June/July 2022 | Kentucky Monthly Magazine

J U N E / J U LY 2 0 2 2

with Kentucky Explorer

Lavender Farms

in Kentucky

and more: Historic Preservationist and Developer Holly Wiedemann

Summer time Enter tainment at Outdoor Amphitheaters

Kentucky State Parks to Get an Overhaul

Ar tist Alice Leininger and Horse Mania 2022

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O N T H E C OV E R Visitors to Woodstock Lavender Co. learn about the culinary potential of the flowering herb. Photo courtesy of Woodstock Lavender Co.

in this issue

12

J U N E / J U LY D E PA R T M E N T S 2 Kentucky Kwiz 3 Readers Write 4 Mag on the Move 6 Off the Shelf 7 Music 8 Cooking 45 Kentucky Explorer 56 Past Tense/ Present Tense 58 Gardening 60 Field Notes 62 Calendar 64 Vested Interest

12 Lavender Fields Forever Kentucky’s lavender growers are passionate about their crop and its many uses 22 Restore and Repurpose Developer Holly Wiedemann combined her passions for renovating historical

structures and providing affordable housing 28 Preserving Our State Parks From humble beginnings to once being the nation’s finest, Kentucky’s state parks are ready for an overhaul

34 More Mania Lexington’s arts and business communities come together for a one-of-a-kind exhibit 38 Hot Tunes in the Summertime Three exciting new venues have joined Kentucky’s sprawling outdoor entertainment scene

In Memoriam This issue is dedicated to the memory of Bremen’s Bill Gatton (1932-2002), the University of Kentucky’s all-time leading benefactor, namesake of the Gatton Student Center and the Gatton College of Business and Economics; and Ashland’s Naomi Judd (1946-2022), an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame and five-time Grammy Award winner with her daughter, Wynonna.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 1

kentucky kwiz Test your knowledge of our beloved Commonwealth. To find out how you fared, see the bottom of Vested Interest.

NOTABLE KENTUCKY SITES TO VISIT 1. In what city can you visit Mary Todd Lincoln’s girlhood home?

7. In what city will you find the Kentucky’s largest zoo?

A. Georgetown

A. Henderson

B. Louisville

B. Louisville

C. Lexington

C. Hopkinsville

Celebrating the best of our Commonwealth

© 2022, Vested Interest Publications Volume Twenty-Five, Issue 5, June/July 2022 Stephen M. Vest Publisher + Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Patricia Ranft Associate Editor Rebecca Redding Creative Director

2. What Kentucky landmark is the largest underground world of wonders?

A. Mammoth Cave B. Carter Caves C. Cascade Caves 3. Where can you admire stunning, intricately designed and crafted quilts?

8. The late author/artist Paul Brett Johnson hailed from which intriguingly named town?

A. Red Hot B. Monkey’s Eyebrow C. Mousie 9. Where can you tour the Aviation Museum of Kentucky?

A. Pikeville

A. Lexington

B. Paducah

B. Bowling Green

C. Elizabethtown

C. Ashland

4. President Abraham Lincoln was born near what town?

10. In what city can you visit a huge floral clock?

A. London

A. Covington

B. Hodgenville

B. Frankfort

C. Versailles

C. Maysville

Deborah Kohl Kremer Assistant Editor Ted Sloan Contributing Editor Cait A. Smith Copy Editor

Senior Kentributors Jackie Hollenkamp Bentley, Jack Brammer, Tom Eblen, Bill Ellis, Steve Flairty, Gary Garth, Janine Washle, Kim Kobersmith, Walt Reichert, Joel Sams, Tracey Teo and Gary P. West

Business and Circulation Barbara Kay Vest Business Manager Jocelyn Roper Circulation Specialist

Advertising Lindsey Collins Senior Account Executive and Coordinator Kelley Burchell Account Executive Teresa Revlett Account Executive For advertising information, call 888.329.0053 or 502.227.0053

KENTUCKY MONTHLY (ISSN 1542-0507) is published 10 times per year (monthly with combined December/ January and June/July issues) for $20 per year by

5. View sharks, rays and more at a large aquarium in which city?

A. Newport B. Owensboro C. Georgetown 6. The birthplace of country music legend Loretta Lynn is where?

11. You can visit a tall monument dedicated to prominent statesman Henry Clay in a cemetery in what city?

A. Frankfort B. Paducah C. Lexington

Frankfort, KY 40601. Periodicals Postage Paid at Frankfort, KY and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to KENTUCKY MONTHLY, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559.

Vested Interest Publications: Stephen M. Vest, president; Patricia Ranft, vice president; Barbara Kay Vest, secretary/treasurer. Board of directors: James W. Adams Jr., Dr. Gene Burch, Gregory N. Carnes, Barbara and Pete Chiericozzi, Kellee Dicks, Maj. Jack E. Dixon, Bruce and Peggy Dungan, Mary and Michael Embry, Thomas L. Hall, Judy M. Harris, Greg and Carrie Hawkins, Jan and John Higginbotham,

12. The most famous Civil War site in Kentucky is where?

A. Butcher Holler

A. Harrodsburg

B. Sedalia

B. Versailles

C. No Creek

C. Perryville

“Kentucky Kwiz” courtesy of Karen M. Leet, author of Sarah’s Courage, a Kentucky historical novel, and co-author of Civil War, Lexington, Kentucky, historical nonfiction, both from The History Press.

2 KE NT U C K Y M O NT H LY JUNE/ JULY 2 0 2 2

Vested Interest Publications, Inc., 100 Consumer Lane,

Frank Martin, Bill Noel, Michelle Jenson McDonnell, Walter B. Norris, Kasia Pater, Dr. Mary Jo Ratliff, Barry A. Royalty, Randy and Rebecca Sandell, Kendall Carr Shelton and Ted M. Sloan.

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Readers Write Politics, Idioms and Fishing I enjoy the magazine every month, with all the wonderful history and fascinating stories.

Steve Vest, the words “conservative” and “liberal” can become weapons, and both can have good meanings (May issue, page 64). As a retired Methodist preacher, I want to be “conservative” at the potluck suppers but “liberal” during the offering—just a matter of perspective.

I loved Bill Ellis’ column about idioms (May issue, page 58). My favorite is from my high school

baseball coach, Woodie Crum, who described my running ability this way: “Faris, you run like a dry creek.” I was a third baseman, never fast but quick. I could beat anyone in a 1-yard dash.

over there and fish from kayaks.

I also loved Gary Garth’s piece on catching bluegill (May issue, page 62). As a poor kid, we never had a fishing boat, but our dad took us to farm ponds. To this day, I still love fishing for those critters who, when hooked, circle the wagons.

I was so happy to read the March article called “Turn Tragedy Into Opportunity” (page 60). I wish everyone could experience replacing the exotics in suburban yards with native plants.

The photo below is of a good mess of bluegill caught in a farm pond near Aberdeen, Ohio. The filet knife in the photo gives a reference on the hand size of these beautiful fish. Sadly, the pond turned over a few years ago and killed all of the fish.

I have a dear friend near Lexington with a 4-acre pond full of big bluegill and love to take my grandkids

The Kentucky Gift Guide Kentucky Monthly is thrilled to partner with Kentucky Proud,

Keep up the good fishing.

John 21:3.

bringing to your attention some

Terry Faris, Wilmore

and treats our Commonwealth

of the finest handcrafted gifts has to offer.

Native Plants

I became a member of the Lexington chapter of Wild Ones years ago and started to understand the connections among soil, plants and insects, plus the delicate beauty of our native wildflowers! We can have the joy of seeing them in natural areas, but landscaping with them is realistic when you have others willing to share plants and educate about them.

Drink Local This handy guide to sipping in the Bluegrass State spotlights local breweries, wineries and, of course, distilleries. Discover unique ways to drink in Kentucky, creative cocktail recipes and more.

Follow us @kymonthly

Thank you for supporting native plants in Kentucky.

Caroline Johnson, Lexington

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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.

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UNITING KENTUCKIANS EVERYWHERE. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 3

travel

MAG ON THE MOVE

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!

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.

Historic Landmark RABBIT HASH (left) Ed and Cindy Howard of West Milton. Ohio, and Randy and Dori Stone of Lebanon, Ohio, visited northern Kentucky’s iconic Rabbit Hash General Store.

Big Sky Brothers MONTANA (right) Willy Jo and Chase Smith traveled to Montana, visiting several scenic areas. The brothers reside in Letcher County.

Island Time ARUBA (left) John, Rebecca, Hannah, and Holden Hobby of Henderson visited Aruba in June 2021 to celebrate John and Rebecca’s 25th wedding anniversary, Hannah’s graduation from Murray State University, and Holden’s graduation from Henderson County High School.

4 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2 0 2 2

Red Sox Fans BOSTON (left) Terry and Sarah Spencer of Hanson (Hopkins County) are pictured at Boston’s famed Fenway Park on top of the “Green Monstah” wall, where they posed with the four World Series trophies won by the Boston Red Sox.

Takin’ It Easy ARIZONA (right) John and Kathy Stansberry of Corbin stopped by Winslow, Arizona, while on a road trip from Reno, Nevada, to Lexington to help Kathy’s brother move. He left Nevada’s desert for Kentucky’s beautiful bluegrass.

Beautiful Badlands SOUTH DAKOTA Jesse and Barbara Holbrook of Nicholasville took in the sights at Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Tight Spot UTAH Nancy Heckman of Lexington is pictured in a slot canyon called Wire Pass at Grand Staircase Escalante in southern Utah. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 5

off the shelf Reviewed by Stephen M. Vest for washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song

By Emily Bingham Knopf, $30 (H)

Coming to Terms With a Controversial Song “The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day.

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy and bright; By ’n’ by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door, Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.”

Today, when listeners hear Stephen Foster’s most iconic song, they likely think of the Kentucky Derby and the Old South. Intentionally or not, they tend to merge “My Old Kentucky Home” with “Dixie,” the latter a song about someone far away from the place they love. The former, in actuality, is about an enslaved person sold downriver to die, who longs to be back among his family and benevolent masters where he belongs—an insidious narrative that originated in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

In her new book, My Old Kentucky Home: The Astonishing Life and Reckoning of an Iconic American Song, journalist Emily Bingham wrestles with the seminal tune’s complicated past, its revisionist whitewashing, and its potential to represent modern-day Kentucky as “a home for all, one that need not be so far away.”

“Generation after generation of whites have cashed in on a song that helped sanitize the American past,” she writes. “One little song reproduced slavery’s brutality for the sentimental and material benefits of white people.”

Many of the song’s most carefully cultivated and maintained images of a genteel, bygone era were inspired

by Federal Hill, a plantation 30 miles south of Louisville, where Bingham’s family built a media empire and where she is now a history professor at Bellarmine University.

Bingham’s childhood home overlooks the Ohio River, once the dividing line between slavery and freedom.

Ironically, Kentucky was a border state during the Civil War and never seceded from the Union. Nearly 70 percent of its soldiers fought for Abraham Lincoln and the North.

Its identity as a bastion of the Old South is a myth.

According to a recent article in the Lexington HeraldLeader, the state’s second-largest newspaper, “ ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ shows the extraordinary ways we deceive ourselves about history and identity. The song is integral to Kentucky’s long, slow descent into a ‘Southern’ state of moonlight and magnolia that happened AFTER the Civil War … a place where slavery was somehow a benign force, not the horrifying crucible of racism that haunts us today.”

Since becoming the state song in 1928, “My Old Kentucky Home” has seen its lyrics praised, protested, altered and mythologized in thousands of performances by 6 K E NT U C K Y M O NT H LY JUNE/ JULY 2 0 2 2

everyone from Bing Crosby and Kentucky Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler to Bugs Bunny, John Prine and the Nappy Roots. In 1986, the offensive “darkies” was replaced with “people,” and any and all misty-eyed references to slavery were excised: “The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the people are gay; The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloom While the birds make music all the day.”

Still, the controversial song remains on a cultural continuum with D.W. Griffith’s 1915 silent film Birth of a Nation (which perpetuated negative Black stereotypes and brought the Ku Klux Klan into the mainstream); Annie Fellows Johnston’s The Little Colonel series, popularized in 1935 by Shirley Temple’s movie The Little Colonel; and even in the persona of Colonel Sanders—whose white-suited, goateed and bow-tied entrepreneur Harland Sanders is based on Lionel Barrymore’s character in the Temple film— which lives on at 250,000-plus KFC locations worldwide.

Despite the reality that Foster, who wrote many minstrel songs, tried in “My Old Kentucky Home” to present slavery as carefree while also telling a wrenching story of an enslaved man being sold to die in the sugarcane fields of the Deep South, the fact remains that “the song was sung by white men in blackface for years, entertaining white audiences,” writes Bingham.

Yet her book is not an attempt to distance her beloved home state from its problematic song; it’s an effort to understand both as fully as possible. “People think I’m out to destroy the song, [but] I wouldn’t have written a book about it if that were the case,” explains Bingham, a selfdescribed “dedicated Kentuckian.”

Instead, she hopes readers will come to perceive the song for what it is and to recognize that it’s hurtful—if not downright racist—to many Kentuckians. “Eleanor Roosevelt said if you study history honestly, you’ll still love your country just as much.”

That’s proven true for Bingham herself.

When, in the 1990s, some out-of-state friends visited, she took the opportunity to proudly show off Louisville by taking them to the Kentucky Derby. When “My Old Kentucky Home” began to play, she found herself tearing up. “It was a moment of revelation,” she recalls. “I needed to find out how it was written, and as I did, my discomfort grew.” My Old Kentucky Home is the unflinching, eye-opening result of what she learned.

For a list of Bingham’s speaking engagements, visit emilybingham. net/category/news.

music

Traditional With a Twist

by Laura Younkin

W

hen The Local Honeys play their bluegrass and bluegrass-influenced music in Kentucky, they are about as local as you can get. Linda Jean Stokley is from Woodford County, and Montana Hobbs grew up in Estill County. Both women graduated from Morehead State University.

They met and began playing music together while at MSU, and in 2015, they were the first two women to earn bachelor of arts degrees in traditional music from the school. Stokley said the traditional music program enabled her to learn “the home music of Kentucky.” She had been playing for a few years when Hobbs joined the program.

Music was not a clear path for Hobbs in college. She started in a pre-veterinary program and found the courses were not for her, so she dropped out of that field of study.

“I took what Dad called a ‘fluff semester,’ ” she said. She explored different areas of interest, and that included taking private banjo lessons. Something clicked.

Hobbs got extra credit in a class for attending a traditional music show, where she saw Stokley in the band.

Hobbs was hooked. “I was blown away,” she said. When they met, Hobbs said, Stokley was happy to finally see another woman in the program playing traditional music.

As The Local Honeys, they honor the strong traditions of homegrown music that Morehead’s program instilled in them. Their former professor, Jesse Ray Wells from Redbush in Johnson County, produced their upcoming album. Both women have tremendous respect for their mentor and felt he knew and understood their sound well enough to produce their album. Wells plays fiddle and guitar in Kentucky powerhouse Tyler Childers’ band.

The Local Honeys toured with Childers before COVID-19 hit and said that Childers’ band members nicknamed Wells “The Professor.” “But he really was our professor,” Hobbs said.

