The Endless Branch, won the inaugural, 2024 James Baker Hall Book award.

The James Baker Hall Book Award was established to recognize the pinnacle of excellence in Kentucky letters. Each year we will honor our literary heritage and recognize a Kentucky Writer who can stand abreast of the accomplishments of history.

2025 Book Award Information - Short Story Collection Manuscripts submission date - starting in May, 2025 NO SUBMISSION FEE!

Feb14 Feb21 Feb20 Mar7

Local Lodging

Established in the 1820s, the Phoenix Hotel was located on East Main Street in Lexington. Throughout its history, the hotel hosted significant visitors, such as Aaron Burr in 1806, and was used as a headquarters by both Union General William “Bull” Nelson and Confederate Generals Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith during the Civil War.

The hotel closed in 1977, and the building was demolished in 1987. Today, it is the site of Phoenix Park. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky’s Special Collections Research Center.

Kentucky Explorer

Charles

One-Year Subscription to Kentucky Monthly: $25

Letter to the Kentucky Explorer

Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

Passenger Train Milk Run

The September 2024 issue had story by Doris Cella, “Everyone Had to Cow-Operate” (page 48), which accurately described how operating a dairy farm is a 5 a.m.-5 p.m. everyday job.

My story is as a fireman on C&O (now CSX) in 1957, working out of Russell (Greenup County). It was 140 miles to Covington.

The 3:15 p.m. passenger train was called a “milk run” by trainmen. I found out why when our passenger train made scheduled stops in any town with a depot to take passengers from town to town, which was more of a straight line (shorter) than by Greyhound bus. The milk run nickname was because dairy farmers along the way put their full cans close to the railroad tracks. Our baggage car dropped off empty cans that indicated the farm they were from. We made about eight stops picking up and dropping off passengers. There were approximately six milk-can pick-up stops. Every stop would be no more than 10 minutes. Trains might be late but never early. Refrigerated milk trucks loaded up, and we picked up their empty cans.

My hat is off to people like Doris Cella.

J.R. Harris, Louisville

Throwing Apples

Something I like to harp on is how non-Appalachians pronounce “Appalachia” and “Appalachian.”

The “i” is silent. Phonetically, it is pronounced APPLE AT CHA and APPLE AT CHIN.

You ought to suggest to your publisher that changing the name of Kentucky Explorer to Appalachia Explorer would open up potential subscribers to well over 40 million people.

Benjamin Jones, from Wallins Creek (Harlan County), now residing in Vandalia, Ohio

Musician Don Everly was born Feb. 1, 1937, in Brownie (Muhlenburg County). He and brother Phil …

The Phoenix Hotel, seen on the preceding page, was a gathering spot in Lexington for more than 100 years. This is a rare photo of the hotel lobby from 1900. Photo courtesy of University of Kentucky’s Special Collections Research Center.

Send memories to Deborah Kohl Kremer at deb@kentuckymonthly.com or mail to Kentucky Monthly, Attn: Deb Kremer, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602.

“I Remember” By Our Readers

Send your memory in today!

Mail Order Chickens

By Benjamin Jones, Vandalia, Ohio

When I was growing up in the 1950s in Wallins Creek in Harlan County, my mother had a lot of chickens. She had a chicken coop behind our house that was on a hill and slightly to the left of our house.

The coop had a rather large fenced-in area where the chickens could go out and root around for bugs and worms and water, and Mother threw out a lot of cracked corn for them, too.

Mother had the layers that she kept from year to year, and those were the chickens that produced the most eggs. One of my jobs was to go out and gather eggs. I reached in through each door in the back of the coop and removed the eggs, while my sister, Joyce Ann, held a basket. The reason this was one of my jobs was because the girls did not like to reach into the nest because there was chicken poop in there. They did not like to get their hands dirty. Plus, I also had the job of cleaning the eggs in a washtub of soapy water. Cleaning all that chicken poop off 30-40 eggs a day was no easy chore. When we had too many eggs, Mother shared them with the neighbors. We certainly had all the eggs we needed most of the time, but the numbers fell off in cold weather.

Mother kept the layers, and each year we butchered the chickens that did not produce many eggs. She hung them up on a wire that was stretched between two poles. You might call it a clothesline. She wrapped wire around their legs and then hang them up there and cut their heads off. Then, she plucked the feathers off by soaking them in a big old kettle of boiling water that hung over a fire. The feathers came out

easily. Then, she cleaned the carcass, keeping the livers and gizzards.

Next, she put a mixture of preservatives on the chickens, wrapped them up, and hung them in the smokehouse. Some got cut up into pieces, cooked and then put into various soups that she canned.

To replenish the chickens, Mother ordered 100 or so baby chicks from the Sears Roebuck Catalog every year. She ordered mostly Rock Island Layers and a few that were gray-and-white spotted. I do not recall what their breed was, but they seemed to be the ones we kept.

After ordering the chickens, Mother sent me to the post office with a wagon to pick up the mail and see if the baby chicks had arrived. Some days, I went down two or three different times, and then finally, Myrtle Milem, the postmistress, would say, “Fannie’s chicks are here.”

I went around back, and Myrtle helped me carry them out to stack on the wagon.

After I got home, Mother put the chicks on the back porch for the first few days until they were acclimated. Then, she took them out to the chicken coop maybe 25 or so at a time. She had a spot out there at the chicken yard where they had an area to themselves. They grew so fast, and before you knew it, they were out there pecking into the ground for bugs and stuff, competing for food just like all the other chickens.

Myrtle was always helpful down at the post office, and she really liked it when Mother sent me over to give her a sack of fresh eggs.

From Benjamin Jones’ book, Wallins Creek: An American Town Nestled in Southeast Kentucky. The Sears Catalog featuring chickens for sale.

“I Remember” continued

For the Love of the Game

By Walker Williamson, Middletown, Ohio

I grew up in Pike County during the 1940s and ’50s. It was a time of high school basketball greats Dickie Prater, Donnis Butcher, John Lee Butcher and Kelly Coleman. I wanted to emulate those players, even with my limited talent.

