Sunday, July 12, 2020

Oh, Bardwell

Uh-oh, I might've fallen in love with going driving on Google Maps this weekend. Here are three trips across Bardwell. Come on, and feel the Carlisle County!
























































38 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure in the 1980s, M.K. Turk was one of the people often rumored to be a coach that WKU was interested in hiring some day. He was the Metro Conference coach of the year in 1986, and he's Southern Mississippi's all-time-winningest coach.

    Turns out M.K. Turk was from Bardwell! I don't think I ever knew that. His mom went to the (pictured) Disciples of Christ (Christian Church), and there is an Edar Turk who is a P.E. teacher at the elementary school in Bardwell. Rest in peace, M.K. Turk (1942-2013), who played on Carlisle County's #khsbbk District 1 champions of 1959 and '60. The Comets advanced to the Region 1 tournament in Turk's sophomore, junior and senior seasons--but were eliminated in the first round each year.

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  2. Bardwell was incorporated in 1878.

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  3. Here's what Kentucky's WPA guide says about Bardwell, which is the second town detailed on the book's Tour 10 of U.S. 51 south from Cairo, Illinois, to the Tennessee line:

    BARDWELL, 14 m., (390 alt., 1,139 pop.), seat of Carlisle County, last established county of the Jackson Purchase, derived its name from a bored well here, which supplied trains with water. The town is a retail center.

    That was written in 1939, and I wonder about how those two sentences came about. Did the writer have another couple in the original draft, for example? Maybe he or she wanted to highlight a couple of particular establishments so as not to paint Bardwell so drab, but maybe the editor was wary of overplaying items in smaller towns relative to similar-sized or -impact items (or even greater ones) in larger towns which were, of course, never even considered for inclusion. Anyway, Bardwell got a couple of dozen words in the WPA treatment.

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  4. Since 1940, though, it's been down, down, down for Bardwell's population (except for a 1950-60, 3.3-percent lowercase baby boom coinciding with the Baby Boom). The 2010 census showed Bardwell with 723 people, down 9.5 percent over the decade. And the estimated 2018 population of 676 was 6.5 percent down from the 2010 official count.

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  5. Six hundred seventy-six people in Bardwell 2018, I think, isn't any too much bigger than Heath High School 1986, and I'm pretty sure HP-editor/Pirata-co-editor me could call up literally everyone's first name on sight at Heath High School in 1986--even the freshmen.

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  6. So, anyway, WPA guide gave 1939 Bardwell and its 1,139-1,218 people fewer than 30 words. Wikipedia records 2018 Bardwell and its estimated 676 peeps in about 900. I've spent about 600 words already here on 2020 e-Bardwell, and this is the town's 41st labeled post in 10 years of this blog.

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  7. Why am I doing this?

    But I am doing this.

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  8. Picture 1: I love how nice a road that is. Look at that road! Not a pothole in sight. Thank you, God, for roads and roadworkers.

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  9. Picture 2: I love that couple on the motorcycle with the matching trailer. I'll bet those two love each other and are having a freaking blast being together. Don't you think it looks that way? Thank you, God, for love and lovers and leisure time to be loved together.

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  10. Pictures 3, 4, 5 and 6: So! Much! Signage! And fuel and snacks! Thank you, God, for helpers and hospitality.

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  11. Picture 7: I love the U.S. Postal Service, and I love stamps. Thank you, God, for correspondence and all of the people who contribute to carrying it from senders to receivers.

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  12. Picture 9: Thank you, God, for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where it all came together for me. Thank you, God, for this particular Bardwell congregation, with whom my wife works. Thank you, God, for her calling and job, and thank you, God, for Rachel.

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  13. Picture 10: Thank you, God, for Arlington, Clinton and Fulton. Thank you for Tour 10 Nation. Thank you, God, for these WPA guides, car travel and everyone who helped build it all.

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  14. Picture 11: Thank you, God, for Roselawn and all of the cemeteries and their headstones. I love cemeteries. I love reading them, and I love walking around in them.