The worldwide break during the worst of the pandemic brought a halt to the duo’s travels abroad.

They spent much of 2019 touring England and Ireland with Childers. When the touring stopped, they performed some concerts online and took on students from around the world. “We started teaching on Zoom,” Hobbs said. “We had students in Dublin, Ireland, Berlin, London and Tanzania.”

That teaching experience kept Hobbs and Stokley financially afloat while they spread the gospel of traditional music.

They feel good about passing the “home music of Kentucky” on to others. “It’s our pride and responsibility,” Stokley said. They aspire to be musicians into their 80s, passing on the traditions of bluegrass and folk music to the next generation.

Both say the music archives at Morehead are a great resource. They were able to find songs that aren’t cataloged anywhere else. The archives have songs that are “not in the Library of Congress, not in the Smithsonian,” according to Hobbs.

The Local Honeys have released two albums, and their third is due for release in mid-July. The selftitled album is a bit of a departure for them in that they take traditional bluegrass and put their stamp on it. When asked how women in their early 30s make a career in bluegrass music, Stokley said it is not really that uncommon. “From the outside looking in, bluegrass does look like an old man’s game,” she said. She said that young people “are really digging into the [traditional music] archives. They’re finding new ways to present it.”

That’s exactly what the duo does on The Local Honeys.

Hobbs said they are trying to “expand the ‘sonicscape’ of this music.” She pointed out that the banjo, mandolin and percussion don’t usually mix in traditional music, but the tracks on their new release include a drum kit.

Stokley said musicians “expand upon what you can do. You learn something from a source” and then tweak it, “making it your own.”

The women are proud that they wrote all but one of the songs on the new album. That song, “The L&N Don’t Stop Here Anymore,” was written by one of their heroes, Kentucky’s own Jean Ritchie, who died in 2015. Stokley and Hobbs often look to Ritchie for inspiration, and her spirit of telling the truth about what was going on is evident in their songs.

Hobbs said the music was “spoonfed to us in an academic setting. Ballads were a way to tell the news. It was a time stamp on your area.” Some things haven’t changed, according to Hobbs. “Music can still do that.”

Stokley has a similar belief, especially when looking at the duo’s musical future. “Storytelling connects humans to their emotions,” she said. By including protest songs in their repertoire and using traditional bluegrass elements, the band “is still putting purpose into our music. I think that’s our long-range goal.”

For upcoming performances and to purchase their albums and other merchandise, visit thelocalhoneys.com. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 7

cooking

Seasonal Selections

The warm weather months of summer bring ripening vegetables—either in your garden or in the gardens of farmers market vendors. Cabbage, carrots and mustard greens are best when fresh and locally grown. It’s also outdoor cooking season, so break out the smoker to prepare your chicken or simply pop the bird into the oven. Either way, it will be sumptuous when paired with Chef Mike Wajda’s Mojo Rojo Sauce.

Recipes and photos courtesy of Senior Executive Chef Mike Wajda of Everyday Kitchen in Louisville.

8 KE NT U C K Y M O NT HLY J U N E / J U LY 2 0 2 2

Mojo Rojo Barbecue Farm Bird SERVES 4-6 1 local farm-raised chicken, about 4-5 pounds (cleaned) Mojo Rojo Sauce

Mojo Rojo Sauce 1 garlic clove, grated 1 dried chipotle whole pepper

Whipped Labneh & Lavash Appetizer

1 dried guajillo whole pepper 1/

8

teaspoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon paprika ¼ teaspoon salt 1/

3

cup red wine vinegar

½ cup extra virgin olive oil 1. For sauce, combine all ingredients except red wine vinegar and olive oil.

2. In a small pan, heat olive oil to 150 degrees. Pour heated olive oil over the mixed ingredients and add red wine vinegar.

3. Marinate chicken in 1 cup of the Mojo Rojo Sauce for 4 hours.

4. Cook chicken in a smoker at 225 degrees for 2½ hours or until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees. Or cook in a convection oven at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

5. Use residual Mojo Rojo Sauce to baste the bird throughout the cooking process.

Reserve additional sauce for serving.

1 cup labneh (strained yogurt) 2 teaspoons olive juice 5½ teaspoons extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon za’atar seasoning, divided 1. Using a mixer with the whisk attachment, combine labneh, olive juice, olive oil and ½ teaspoon za’atar. Whisk on high for 2 minutes until light and fluffy.

2. Spoon into a serving bowl and garnish with more olive oil and remaining za’atar. Serve with fresh vegetable crudités, pita, a favorite bread or crackers.

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 9

cooking

Slaw with Krussian Dressing

Sake Wilted Mustard Greens

SERVES 6

SERVES 6

½ head cabbage, cored and julienned or shredded

3 pounds clean and dry mustard greens, stems removed

1 cup carrots, shredded or julienned

7 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 garlic clove, thinly sliced cup plum sake

Krussian Dressing

2/

¾ cup + 4 teaspoons Kewpie mayo or other Japanese mayo

2 tablespoons shoyu (First Plus White Soy Sauce)

3

Black and white sesame seeds (optional)

5 teaspoons Korean hot pepper paste 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar ¾ teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon diced shallots 2 tablespoons diced pickles of your choice

1. Combine mayo, hot pepper paste, vinegar and salt in a medium bowl using a whisk. Add shallots and pickles.

2. Toss cabbage and carrots with Krussian dressing and serve.

Note: This recipe replaces tomato products with Korean hot pepper paste for a playful spin on the classic Russian dressing.

10 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY J U N E / J U LY 2 0 2 2

1. Thoroughly rinse all debris from mustard greens and remove stems.

2. Using a large pot over medium heat, add olive oil and sliced garlic and cook until lightly golden. Turn the heat to high and add the mustard greens. Cook for 4 minutes or until wilted.

3. Remove from heat and add plum sake and shoyu. Season with additional salt if needed. Garnish with black and white sesame seeds, if desired.

Blistered Long Beans with Verde Lima Beans

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1. Rinse dry lima beans and place in a medium pot. (Do not presoak as they can sometimes split.) Cover with chicken stock, water, carrot, celery, onion, bay leaf and thyme sprig. Bring to a light simmer and cook until tender, about 2 hours.

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2. Drain and remove carrot, celery, onion, bay leaf, and thyme.

Verde Sauce 1 cup extra virgin olive oil ½ cup parsley, julienned 3 tablespoons tarragon, julienned 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar 1 lemon, zested Salt, to taste

1. In a small bowl, combine all the verde sauce ingredients.

2. On a grill or stove, heat a cast-iron pan to very hot and dry roast the long beans to get a solid char.

3. Combine cooked lima beans with desired amount of verde sauce to create a creamy verde lima bean.

3. Top with charred long beans and serve.

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Grand Victorian Inn 270.590.1935 grandvictorianinnky.com

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 11

BY JOEL SAMS

Lavender Fields Forever

Kentucky’s lavender growers are passionate about their crop and its many uses

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 13

As hot weather blankets the Commonwealth in June and July, one unique crop truly comes into its own.

Native to the Mediterranean, lavender thrives in hot, dry climates and poor, chalky or sandy soil. With persistence, soil amendments and careful attention, the plant can thrive in Kentucky.

Offering lavender picking, special events and classes, unique products, and multi-generational fun, here are four Kentucky lavender farms you’ll want to visit this season.

WOODSTOCK LAVENDER CO. When Allison Horseman moved back home to Woodstock in Pulaski County with her husband and kids, she knew she wanted to get her hands in the dirt and honor her family’s farming legacy. She teamed up with her mom, Mary May, and the pair dove headfirst into lavender growing.

“I said, ‘We don’t have much to lose,’ ” May remembered. “We can just get 50 plants and set them out and see what happens.”

Today, Woodstock Lavender Co. has grown from 50 plants to about 1,000, and produces 23 products. The mother-daughter team cultivates 14 varieties of lavender on land that has been in the family since 1928. Guests can visit the farm during the growing season, pick their own bunches of lavender, reserve an optional catered lunch, and browse lavender products for sale.

“It was really important to me to honor the agricultural roots, that heritage that I have on both sides of my family,” Horseman said. “We enjoy telling the story of agriculture in our family, and this was one way that we could do that.”

May and Horseman each bring unique skills to the business. May, who retired from a 25-year teaching career, said that she has a practical bent, and Horseman is a marketing and communications professional.

14 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Still an educator, May likes to open customers’ eyes to the culinary potential of lavender. People don’t always realize it’s a versatile ingredient, but after a cup of lavender lemonade at the farm, they’re often convinced.

Through the farm’s online store, customers can buy a range of valueadded lavender products—from linen spray to lotion to teas and culinary lavender buds. The duo have also launched a subscription box called the Purple Spoon.

Customers who subscribe can expect a monthly selection of ready-to-use items such as lavender honey, lavender marshmallows and lavender hot chocolate. During the growing season, customers can purchase products on site.

Horseman, the storyteller, emphasizes the continuity of agriculture in her family’s legacy.

“The reason that we do all of this is because we do love agriculture,” she said. “We do love the land, and we do love our heritage, and so sharing that is just important to us … We are out there doing the work, putting in the hours. We honestly love what we do, and we honestly love sharing part of the farm with people, whether they visit or buy our products or just drop us a line on Facebook.”

Woodstock Lavender Co. 13394 Ky. 39, Woodstock 859.608.9117 woodstocklavender.com Open May 27–June 25 Fridays, 5-8 p.m.

Saturdays, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

Special events are available throughout the season.

that “no longer serves them well,” said farmer, author and speaker Erin Ramsey. Some guests leave behind metaphorical burdens; others have left physical tokens such as a lighter; a lipstick case that reads, “I am perfect”; and an ultrasound photo. “It brings a tear to my eye now,” said Ramsey, who farms with her husband, Doug.

“There are lots of amazing stories and amazing experiences.”

At the farm, lavender is part of a larger experience that Ramsey said is all about healing and connection. She calls it “growing peace.” The farm brings together a diverse array of people who might have never met otherwise and regularly hosts workshops featuring experts in skincare, meditation and more. Visits to the farm are always free—“We remember how broke we were raising our four kids!” Ramsey said, laughing.

Cut-your-own lavender costs $10 per 2-inch bundle, and customers can buy lavender-CBD products, bath and body products, gift boxes and more in the farm store and online.

Best-sellers include lavender linen spray, lavender bundles and lavender wreath-making events.

The Ramseys have four children and three grandchildren, making the farm a three-generation endeavor. All the generations are represented in the farm logo, which features three lavender buds. A sense of connection is important to Ramsey, who said guests benefit both from the traditional healing properties of lavender and the peacefulness of the farm itself. “We’ve had people come just because they were anxious and sit in the field, and they feel much better,” she said. “What most visitors tell us is that it’s magical at Big Roots, and it’s healing, and they feel rejuvenated when they leave.”

BIG ROOTS FARM One of the most notable features of Big Roots Farm isn’t the lavender crop at all—it’s a labyrinth, built from rocks sourced on site. Patterned on a medieval design, the labyrinth is both a winding footpath and an ancient tool for prayer, meditation or reflection. At Big Roots Farm, guests are invited to walk meditatively into the heart of the labyrinth and leave behind something

Big Roots Farm 3204 Truman Young Road, Hawesville 270.697.3334 bigrootsfarm.com Open May 28-July 3 Fridays/Saturdays, 9 a.m.–3 p.m.

Sundays, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Lavender Sour Cream Pound Cake

by Mary May, Woodstock Lavender Co. 1 box yellow cake mix 4 eggs 8 ounces sour cream ½ cup sugar ¾ cup vegetable or canola oil 1 tablespoon crushed lavender buds 1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour bundt pan.

2. Mix all ingredients together except for lavender buds.

Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed 4 minutes. Stir in lavender buds.

3. Bake 40-45 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan.

GLAZE:

½ cup water 2 tablespoons crushed lavender buds ½ cup (or more) confectioners’ sugar

“I have made and served this cake many times to groups who visit Woodstock Lavender Farm. It is yummy and helps people understand

1. Combine water and lavender buds in small saucepan. Gradually bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and simmer 3-5 minutes.

2. Remove from heat. Stir in confectioners’ sugar, combining well.

3. Pour over slices of cake as they are served.

how easy it is to cook with lavender!”

— Mary May k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 15

Butterflies enjoy the lavender growing at Big Roots Farm in Hawesville; right, wreath workshop at Lavender in Bloom.

LAVENDER HILLS OF KENTUCKY Denise Scaringi may not think of herself as a trailblazer, but as the first commercial lavender grower in Kentucky, she’s certainly paved the way for other farmers and entrepreneurs.

Scaringi grew up in rural Bracken County, but in 2005, she was living in Kenton County and feeling nostalgia for the countryside of her childhood.

“I was just getting a little homesick for my kids to be able to have a little bit more of a country life instead of the city life that we have here,” she said. “So, I just started looking for what to do with land.”

Scaringi researched various crops—from herbs to trees—before settling on lavender and getting started with the help of her mom and sister. There have been peaks and valleys through the years, she said, including a catastrophic crop loss during the hard winters of 2013 16 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

and ’14. Weather patterns have changed, she said, making it difficult to reestablish the volume of lavender she grew before. The lavender patch may be smaller today, but the gift shop, workshops and tours are worthy of a trailblazer.

Like many farms, Lavender Hills of Kentucky is a multigenerational effort. Scaringi’s father keeps the property manicured, and her mother collaborates on products and workshops. A high school business teacher for 27 years, Scaringi loves to educate customers about the uses of the plant.

“We are doing more and more with our culinary lavender,” Scaringi said. “When we first started, people were kind of hesitant—‘What do you mean you eat lavender?’ They only think of it as a flower; they think of it as a scent. But we actually do a lot of cooking with our lavender. We

have seen through the years that more and more of our culinary products are selling.”

Scaringi emphasized that growing lavender is hard work. Caring for hundreds of plants is real agriculture that requires labor-intensive harvesting and value-added production. The rewards are real, though, and she’s glad to see more Kentucky farmers growing lavender.

Proud to call Kentucky home.

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Above, the Habash family of Lavender in Bloom.

“I like the fact that there are more lavender farms in the state, and we have probably met every single person that now has a lavender farm, or we have at least talked to them,” she said. “I like the idea that they saw something fun, something different, and wanted to get involved as well.”

Lavender Hills of Kentucky 229 Conrad Ridge Road, Brookesville 606.735.3335 lavenderhillsofkentucky.com Tours and workshops are offered June through September and must be booked online.

LAVENDER IN BLOOM Lavender in Bloom may be located in Georgetown, but it was born in Seattle, Washington. While on vacation in the Emerald City, Kefah and Tessa Habash visited a nearby lavender farm and fell in love with the experience. Kefah, who

sometimes struggles to sleep, also bought lavender essential oil.

(Lavender has been traditionally used as a sleep aid.) “It was the best sleep I’d had in a long time,” Kefah said. “I woke up and I told my wife, ‘I know what I want to do when we retire. I want to have lavender.’ ” Neither Tessa nor Kefah had grown up farming, but as they learned more about lavender growing, they realized they didn’t want to wait for retirement. “The more we learned about it, the more we loved it,” Tessa said. “It’s definitely a hobby turned business.”