I lived on Road Fork of Big Creek, between Pikeville and Williamson, West Virginia. Road Fork was so isolated that the Williamson newspaper was delivered the day after its publication date. Both my parents had died by 1952, and when I was 11, my grandfather became my guardian.

I was introduced to basketball by my older brothers, Mike and John Larry. They nailed a basket to the barnside, and either Uncle Noble or Cousin Tracy gave us a basketball that did not hold air pressure. We pumped it up by placing it beside the fireplace until the heat made the ball inflate. We then shot baskets until the ball deflated.

By 1950, my brothers lived in Pikeville with our aunts, attending Pikeville College Academy (PCA) and playing basketball for the PCA Cubs. John Larry’s team achieved notoriety by winning the 1951 district tournament. PCA beat Belfry, who had beaten the feared Pikeville Panthers, coached by the legendary John Bill Trivette

My dream, as I played solitary basketball on what was now a metal goal, was to follow in my brothers’ footsteps and play for PCA. That was never to be, because PCA quit fielding a team in 1955 and closed in 1957.

Our family wasn’t poor. We just had no expendable money. Our grandparents and aunts worked hard to supply us with basic necessities, as well as emotional, psychological and educational support.

In 1952, Bevins School, a consolidation of three oneroom schools, was opened. The building complex included two sports facilities. One, a baseball diamond, also was used as a community baseball facility. The other was a full basketball court, albeit with a dirt floor. These two facilities became my recreational sites.

My grandfather drove my school bus, and I quickly realized there were disadvantages to that arrangement. I was the first on the bus and the last off. I could never misbehave on the bus. I did the unpleasant chores related to the bus (cleaning). The only advantage was I had plenty of time to use the school sports facilities. My grandfather had two other routes to run, and I had an hour in the morning and in the afternoon to play pick-up baseball or basketball games.

When I entered eighth grade in 1954, a teacher, Carl Lester, was persuaded by students to organize a basketball team. Mr. Lester probably knew as much basketball as we did and was kind enough to be our coach and schedule games with other schools. We were a ragtag bunch, playing on a dirt floor with no uniforms and with a basketball that came from God knows where. But we tried hard and loved the game.

I love to joke that I was the second-leading scorer in the first basketball game ever played by Bevins School. We played Blackberry School and lost 21-18. Benny Tackett scored 17 points, and I scored 1. Not much but at least I got in the scoring column.

In 1955, I entered Belfry High School, the biggest school in Pike County. I tried out for the freshman team but had to quit because I could not manage the 5 p.m. practice time. There was no activities bus, and I was practicing and then had to hitchhike home at 6:30 p.m. I had the wisdom not to try out my sophomore year.

In 1957, I entered Berea Foundation, a laboratory high school for Berea College. I was then attending school about 200 miles and four hours’ drive from Pike County. I would like to say that I enrolled in Foundation because of the rigorous academic program, but honestly, it was because I had a chance to make the basketball team. Since I was a dormitory student, I had no problem attending basketball practice. Berea Foundation was about one-half the size of Belfry. Therefore, my chances of playing were better.

Several factors combined to limit my play (as the sixth man) to one year at Berea. Those included missing several seasons of competitive play, lack of prior coaching, and limited ability. In my senior year, I played intramural ball.

Now at 80-plus years, I look back on my life of loving and playing basketball, and I realize I never really quit. I competed on intramural teams at Pikeville College (now the University of Pikeville). After becoming a teacher and administrator in the Ohio public schools, I played on independent and church teams.

At 67, I fired my last shot in basketball during a threeon-three game in a church gym. I attempted a jump shot and pulled my Achilles tendon. My time had come. I played no more.

My love of the game of basketball is summarized by the final words of Jim Bouton in his book, Ball Four: “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

If this story sparks a memory and readers want to contact the author, he can be reached at wwilliamson@cinci.rr.com

Daniel Boone’s three

pioneer: “A good gun, a good horse and a good wife.”

Neighbors ‘Stuck’ Together

By Bobbie S. Bryant, Jefferson County

It is rare for my daddy to be at home on a weekday. Even more unusual is the spectacular 12 inches of snow splayed across the frigid countryside. There will be no English, history or math lessons for me this week. School will be out for several days in our farming community of Calloway County.

With our morning chores complete, Daddy proffers, “Let’s me and you drive to Kirksey and check on Granny and Granddaddy. It shouldn’t take too long, and we can check out the snow.”

I eagerly tug on my long johns, scarf, boots and gloves and waddle out to his truck. We carefully inch down the drive, flabbergasted by the amazing drifts of snow piled high above the truck tires.

Farmers in the area have worked all through the night, trying to keep the Kirksey Highway passable. The road is the main artery connecting everyone with Murray, the largest town within several miles. We motor along for about 2 miles. In a few minutes, we come upon a tractor blocking the road, stuck in a seemingly bottomless drift. The driver is a family friend and neighbor.

Daddy brings our truck to a stop, climbs out into the snow, and offers to help. As the two men discuss possible strategies, another neighbor arrives in his pickup truck and he, too, offers to help. Together, the three men decide to hook heavy chains to the tractor and attach them to the neighbor’s truck.

The first man climbs into his tractor seat and lets out the clutch, pushing forcefully for more diesel. We are astounded as black smoke pours forth and the tractor tires spin uselessly. While the tractor remains decisively stuck, the helpful neighbor’s truck is now mired hubcap deep as well. Daddy slogs back to our truck to go home and get our tractor so he can pull them both out. To his dismay, he discovers that our truck is now wedged in the massive snow drifts as well.

Sarcastic laughter erupts as the three hapless men grasp their plight. The closest farmhouse is at least a halfmile away. Walking in the knee-deep snow is really out of the question. They’ll simply have to be patient until someone else comes along to help.

The tractor driver climbs into the truck of the neighbor, while Daddy and I talk and pass the time in our truck, listening to the local news on the radio, keeping warm as we wait. Within the hour, the roar of a gigantic road grader is heard in the distance.