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  15. Pictures 12 and 13: Thank you, God, for all of the links--the county, state and federal highways, that railroad, all of the railroads ... and thank you for the people who built them and then made them safer and more useful.

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  16. Picture 14: I'm going to come back to Picture 14.

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  17. Pictures 15 and 16: Imagine the activity that might've taken place in that building. I wonder what month and year the calendar is showing. I wonder if the clock is still running. I'd love to read the papers on the tables. Thank you, God, for all of the positive plans and projects of human endeavor that keep us cared for, utilized or at the very least occupied.

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  18. Pictures 17, 18 and 19: Thank you, God, for all of the churches and shady, safe neighborhoods that draw us out of our homes and families and encourage us to love and care for each other beyond boundaries.

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  19. Pictures 21, 22, 23 and 24: Thank you, God, for shopping and commerce. I'm surprised at just how much I've missed them during the pandemic. I knew I'd miss them some. I freaking love being in a busy, prosperous mall, for example. But I miss them so much more than I realized. Thank you for the hardware store in the first of these pictures, the barbecue joint in the second, the gas station in the third and the grocery in the last--I'd love to be running a list of errands today that would take carefree me into each of them, to spend money, acquire things and interact.

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  20. Picture 25: Thank you, God, for Carlisle County High School. (Actually, I think this might be the campus for all grades of public school.) Thank you for the whole notion of public education, and thank you for all of the fun and meaningful extracurricular stuff that comes in it. For example, thank you for all of the years and years of fun we've had with KHSAA basketball. Even more specifically, thank you, God, for all the fun of the #khsbbk83 tournament!

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  21. Fields writes that Carlisle County had shots to win at the end of regulation and both of the first two overtime periods in the final.

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  22. The "Notable people" section of Wikipedia's "Bardwell, Kentucky" page mentions five people.

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  23. There's the aforementioned M.K. Turk.

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  24. And there's Martha Ruth Stewart Haworth, who acted on Broadway, in several movies and made a number of appearances in the very early days of television. (This woman is apparently still living out in California--she's 97!)

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  25. York, Henley, Rambo, Tyler, Hall and Slone--the names of the 1983 Comets from Fields's story--are not in the Wikipedia list, but they certainly are in my personal list of notable Bardwellians. I stopped in the local newspaper about 25 years ago and asked about what happened to the notable guys from the team. Here's what I took down from that conversation:

    Woman in the newspaper office: “One’s the basketball coach at Murray. HT’s a worker—I don’t know where; he just works. Elvin just works, and Bubby doesn’t do nothing—does he, Mike?”

    Mike: “I think he’s going to mortician school.”

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  26. And that brings me back to Picture 14. I love that person in Picture 14. I think it's a woman, but it doesn't really make any difference to me.

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  27. We've been watching a lot of Hamilton: An American Musical in my house over the last two weeks. All three of us have sat through six end-to-end viewings of the filmed production on Disney Plus since Independence Day. As I talked about at GoHeath's great 2016 review, I am just totally blown away by Hamilton.

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  28. I really love learning hearing, collecting and telling the interesting stories about notable people like Alexander and Eliza Hamilton, M.K. Turk and Martha Ruth Stewart Haworth, and I thank God for all of those.

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  29. But, even more, I thank God for giving each of us our shots--no matter how seemingly unnotable those shots are. I don't know anything about the person in Picture 14. She or he might be a former Bardwell mayor or the director of Carlisle County High's senior-class play from 65 years ago, or she or he might have done literally nothing that made the HP or The Carlisle County News. And yet I do know it is true that the person in Picture 14, who sure appears to me to be doing something with tremendous purpose and effort, has an ever-renewing, somehow both utterly common but also totally singular-to-her opportunity to be no less than the mouth/hands/feet/brain/heart of Jesus Christ.

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  30. That's amazing, isn't it? God could've rigged this thing however God wanted to rig it, and God rigged it that we all get to participate in the new creation that God is always unfolding. It makes everything, every moment, Bardwell and every other place totally notable. Thank you, God, for that.

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