The Habashes, who both practice as optometrists at Advanced Eye Care in Georgetown, now grow 2,000 lavender plants as well as tulips with help from children Noah, 14, and Mariam, 12. Kefah said farming appeals to them because it’s so different from their everyday jobs.

“It’s the complete opposite of what we do all day long,” he said. “Our jobs are in a small room that’s dark with no windows. So, when we’re not at work, we want the opposite.

We want to be outside in the sun in the fresh air and with flowers.”

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Lavender Rum Cake

by Denise Scaringi, Lavender Hills of Kentucky ½ cup chopped pecans 2 teaspoons dried lavender buds 1 package yellow cake mix 1 package vanilla pudding mix ½ cup vegetable oil ½ cup rum ½ cup water 4 medium eggs 1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Grease and flour bundt cake pan.

2. In a small mixing bowl, toss chopped nuts with 1 teaspoon lavender. Sprinkle nut mixture over the bottom of the pan.

3. In large bowl, beat together cake mix, pudding, vegetable oil, rum and water. Add eggs and the remaining lavender and beat until smooth. Do not overbeat.

4. Pour batter over nuts in pan.

Bake for 60 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean. Turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

GLAZE

enough for 2 cakes

¼ cup butter ¼ cup water 1 cup granulated sugar ½ cup rum 1. Bring the butter, water and sugar to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and let stand for 1 minute. Add rum and stir.

2. Poke holes into the cake with a skewer. Brush and spoon half the glaze over the cake.

18 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

“Working with lavender ignites all your senses,” Tessa said. “What I love most about having a lavender farm is seeing others enjoy themselves while at our farm. There are quiet conversations while picking lavender stems and taking photos to remember their day together. Many people comment how relaxing it is to be at our farm.”

Lavender in Bloom sells a wide range of products, including baking mixes, lavender ice cream, a handdistilled hydrosol body spray, lavender sachets and more. Special events on the farm have included yoga in the lavender field, wreath making and, of course, lavender picking.

“I think people love the relaxing atmosphere of it,” Kefah said. “They love the beauty of the farm, of seeing the lavender plants, and I think they’re amazed. We see families come out in generations—grandparents, parents, kids—and everybody’s having fun with how beautiful it looks and how great it smells.” Q Lavender in Bloom 426 McClelland Circle, Georgetown lavenderinbloom.farm Season opens in June, with days and hours to be announced.

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 8 • K E N T U C K Y M O N T H LY

19

kentuckytourism.com • 1-800-225-TRIP

TEXT AND PHOTO S BY TO M EBL EN

restore and repurpose Developer Holly Wiedemann combined her passions for renovating historical structures and providing affordable housing

A

U Associates, the development company Holly Wiedemann started in Lexington more than three decades ago, takes its name from the historic preservation concept “adaptive use”—remodeling old buildings for new purposes.

But AU has another meaning. It’s the chemical symbol for gold.

Wiedemann says her company has been financially successful. But as she retires and turns AU Associates over to a longtime employee, its greatest value is in the treasures it has left in 16 communities across Kentucky and five in West Virginia. The company developed, owns and manages more than three dozen projects totaling more than 1,200 units of high-quality, affordably priced rental housing.

But that’s only part of the story.

While some projects have been new 22 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

construction, most are beautifully restored schools and other public buildings. Once community landmarks, they were abandoned and well on their way to demolition when Wiedemann acquired them.

The company reflects two of Wiedemann’s passions: affordable housing and historic preservation.

Key to its success have been her keen design aesthetic, a commitment to quality, a knowledge of construction, and an even greater knowledge of finance. That last skill has been essential to navigating the complex rules for putting together projects using federal and state tax credits, government programs, grants and private debt financing.

“I have a lot of respect for Holly and what she’s done over the years,” said Rick McQuady, a retired Kentucky Housing Corp. CEO who is now Lexington’s affordable housing manager. “If a community needed a school building converted to housing

or a building saved, she was the one everyone talked to. One thing that always impressed me about her affordable housing units was the quality. They were built the same as market-rate units—no shortcuts.”

“I only develop places that I myself would like to live,” Wiedemann said.

YEARS OF PREPARATION Wiedemann comes from a long line of Kentucky entrepreneurs. Her great-great-grandfather was George Wiedemann, a German immigrant who created Wiedemann beer in Newport in 1870. Her greatgrandfather, J.D. Purcell, started Purcell’s, a leading Lexington department store in the mid-20th century.

She grew up near Lexington in an antebellum mansion, part of which dates back to the late 1700s. “I loved the architecture of it, the integrity of it, the proportions of it,” she said. “I

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 23

>>>>>>

The restoration of the former Fayette County Courthouse is perhaps AU Associates’ most visible project.

think that’s what gave me an appreciation for historic buildings.”

After graduating from Sayre School in 1973, Wiedemann took her grandmother’s advice and studied landscape architecture at the University of Georgia. She worked a summer on the landscaping crew at Colonial Williamsburg, then sat out a couple of quarters to help author Wendell Berry and several environmental lawyers save the Red River Gorge from being flooded by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We founded the Red River Gorge Legal Defense Fund, of which I was the only paid staff member at $2 an hour,” she said. They took their case all the way to the United States Supreme Court—and won.

After college, Wiedemann was lured to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to work in urban planning. Then she ran a program that put artists in underserved Tulsa neighborhoods.

“That had a strong impact on my desire to eventually get into affordable housing,” she said.

Her next job was with a national developer, helping design large 24 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

urban infill projects in Denver, San Antonio and Charlotte. “I really liked the development side,” she said.

“But I thought I needed to learn finance because I didn’t want to always be on the receiving end. I would rather hire the architect and tell them what I would like done.”

She earned an MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she met her husband, Bart van Dissel, then a doctoral student. They have two children: Britton, 32, and Liza, 30.

The couple moved to Boston when van Dissel got a teaching job at Harvard Business School.

Wiedemann went to work for WinnCompanies, a developer that pioneered the use of affordable housing tax credits created in 1986 as part of federal tax reform legislation.

“It has been the most successful program ever because it relies on the private sector to develop the housing,” she said. “It’s so highly regulated. I got a Ph.D. level of training by being on the cutting edge of it in Boston.”

How do affordable housing tax

credits work? Developers apply for credits, which they sell to banks and other investors to raise capital for a project. In return, rents are limited by the area’s median income.

Renovation projects often combine affordable housing tax credits with federal and state historic tax credits.

After her father’s death in 1986, Wiedemann and her husband left Boston for Lexington, where she started AU Associates in 1990. Since then, the company has grown to 35 employees and built projects totaling $275 million in capital investment.

NO NEED FOR MARKETING AU’s first project was the Midway School Apartments, which involved renovating a circa 1926 school in Woodford County into 14 subsidized and 10 market-rate apartments for seniors. Word of what Wiedemann was doing spread quickly.

“When I was under construction on Midway, somebody drove up one day and said, ‘You’re Holly Wiedemann,’ and I said, ‘Yes, ma’m,’ ” she recalled. “‘I’m Nell Williams, and I’m from Irvine. We have an old

“She curated that space in a way that makes it work for a new time and its new purposes.” school, and you need to come down.

When can you come?’ Well, I didn’t know where Irvine was, but I went there and was just captivated by all of them. That was my second project, the Irvine School Apartments.”

Wiedemann was next approached about renovating a 120,000-squarefoot former YMCA in Louisville built in 1913. It became the 58-unit St. Francis Apartments and the private St. Francis High School.

Then Lexington’s Old Western Suburb approached Wiedemann about a 200-year-old house and vacant lot in the neighborhood, which was a hot spot for crime. The building became AU Associates’ headquarters, and the lot is now the 38-unit Artek Lofts.

“The work just mushroomed after that,” Wiedemann said. “I never did any marketing.”

Edna Mae Turner, matriarch of an old Breathitt County family, invited Wiedemann to eastern Kentucky.

“She said, ‘There are two buildings you have to save,’ ” Wiedemann recalled. “One’s here in Jackson, and one’s in Campton.”

Within a few years, Wiedemann had done both. Jackson’s former federal building, a Renaissance Revival structure built in 1916, became Federal Place Apartments.

The Wolfe County school, built of local sandstone during the Great Depression, became the Campton School Apartments.

“I’m pleased that the [federal] building was saved because it was such a part of our history,” Jackson Mayor Laura Thomas said. “I wish we could get Holly down here to do

a couple of other projects.”

AU Associates’ other Kentucky renovations have been in Winchester, Lexington, Beattyville, Jenkins, Ashland, Elkhorn, Springfield, Covington, Versailles, Buffalo and Glasgow. The company also has built new housing developments in Lexington and Nicholasville. Plus, it has done three renovations and two new projects in West Virginia.

One notable project is Victory Point, which has 50 units of affordable housing for veterans near Lexington’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Leestown Road. In the 1930s, the VA had built a dormitory for nurses, several townhouses for

doctors, and a hospital administrator’s house. When local hospital managers started wrecking the abandoned buildings, national VA officials stepped in, halted the demolition, and sought bids for redevelopment. AU Associates won a national competition to renovate the old buildings and build new townhouses beside them.

MOST VISIBLE LANDMARK Perhaps AU Associates’ most visible project didn’t involve affordable housing. In 2015, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, who as a child attended a Glasgow school Wiedemann later renovated,

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 25

Among Wiedemann’s housing projects are the Campton School Apartments, top right, and the Midway School Apartments, above.

recruited her to oversee a $32 million restoration of the former Fayette County Courthouse. The circa 1900 landmark had been shuttered since 2012 because of lead paint hazards.

It had suffered a devastating interior “modernization” in 1960 and then serious neglect, especially after new courthouses replaced it in 2002.

Following two years of work, the old courthouse reopened in 2018 with a restaurant, bar, offices, the city visitors’ center and event space.

“She didn’t let any detail go, and it shows,” said Gray, now secretary of Kentucky’s Transportation Cabinet. “She curated that space in a way that makes it work for a new time and its new purposes.”

As mayor, Gray also convinced 26 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Wiedemann to join the Lexington Center board, where she has helped oversee the renovation of Rupp Arena, the rebuilding of the convention center, and the development of Town Branch Commons, a new downtown trail. “I attribute a lot of what happened with the reactivation of downtown [Lexington] to her support, encouragement and attention to detail,” Gray said.

As she opened a new affordable housing project in Lexington last winter and prepared to break ground for another, Wiedemann sold AU Associates to Johan Graham, who was her development director for 15 years and shares her passion for affordable housing. Wiedemann and

van Dissel now divide their time between Kentucky and Colorado, where their first grandchild was born in January.

Craig Potts, executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Council and the state’s historic preservation officer, said Wiedemann is unique among developers he has worked with because of her creativity, optimism and ability to successfully complete projects others would be afraid to try.

“She’s an entrepreneur, but none of her projects ever felt like they were just business ventures,” Potts said. “They all had meaning—they were about helping people, helping a community.” Q

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early 100 years ago, citizens of Bell County in southeastern Kentucky wanted to establish something the naturally beautiful Bluegrass State lacked—a state park.

Their goal was to attract tourists and, in turn, improve the local economy.

28 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Kentucky’s 1924 General Assembly, at the urging of then-Gov. William Fields, created a three-member Kentucky State Park Commission to look at available park sites in the state. Fields named Willard Rouse Jillson, a geology teacher at the University of Kentucky in his mid30s, to chair the commission.

Jillson met with the people of Bell

County. The nearby Cumberland Gap area was first considered as a possible state park site, but its potential as a future national park led Jillson to look elsewhere, and in 1926, Kentucky’s first state park opened.

Initially called Cumberland State Park, its name was changed in 1938 to Pine Mountain State Park to avoid confusion with the similarly named

We grabbed some fun Throw Back Thursday posts from the Kentucky State Parks’ Facebook page. Enjoy!

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Preserving Our Parks From humble beginnings to once the nation’s finest, Kentucky’s state parks are ready for an overhaul

BY JACK BRAMMER

Cumberland Falls State Park, which later came into the parks system.

Three other state parks quickly followed: Natural Bridge in Powell County, Pioneer Memorial in Harrodsburg (today called Old Fort Harrod), and Blue-Gray near Elkton in Todd County.

All four of Kentucky’s earliest state parks are in operation today except

Blue-Gray, named in honor of Kentucky being the birthplaces of United States President Abraham Lincoln and President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis.

A 2007 article in the Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville stated that the 80-acre park site started well with an inn but closed in the late 1930s as it bled money. One of its last activities

was to serve as a shelter for victims of the 1937 Ohio River flood in the Paducah area.

Seven state parks in western Kentucky took on a similar role in December 2021, providing emergency shelter to about 900 people who were displaced by the deadly tornadoes that struck Mayfield, Dawson Springs and several other communities. k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 29

#

throwbackthursday

Above, Sylvia and Jinny at Jenny Wiley State Park in 1964. At left, Willard Rouse Jillson was named the first chair of the Kentucky State Park Commission in the mid-1930s.

Growth of Kentucky State Parks From its humble beginnings, Kentucky’s state parks system has grown to 45 parks today, 17 of which are resorts with overnight lodging and dining. The system also has eight historic sites, 13 golf courses, 34 pools and beaches, 15 marinas and 30 campgrounds. Its annual operating budget is about $99.4 million.

The Kentucky state parks system blossomed from the 1940s to the 1970s with much expansion. Thirteen parks were added in the early 1960s

#exploreky WWW.PARKS.GOV

as part of an effort to establish the largest state resort park system in the United States.

It often was referred to as “the nation’s finest.”

Help for Parks in Disrepair State budget cuts over the years led to delays in keeping the parks spruced up and providing amenities that a flurry of new, large private lodging companies offered.

This year’s General Assembly provided an infusion of dollars to

Wherever you travel in Kentucky, you are never far from one of 45 Kentucky State Parks.

30 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

improve the state parks. “One of our greatest and best assets is the natural beauty of the state,” state Senate President Robert Stivers, a Republican from Clay County, said on March 29 as House-Senate conferees crafted a twoyear state budget. “We have made some serious investments in tourism.”

Those investments for the state parks system amount to $10 million a year for maintenance—up from $5 million a year—and $150 million for an overhaul plan.

That plan calls for the parks system to come up with improvement

Carter Caves was a tourist attraction long before it became a state park in 1946. This 1920s postcard shows folks gathered at the “Social Hall” that was behind where the current visitor center is located. In fact, the Hall was built directly over Cave Branch Creek!

recommendations involving the private sector or local government partnerships by December for consideration by state lawmakers in their 2023 session.

Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Kenton County Republican and chair of the Senate budget committee, said at the March budget meeting that state parks “are fairly antiquated in their amenities and we are directing” the state parks system to review its needs and make recommendations to the legislature next year, “ideally involving some private sector and local partners.”

Mike Berry, secretary of the state Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet which oversees state parks, appreciates the legislature’s funding and said in a recent interview in his Frankfort office that it is much needed. The $20 million over the next two years for maintenance will help in defraying the system’s list of deferred maintenance that totals $230 million, he said.

Among the items at the top of the maintenance list, Berry said, is restoration at Jenny Wiley State Park in Floyd County. A fire damaged its marina in 2018.