The three men gather once more to discuss different options of how to get out of this fix. Eventually, an enormous tractor with a snowblade emerges through thick sprays of snow as it clears a path on the road. The driver is yet another neighbor, who instantly comes to our aid. With his help, in time, we are all mobile once again. Back at home, Momma is so frantic she cries when she sees us. Granny and Granddaddy hadn’t seen us all morning. Phone calls among neighbors and friends up and down the Kirksey road had been going back and forth for nearly three hours, but no one had spotted us. Everyone was worried sick and couldn’t imagine where we were. I felt bad that such a ruckus was raised. We had been warm and safe all along. I’m just guessing that with his mother and his wife both so upset, my Daddy probably was in the doghouse for a few days afterward. But for me, it had been a fun time, just the two of us together in a magical winter wonderland.

Bobbie with her brother, Billy, and their snowman in 1968.

The Smith Farm on the Kirksey Highway in Calloway County.

O.O. Burgess

The Man Who Embalmed Floyd Collins

By Bob Thompson, Mason, Ohio

Orval O. Burgess (1882-1969), a native of Petroleum, Indiana (near Bluffton), operated a licensed funeral home in Bowling Green from 1924 until he died in 1969. The funeral home began operation as the Burgess & Walker Funeral Home. It was most noted as being the firm that embalmed and transported the body of Floyd Collins after the 1925 Sand Cave entrapment.

Burgess’ first job came when he was 11 years old as an assistant driver of a “nitroglycerin wagon.” He worked only for a week or so, and the oil-well crew that replaced them was on their way to “shoot” a well. They had 200 quarts of glycerin in the wagon, and while crossing a creek, a wheel dropped into a hole in the solid rock bottom of the creek bed, “jarring” the wagon to such an extent that it ignited the glycerin. Nothing was ever found of the driver or the horses.

Burgess worked in the oil business in Indiana for 11 years before moving to Bowling Green in 1920. He already was a registered embalmer and undertaker for about 25 years in other states when he and R.E. Walker opened the Burgess & Walker Funeral Home on the corner of Main and Center streets on Sept. 6, 1924. Burgess was granted an embalming license in Kentucky in 1923.

After an unsuccessful attempt to bring Collins’ body out of Sand Cave in February 1925, at the request of Floyd’s brother, Homer, another attempt was made in April by William H. Hunt, a mining engineer from Central City,

and his six-man work crew. Following the successful recovery of the body, the remains were taken to the J.T. Gerald’s Funeral Home in Cave City by the Burgess & Walker funeral car. The hearse left Bowling Green on April 23 at 5 a.m. and arrived at 9 a.m. to pick up the body.

Once Collins’ body arrived at the Gerald’s Funeral Home, it was taken inside to be embalmed by Burgess. According to Burgess, Floyd’s body was in bad shape, and embalming would be difficult. Restoration on the body included the replacement of the destroyed facial features— the eyes, nose and mouth. The body showed bruises on the left leg and a dislocated right shoulder. Cave crickets had eaten away parts of Collins’ face and ears, which had to be replaced with plaster.

Burgess had to embalm each limb and then the trunk separately. Collins’ hair, scraped from the front of the head, was replaced with hair from the back. The entire procedure took two days.

Undertaker James Thomas Gerald (left) and embalmer Orval O. Burgess (right) are pictured inside J.T. Gerald’s Funeral Home in Cave City with the covered remains of Floyd Collins (inset), April 1925. (Dean Snyder Collection)

Collins’ funeral took place on April 26 at the Collins homestead on Flint Ridge. His body was transported to the homestead from the funeral home at Cave City by the Burgess & Walker funeral car. Burgess played a part in the funeral service as a pallbearer and stood at the rear of the casket.

Later, after Crystal Cave (Collins’ discovery) was sold and Collins’ remains were displayed in a casket within the cave, the body was stolen and thrown over the cliff at Pike Spring. After the remains were recovered, Burgess again had to “repair” Collins’ body. He mentioned that the fall broke off one of Collins’ legs and required some doing to get him patched back together.

Over the years, Burgess had several partners that resulted in funeral home name changes. These included a partnership with Otis C. Moody that lasted from 1954-67. The firm had several Bowling Green locations: 240 East Main Street, 826 State Street, 534 East Main Street and 512 East 12th Street. Newspaper advertisements for the firm mentioned amenities such as 24-hour service, airconditioned and oxygen-equipped ambulance service, friendly courteous staff, personal direction, and dignified and thoughtful service. Shortly after Burgess’ death in 1969, the funeral home closed.

Brownsville historian Norman Warnell remembered seeing Burgess when he worked part time for the funeral home. “In 1965, when I enrolled at WKU [Western Kentucky University] in Bowling Green, Mr. Burgess had just sold the Burgess-Moody Funeral Home to Bert Gravil [July 1964]. Mr. Gravil’s brother and I graduated together from high school, and he let us and two other workers board in an apartment at the funeral home. I assisted in digging graves and running an ambulance. Mr. Burgess came up to the funeral home every day, and we became friends. One day, he related to me the story of Floyd Collins and how he embalmed him. He had a trunk with a lot of photographs, which were later given to Pat Thomas, another boy who worked part time at the funeral home. I never remember seeing Mr. Burgess without him wearing a suit and tie.”

Thomas became a Bowling Green police polygraph examiner. After Burgess died, his daughter gave Thomas a set of glass slides Burgess had bought that photographically detailed the events surrounding Collins’ death. Many of these slides were taken by

photographer Wade Highbaugh, who was employed by William H. Hunt to take pictures of the recovery of the body in April 1925. These slides were the centerpiece of a personal collection of Collins memorabilia that Thomas occasionally presented to groups and clubs in the region before he passed away in 2016. Many of the original Highbaugh glass slides of the Collins event can be found today at the National Cave Museum at Diamond Caverns in Park City.

