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Category: Kentucky

The Woodsman

The Woodsman

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Like Johnny Appleseed, Daniel Boone is part legend, and many of the images we have of him are false. He did not wear a coonskin cap, did not discover Cumberland Gap and was not the first settler to arrive in Kentucky. 

But he did guide many through the Gap and he, more than anyone else, helped settle the Bluegrass State. In fact, one of the chief ironies of Boone’s life (1734-1820) is that he, more than anyone else, helped ruin the wilderness he loved. 

The Daniel Boone that emerges from Robert Morgan’s biography is a bright, humble, kind man, a woodsman more at home in the forest than anywhere else and as sympathetic to Native Americans as most any of his generation. 

Often in debt, Boone learned the hard way that his personality was better suited to the edges of civilization than to its midst. But not before he may have had this realization, Morgan writes: 

By 1788 the irony could not have been lost on Boone that he, as much as any other single human being, had helped create the world that was now repugnant to him, so raging and relentless in growth and greed. And he must have seen, perhaps for the first time, the contradiction and conflict at the heart of so much of his effort: to lead white people into the wilderness and make it safe for them was to destroy the very object of his quest.

(Boone’s first view of Kentucky by William Tylee Ranney, 1849, courtesy Wikipedia) 

80-1 … 91-1

80-1 … 91-1

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When I wrote Saturday’s post, which only alluded to the Derby, I didn’t know what a Derby it would be. Didn’t know that friends and family would be calling and texting to share their amazement. Didn’t know that Rich Strike, the horse with the second-longest odds ever, would win the race. 

What I had forgotten until my brother reminded me yesterday was that the horse who won with the longest odds ever was Donerail, 91-1, named for Donerail Station in Scott County, Kentucky. It’s a horse I’ve heard about since I was a child, a horse Mom would have bet on, for sure, if only she had been alive and of betting age at the time (1913). 

As the descendants of both Donnellys and Scotts, as the proud daughter of a long-shot bettor, as a fan of hopeless causes everywhere, Rich Strike, I salute you!

The Meadow Land

The Meadow Land

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It’s the first Saturday in May, the one day of the year when Kentucky takes center stage in the sporting world. But this first Saturday in May I’m thinking of a different sort of Kentucky and Kentuckian. I’m knee-deep into Boone: A Biography by Robert Morgan. 

I’ve been learning a lot about my home state. For instance, the name doesn’t necessarily mean “dark and bloody ground.” It could be Shawnee for “at the head of the river.” Or Wyandotte for “the land of tomorrow.” Or Iroquois for “the meadow land”—kenta (level) and aki (place).  

That one makes the most sense: it captures the open savannah for which the Bluegrass region is known. 

But whatever the origin, Morgan says, “some words have a resonance, a color, and are memorable even before we know what they mean. We love to say them just to feel them in the air and on our tongue.”

Amen, Mr. Morgan. 

Old House

Old House

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Whenever I’m in Lexington I make the pilgrimage and drive to the houses where I grew up. Unlike my own children, who know only this much-loved and much-battered center-hall colonial, I had three places to call home. 

My sister and I drove past one of them last month. It’s a house I lived in only two-and-a-half years, the one I returned to from college and my early work years in Chicago. But though my time in the house was short, it left a big impression. 

I’m not used to seeing the house from the back, but we drove down a cul-de-sac that gave us this view, that showed us the deck that’s been added, the trees that have grown up in the decades we’ve been gone. 

When I look at this photo, I see not just a ranch-style house with a walk-out basement and steep driveway, but the rooms inside … and the people who used to live in them. 

The Lexingtonians

The Lexingtonians

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Yesterday’s memorial service paid tribute to a husband, son, brother, uncle, cousin and friend. But most of all, it paid tribute to an artist.

My cousin Pat was a painter, musician and filmmaker. He was, as many recalled, a man who created the life he wanted to live … and managed to live it in the town where he was born.

I think many of us in the audience thought about our own lives, weighed them against his, measured the tradeoffs, the staying put versus the leaving.  

My cousin Brian, Pat’s brother, summed it up best when he spoke: “Today I’m not just proud to be a brother, I’m proud to be a Lexingtonian.”

And though the family members in attendance now reside in Brussels, Paris, California, New York, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio,  Maryland and D.C.,  yesterday we were all Lexingtonians. 

Winter Again

Winter Again

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From shorts to shudders: that’s what the weather has given us in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, Lexingtonians were bopping around in t-shirts and cut-offs. Today they’re donning parkas and gloves.

For many people in the middle to eastern half of the country, Standard Time is going out with a bang — wind chills in the teens and (at least in Lexington) five or so inches of snow on the ground.

It’s a good day to stay inside and visit with family, which is what I’m doing. 

The sun is bright and there’s a warmup in the forecast but, at least for now, it’s winter again.

(You’d have to look hard to see crocuses blooming today.)

Back in the Bluegrass

Back in the Bluegrass

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By Winchester the land has changed, has taken on the open feel of the Bluegrass. It’s close in Mount Sterling, but not quite there. 

So I felt myself exhale a little when we got to that point on our drive yesterday, savoring that feeling of home.

It’s a feeling I’ve been enjoying all day. 

For Mayfield

For Mayfield

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I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country’s midsection. So this post is a lament: it’s a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am. 

At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad’s kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don’t recognize, “in the western part of the state.” And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters. 

I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it’s Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs. 

It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier. 

(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)

Scott Hotel

Scott Hotel

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Only time for a short walk yesterday, but I had a destination in mind: the Scott Hotel, once owned by my grandfather and great uncle. Mom and her family lived at the hotel intermittently through the years, sharing quarters with the horsemen and the tobacco farmers in to sell their crops. 

The hotel was right across from the Southern Railway Depot, a natural place to stay for a night or two if you were in Lexington on business.

It was a less likely place to house three young daughters and a son. But these were different times, harder in some ways, easier in others.

The hotel is abandoned now, has been for years. It stands in mute testimony to those long-ago lives. 

Olmsted in Kentucky

Olmsted in Kentucky

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I learned through weekend wanderings that famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted once turned his attention to my hometown. 

He and his brother, as the marker explains, had a hand in designing Transylvania Park, where the lovely Lexington Library once reigned; Ashland Park, where I spotted this sign; and Woodland Park, one of my favorite haunts.

It doesn’t surprise me. These places may not be the Chicago World’s Fair or Central Park (two of Olmsted’s more well-known accomplishments), but in them the built and natural environments work together. They have a beauty and a presence — a  sense of having always been there.