Other immediate maintenance work, Berry said, includes upgrading water and sewer systems, campgrounds, roofs, accessibility for

disabled people, security and IT infrastructure.

Berry said the campground at Kentucky Dam Village in Marshall County is in a flood plain and regularly needs maintenance.

All 17 resort parks have internet services, he said, but some are plugged into local providers and won’t allow visitors to stream movies.

He’s hopeful that the Kentucky Wired project will help. It is a state-run project constructing more than 3,000 miles of high-speed fiber optic cable reaching every Kentucky county.

It’s too early to say what the $150 million in the second year of the state budget will mean for the parks system, according to Berry. But he said it likely will involve some of the more popular resort parks such as Lake Cumberland near Jamestown, Lake Barkley near Cadiz, and Kenlake near Hardin.

An interesting tidbit about Kenlake is that a 300-acre state park for Black visitors only was built nearby. The so-called Cherokee State Park, built by the Tennessee Valley Authority, opened in 1951. It was the only segregated state park in the South and one of only three in the entire country.

Berry said that Cherokee State Park was included in the Green Book, an annual travel book for Black

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1960s Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park The pedal boats at the park are no longer aluminum (ouch), and those interested in visiting do not need to “write” for more information, but the fine sand beach, lakeside cottages and restaurant with a lake view are as charming as ever.

motorists published from 1936-66, when discrimination against Blacks and other non-whites was more widespread. The subject was featured in the 2018 movie Green Book.

Cherokee closed in 1963 upon the desegregation of travel and lodging facilities, and it became part of Kenlake.

About 7.9 million people visited Kentucky state parks in 2019, the year before COVID-19 struck. But many people still visited the parks during the pandemic, Berry said.

“Attendance stayed steady. People still wanted to get outside.”

Lodging in state parks in 2021 brought in about $18.3 million, with 162,479 reservations. Campgrounds took in about $6.1 million, with 79,622 reservations.

32 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Pine Mountain State Resort Park … or as it was referred to at the time of this 1936 photo, Cumberland State Park. The name was changed to avoid confusion with Cumberland Gap National Park, which came along in 1940. No matter what the park was called or what year it was, people have flocked to view the scenery and especially to visit “Chained Rock.” The chain was installed in 1933.

Parks for Our Posterity Gov. Andy Beshear said the new investments in Kentucky state parks are worthwhile. “We are committed to maintaining a world-class park system, especially with the growth and emphasis we’ve seen around outdoor tourism during the COVID19 pandemic.

“Our Kentucky state parks offer unique opportunities for our families and visitors alike, and they also serve as resources in our greatest time of need, so it’s critical we support and invest in them,” Beshear said.

“People will always want a place for relaxation in the beauty of nature,” Berry said.

Berry’s comment echoed those that Jillson, the first state parks director,

wrote in the preface to his 1929 book Kentucky State Parks. “Mere words can never adequately describe the many points of natural beauty in Kentucky,” Jillson wrote. “The vastness of the great outdoors; the initial detail of each physical component; the myriad forms of life; the exquisiteness and adaptation of each organism; the soul uplifting silence of the primeval forest; the fleeting liquid note of a passing songster—these and a thousand other wonderful experiences await the lover of nature in the wilderness.”

The acquisition and preservation of parks by the state, wrote Jillson, “constitute a service in which we may all unite with pride and enthusiasm—assured in advance of an appreciative posterity.” Q

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More Mania Lexington’s equine, arts and business communities come together for a one-of-a-kind exhibit

BY JACKIE HOLLENKAMP BENTLEY PHOTOS BY MICK JEFFRIES

L

exington artist Alice Leininger lives in a 100-year-old house.

No doubt many have walked into the home’s large front hall and have seen different home décor over the past century. But it’s safe to say that never before has there been a 6-foot fiberglass horse gracing its historical floors.

While it’s odd to have such a large object there, the hall’s roominess accommodates Leininger’s work to paint a horse for LexArts’ Horse Mania 2022. “I live in an old house, so they used to make the big front halls,” Leininger said. “I’ve got plenty of room in there.”

Leininger is one of dozens of

artists selected to paint sponsored horses that will be on display throughout Lexington through December. “I saw [last year] that they were taking submissions to paint horses, and I thought of how much fun it would be,” she said.

“So, I got busy and submitted three designs. I was absolutely surprised when I ended up being notified that” one had been selected.

Horse Mania sponsors pay $7,500 per horse, and that sponsorship allows them to pick the design they want for their horse. More than 160 horses will be displayed at various locations throughout the city. Then, if sponsors don’t pony up another

$7,500 to purchase the statue, the horses will go on the auction block in December at Keeneland.

“Our painted horses come out, and all of our bidders get to be in that space and have fun and bid on horses as if you were buying a racehorse—a Thoroughbred—in that ring, which is really fun,” said LexArts President and CEO Ame Sweetall. “It’s a good play on the horse industry and art sector merging.”

Money raised from the auction goes back to LexArts to help fund its mission of promoting arts in the community.

Sweetall said it’s a win-win for everyone. “We’ve engaged the k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 35

corporate community, and we’ve gotten them involved in supporting the arts and local artists,” she said.

“Then, artists are doing artwork that’s going to be included in a very public art exhibit.”

Their artwork will join horses from two previous Horse Manias—in 2000 and 2010. Sweetall said the COVID-19 pandemic prevented Horse Mania from returning in 2020, so LexArts moved it to 2022 to coincide with the organization’s 50th anniversary and November’s Breeders’ Cup hosted by Keeneland Race Course.

“People who drive around and visit Lexington have enjoyed seeing these horses out on the streets for 22 years,” Sweetall said. “The artists 36 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

themselves find this to be an honor to be able to participate in such a really public and iconic art exhibit.”

• • •

Leininger, who owns stationery company Rose Street Design, began to expand her artistic skills about 10 years ago. Her oil and watercolor paintings have been exhibited at Artists’ Attic Galleries and Studios and at Kentucky Watercolor Society’s AquaVenture 2022.

Working with the horse will be her first time dealing with an outdoor acrylic medium. “It’s a fascinating process … and it’s been a learning experience for me,” she said.

One of Leininger’s submitted

designs was of Lexington’s iconic Big Lex—a blue rendition of the 19th century racehorse and stallion Lexington painted by renowned equine artist Edward Troye. Signs sporting Big Lex are prevalent throughout the city. Leininger’s design caught the eye of VisitLEX, the city’s convention and visitors bureau and one of Horse Mania’s sponsors.

“Big Lex was really the last one I submitted,” Leininger said. “I thought, ‘I love that horse, so I’ll throw that in.’ In my submission, I said I was going to make it look as much like Big Lex as I could.”

It apparently did.

“Nearly 12 years ago, VisitLEX launched our beloved Big Lex icon and instantly fell in love with Alice

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BUY YoUr gear Leininger’s design [when she submitted it last year],” said Mary Quinn Ramer, VisitLEX president.

So much so that VisitLEX bought the horse for permanent display. “Visitors and locals can find Big Lex on display at the Central Bank Center throughout Horse Mania,” Ramer said. “He will [then] have a permanent presence at the newly expanded Central Bank Center to welcome guests for years to come.”

Leininger, meanwhile, is thoroughly enjoying herself. “It’s a fun thing to be a part of, for sure,” she said. “That’s one thing about art.

Art is like playing. You can do something different all the time, anytime you want.” Q

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38 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

BY DEBORAH KOHL KREMER

Hot Tunes

in the Summertime Three exciting new venues have joined Kentucky’s sprawling outdoor entertainment scene

L

ive music under the summer sky sounds like the makings of a great experience. Last year, Kentucky was lucky enough to get three new amphitheaters in three different parts of the state, each with its own unique features. Visit their websites and social media to see up-to-date lists of acts coming this summer.

NEW PO RT

PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation 101 West 4th Street, Newport 859.900.2294 promowestlive.com

On the banks of the Ohio River in Newport stands PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation. The facility opened in

August 2021 and boasts a spectacular view of the Cincinnati skyline as well as a unique reversible stage allowing the venue to feature both indoor and outdoor shows.

The parent company, PromoWest, is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, and hosted the popular Bunbury Music Festival on the Cincinnati riverfront for several years. This led the company to create a permanent music venue in the area. It found

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 39

Entertainment

Under the Stars Check out this selection of venues for open-air concerts and shows near you!

BEAVER DAM AMPHITHEATER 217 South Main Street, Beaver Dam 270.274.7106 beaverdamtourism.com FORT THOMAS AMPHITHEATER Cochran Ave, Fort Thomas 859.441.1055 ftthomas.org FRANKLIN-SIMPSON SUMMER CONCERT SERIES Simpson County Courthouse Lawn, 100 Courthouse Square, Franklin 270.586.8482 franklinsimpsonrenaissance.com FRIDAY AFTER 5 Owensboro Riverfront 270.687.2770 fridayafter5.com HOLLER IN THE HOLLER HomeGrown HideAways, 500 Floyd Branch Road, Berea homegrownhideaways. eventbrite.com IROQUOIS AMPHITHEATER 5216 New Cut Road, Louisville 502.363.7766 iroquoisamphitheater.com LEGACY NIGHTS Legacy Grove Park. 1107 West Lexington Avenue, Winchester legacygreenscapes.org/ legacy-nights LU-RAY PARK & AMPHITHEATER 203 Lawton Way. Central City 270.754.5097 cityofcentralcity.com/ lu-ray-amplitheater continued on page 42

40 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation

what it was looking for in Newport.

“We are very happy to be where we landed,” said Marissa McClellan, PromoWest’s marketing director.

The facility offers capacity for 2,500 people indoors and 7,000 outdoors, the majority of tickets being general admission and standing room only. With the movable stage and options for having the audience inside or out, the stage gets twice as much use as an outdoor-only concert venue. If an indoor show is close to selling out, it could be moved outdoors in the warmer months, allowing more people to attend. “It definitely gives us a bit more versatility,” McClellan said.

Although it is billed primarily for concerts, the facility also hosts sporting events, wedding receptions and corporate functions. Its state-ofthe-art acoustics and lighting are

welcoming to any musical genre.

Some of the artists scheduled for outdoor appearances this summer include Wallows, Bon Iver and Death Cab for Cutie.

The venue is part of an underconstruction mixed-used development. The 25-acre project, called Ovation, is led by Covington’s Corporex, a commercial development firm. When completed, it will include a hotel, an office building, and retail and residential units covering about four city blocks.

“Newport, Covington and Newport-on-the-Levee are great partners, and everyone seems excited to have this new venue,” McClellan said. “Bars and restaurants are seeing traffic; people are coming to pregame and then to drink afterward. It is exciting to be part of this revitalization.”

SH A R PS BU R G

The Barnyard Entertainment Venue The Barnyard Venue 10005 West Ky. Hwy. 36, Sharpsburg 606.709.BARN (2276) thebarnyardvenue.com

At The Barnyard Venue, the musicians don’t have to worry about bothering the neighbors. There are no neighbors. This former-farmlandturned-amphitheater might feel a little out of the way. But the payoff is amazing.

“We’ve got incredible acoustics because the pavilion is built down in a little hole, so we’ve had artists tell us, ‘No matter what you do, don’t change this. The sound is great,’ ” said Jeffrey Vice, director of operations and co-owner. “And the way it sits, even if it is hot, we’ve always got a breeze going through there.”

The Bath County facility, which opened in July 2021, is located 50 minutes from Lexington and about two hours from Cincinnati and Louisville.

Vice worked in the music business in Nashville for many years before returning home to Mount Sterling. “I retired from the music business in 2012,” he said with a chuckle. “I thought I was done with it, and somehow, I got sucked back into it.”

After scouting for the right property, the next big decision was on the size of the amphitheater.

Originally, the developers had talked about building a venue for 500 people, but Vice said that reminded him of a field party with friends.

“We realized if we wanted to attract the right artists, it needed to be at least 2,000 people. Then, we bumped it up to 8,000 before we even opened,” he said. “This year, we can get at least 10,000 in.”

Sporting roomy stadium seating, the pavilion is similar in size to Cincinnati’s Riverbend Music Center. One big difference, Vice said, is that Riverbend, including its parking lot, sits on about 15 acres.

The Barnyard rests on 172 acres.

With all that room, there are plans to enlarge its current campground to 500 campsites by next year. This summer, in addition to big names like Lady A and Blackberry Smoke coming, The

Barnyard will host its first music festival in June with five bands. Vice said that next year, the festival will span two days and feature 10 bands, and in 2024, it will be a three-day event with 15 bands.

The owners plan to add more seating on the sides of the pavilion and hope to bring in different kinds of events such as plays and Broadway-style shows. They are excited to see the positive results spill out to the little town of Sharpsburg, which is getting a facelift from all the attention of concertgoers.

But the one thing venue owners won’t change is the serene setting.

“You feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, yet you are only 7 miles from the interstate [I-64],” Vice said.

“The sun sets to the left of the stage, so if you’re watching a show and the sun starts to go down, it is just a beautiful thing.”

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The Amp at Dant Crossing The Amp at Dant Crossing 225 Dee Head Road, Gethsemane 502.917.0710 dantcrossing.com/amp

There’s a lot going on at Dant Crossing. The 350-acre campus, located 14 miles south of Bardstown in Gethsemane, is home to a distillery, an events center, a restaurant, lodging options, and a 2,000-seat amphitheater.

The property is opening in stages—Log Still Distillery opened in May 2021; the The Amp at Dant Crossing opened in July 2021; and The Legacy events venue opened in April of this year.

“The distillery is the anchor of the property, but we want to have multiple things to do there—concerts, weddings, weekend getaways, a tasting and a tour, to name a few,” said Melody LaVon, The Amp’s general manager. “We can offer many different kinds of experiences.”

The Amp will have about 30 concerts this year—most on Friday nights through the end of October.

Some big names coming this summer are Dwight Yoakam, Billy Ray Cyrus and Diamond Rio. Restaurants in the area are scarce, so Dant Crossing hired longtime

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The Avett Brothers at Ovation

Jammin’ at The Amp at Dant Crossing

continued from page 40

MOON DANCE AMPHITHEATER 1152 Monarch Street, Lexington 859.425.2349 lexingtonky.gov/moondance MOUNTAIN HERITAGE FESTIVAL STAGE Cowan Community Center, 81 Sturgill’s Branch Road, Whitesburg 606.633.3187 cowancommunitycenter.org MUSIC ON THE LAWN Shaker Village, 3501 Lexington Road, Harrodsburg 859.734.5411 shakervillageky.org SMITH-BERRY WINERY CONCERT SERIES 855 Drennon Road, New Castle 502.845.7091 smithberrywinery.com SPRINGHOUSE MUSIC SERIES Castle & Key Distillery, 4445 McCracken Pike, Frankfort 502.395.9070 castleandkey.com/pages/book-now SUMMER CONCERT SERIES Old State Capitol Lawn, Frankfort 502.223.2261 downtownfrankfort.com/summerconcert-series.html

Churchill Downs executive chef David Danielson to head up the culinary department. He is working on menu choices for 47 & Poplar, the on-site restaurant opening next year, as well as food options for this summer.