Prints of the glass slides can be seen in the 2017 book The Floyd Collins Tragedy at Sand Cave by John Benton, Bob Thompson and Bill Napper

John

Above, Orval O. Burgess (center), advertising for Burgess & Walker Funeral Home shortly after the funeral of Floyd Collins; clockwise from above right: the Collins casket inside J.T. Gerald’s Funeral Home, Burgess headshot, newspaper advertisement for Burgess Funeral Home in Bowling Green. Burgess (left) and J.T. Gerald (right) outside the funeral home in Cave City. (Tim Donley Collection); top, the Burgess & Walker invalid car in front of J. T. Gerald’s Funeral Home in Cave City, April 1925. Inset: Newspaper advertisement for the Burgess & Walker Funeral Home in Bowling Green, 1925. (Courtesy of the Special Collections Library, Western Kentucky University)

When Willie & Hallie Lived Down on the Farm

The author’s grandparents, Willie and Hallie Corbin, were married in November 1914. They had grown up together in Gradyville, in Adair County. They were married for 53 years and had four children. Willie told humorous stories to his children and passed them down to future generations. Grandson Donnie Corbin turned a few of those into this poem.

By Donnie Corbin, Campbellsville

As I was sitting around a thinkin’ this thought just came to mind, How folks just always love to talk and look back on simpler times, With lots of remembrances, when their lives were filled with charms, So … here’s when Willie and Hallie set up living down on the farm.

Now they had bought this farm and cabin just a short ways out, It had a barn, crib and cellar, and a new out-house. There was lots of woods and a good spring with an acre or two, And they were both so very happy as they started their lives anew.

So they got their things together and with help from lots of friends, Filled up their little cabin and very quickly settled in. They planned to grow the foods they ate and make their living off the land, And theirs would be the perfect life, the envy of any man.

Hallie knew just how to cook, what grew in her garden grove, But seems that she had never tried the use of an old wood stove. To build the fire and get the heat, she tried with all her might, But after labors long and hard, she just couldn’t get it right.

So she looked for what the trouble was and to fix it if she could, And decided what it really needed was something to light the wood. She packed the firebox good and tight and stuffed in some paper, too, Then poured in a jar of lighter fluid and said, “Now, that should do!”

Hallie struck a match on the old wood stove and dropped its flame inside, And what just happened right after that, is kind of hard to describe. With a “BOOM!” the old stove belched in flames and blew its lids asunder! It filled the room full of thick black soot and shook the little house like thunder!

The fire blew up through the cabin roof, through the crooked old stove pipe, And that thing shot off like a rusty rocket … lawd what a frightening sight. It flew so high, through fire and smoke, that it was kinda hard to spot, But it finally fell and crashed to the ground down by the old hog lot.

The hound dog let out such a howl and ran under the high front porch, The cow started bawling and ran over the hill, but they found her down in the gorge. The chickens all flew from off the roof and scattered every which a way, They fled to the roost and wouldn’t come out and didn’t lay for three more days.

Now Hallie had survived this terrible uproar, but oh what a pitiful sight, With scorches and soot she looked like a haint coming out on Halloween night. The thick black smoke still filled the cabin as Willie made his way in the room, But he knew not to speak of the old cooking stove lest Hallie should be his doom!

Well, they cleaned up the cabin and started again, and everything went fine, Until the day Willie’s tooth started hurting, and he decided it was finally the time, To start the old car and go into town and find a dentist there, Who’d pull his tooth and give him some ease, with a bottle of medicine to spare.

Willie and Hallie Corbin

So he went to the barn to get his old car, for he kept it parked in there, Pulled up its rag top and shooed out the chickens and checked the air in the spare. He stepped on the starter and give it some gas and hoped the old engine would fire, But all it would do is sputter and cough, and he knew that its life had expired.

Willie thought for a moment and come up with a plan he was sure would work just fine, He’d hitch the mules to the front of that car, and they’d pull it, and it’d start this time. The two old mules, ole Blue and ole Bess, were his Paw’s that he’d planned to use, For he was going to farm like his grandpa did and plow up an acre or two.

It took about an hour to get the mules hitched up and hooked to the front of the car. Willie felt sure it’d start this time, and they wouldn’t pull it very far. He put the reins from the old mules’ mouths through the place where the windshield goes, Then slapped them on the rump and yelled “Get up!” expecting to go real slow.

Now the mules started off at a good slow pace, and everything was fine, Till Willie tried to start it, and the car backfired, then those mules plumb lost their minds. They let out a bray and kicked the old car and took off like a streak in the blue, And what just happened to Willie that day, I wouldn’t want to happen to you!

They drug that old car plumb over the bluff, then up the spring house road! With Willie yelling, “Whoa!” as loud as he could, but those mules weren’t about to go slow. Then they ran on through a big briar thicket and scared up a bunch of skunks, And nothing that Willie had ever smelled compared to how bad they stunk!

Then those mules turned around and headed home in a line as straight as could be, The only trouble was, in the middle of the yard, stood a great big apple tree. That tree was loaded with big red apples, and its branches hung way down low, And when the mules got there, they headed right for it, and they wasn’t going slow!

They hit that tree with car in tow, while Willie was just trying to hold fast, And it ripped the top plumb off that car in something as quick as a flash! Now … there Willie set in a topless car, a swearing and mad as could good be, With tree branches piled up all around him, and apples clean up to his knees!

Willie knew now that he wasn’t going to town, but his tooth hurt him just the same, And he had to do something to get some relief and help him get over the pain. So he thought for a minute of an old time story, whose truth he wasn’t real sure, But it promised a fix to a bad toothache and was a quick and easy cure.

Willie went and got Hallie from the house and told her about his plan, And her jaw kind of dropped as she stood and listened and thought Willie a crazy man. They walked past the barn, where this plan would happen, and on to the garden gate. And Willie took some string to measure it there and see how much it would take.

Willie tied one end of the string to his tooth and said a prayer to the Lord up above, He tied the other end of the string to the gate and told Hallie to give it a SHOVE!

LAWD HAVE MERCY!! When that gate slammed shut, ole Willie just knew he was dead! There was fire and lightning, and Willie knew for sure his brains was jerked out of his head!

Willie looked and saw stars and heard bells ring, and wondered if he would survive! But he finally came to with Hallie by his side saying he was lucky to be alive!

