Friday, June 24, 2016

Oh, Kentucky



What was the deal with that cloud over Perry County on Wednesday?

WHOP reports that the house was packed Thursday in Hoptown to discuss a proposal to boost taxes to pay for projects including building an indoor sports complex.

Trunnell's Farm Market is expanding from Utica and into Owensboro.

Burmese in Bowling Green.

Dr. Pruitt goes to Washington: "We wanted to do what was right for students, and not waste money on a meaningless test."

Kentucky for sale:



4 comments:

  1. That 1945 railroad map linked behind "Kentucky for sale" is intoxicating, by the way. This seems like a good time to mention again that my maternal grandfather as a young man left Earlington by rail and hoboed around the country for a few years.

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  2. Per the map, his first stop would've been Madisonville or Barnsley and then Mortons Gap and Nortonville, depending on whether he started north or south. Anyway, from either of those points forward, he starting having all sorts of interesting choices to make.

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  3. Something my mom wrote about hobo “Pate” of Earlington, Kentucky:

    He lived at 414 Railroad Street, and the L&N Railroad went by his house. One day he hopped the train, and hoboed for two years. During this time, he worked at many jobs. He had rustled cattle, worked in the wheat fields in Kansas, was in a circus and also in the rodeo as a clown.

    He always wanted it clear that a hobo worked for his room and board—much different than a bum. A hobo did not want to be tied down, wanted to work at various jobs and see the country. He worked for a while at a job, then rode the boxcar until another town interested him. He stayed at hobo camps.

    Then he came to Evansville. For his first job in Evansville, he was a bartender--I can't imagine this met with his mother's approval, but then she probably didn't know what he was doing. He and my mother were at the same gathering—most likely at the Y—and, when he first saw my mother, he told the fellow that was with him she was the girl he wanted to marry. He never hopped a train afterwards. That was the story he told me—whether it was like that or not, I don't know. I never asked Mom, and she probably didn't know that he had his eyes on her from the first time he saw her, anyway.

    It must have been love at first sight and a lasting love, for they were married about 49 or 50 years before my dad died. He carried a picture of her in his billfold that was taken when she was young. She was very pretty with long curly hair. This was the only picture he had in his billfold.

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  4. As a matter of principle, I don't buy maps of Kentucky where any part of the Commonwealth is broken off from the rest.

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