“It won’t be the traditional menu,” LaVon said. “I’m sure we’ll have hamburgers and hot dogs, but there will be some fun items like bourbon rice crispy treats and ice cream.”

Some of the concerts will be included in a Summer Supper Series, which includes a Chef’s Table, similar to a buffet, at The Legacy

event center. “So, you can add dinner to your concert and have an additional experience,” LaVon said.

The Nelson County land where Dant Crossing is located is full of history. Once the site of Dant & Head Distillery, several generations later, the Dant family once is again making bourbon on site.

Although the location may seem remote, LaVon said visitors are just 50 minutes from either Louisville or Lexington and 20 minutes from I-65.

“You are in the wonderland of bourbon, where you can listen to great music under the stars,” she said. Q

SOUNDS ON 2ND Beaver Dam Tourism has announced another season of the popular Sounds on 2nd free concert series in downtown Beaver Dam. The tunes will fill the air on Friday nights, June through September, 7-10 p.m. The series will feature some of the area’s most talented bands and artists, many with deep ties to the community.

Outdoor Theaters The Stephen Foster Story J. Dan Talbott Amphitheatre 411 East Stephen Foster Avenue, Bardstown 502.348.5971 stephenfoster.com

Pioneer Playhouse 840 Stanford Road, Danville 859.236.2747 pioneerplayhouse.com

42 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

C. Douglas Ramey Amphitheater Central Park in Old Louisville, 1340 South Fourth Street, Louisville 502.574.9900 kyshakespeare.com

James Harrod: The Battle for Kentucky Old Fort Harrod State Park 100 South College Street Harrodsburg 859.734.3314 parks.ky.gov/Harrodsburg

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A section for Kentuckians everywhere … inside Kentucky Monthly.

The 1901 Kentucky Derby was the 27th running of the Kentucky Derby. The race took place on April 29, 1901.

K ENTUCKY XPLORER E All About Kentucky

Volume 37, Number 5 – June/July 2022

This 1934 photo is of the Durrett family at their annual family reunion at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace in Hodgenville. The relatives lived in the surrounding area as well as in Louisville. The photo is courtesy of Robert L. Durrett, of Crestview Hills. He is the toddler in the front row on the far left.

Your Letters -- page 46 Small Schools With Big Spirit -- page 48 Abraham Alexander Frizzell -- page 54

“I Remember” By Our Readers

and More!

Featuring Things Old & New About Kentucky

46

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Kentucky Explorer a magazine published for Kentuckians everywhere Charles Hayes Jr. • Founder Stephen M. Vest • Publisher Deborah Kohl Kremer • Editor Rebecca Redding • Typographist One-Year Subscription to Kentucky Monthly: $20

FOUNDED 1986, ISSUE 335, VOLUME 37, NO. 5

Letters to Kentucky Explorer Letters may be edited for clarification and brevity.

Slaughter Family Descendants June—the traditional month for brides, grads and dads—is here. Summer brings vacations and pool days, along with fun Kentucky festivals. If you are looking for somewhere to venture, look within the borders of our Commonwealth. Outdoor recreation at our wonderful state parks, boating and fishing on our countless lakes, and festivals such as the Great American Brass Band Festival (gabbf.org) in Danville and Winchester’s Beer Cheese Festival (beercheesefestival.com) are among my favorite summer activities.

Do you have memories of Kentucky summer festivals and fairs? Write ’em down and send them to me! I’d love to share them with our readers.

This month we have an interesting story about the Lincoln Marriage Temple in Harrodsburg. This is not the site of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd’s nuptials but of those of Lincoln’s parents. You would be remiss on a visit to Old Fort Harrod if you didn’t peek inside the Marriage Temple. Enjoy this month’s photos, an essay and poem about Kentucky, a Civil War story, and the “I Remember” section.

You can reach me at deb@kentuckymonthly.com or mail items to Kentucky Monthly, Attn: Deb Kremer, P.O. Box 559, Frankfort, KY 40602-0559.

Happy summer!

— DEBORAH KOHL KREMER

This photo from the Library of Congress is identified as “Somewhere between Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, 1944.”

In memory of Donna Jean Hayes, 1948-2019

For research I am doing about the enslaved, I am looking to connect with a descendant of Harry Slaughter, born enslaved to Capt. John C. Graves, on March 18, 1818, in Fayette County. Slaughter died a free man sometime after 1887 and was the father of five children.

Mikael Levin Bellport, New York email@mikaellevin.com

Genealogy Assistance I am doing genealogy research on my family in Kentucky in the 18th and 19th centuries. I am researching the following families: Bell, Summers and Watson. These are all early Kentucky families who moved into the area in the late 1700s from Virginia.

I am seeking a copy of a letter submitted to Kentucky Explorer by James L. Pyles and published in October 1997.

Do any of your readers happen to have this issue or more information on those families?

Michael Stuver Missoula, Montana mjs1006@comcast.net

Kentucky Glamour Your article (“Gilded Age Glamour in Kentucky,” March issue, page 26) sent me down memory lane. In the late 1950s or early ’60s my friend, Beth, and I were high school students intrigued by the lovely homes in what has become Old Louisville. We walked blocks admiring the architecture. We were mesmerized by the homes in St. James Court, in particular, and curious about what lay behind those beautiful façades.

Looking back, it is hard to believe how bold we were.

We invented a story in which we were University of Louisville students looking for an apartment. We knocked on doors asking if the home owners rented space and spent a pleasant afternoon touring available places. Both of us have lived away for years, so I am glad to read that those homes are being lovingly cared for.

Gay Vekovius Nashville, Tennessee Kentucky Explorer appears inside each issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine. Subscriptions can be purchased online at shopkentuckymonthly.com or by calling 1.888.329.0053.

Kentucky was admitted to the Union as the 15th state on June 1, 1792.

June/July 2022 47

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” Send your memory in today!

Memories of West Liberty I was born on a tobacco farm on a dirt road in Buskirk, about 7 miles from West Liberty in Morgan County. There was no kindergarten. Except for first grade, I went to an unnamed one-room schoolhouse. The teacher, Mildred Chaney, taught all eight grades. To get to school, I walked 1 mile on a dirt road.

I was unable to finish first grade because the road became so muddy and snow-covered that it was impossible for a 6-year-old to walk. In the second grade, I rode the school bus to West Liberty.

My father became resident highway engineer for the Kentucky Department of Highways, and when I was about 6 or 7, the road was graveled. A couple of years later, after

By Our Readers

a few trips to Frankfort to see Gov. Lawrence Wetherby, the graveled road was paved. We called it The Hard Road.

I also remember that—believe it or not—the mail was delivered by Jim Chaney in a covered horse-drawn wagon to the small one-room post office. I recall meeting Mr. Chaney on the way and getting our mail from him before he got to the post office. This was all around 1948-52.

I love my upbringing. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati and went on to a 35-year career with Ashland Oil. Each year in late September, I journey back to West Liberty for the annual Sorghum Festival.

I am a proud Kentucky Colonel.

Dick Gose, Ludlow

Because Coach Rupp Said So This is a photograph of my father, Robert Clark Stone, wearing his University of Kentucky letter sweater. Around 1936, he was a student manager for the UK basketball team. He loved to tell this one story.

One day after a game, Coach Adolph Rupp told him to stand by the locker room door and not let anyone in. Well, Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler showed up and wanted to talk to Coach Rupp and the team.

Dad told the governor to wait, and he went to tell Coach Rupp that Happy Chandler wanted to come into the locker room. Coach Rupp said, “Good Lord, son, go let the governor in.”

Stone had a long career with the FBI and later was instrumental in founding the Department of Criminal Justice Training.

Bill Stone, Louisville

Downtown Richmond, 1940s This photo is of Richmond’s West Main, taken from the intersection of Main and Second streets. Some of the businesses in view are Paul Jett Shoes, Lerman Brothers, Thomas Furniture, the Glyndon Hotel, Begley’s Drug Store, Hughes Jewelry, the White Kitchen, Marcum’s Billiards, the Masonic Temple, the Ideal Cafe, and W.F. Higgins Furniture. Photo courtesy of John Lovell, Berea.

“A life without love is like a year without summer.” Swedish proverb

4 THETHE KENTUCKY EXPLORER 48 KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Small Schools With Big Spirit

By Roger L. Guffey Lexington

nestled in the hills and hollers. Today, Floyd County’s 18 high schools have dwindled to three, Pike County from 18 to five, Perry County from 19 to one, and Knox County from 14 to two. n the early 1970s, high school boys converged on the Cheering on your home team provided a respite from library every Monday morning to check out the the oppressive burdens of life in Appalachia. High Litkenhous Ratings in the Louisville Courier-Journal for mortality rates, serious illnesses and dangerous all of the state’s basketball teams. Rooting for the home occupations plagued the region’s people, but fans gathered team was a major component of student life in Kentucky every Tuesday and Friday night to support their teams like high schools. so many hopeful Walter Mittys. In the extreme poverty of The gymnasium filled to capacity for home games, and Appalachia, school buses basketball became transported our popular because it Wayne County was inexpensive, High School requiring only a Cardinal fans to ball, a hoop, a flat the away games. place to play, and The school held five players. pep rallies to Small cheer on the community high teams and give schools afforded the school band dozens of students opportunities to the opportunity to perform. Is there play in any high school interscholastic band anywhere competitions. that did not play Before Title IX, the instrumental only boys played “The Horse” by organized sports, Cliff Nobles? but they were the Fifty-five years rock stars who later, that catchy paraded around tune is still a the town wearing mainstay of high Wayne County Basketball, 1945: front row, from left, Ray Molen, Leonard Carter, Bill their school jackets school and Kelley, Wendell Tucker, David Huffaker, and Manager Tommy Gover; back row, from left, emblazoned with college bands.

Coach Lawrence Bell, Ray Reynolds, Howard Massengale, Junior Selvidge, Bruce Golf their names and The weekly and Paul Neeley. Photo courtesy of Gwen Dick. mascots. ratings filled an A perfect storm entire page of of events was brewing that spelled the demise of small the newspaper because there were so many high schools. schools. The onset of World War II siphoned off 307,000 The Kentucky High School Athletic Association home page lists more than 1,000 high schools that have ever existed in Kentuckians to the European and Pacific theaters. After the war, the GI Bill of 1944 provided an impetus for returning the state as well as the team mascot of each school. The soldiers to pursue new vocational and educational most popular mascots were Tigers (64), Wildcats (58), opportunities. Between 1941 and 1944, very few nonBulldogs (53), Eagles (53), Cardinals (43), Panthers (40) military vehicles were produced by the Big Three and Yellowjackets (26). A few schools had unique mascots: automakers. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler dedicated Horse Cave had the Cavemen, Hazel Green the Bullfrogs, their factories to building tanks, airplanes, and Jeeps to Nicholasville the Tarantulas, and—my favorite—the Van support the war effort. By the end of the decade, Lear Bank Mules. automotive and other factories had retooled again to The high schools were focal points of the communities, produce civilian vehicles. All they needed was a labor with enthusiastic fans who supported their teams. force.

Outsiders may have trouble truly understanding how These industrial giants found just what they needed in isolating the rough topography of Appalachia can be. With Appalachia and surrounding areas. To young people facing limited bus transportation and substandard roadways, physically demanding and dangerous lives in the mines, many students had to walk to the numerous schools

I

Virginia’s Kentucky County was abolished on June 30, 1780, and divided into Fayette, Jefferson and Lincoln counties.

June/July 2022 49

homecoming parade farms and sawmills, and marched the assembly lines through town to were a walk in the cheer on their park. The work ethic beloved Cardinals. and eagerness of the Seniors held an migrants convinced autumn carnival and the industries that sold magazine these people could subscriptions, candy be taught to do a and other wide variety of merchandise to raise tasks. Nearly every money to pay for a family in the senior trip to mountains saw Washington and children join the New York City, great northern places most of them exodus to the Monticello High School girls and boys basketball teams, 1927-28: front row, from would never have greener pastures of left, Oral Bertram, Frank Duncan, Fred Tate, Leonard Noe, Eugene Anderson, Henry gotten to visit Detroit, Miller and Bill Wray; back row, from left, Coach George Taylor, Margaret Lee, otherwise.

Indianapolis, Mildred Phillips, Sybil Spann, Mary Lena Hurt, Mable Noe, Mary Dodson and Even worse, the Kokomo and Pauline Back. Photo courtesy of Gwen Dick. communities of the Cleveland. Between mountains have 1960 and 1970, the diminished the oral traditions population of my home of the vanished basketball county, Wayne, declined teams. One of the best by 10.8 percent. As young examples is the Carr Creek people migrated north to Indians. The 1928 team from start their own families, Knott County did not even have the number of school-age uniforms until fans in children declined Richmond bought them when dramatically, and the the team won the regional title. small high schools no All eight of the players were longer were economically related, and the team traveled sustainable. to the national tournament in The energy crisis and In 1916, the first basketball gym in Wayne County was built at Chicago. Billed as the “Barefoot rust belt collapse Monticello School. Funding was raised by the senior class, Boys,” they created such a stemmed the tide after with matching funds from the school board. It was located at national frenzy that a wealthy 1970. Between 1970 and College and Cave streets near the school. This photo, taken in Northerner offered to buy them 1980, the migrating 1922, is courtesy of Gwen Dick. shoes. Even actor and comic workers retired and Will Rogers heralded their unlikely success. moved back home. Unfortunately, their children and The story of Carr Creek is just one of the hundreds of grandchildren did not relocate because they had no remarkable stories about the heroes of the small high connection to the mountains; they would never root for school teams. I seriously doubt that students today— the Marion Blue Terrors or the Joppa Bloodhounds. distracted by cell phones, the internet, Instagram and the The consolidation of small schools met considerable temptations of drugs and alcohol—will ever have stories opposition from fans who wanted to preserve the athletic that will be remembered so fondly by so many traditions of the schools. What would happen to the Kentuckians a generation from now. trophies and memorabilia of their beloved teams? Sadly, The Howell Hustlin’ Owls, the Benham Tigers and the most were discarded or lost in the transition to the new Flat Gap Greyhounds have gone the way of the passenger schools. pigeon, driven to extinction by the inexorable march of Larger high schools offered a more diverse and progress. Still, my curiosity got the better of me and I had advanced curriculum with modern facilities and betterto research what the Van Lear “Bank Mule” was. A bank trained faculties, but they also had unforeseen mule hauled the coal mined from the underground seams consequences. Student anonymity allowed drugs, gangs, to the surface. What could be a more fitting high school violence and guns to filter into the schools. Educational basketball team mascot than one so intimately linked to experts now recommend the maximum high school size to the lifeblood of the community? be between 700 and 1,000 students, but the chances of Even today, two score and 10 years later, I still hear an breaking up the big high schools are slim to none. old cheer echoing down the halls of my memories: Students today have lost many of the intangibles One, two, three, four, Let’s go Cardinals, SCORE, associated with small schools. At Wayne County High SCORE, SCORE! School, the classes and clubs built floats for the

Henry Clay died June 9, 1852, and Abraham Lincoln delivered the eulogy for his political idol.