Well, they made it back to their cabin door, when Hallie handed Willie a little thing, ’Twas the very same tooth, that caused all the pain, the one still tied with the string!

So Willie and Hallie settled down to the simple country life and lived there for several years, And when the neighbors stopped by, as they often did, there was always joy and cheer. There was all the good cookin’, with stories to tell, and the thing most people hold dear, When folks would leave, there was always the saying, “Now, ya’ll come back, ya hear?”

From The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky:

John Fee: Abolitionist and Founder of Berea College

By Caroline R. Miller

John Gregg Fee (b. September 9, 1816, Bracken Co., Ky.; d. January 11, 1901, Berea, Ky.). John Gregg Fee, a noted abolitionist and the founder of Berea College in Berea, was the son of slaveholders John and Sarah Gregg Fee. He was born on the family farm along Hillsdale Road near Germantown, and Hillsdale was the location of his first church and school. Fee attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and obtained a BA from Augusta College before entering the Presbyterian Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati in 1842. A personal epiphany initiated his antislavery convictions. When he returned home to Bracken County, he was met with angry mobs who did not support his antislavery teachings. He was subject to beatings, ridicule and finally banishment. The American Missionary Society placed Fee in charge of 15 to 20 young ministers, and Fee and these associates were often accused of and charged with enticing slaves to escape. In September 1844, Fee married Matilda Hamilton, who shared his zeal for advancing the rights and education of the enslaved.

abolitionist Fee represented a similar threat, and on December 23, 1859, a band of prominent citizens and slaveholders from nearby Richmond rode to Berea and told Fee and his associates they had 10 days to leave the state. When the governor of Kentucky, Beriah Magoffin (18591862), refused to help the Berea abolitionists, Fee and his associates fled to Ohio. Thus, the college at Berea failed to open as planned. It opened in 1866, one year after the Civil War (1860–1865) had ended. During the war, Fee kept in touch with the situation in Berea by occasionally visiting relatives and churches there.

In 1854 Fee moved to Madison County at the inducement of his friend and fellow abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay, who had given Fee 10 acres of land. However, their relationship did not endure, since the two men took contrasting positions about how to end slavery. Clay favored a gradual approach, whereas Fee maintained the need for immediate emancipation.

Fee’s belief in immediate emancipation prompted him to purchase a family slave, Juliet Miles, from his father to prevent her from being sold. A court action followed that resulted in the emancipation of Juliet and her son, Henry However, after a move to Clermont County, Ohio, Juliet returned to Bracken County to attempt to rescue her children. This daring action was unsuccessful; she and her family were arrested, and she was remanded to the state penitentiary at Frankfort, where she died two years later.

By 1859, Fee had proposed an abolitionist colony at Berea in Madison County along with a co-educational, integrated college. Berea College, based on the New Testament principle of “open-mindedness,” was intended to be similar to Oberlin College in Ohio. Just as he and his colleagues were preparing to open their new school, the abolitionist John Brown led his attack on Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. Slaveholders from Madison County decided the

Fee also returned to Kentucky during the war to offer food, shelter and the promise of education to recently freed slaves reporting to Camp Nelson, a Union recruitment center in Jessamine County, not far from Berea. While he was at Camp Nelson, Fee, now a Union Army chaplain, founded a trade school for former slaves, the Ariel Academy. Fee’s work with freed slaves in Kentucky and his earlier plans to build an interracial college with biblical underpinnings delivered a hopeful message to Northern abolitionists; that the Berea and Camp Nelson experiences could serve as models for other such institutions in the South.

From 1866 until 1889 at Berea College, which began as both a college and a 13-grade (K-12) preparatory school, at least half of the students enrolled were African Americans. Thus, Fee’s goal of demonstrating that education should be color blind was achieved. However, there developed a period of turmoil and disagreement among the trustees about sustaining this mission. The issue was settled when William Goodell Frost became Berea’s new president in 1892. Fee, who had been concentrating for years on his work as a minister, no longer was in control, and the prevailing educational thought in America favored “separate but equal” education: Berea College was forced to segregate after its unsuccessful legal attempts to challenge the state’s racist Day Law (1904). In 1950, the college was reintegrated. Fee, who saw his noble dreams for Berea College come to an end, died in 1901 and was buried in the Berea Cemetery.

Miller, Caroline R., “Fee, John Gregg.” in The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, edited by Paul A. Tenkotte and James C. Claypool. pp. 323. ©2009 The University Press of Kentucky. Used by permission.

John Fee

Floyd Collins 100th Anniversary Events

Mammoth Cave National Park: Evening programs by park rangers in the Rotunda Room of the Lodge at Mammoth Cave.

• “Floyd Collins’ Life and Tragic Death,” Friday, Feb 21

• Floyd Collins Discussion Panel, Saturday, Feb. 22 nps.gov/maca

The Floyd Collins History Tour will include visits to the Collins family homesite, Sand Cave Overlook and Mammoth Cave Baptist Church, where Collins is buried. Select dates in February. nps.gov/maca/planyourvisit/floydcollins-commemoration-2025.htm

Historical items from the Park’s curatorial collection related to Floyd Collins will be on display in the visitor center, including informational boards about Collins’ life, death, the Kentucky cave wars time period, pre-park communities and cave exploration. nps.gov/maca

SKyPAC, Bowling Green

The MACA Environmental Education program will present at an event at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green on March 3. theskypac.com

Ramsey Theatre Company will present Floyd Collins: The Musical at the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green on March 8. theskypac.com

The Kentucky Historical Society Presents:

CLASSIFIED ADS

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BOOK FOR SALE — George Graham Vest: The Life and Times of Dog’s Best Friend chronicles the life and career of Frankfort native, jurist and legislator George Graham Vest. The book is by Stephen M. Vest, a cousin, who also is known for his command of the English language. $26.95 plus shipping. To purchase, call 888.329.0053 or visit shopkentuckymonthly.com.

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BACK ISSUES We have a select number of back issues of Kentucky Explorer from 1986-2000. Back issues are $5 plus shipping. If you are in search of a certain issue or are interested in adding an issue to your collection, please call 1.888 329 0053 or email kymonthly@kentuckymonthly.com to see if it’s available.

A Literary Tradition

Kentucky often is unfairly reviled for its alleged lack of educational sophistication. A look at the literary history of Bowling Green, home of Western Kentucky University, reveals a pushback. The town is a champion of literary clubs, and Jean E. Nehm, an emeritus associate professor of English at WKU, shows proof.

Her book, Respectfully Submitted: The Remarkable Literary Clubs of Bowling Green, Kentucky, profiles nearly two dozen literary clubs, also known as “book clubs,” “book groups” or “reading groups,” according to Nehm. In the Manuscripts and Folklives section of WKUs Kentucky Building, Nehm spent countless hours sifting through “gray, acid-free boxes of meticulously catalogued and inventoried papers” in pursuit of the town’s some 140 years of literary club history.

Relying on meeting minutes, Nehm narrates the stories of such clubs. Those minutes provide the rituals, meeting topics, amiable interactions and member characteristics.

By Steve Flairty

Respectfully Submitted: The Remarkable Literary Clubs of Bowling Green, Kentucky by Jean E. Nehm, Landmark Association, $29.95 (H)

Poet’s Publishing Guide

Internationally recognized poet Katerina Stoykova is the founder and senior editor of Accents Publishing in Lexington, having selected, edited and published more than 100 books.

Stoykova holds poetry book boot camps over Zoom for poets in her acquaintance. Released by McFarland Press, The Poet’s Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry is the craft book that was used for those boot camp lectures. She was writing the book and consulting with classroom reactions to it as students learned. Parts of the book include the voices of students who wrote and published books.

The book breaks down into stages of bookmaking as a “project,” a focused, planned, temporary set of activities. The book offers tactics, tools, tips and homespun humor.

This book helps reduce stress by encouraging poets to have faith, focus and some sense of planning in their process. It also examines ways to promote the collection of poetry once it has been published.

By Manny Grimaldi

The Poet’s Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry, by Katerina Stoykova, McFarland Press, $19.99 (P)

Transy Tradition

For at least four decades, Don Lane was the face of men’s basketball at Lexington’s Transylvania University and a respected faculty member there. In a town where Big Blue was king, Lane’s hoopsters held their own, albeit with less fanfare. But his influence was much greater than coaching young men to play a game successfully.

In his memoir, The Lane Way: Family, Faith, and Fifty Years in Basketball, Lane, along with co-writer Sarah Jane Herbener, share personal recollections of his life experiences. There’s an emphasis on gratitude for the relationships Lane has cultivated. Readers learn of his upbringing in a religious family near Versailles, his basketball playing career, and his climb through the coaching ranks to the Transylvania position.

With anecdotes about the Lane family, detailed game accounts, his deep religious faith, player profiles and his love of Transy, the book is a breath of fresh air for those looking for a positive take on sports and life.

By Steve Flairty

The Lane Way: Family, Faith, and Fifty Years in Basketball, by Don Lane, with Sarah Jane Herbener, Butler Books, $29.95 (P)

Military School Memories

In the preface of Spit and Polish: A Kentucky Boy’s Coming of Age in a Tennessee Military School, author William Robey Harris Jr., a native of Franklin, explains why he has written this book: to “make the modern reader understand how military preparatory schools functioned in the 20th century, and what it was like to be a cadet at such an institution, and what prompted good parents to send their sons there.”

Harris’ parents knew he needed some discipline in his young life, and being only 50 miles away from home, Castle Heights Military Academy was the perfect choice.

Harris’ “Heights Adventure” was just what the 14-year-old needed. He soon fell into the rhythm of life at a military school in the late 1950s.

“The first year I hated it; the second year I learned to accommodate it; the third year I began to appreciate it; the last year I loved it (but was ready to move on),” he writes.

Harris moved on to practice law, eventually serving as circuit judge for Allen and Simpson counties.

By Bill Ellis

Bringing ‘the Forgotten’ to Light

Handed-down family stories often are captivating and can have “staying power” through generations. When a family member takes a serious approach to uncover the facts of such a story, a more certain degree of authenticity results. That’s what transpired for Barbara Pendleton Jones

Through painstaking research, Jones turned out a 520-page look at her great-aunt, Tula Pendleton, a Southern short story writer from Hartford, Kentucky, who, in 1924, died tragically with her husband in a double suicide.

Tula Pendleton: The Life and Work of a Forgotten Southern Writer starts with a profile of Pendleton, gleaned from personal letters and other snatches of credible information, creating a splendid narrative. The second part of the book is a collection of Pendleton’s short stories from the early 20th century, well-written and published across America, though never bringing great acclaim.

Jones is a retired psychologist and psychoanalyst living in Virginia.

By Steve Flairty

Chapman Shares Struggles, Triumphs

Rex Chapman takes readers on the rollercoaster ride of his life. He shares stories about his youth as a basketball prodigy, his University of Kentucky stardom, and his successful but injuryriddled pro basketball career.

He writes in unsparing detail about his opioid and gambling addictions, which cost him his fortune, his health and his marriage. He fondly recalls the family members and friends who helped him turn his life around. And he celebrates his post-rehab success as a basketball analyst and consultant and surprise social media star. Chapman’s unvarnished observations about race and politics will rankle some Kentuckians. His memoir suggests that he is less concerned today about pleasing people and more concerned about speaking truth, reaching out to people suffering from addiction and, most of all, being worthy of the love of his four children. “That,” he concludes, “is my championship right there.”

By Ted Sloan

It’s

Spit and Polish: A Kentucky Boy’s Coming of Age in a Tennessee Military School byJudge (Ret.) William Robey Harris Jr., Butler Books, $24.95 (H)

Tula Pendleton: The Life and Work of a Forgotten Southern Writer by Barbara Pendleton Jones, Butler Books, $32.95 (H)

Hard for Me to Live With Me by Rex Chapman with Seth Davis Simon & Schuster, $27.99 (H)

BY BILL ELLIS

As the Old Saying Goes …

Ihope y’all had a great Christmas and holiday season. I reached my 85th birthday at 10 minutes after midnight on the first day of this year.