6 THETHE KENTUCKY EXPLORER 50 KENTUCKY EXPLORER

The Lincoln Marriage Cabin and Temple

By Bobbi Rightmyer Harrodsburg “The cabin in which Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln were wed … is housed in a church-like structure known as the Lincoln Marriage Temple.”

— From In Lincoln’s Footsteps: A Historical Guide to the Lincoln Sites in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky

by Don Davenport

T

homas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, the parents of President Abraham Lincoln, were married on June 12, 1806, in the log cabin of Richard Berry in the small community of Beechland near Springfield in Washington County. Berry was Nancy’s uncle and guardian, and his cabin was 25 miles southwest of Harrodsburg. Over time, the property passed from the Berry family to W.A. Clements of Springfield.

In 1911, permission was granted to move the cabin to the grounds of the Harrodsburg Historical Society (the current location of Old Fort Harrod State Park), and the minutes of the society meeting in May 1911 note the cabin was a gift from Clements. The logs were transported to Harrodsburg for $17 and stored at the new site until funds could be raised to rebuild it. In May 1913, the cabin was reassembled on the historical society’s Old Fort Hill property near the Pioneer Cemetery for $261.

In 1931, Mrs. Edmund B. Hall of Ball Corporation (glass home-canning jars) fame from Indiana donated the money to build a brick temple to enclose the cabin and protect it from the elements. The cabin was disassembled one last time and moved to its current location inside the temple near the entrance of Old Fort Harrod State Park.

The brick temple is modeled after the Lulbegrud Church, founded in 1799 near Mount Sterling. The architect was Frederick L. Morgan of Louisville. It was constructed of handmade brick in Flemish bond in the shape of a cross. The marriage cabin is directly under the cross’ intersection and near an opening that leads to a spire and belfry.

The newly protected cabin and brick temple were dedicated on June 12, 1931, the 125th anniversary of the Lincoln wedding. The dedication was attended by Kentucky Gov. Fleming D. Sampson and William Nuckles Doak, secretary of labor with the President Herbert Hoover administration, along with Mrs. Ball.

From the outside, the Lincoln Marriage Temple looks like a small old-fashioned brick church, but inside, there are no pews or altars, just the log cabin. Several bronze plaques on the interior brick walls of the temple affirm the cabin’s significance. Tom Lincoln was singled out for his “powerful physique” and “temperate habits.” As for Nancy Hanks, “her name will ever be an inspiration to the motherhood of every land.”

Lincoln and Hanks were married by Rev. Jesse Head.

July is the hottest month in Kentucky, with an average high temperature of 86.7 degrees.

June/July 2022 51

The marriage bond signed by Lincoln and Berry and witnessed by John H. Parrott is dated June 10, 1806, and the minister’s return of marriage was lodged in the records of the Washington County courthouse in Springfield. This cabin was the first home of the young couple.

Later, enemies of President Lincoln tried to dishonor him by spreading a story that alleged his father and mother were never married. This became a popular rumor. In 1882, Dr. William Eleazar Barton of Evansville, Indiana, spoke with Harrodsburg citizen Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, who claimed to be at the Lincoln-Hanks wedding.

Graham wrote of the celebration: “I came to the LincolnHanks wedding in 1806. Rev. or Judge Jesse Head was one of the most prominent men there, as he was able to own slaves, but did not on principle. Next came Mordecai Lincoln, at one time a member of the Kentucky Legislature.” He also wrote of the wedding feast with bear meat, venison, wild turkey, ducks and “a sheep that the two families barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juices in.”

Graham was born at Worthington’s Station near Danville in 1784. For years, he was the owner of the famous Harrodsburg Springs, where he operated the Graham Springs Hotel. In 1852, he sold this property to the War Department of the United States as a retreat for

invalid military officers. After the sale of the springs, he spent time in study and in arranging his fine collection of files on Kentucky geology and natural history before selling it to the Louisville Library Association.

On May 11, 1934, James L. Isenberg, director of the Pioneer Memorial Association, spoke before the Springfield Historical Society during an open meeting at the courthouse. He explained his ideas and inspiration for the founding and development of Pioneer Memorial State Park and the addition of the Lincoln Marriage Temple. Isenberg was invited to talk on this phase of historical community development because the recently formed Springfield Historical Society wanted to capitalize on the old properties in the area connected with the Lincoln family as tourist attractions.

Old Fort Harrod State Park is located at 100 South College Street in Harrodsburg and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. The interior of the Lincoln Marriage Temple can be viewed when the park is open, and the exterior can be seen at any time. For more information, visit parks.ky.gov/harrodsburg.

Right, a postcard of the Lincoln cabin after it was first reconstructed near the Pioneer Cemetery in 1913.

From the collection of Bobbi Rightmyer; below, the Lincoln Marriage Temple today. Photo by Keith Rightmyer; below right, the 1931 Lincoln Temple Dedication. Photo from the Armstrong Archives; opposite page, the cabin was moved to its present location in 1931. Visible in the photo are Mrs. Edmund B. Ball (white collar) and the brickwork of the Marriage Temple that was constructed around the cabin. From the collection of Bobbi Rightmyer.

Kentucky’s hottest day on record was July 28, 1930, when it reached 114 degrees in Greensburg.

52

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

The Dropleaf Table

By James Silas Rogers St. Paul, Minnesota jjsrminn@gmail.com

M

“readers write” competition in the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper and was proud of its publication.

I grew up to spend a career among books and writing. For all her humility, Grandma was the first poet I ever knew. She imparted the lesson that paying attention to words was a worthy use of time and also that literature should concern itself with the past, that memory was the wellspring of writing.

I certainly never heard my grandmother recite the poem, but I know the lines as if I just heard them spoken:

y Grandmother Rogers wore her Kentucky origins lightly.

By the time her grandchildren came along, the former Mary Wigginton of Stamping Ground had been away from her home state for close to 50 years and spoke without a trace of an accent (unless you count saying “skillet” instead of “frying pan”). Nonetheless, to my siblings and me—growing up on the outskirts of St. Paul, Minnesota—she was always our Kentucky A smell of sweaty saddle grandmother. a hemp field rinsed with rain There were only a few Southern as I ride a sorrel gelding knickknacks in her home: an ashtray down a lush Kentucky lane. shaped like her home state (though no one ever smoked in her presence) and Earthy smells leap out in those a ceramic Kentucky cardinal. But lines. So, too, does the young woman’s alongside the wall of her living room awareness of her own was a dropleaf body as the horse table on which my canters. father, a one-time The dropleaf table commercial artist, has stayed in the had lettered family—her greatGrandma’s fourgrandson Charlie, stanza poem, born 40 years after “Wilted her death, now owns Bluegrass.” it—but it no longer The poem was links us to a Southern uncharacteristic of past. He stripped and her in several refinished it years ways. ago, literally scraping Grandma was away Grandma’s unpretentious, and wistful memory that the poem was Portrait of the author’s grandmother, poem. on display was painted by her friend, Beatrice My grandmother unlike her. I have Holmes in 1962. might very well have no doubt that she wrote many poems over the years, and been glad to see it go. On the whole, she had almost nothing good to say she had a great store of 19th century about the South, though from time to poetry committed to memory—along time—in this poem and scattered with the New Testament, which she conversations—she would betray a could recite. memory of Kentucky that was, as she I suspect she burned or discarded wrote in the first stanza, “lush.” The all of her other verse, as a fear of novelist Vladimir Nabokov believed calling attention to herself had been the children of czarist Russia were drilled into her as a girl, and she blessed with heightened memories to believed a Christian woman was compensate for the great losses they commanded to stay humble. But she had suffered. I wonder if something entered “Wilted Bluegrass” in a

My grandmother’s poem of Kentucky similar happened for Grandma.

Usually, she refused to surrender to such memories, but there were lapses in her vigilance. One afternoon at the lake, she went on for an hour about the fruit crops of Kentucky, a subject that came up when she mentioned that she had never seen an orange until she was 35. As she spoke of the hard-bitten harvests of her youth, it was clear that all of the fruit she recalled was smaller, vastly more difficult to grow and gather, and impossible to store. But much sweeter.

Other Kentucky memories contained pockets of exoticism that existed nowhere in my suburban childhood. For years, her family kept a mockingbird with a broken wing in a cage, but the bird died after someone fed it a bee that was not dead but only dormant.

Another memory is of Grandma going out for a ride on her horse, Bluebell, one morning. She bit into a biscuit her mother had just taken from the oven, only to find it was not fully baked, so she threw it into a stream.

Several years later, she found the biscuit fossilized by the limestone in the water, her tooth marks still in the stone. As a boy, I yearned to hold that fossilized biscuit, which had been lost somewhere along the way.

In 1910, at age 21, she married my grandfather, who was 18 years her senior and not even close to her intellectual equal, and she moved with him to Minnesota. She was a frail, plain young woman. Her move north meant an escape—probably the only escape open to her from the stultification of small-town life. My grandfather, whom I never met, went home frequently for weddings, funerals and the autumn harness racing season. Grandma went back, only reluctantly, for summertime visits to his family.

Publicly, Grandma disliked sentimentality. She loathed nostalgia.

She loved modern convenience. A corollary was that she thought the nascent environmental movement of the 1970s, to which my brother and I

President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a federal gold vault to be built in Fort Knox on June 28, 1936.

52 K E NT U C K Y M O NT H LY NOV EMBER 2 0 2 0

June/July 2022 53

were devoted, was nothing but mistyeyed romanticism. The study club at her Presbyterian church provided one of her important social outlets. At one point, she prepared and delivered a talk for the study club titled “The Good Old Days … That Never Were.”

Grandma believed in progress. She prized stainless steel cookware, remembered the arrival of her first washing machine as one of the greatest days of her life, and said she would have been happy to eat convenience food from McDonald’s for the rest of her life.

She would never have admitted to bitterness, but she had a childhood filled with suffering and routine privations.

All three of her brothers had died of childhood illnesses; her only sister was killed at 11 when a barn door crushed her in a windstorm.

Springtime in Kentucky always brought a month of isolation because the roads were too muddy to travel.

The cultural isolation continued yearround. She hinted that she had once been in love with a boy named Cunningham, but her parents broke it off because he was Catholic.

Grandma’s mother was a meddlesome, hyper-controlling woman, who, on one occasion, snatched a novel Grandma was reading out of her hands and threw it into the fire because someone at church had told her the novel mentioned a divorced woman.

Grandma recalled Election Day not as a civic celebration but as a day when someone was likely to be murdered in a liquor-fueled fight.

Her memories of schooling were especially painful. She watched helplessly as promising children were pulled out of school at age 8 to help in the fields, never to go back. She watched farm boys beaten for not being able to read the blackboard when it was clear to my grandmother that they simply needed glasses. In her own experience, she suffered the same sort of inflexibility, as she was born blind in her right eye and partially paralyzed on her right side but was forbidden to use her left hand predominantly.

All the same, there was an attractive earthiness in the tumbledown Kentucky she had left behind. The second stanza retrieves that world: A vagrant whiff of mildew a smell that’s green and dank I shove a rotting john-boat from the Elkhorn’s muddy bank.

Mildew, dankness and a rotting boat cast adrift—she would deny it, but the good old days that she insisted never were also carried an alluring trace of something elemental.

The poem in her living room was nakedly elegiac.

The last two stanzas move away from the immediacy and sensuality of the others. Grandma was exceptionally well-read; she generally finished a book a day, and it’s not surprising that she would invoke the classical god of drink in the third stanza, though her family had supported the Prohibition Party in Kentucky, and I doubt she ever had a

glass of wine in her life, it comes across as mannered: A luscious fruity fragrance One of Bacchus’ favorite scents And I see pale blue grape clusters On a stake-and-ridered fence.

This stanza reflects another of those moments when she forgot to insist that things are better now.

When I asked her what a “stake-andridered fence” was, she fondly explained the inefficient structures and recalled the rabbits and bobwhite quail that found shelter and freedom along the fence lines that could not be cultivated.

But as much as she may have loved the weedy, wild places near the fences, she was never allowed—and never allowed herself—to idle there.

In the last stanza of Grandma’s poem, she steps away from direct recollections.

Through my Minnesota window Southern breezes fan my bed and I weave a magic carpet using fragrances for thread.

Today, I recognize that the tidiness of this stanza rings false—language that could have come from a commercial greeting card. Back then, of course, I didn’t recognize the triteness; I merely marveled at the rhyme.

Nor did I recognize that the disappointing last stanza was by no means the only time that, by yielding to convention, my grandmother lost a lot.

William Mason Memorial Hospital in Murray was established in 1910 and served the community until 1947. This building was razed in 1979. The local hospital in the area today is the Murray-Calloway County Hospital.

Actor Harry Dean Stanton was born in West Irvine on July 14, 1926.

54

THE KENTUCKY EXPLORER

Abraham Alexander Frizzell, Corn Crops and Confederate Prisons

By Joseph Burgess Frankfort

I

fervor until he died in 1932. He grew up on his father’s farm with three older brothers who also showed love of country. The three each joined a Kentucky volunteer regiment a year to two years after Abraham joined Peay’s company, which in December 1861 became Company D of the 11th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army.

About a week after the Battle of Shiloh, Frizzell fell ill with typhoid and pneumonia. He was moved from his regimental field hospital to Hamburg Army Hospital in Evansville, Indiana, where he spent several weeks continuing to survive both maladies and their dubious treatments, and then he was sent home for 20 days to fully recuperate. Meanwhile, as a part of the Army of the Ohio, his regiment was operating against the Confederacy’s Army of Mississippi in Mississippi, across Alabama, and back into Tennessee, where the army appeared to be poised to invade Kentucky.

n June 1862, Abraham Alexander Frizzell, a recently turned 18-year-old private in the Union Army, was absent from his volunteer infantry regiment, which was part of the Union Army of the Ohio in the deep South trying to catch and engage the Confederate Army of Mississippi. He was home on the family farm, tending a newly planted corn crop. Had the young Kentuckian deserted and was likely to face unpleasant consequences if caught? Well, no.

Frizzell already had fought in his first Civil War battle, the Battle of Shiloh, on the Tennessee River in southwest Tennessee. The April 6-7, 1862, battle was the bloodiest to that date in what became a war of bloodier battles. Union forces won the battle, pushing the Confederates back into Mississippi on the second day. Frizzell’s infantry regiment was one of 12 from Kentucky that helped with the Union win.

Frizzell was from Woodbury, a village on the Green River in Butler County. He had lied about his age in September 1861 when he enrolled for three years in Capt. Newman Peay’s company in neighboring Muhlenberg County. His age was recorded as 21; his height, 6 feet. The latter is likely correct, for he had grown to 6 feet 3 inches when the war ended in 1865. But he was 17, born in April 1844. His stature and his beard probably made him appear well over age 18, the presidentially mandated minimum in 1861 for enrolling without parental consent, which he likely didn’t have.

According to family lore, Frizzell loved Left, Corp. Abraham A. Frizzell struck a Napoleon-style pose for the studio photographer, likely in 1863 when his 11th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Union Army) was mounted for operations growing a good crop of against marauding guerrilla and outlaw bands in southern Kentucky; right, well into his 80s, Frizzell corn as much as he loved celebrated Independence Day, a tradition he observed for decades following his service in the the United States, which Union Army during the Civil War. he showed with patriotic Mary Todd Lincoln died of a stroke at age 63 on July 16, 1882.