As the old saying goes, “If I had known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

I should not complain. I had fiveartery heart bypass surgery in 1999 and cancer surgery in 2007, and here I am today, worn a bit around the edges but still “plugging along.”

As a matter of fact, I still recall how we used to react to life and talk in the old days when I grew up on Snow Hill outside Shelbyville in the 1940s and ’50s. We spoke in a kind of code perhaps unknown to later generations or city folk.

If someone asked, “How are ya?” you replied, “I’m fit as a fiddle” or “plumb wore out.”

If asked if she knew you, Mom would reply, “I’d know you even in a boneyard.”

In the old days, if someone called you stupid, it was “like water off a duck’s back” if their opinion didn’t matter to you. But to be called “dumb as an ox,” “dumb as a post” or “not having enough sense to come in out of the rain” was a real attack on one’s intelligence.

Further attacks included “dumb as a box of hammers” (from my good friend Jim Beardon), a western “Kentuckyism” I had not heard before.

• • •

I guess I was “wet behind the ears” growing up. My red hair and sometimes flushed complexion made me look “red as a beet,” and not living in the big city of Looavul probably made me appear “green as a gourd” to outsiders.

I was “free as a bird” most of the time. I wandered over railroad tracks and bridges*, waded in Clear Creek (which was never clear), and walked in and out of dime stores and grocery stores, where I always knew someone.

In Pop’s welding shop, I would get “hot as a chinch” while welding, brazing or undertaking other tasks.

In our senior year of high school, I invited Charlotte Frances Rohrer for a date. She was “pretty as a picture” and “sweet as honey.” I was “ugly as sin” and “dumb as a stump” for not asking her for a date earlier. What if I had lost her?

On that first date, I realized “my face would stop an eight-day clock,” and though I tried to “act cool as a cucumber,” I was nervous as a “cat on a hot tin roof.” Sounds like a good movie title, doesn’t it?

I became “crazy as a loon” about her while “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.” Her skin “was smooth as silk,” while mine was “rough as a cob” from working in Pop’s welding shop. I became “happy as a lark” and was “Johnny on the spot,” although my name was Billy. Her “kisses were sweeter than

wine,” though as good Baptist youth, we had never tasted such.

After our marriage on July 30, 1960, we were “poor as church mice” but “happy as a lark.” I continued to play football for the Georgetown Tigers under Coach Bob Davis, a hard-nosed taskmaster. I was kind of small to play guard and linebacker, and we had a difficult season. Although I was “tough as nails,” many a time I was knocked “flat as a flitter.” Perhaps I was “silly as a goose” to continue the sport, but I was “hard to tare.”

Well, I haven’t seen “hide nor hair” of many of my old teammates or classmates from high school and college. Like many of them, soon I will be “dead as a doornail.”

Meanwhile, I will attempt to be “busy as a bee” and “slick as a ribbon.”

Some days I am “sick as a dog” … “when my get up and go just got up and went.” I’ve been “rode hard and put up wet” too many times to count.

I try to be “happy as a lark,” but it’s difficult sometimes.

*Little did I know at the time that the railroad bridge over which I walked many a time from school was the site of a heinous crime, the lynching of two African Americans in 1911. The Shelby County Historical Society has commemorated this terrible event in a book, The Lynching Bridge.

Readers may contact Bill Ellis at editor@ kentuckymonthly.com.

The Birthplace of Vertebrate Paleontology

When Meriwether Lewis departed Pittsburgh on Aug. 31, 1803, and headed down the Ohio River toward Louisville and his rendezvous with William Clark, he carried a full agenda from President Thomas Jefferson

One thing on the list: The president wanted some bones from Kentucky.

Specifically, Jefferson wanted a sampling of bones and fossils from a salt lick and marshy region about 80 river miles upstream from Louisville. The science of paleontology was in its infancy, and Big Bone Lick, as the area was known, reportedly was littered with bones from ground sloths, mammoths, mastodons and other critters from a world that no longer existed.

Lewis followed the president’s orders and, with the help of some local experts, collected and shipped several boxes of bones to Jefferson. Unfortunately, the boxes never made it to his Monticello home. But Jefferson, whose scientific interests might have equaled his political ambitions, later dispatched Clark to Big Bone Lick in 1807, after he, Lewis and the Corps of Discovery had triumphantly returned from their journey up the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. Clark assembled a crew and collected some of the ancient relics. This time, the boneyard treasures reached Jefferson. A few of the fossils, including a jawbone from a mastodon, are on display at Monticello today.

Big Bone Lick eventually became regarded as the birthplace of vertebrate paleontology in North America.

Today, Big Bone Lick is a state

historic site managed by Kentucky State Parks. And while mastodons and mammoths won’t be seen, a few bison still prowl the grounds.

Big Bone Lick State Historic Site recently was bestowed a new title, being designated a National Historic Landmark. This is a significant honor, but it hardly makes the Boone County property unique. The Department of the Interior, which hands out the designation, elevated Big Bone Lick to landmark status in December, along with 19 other properties.

Nationwide, there are more than 2,600 National Historic Landmarks. Most are privately owned. Kentucky is home to 33 NHLs, including the recently enshrined Big Bone Lick. What makes them special? That depends on where you’re going.

According to the National Park Service, which oversees the program, National Historic Landmarks are “historic properties that illustrate the heritage of the United States.”

When it comes to “illustrating the heritage of the United States,” Churchill Downs (designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986) speaks for itself. However, Ohio County’s Indian Knoll (another NHL site) is a shell-midden archaeological motherlode that outdates the racetrack by several millennia and literally is littered with history but isn’t much to look at.

Big Bone Lick gives visitors a glimpse into the last Ice Age. Native Americans had long visited the area for the same reason the Ice Age animals had come: for the salt. They were undoubtedly aware of the large bones scattered about. When Europeans arrived, the boneyard began to attract attention. A 1784

map, prepared by John Filson, notes, “Big Bone Lick; Salt and Medical Spring. Large bones are found there.”