June/July 2022 55

Frizzell decided that, while he was home and feeling fitter, he would plant the family’s annual corn crop. His father was either in ill health leading to his death or had died (incomplete records show only that he died in 1862, and his tombstone and grave in a cemetery beside Green River were washed away in a massive flood), two of his brothers possibly were absent, and a corn crop was imperative.

Frizzell got a local doctor to write to Hamburg Hospital extending his furlough for 20 days; another willing doctor in nearby Morgantown later did the same.

Corn-ear silks were drying on a good crop when in September Frizzell reported back to his regiment in nearby Bowling Green with the Army of the Ohio. The army was replenishing there as it raced toward Louisville to head off the invasion of Kentucky and Louisville by the Army of Mississippi, moving up from east Tennessee.

The long absence from his regiment didn’t cause Frizzell problems. In fact, when he returned, he was promoted to corporal. He marched with his regiment to Louisville and then on southeastward to where the Army of the Ohio and the Army of Mississippi met and clashed at Perryville in Kentucky’s biggest Civil War battle on Oct. 8. Frizzell’s regiment was involved in outlying skirmishes and then in helping push the Confederates back into east Tennessee.

Over the next nearly two years, Frizzell and his regiment fought valiantly. They were part of the Army of the Cumberland in the bloody Dec. 31, 1862, and Jan. 2, 1863, Battle of Stone’s River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

They mounted to pursue and capture or kill members of guerrilla and outlaw bands who were infesting midsouthern Kentucky through the summer of 1863. They rode their mounts to Knoxville, to reinforce Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s command, where they fought in several small battles in the fall of 1863. They were trapped in and fought out of the 21-day siege of Knoxville by Gen. James Longstreet’s army. In the winter, they returned to Kentucky, were dismounted, and in late winter 1864 marched back to east Tennessee, where they joined a brigade that until June guarded a river bridge against Confederate interference with communication and supply lines for Gen. William T. Sherman’s armies in their march from Chattanooga to Atlanta. After that, the 11th joined Sherman’s armies near Marietta and was involved in more than a half-dozen battles along the path to Atlanta and in the siege of that important city.

In late August, Sherman determined that if he could cut the railroad supply lines of the Confederate Army holding Atlanta, it would have to evacuate the town. On Aug. 25, Sherman moved six of his seven infantry corps against the supply lines. Frizzell was taken prisoner by the Confederates that day, according to his company muster roll, although another official record states that he was taken prisoner on Aug. 19. On that date, his regiment was just south of Atlanta, skirmishing against Confederate Army fortifications as the Union forces continued their siege of the town.

Whichever day he was captured, the Kentucky farm boy was sent to the Confederacy’s infamous Andersonville

Prison, from where he was transferred to the alsoinfamous Millen (aka Camp Lawton) Prison on Nov. 11.

Meanwhile, after the Confederate Army at Atlanta evacuated the city, the 11th maneuvered through Georgia and into Tennessee, from where, in mid-November in a cruelly ironic turn, it was ordered to proceed to Louisville and then to Bowling Green to be mustered out of service on Dec. 16, 1864.

On April 28, 1865, following the surrender on April 20 by the Confederacy’s District of Georgia, Frizzell was “paroled” at Jacksonville, Florida, to U.S. officials by what had become former Confederate officials. After stops at Camp Parole, Maryland, on May 11 and Camp Chase, Ohio, on May 20, he arrived in Louisville and was mustered out of the U.S. Army on May 29. He had been paid through Feb. 19, 1864 and was due $100. It’s not known among Frizzell’s descendants if he spent any of the money on seed corn for a late crop that year.

Frizzell died on Nov. 21, 1932 as a widower and Civil War pensioner at a daughter’s home near Beaver Dam in Ohio County, where he had moved and farmed and famously celebrated the Fourth of July. In middle age, ill health resulting from his long-ago bouts with typhoid and pneumonia caused him to give up, among other things down on the farm, the growing of corn.

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Buffalo Trace is the oldest continually operating distillery in America.

past tense/present tense

by Bill Ellis

Accents and Place Names

I

love the varied accents of our Commonwealth as well as in the rest of the English-speaking world. Moreover, place names are always intriguing.

The name “Kentucky” has interesting origins. Is it based on the Iroquoian “Ken-tah-ten,” meaning “land of tomorrow”? I have seen it written as “Ken-ta-tah.” Or did it come from the Wyandot tribe’s word for plain or meadow, as referring to the central part of the state? And was it really called the “dark and bloody ground?”

The “dark and bloody ground” reference undoubtedly is more folklore than fact. “Ken-tah-ten” is probably more correct and was changed to “Kentucky” by early European settlers as was the Kentucky River, which is entirely within the state.

From Erlanger to Tompkinsville; Hickman to Belfry; London, Kentucky, to London, England, I have always loved to hear other people speak English in their native pronunciation. To my ear, it is all interesting.

Folks trained in the art of guessing where a person has grown up by their pronunciation often can determine a person’s origin after they speak 10 words or so. Over the years, I found that Eastern Kentucky University students who had grown up in a military family and had lived in different states—and sometimes other countries—spoke with a standard American accent, not identifiable with any region.

My wife and I once knew an English couple. Spencer was easily understood, while his wife, Dorrie—an Eastend Londoner with a stronger accent—presented a problem. I could understand her speech only by standing in front of her and watching her lips move. Spencer and Dorrie were a joy to take on an extended trip around Kentucky several years ago. When I told Spencer that we had made reservations at a truly unique motel, Wigwam Village, which we pronounce as “wig-wom,” he said he wasn’t interested in staying in a wigwam, thinking it was a tent, and he placed an emphasis on “wham” as the ending of word. But we did stay there, and he loved a real taste of Americana.

• • •

When I was growing up, we Shelby Countians of the Snow Hill sub-species had a distinct pronunciation of certain place names. Louisville was pronounced Lou-avull. Elmburg was Elemburg; Frankfort was Frankfurt (as in frankfurter), while Waddy, Peytona and Bagdad were pronounced in the proper way. We pronounced Shelbyville as expected, but my Buzzard Roost Road Grandmother Stratton always pronounced it “Shubville.”

Place names have always intrigued me. These names all but disappear quickly if they do not have incorporation or a post office.

Bereft of my usual reference books while a “snowbird” Readers may contact Bill Ellis at editor@kentuckymonthly.com 56 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

in Florida last winter, I looked up websites on a wet, cold day in Daytona Beach and found more than one that intrigued me. Only in Your State (onlyinyourstate.com) provided interesting place names, and there are others.

Robert M. Rennick’s Kentucky Place Names and From Red Hot to Monkey’s Eyebrow: Unusual Kentucky Place Names are the most authoritative books on the subject.

Kentucky apparently has dozens of place names of biblical origin. I am familiar with several, including Lebanon, Hebron, Corinth, Antioch, Bethany and Bethlehem. An extensive online article by T.P. Field, “Religious Place-Names in Kentucky,” includes dozens more, the naming influenced by religious folk and religious movements through the years.

• • •

Questions regarding place names abound. Why is Liberty west of West Liberty? (Publisheer Vest claims to know the answer.) Is Sublimity City in Laurel County really up to its name? In the Metcalfe County community of Summer Shade, does shade occur in other seasons?

Many names of Kentucky towns and cities are found in other states, including Louisville, Bowling Green, Shelbyville and Lexington.

Actress Patricia Neal was born in Packard, a coal town in Whitley County that has now all but disappeared. Actor Warren Oates was born in Depoy in Muhlenberg County.

Abraham Lincoln was born on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, while Jefferson Davis was born near Fairview in Christian County.

Towns have been inundated by an impoundment of a lake, such as Kuttawa and Eddyville when Lake Barkley was created, and then been reborn at a higher elevation.

Why are there so few Native American place names in Kentucky? Marshall Myers, the author of Only in Old Kentucky: Historic True Tales of Cultural Ingenuity and other books, emailed me that his source told him that “Kentuckians hated Indians so much they wouldn’t name anything the least Indian-sounding.” I have heard that from other folks as well. Is Paducah really named for Shawnee Chief Paduke? Shannoah was an ancient Shawnee settlement in Greenup County. What is now called Indian Old Fields in Clark County was the site of another Shawnee settlement, Eskippakithiki. Many states, including our surrounding neighbors, have a greater number of Native American place names.

But what of Helechawa in Wolfe County? Is it of Native American origin? No, it is the combination of the first letters of the name of Helen Chase Walbridge, the daughter of the railway president who founded the town.

While living in Jackson years ago, I was told a joke. A drunk got off the train in Helechawa but returned quickly when he interpreted a sign to read “Hell Each Way.”

KET producer Tom Thurman claims Christiansburg in Shelby County as his birthplace, while nearby Bagdad proudly claims to be the birthplace of Gov. Martha Layne Collins.

I was fortunate to have received a Fulbright Grant to Massey University in New Zealand in 1989.

Although we spoke the same language, Pakeha (European) New Zealanders often confounded me.

For example, when I went to open a banking account, the helpful bank employee said, “You want to • • • open a cheeking account!” I learned to love their Everyone has favorite place pronunciations, but truth be told, names of unusual origin. Berry the Maori (native New Craig, the author of several books Zealanders) were more easily about Kentucky and a western understood.

Kentuckian, includes the names of New Zealand has many old What shall we call the place where Old Bill finally Monkey’s Eyebrow in Ballard place names from its colonial days, caught a fish?

County, Possum Trot in Marshall including Wellington and County, and Fancy Farm and Palmerston North, where we lived.

Dublin in Graves County among his favorites.

I always mispronounced until corrected Maori place names Fred Landrum of Jackson, my colleague from Lees such as Opotiki, Taupo, Tauranga and Paraparaumu. Natural Junior College days, includes the names of Rowdy, areas in that country have both Pakeha and Maori names.

Redbird, Hardshell, Soft Shell, Dry Bread, Snake Valley, What do you consider to be Kentucky’s most unusual Blue Diamond and Clayhole among his favorite and place names? Do you live in or near one? somewhat unusual eastern Kentucky place names.

On a trip through North Dakota some years ago, we stopped at another old railroad town, Havre. According to our guide on a tour of Havre “underground” (which is a much too long story for this column), the town’s name originated with two men arguing over a female.

One said to the other, “You can have her,” shortened to “Havre.”

Actually, a railroad executive named the town for Le Havre, France.

Of Bourbon & Baitcasting Thursday, June 14, 7 to 9 pm

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Featuring discussion with authors William Hinkebein and Art Lander and a tasting of 3 historic bourbons with special ties to the Kentucky fishing reel.

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gardening

by Walt Reichert

Summer Chores

S

o, you sat in your recliner all winter poring through catalogs and dreaming about your summer garden. Well, here it is. And it’s hot and humid; your deodorant has failed; and you’re over it already.

Sorry, there’s work to be done. Go at it in the early morning, rest in the afternoon, and work again in the evening. You can do this. Here’s a list of summer gardening chores in case you’re inclined to forget.

LAWNS The bluegrass and fescue grasses we grow in our lawns are far better suited to the climate of northern Europe, where they came from, than they are to Kentucky’s summers. They don’t like our heat and humidity. If you insist on an emerald-green lawn all summer, you must supply at minimum an inch of water every week if the rains don’t come.

It’s far better to let the lawn go dormant during hot, dry weather; it will recuperate when it’s cooler and wetter. When you mow, be sure to set the blades to at least 3.5 inches; 4 inches is better. The taller lawn may look like amber waves of grain to you, but leaving the grass at 4 inches shades out weeds and retains moisture. Scalping the grass does not reduce the number of times you have to mow; it just allows weeds to creep in, and weeds need to be mowed more frequently than the grass.

58 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2 0 2 2

ANNUALS The annuals in pots and beds that you planted in May could be starting to look a little ragged about now. If you didn’t plant them with a slowrelease fertilizer in the spring, now would be a good time to add some.

Osmocote is one brand name of slow-release fertilizer that should be easy to find.

Another chore is dead-heading— removing the spent blooms. Many annuals, especially impatiens and petunias, have been bred to deadhead without your intervention, but others still require removing spent blossoms to spur more blooms. While you’re pulling off the old blossoms, check for insects and disease damage.

Catching these issues early makes it more likely that you can accomplish effective damage control.

PERENNIAL BEDS Many perennials, especially the Kentucky natives, are at their best this time of year. Like annuals, many benefit from removing spent blossoms. Perennials planted in the spring are especially vulnerable to dry spells that older plants tolerate better; be sure to keep them watered during droughts.

Most perennials are best fertilized in the spring before new growth starts, so leave off that chore, but do check for insect and disease damage.

If your perennials are visited by bees, however, hold off on spraying

insecticides, especially while the plants are in bloom. If the insect damage is severe and you think you’ll lose the plant if you don’t spray, wait until it’s nearly dark outside, when the bees are back at the hive.

VEGETABLE GARDEN If you have a summer vegetable garden, you are likely spending most of your gardening time there. You need to be picking vegetables in a timely manner, keeping weeds down, and even thinking about planting a fall crop. Yes, it can be exhausting.

If you want to keep vegetables producing, don’t let the fruit get too large and start to set seed. This is especially challenging with summer squashes, okra and cucumbers, which need monitoring almost daily.

Squashes can go from a fruit no larger than your thumb to caveman club size in two or three days. Even if you have to throw the squashes on the compost pile, keep them picked.

Keeping the vegetable garden weed free is the task I fail at most often. I’ve learned that I’m never going to eliminate all the weeds. So, I set a goal of at least not letting them go to seed. Some weeds, such as pigweed, can produce as many as 20,000 seeds per plant that can persist in the soil up to 20 years. If you can keep weeds from seeding, you go a long way to reducing weeding chores next year.

And remember the fall garden.

Let the fun begin in Grant County!

The cole crops, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, grow better in the fall in Kentucky than they do in spring. But these plants often can be hard to find. If you start your own from seed, the middle of July is a good time to begin. You’ll want to set them outside in late August.

visitgrantky.com 800-382-7117

TREES AND SHRUBS Too often, trees and shrubs planted in the spring get neglected once they’re in the ground. They’re left to suffer drought, weed competition and string-trimmer attacks. Mulching 2-4 inches deep after planting goes a long way to helping your trees and shrubs weather all three enemies. Mulch holds soil moisture, reduces weed competition, and keeps lawn mowers and string trimmers away from the still-tender trunks. Just keep the mulch a few inches away from the trunk and, for heaven’s sake, don’t make those mulch volcanoes like too many of the landscape companies insist on doing.

Even though you have mulched, it is still a good idea to water trees and shrubs. Plant experts at the University of Kentucky say they should be kept well-watered the first three years after planting. It’s not easy to remember to do, but you do have a large investment in money and time in a tree. Using a soaker hose or one of those “alligator” bags may help with that chore.

Readers may contact Walt Reichert at editor@kentuckymonthly.com k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 59

field notes

by Gary Garth

Outdoor Summer Fun

S

ummer is upon us. Not officially, of course. The 2022 summer solstice will not roll across Kentucky until the early hours of June 21. But for practical purposes—camping, hiking, canoeing, fishing, biking, picnicking, paddling, sailing, sunbathing, cookouts, swimming, boating, water skiing, road trips, sunburns, kayaking, rock climbing, sweating, spelunking, walking, wading—summer is here.

Get out and enjoy it.

But expect crowds. You’re not the only one itching to get out of the house.

Options are limited only by time, budget and willingness.

Fishing? What would you like to catch? Catfish (blues, channel, flathead and more). Sunfish (warmouth, bluegill, redear, rock bass, smallmouth bass, spotted bass, largemouth bass and more). Temperate bass (whites, yellows, striped, hybrid striped). Trout (rainbows, cutthroats, brown and brook). Sauger. Carp. Walleye.

Muskellunge. It’s a long list. Regardless of where you live in the Commonwealth, fish are swimming nearby. No boat? Kentucky is drained by more wadable streams than can be fished in a lifetime and is dotted with hundreds of lakes and ponds harboring miles of bank access. City dwellers who want to fish close to home should check out the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Fishing in Neighborhoods program. Go to fw.ky.gov and click on 60 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY JUNE/ JULY 2 0 2 2

“fishing.” It’s loaded with good information. All you need is a fishing license.

Jefferson County urbanites shouldn’t overlook the Parklands of Floyds Fork, which also is a superb paddling destination.

Camping? If you’re looking for a full-facility campsite (with running water, electrical hookups, nearby restrooms and showers) or a place to park your RV or camping trailer, reservations are recommended, especially if your travel plans include a Friday and/or Saturday night. If you’re content with fewer frills or can go primitive, your options expand. Kentucky Tourism (kentuckytourism.com) can help. So can Kentucky state parks (parks.ky.gov). The Land Between the Lakes and the Daniel Boone National Forest (landbetweenthelakes.us and fs.usda.gov/dbnf) offer enough camping options to fill a lifetime of summers.

Hiking? From the Hematite Trail at LBL to the Cumberland Falls Moonbow Trail, hiking options abound.

Some of the state’s trails—including the 11-mile Moonbow Hike—are strenuous. Allow more time than you think you’ll need. Others, such as the jaunt around Hematite Trail, are easy. Some trails are ADA/wheelchair accessible.

Regardless of which path you follow, wear supportive, protective footwear. A walking stick also is a good idea.

Carry water and don’t forget the insect repellent. A Kentucky summer turns up the heat and comes with mosquitos, ticks and other annoying critters. Snakes sometimes live along the trail, too. Most are harmless, but a few are not. Watch where you step. And learn to identify and avoid poison ivy and its kin. Details are at healthline.com/health/how-to-identify-poison-ivy.

Paddling? I’ve been paddling a canoe since before I could legally drive an automobile. It remains a favorite summer outing. If you want a paddling ride, canoes, kayaks and paddle boards can be rented at numerous locations, including full-service outfitter Canoe Kentucky (canoeky.com).

Check out the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Blue

Water Trails program (fw.ky.gov/ Education/Pages/Blue-Water-Trails. aspx), which profiles more than 30 paddling waters across the state.

Many are also productive fisheries.

When combining paddling and fishing, keep things simple. An ultralight spinning outfit spooled with 6-pound test line and a few top water plugs, crawfish imitators, and soft plastics will get you started.

Carry a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Regardless of where or when you are paddling—in a creek, stream, river, lake or pond—wear a life jacket. Don’t toss it to the bottom of the boat. Don’t strap it to the seat.

Wear it regardless of your swimming ability or lack thereof. Wear it.

Inflatable models, which I prefer, are lightweight and less constrictive, particularly if you are handling fishing gear. Inflatable PFDs (personal flotation devices) start at around $70.

Belt and vest models are available. If you rent a boat, the outfitter should provide you with a life vest.

Wear it. They save lives.

• • •

Kentuckians, along with nearly everyone else on the planet, have for the past couple of years been confined, restrained and spooked by COVID-19.

And with good reason. Coronavirus has killed more than 15,000 Kentuckians, more than 1 million Americans, and an estimated 6 million people worldwide. This trio of dreadful statistics is made even more horrifying by the knowledge that the virus might be abating but is still with 2022 us. Still dangerous. Still deadly. So, wherever summer takes you, be careful, be cautious and be safe.

73

SUMMER 2022 Celebrating 73 Years in Danville, KY! OUTDOOR THEATRE & CAMPGROUND

June 10 - August 6

DRACULA BITES! SOUTHERN FRIED NUPTIALS COCKEYED August 12-13

ELVIS PRESLEY & PATSY CLINE!

Plus more musical guests!

Hickory-smoked BBQ dinner before a “Broadway in the Bluegrass” show...all of it under the stars!

For more information and reservations: 859.236.2747 pioneerplayhouse.com Places to stay: danvilleky.com

Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com

k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 61

calendar

JUNE

2022 MONDAY

Ongoing Shakespeare Festival,

Ongoing A Thought Is a River Exhibit,

Central Park, Old Louisville, through Aug. 7, 502.574.9900

Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, Covington, through Aug. 20, 859.957.1940

5

Martina McBride in Concert,

6

Kilgore House and Garden Tour, various

13

locations in Louisville, 502.327.4622

19

Ongoing West of Ninth: Race, Reckoning and Reconciliation,

THURSDAY

2

Great American Brass Band Festival, Centre College, Danville, through June 5, 859.319.8426

Hamilton,

20

14

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,

W.C. Handy Blues and BBQ Festival,

Audubon Mills Park, Henderson, through June 18, 270.826.3128

21

ROMP Fest,

4

The Amp at Dant Crossing, Gethsemane, 502.917.0710

banks of the Ohio River, Augusta, 513.310.5652

Joan Jett in Concert,

11

Francisco’s Farm Art Fair,

Pine Mountain State Resort Park, Pineville, through June 11, 606.337.3066

Midway University, Midway, through June 12, 859.873.7400

16

17

18

Barnlot Theater, Edmonton, through June 26, 270.432.2276

Claybon Park, Madisonville, through June 19, 270.836.9097

Play & Dinner, Rough River Dam State Park, Falls of Rough, 270.257.2311

Duck Hunter Shoots Angel,

23

Paducah Aviation, McCracken County Public Library, Paducah, 270.442.2510

Juneteenth Festival, Festus

24

Union Kentucky Celebrates America, Larry A. Ryle High School, Union, 859.384.1511

30

Murder at the Opry! Mystery

Wildlife Baby Shower, Second Chances Wildlife Center, Mt. Washington, 502.821.9541

Paducah Aviation,

22

McCracken County Public Library, Paducah, 270.442.2510

a guide to Kentucky’s most interesting events 62 K E NT U C K Y M O NTHLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Art in the Garden,

>>>

Arena, Lexington, 859.233.4567

Yellow Creek Park, Owensboro, through June 25, 270.926.7891

SATURDAY

3

Music Festival,

Carson Center, Paducah, 270.908.2037

27

FRIDAY

15 10 Laurel Cove

7

>>>

New Kids on the Block in Concert, Rupp

1

Frazier History Museum, Louisville, through Sept. 1, 502.753.5663

FATHER’S DAY

26

WEDNESDAY

Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, Louisville, through June 19, 502.584.7777

Iroquois Amphitheater, Louisville, 502.368.5865

12

TUESDAY

>>>

SUNDAY

25

JULY 2022

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

5

FRIDAY

1

SATURDAY

2

Cave City Cars and Coffee,

4

Praise in the Park,

FOURTH OF JULY

Madisonville City Park, 270.824.2100

10

11

Taylor County Airport, Campbellsville, 502.592.5267

Carson Center, Paducah, 270.908.2037

17

18

Bill Engvall: Here's Your Sign,

19

8

Berea Craft Festival, Indian Fort Theater, Berea, through July 10, 859.986.2540

13

14

Disney's Little Mermaid,

28

Rev On: The Foreigner Experience, My Old Kentucky Home State Park, Bardstown, 502.348.5971

26

Cockeyed, Pioneer Playhouse, Danville, through Aug. 6, 859.236.2747

27

Waterfront Wednesday, Waterfront Park, Louisville, 502.574.2646

Glier’s Goettafest,

Newport on the Levee, Newport, through Aug. 7, 859.291.1800

9

Chase Matthew and Kidd G, Beaver Dam Amphitheater, 270.298.0036

15

16

Community and Technical College, through July 16, 606.875.6732

Bowling Green, 270.904.1880

22

23

Iroquois Amphitheater, through July 24, Louisville, 502.368.5865

Meetinghouse State Historic Site, Tompkinsville, 270.487.8481

29

30

Louisville Palace, 1.800.745.3000

Green River Lake Dam, Campbellsville, 270.527.4226

Master Linda Ronstadt Musicians Songbook, Festival, Somerset SKyPAC,

Billy Strings in Concert,

Center for the Arts, Richmond, 859.622.7469

25

31

7

Lexington Opera House, through July 17, 859.233.4567

Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo in Concert, EKU

Renfro Valley Entertainment Center, 1.800.765.7464

24

6

Pioneer Playhouse, Danville, through July 23, 859.236.2747

12

Blue Man Group,

Jets Over Kentucky,

Southern Fried Nuptials,

>>>

3

>>>

downtown Cave City, 270.528.6003

Brit Floyd - Pink Floyd Tribute,

Pirates at the Park, Old Mulkey

Green River Raft Up,

find more at kentuckymonthly.com k e n t u c k y m o n t h l y. c o m 63

vested interest

Lawn Envy

T

he Vest Estate occupies a corner lot in a subdivision on Frankfort’s west side. Besides its overwhelming sky-blue siding, the house is an attractive Cape Cod situated over a two-car garage.

There is a basketball goal on the driveway and a wooden privacy fence around the backyard, which Toby, our Yorkie-mix guard dog, oversees. In the front yard is a large plant bed around two maple trees, and the side yard has another bed around two modest oak trees. Mulch snuggles the house on three sides with an assortment of hostas, azaleas and Japanese maples. It’s a quiet place.

Peaceful.

My lawn maintenance program consists of cutting the grass weekly from April to November—say, 30 times— replenishing the plant beds with 70 bags of mulch, and power washing the house or the fence every other year.

For more than eight years, this was my routine.

I can plan on filling my gasoline can a half-dozen times a year. The branches that fall from my trees provide kindling for the fire pit on my back deck.

I use the grass trimmer and edger when needed or encouraged.

Again, for more than eight years, this was my routine.

Enter Jed and Ned, who became my backyard neighbors three years ago.

Jed is ripping out shrubs (some of which have found new life in the Vest yard), tearing out grass, and cutting down trees five days a week. He’s replaced every flowering plant at least twice for the better. He’s taken out brick. Put in rock. Taken out rock.

“Dude, I’ll give you $100 to stop. I surrender. You win,” I want to say.

Work crews come and go throughout most days, both inside and out. I haven’t been in the house, but if the exterior is any indication, it is fabulous. Each improvement of Jed and Ned’s house looks like a twohour episode of “Yard Crashers,” while the Vest Estate withers in STEPHEN M. VEST comparison.

Publisher + Editor-in-Chief My house looks as lovely as the day we moved in, but it looks dated and drab next to Jed and Ned’s. I imagine that, while I’m away, creating Kentucky’s premier magazine, Jed is bringing in Erin and Ben Napier from HGTV’s Hometown (which featured La Grange on May 15), and they are laughing at us over the privacy fence. I’m pretty sure I saw

Chip and Joanna Gaines pulling out of their driveway late one afternoon. I swear the truck had Texas license plates.

“Please, for the sake of all that’s holy, you’ve done enough.”

Much of Jed and Ned’s backyard is taken up by their driveway, which begins from their two-car garage and tapers to one lane at the street, in the shape of Mexico or an angry tornado. Over one weekend, the concrete drive was removed and replaced by one that looks like Palm Springs in Frankfort. It appears to the uneducated—that’s me—like crushed coral covered with a magical coating that gives it the constantly wet appearance.

This residential beauty is highlighted with professional lighting, making it visible 24 hours a day, not only from the Vest Estate but to anyone flying out of Louisville, Lexington or Cincinnati.

Because of the pitch in elevation, Jed and Ned’s house is the first thing I see when I get out of bed in the morning and the last image I see at night.

I would talk to Jed, but I’ve never seen a break in the action, and I’d hate to interrupt his progress. And my record is not good. When I complimented another neighbor on her wrap-around patio and asked her who had done the work, she told me to back off because I was suffering from “deck envy.”

Ned, however, comes and goes. Maybe I could express to him my insecurities without ridicule.

January began with a broken pipe in our front yard.

Between the ice and snow, workers excavated a gravesized hole to the left of the front walkway. When the workers left, the gravesite had a large white access pipe where the tombstone would go.

This spring, I tried to conceal the white pipe and get grass to grow with some success. In February, the renovation of our upstairs master bath began; the workers left a weathered trail across the lawn worthy of hiking.

The quick-fix grass patches made my luscious lawn look like a tattered green quilt.

As I stood, looking forlorn at my patchwork lawn, Ned pulled up in his pickup truck.

“Doing some home repairs?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s always something, right?”

“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“It wasn’t my choice to have a white pipe in the center of my front yard. Any ideas?”

“I’ll ask Jed for suggestions,” he said.

“Yes, Jed seems to have some good ideas from what I’ve seen.”

“Yep,” said Ned. “They’re good—good and expensive.”

Kwiz Answers: 1. C. Mary Todd Lincoln, born and raised in Lexington, greatly admired statesman Henry Clay and would later meet and marry Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois; 2. A. Tours of this national park take visitors to the Bottomless Pit, tight spots and amazing caverns.

3. B. Quilting is an art form, as visitors to the National Quilt Museum can attest; 4. B. Though he spent much time in Illinois, Lincoln was born here in Kentucky; 5. A. At Newport Aquarium, various exhibits enable visitors to experience up-close-and-personal encounters with aquatic life; 6. A. Visitors can tour Lynn’s birthplace and childhood home in Johnson County; 7. B. Established in 1969, the Louisville Zoo is a major attraction for residents and tourists alike; 8. C. Some of Kentucky’s smaller towns and communities have quirky names; 9. A. The Aviation Museum has a hall of fame, artifacts galore, and educational programs; 10. B. Visitors to the State Capitol in Frankfort can view this landmark just behind the building; 11. C. Henry Clay’s elegant home also is in Lexington and is open to the public. 12. C. A re-enactment of the Battle of Perryville takes place annually in the fall.

64 K E NT U C K Y M O NT HLY JUNE/ JULY 2022

Kentucky’s ultimate road trip destination home of the Corvette and so much more.

KENTUCKY GATEWAY MUSEUM CENTER 215 Sutton Street Maysville, Kentucky 41056 606-564-5865 www.kygmc.org Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-4pm The Old Pogue Experience located in the limestone building on the corner of sutton & west 2nd Streets kygmc campus

CLEANER WATER THROUGH EDUCATION AND ACTION

On Display May 7th - August 8th Tickets: $10 per individual $2 per student Free Admission for KYGMC Members

WHERE CAN YOU SEE THE NATURAL PHENOMENON OF A LUNAR RAINBOW?

Only in Whitley County, KY

w w w . w h i t le yc o u n t y t o u r i s m . c o m