Big Bone Lick State Historic Site (and National Historic Landmark) is located near Union and is open daily. It has a full-facility campground, 4.5 miles of hiking trails, two orienteering courses, a visitors center and a history that extends to the Ice Age. It’s worth a visit. Find details at parks.ky.gov/ explore/big-bone-lick-state-historicsite-7807

For more information about the National Historic Landmark program, go to nps.gov/subjects/ nationalhistoriclandmarks/index.htm

•

Following an agreement between the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and the University of the Cumberlands, a new public-use area has been established in Whitley and McCreary counties.

The mostly wooded, 10,273-acre University of the Cumberlands Wildlife Management Area is a threetract property. Hunting for deer, bear and coyote is archery only. Other game species are open under statewide regulations.

Access to the property is walk-in only. The agreement prohibits nighttime hunting, horseback riding, off-road driving, target shooting, baiting, feeding and commercial guiding on the new WMA.

For more information, including a map of the area, visit app.fw.ky.gov/ Public_Lands_Search/detail. aspx?Kdfwr_id=9727 or contact the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources at 1.800.858.1549.

Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

FEBRUARY 2025

Option Expedition

National Quilt Museum, Paducah, through June 21, 270.442.8856

Ongoing

First Farmers of the Barren River Valley Kentucky Museum, Bowling Green, through June 30, 270.745.2592

Bluegrass Music Hall of Fam, Owensboro, through March 28, 2026, 270.926.7891

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall

Lexington Opera House, Lexington, 859.233.3535

Moulin Rouge! The Musical

859.233.3535

Renfro Entertainment Center, Renfro Valley, 1.800.765.74647

Ongoing

Portraits in Faith Exhibit

Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville, through April 30, 502.584.9254

Ongoing

The Jackleg Testament

Part 2: The Book of Only Enoch UK Art Museum, Lexington, through June 21, 859.257.5716

A Raisin in the Sun Woodford Theatre, Versailles, through Feb. 16, 859.873.0648

Sandhill Cranes

Nature Watch Weekend, Barren River Lake State Resort Park, Lucas, 270.646.2151

Larry Sparks & The Lonesome Ramblers

Mountain Arts Ctr, Prestonsburg, 606.886.2623

Social Media’s New Face of Appalachia

Don’t try to pigeonhole Shae, a 28-year-old from Eastern Kentucky. She’s a conundrum, to be sure. Better known as Haesicks on social media, she embraces and yet defies Appalachian stereotypes.

On the one hand, her father is a former coal miner who suffers from black lung disease. On the other hand, her mother entered the workforce at 13 and is now a regional manager and KFC franchise owner.

As for Shae, she was not only a cheerleader but an award-winning one. Try to counterbalance that with her passion for anime—a style of animation developed in Japan and best known for Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon.

“Cheerleaders tend to be popular; people who are into anime tend not to be,” she said, sporting her milliondollar smile with a voice that’s a cross between Ruth Langmore, a character created by Julia Garner on the Netflix series Ozark (minus Ruth’s obscenities), and country music icon Reba McEntire. “When I started doing videos on TikTok, it was to express the things I like and connect with people who share the same interests.”

Over time, pieces of Shae’s personal life started to sneak into her videos, and about a year ago, she presented her first video: “It’s time, y’all, for Appalachian word of the day,” in which she inserts everyday words into sentences. An example is “marinara,” the tomato sauce that features garlic, herbs and onions. “What do you expect that car can get up to?” she asked. “About 120 marinara [instead of miles an hour].” Check out www.tiktok.com/@haesicks2/ video/7425707798995979563 for a better understanding.

Nearly as quickly as the car, Shae’s Instagram followers grew to 683,000 (more than the population of Louisville) with almost as many on TikTok and Twitch. The marinara video alone has been viewed nearly 51,000 times on YouTube.

• • •

Part of Shae’s popularity comes from her steering clear of politics, and she goes out of her way to leave her family and friends out of the spotlight. “I’m the one who chose to do this, not them,” she said. “I don’t mind the negativity that comes with it—I’m thick skinned.

“Sometimes, I actually enjoy it [the negativity], but what

I like is having connections worldwide and knowing there are people out there who like what I have to say.”

One of her followers is country music star Kenny Chesney, who sent tickets for Shae, her husband and her parents to attend a sold-out concert in Nashville. “He [Chesney] said my voice brought back memories of growing up in East Tennessee,” Shae said.

When asked if her accent is exaggerated for her videos, she said it’s the opposite. “We’re taught to hide our accent,” she said. “So, like now, I’m doing my best to suppress it. But when I’m doing the videos, I’m myself, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“What’s wrong is the way the media represents us—like we’re less intelligent because of the way we sound,” Shae said. And don’t dare mention marriage and cousins in the same paragraph: “That’s the worst. Why do they always go there?”

If anything, Shae would like to dispel such unfair stereotypes. “It isn’t like Appalachia doesn’t have its problems, but we need help, not ridicule,” she said. “What we need is for more people to stay here and find success.”

A 2019 graduate of Big Sandy Community College, Shae spent six years in her trained profession—dental hygiene— before circumstances led her to take a break. “I wouldn’t have been in the position to quit my job if it hadn’t been for social media, and I want to keep doing this as long as I can. I enjoy it,” she said.

Shae has been approached by show business executives twice. She’s been visited by a scout for a movie set in Hazard and by the former casting agent for Netflix’s Stranger Things, who pitched her a possible movie role. “I haven’t heard from either of them in a while, and I have no idea if I’d be able to act,” she said.

I told Shae that longtime Corbin subscriber Don Estep once told me the proper way to pronounce Appalachia is: “I was standing in an orchard when I decided to throw an ‘apple at ’cha.’ ”

STEPHEN M. VEST Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

Shae’s response: “I don’t care how you pronounce it, as long as it’s said with respect.”

Vest can be contacted at steve@kentuckymonthly.com

Shae

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