Day Seven... Home of the Kentucky Time Machine
Upside to civilization, we caught wifi in the KOA campground and connect with family, friends, and family of friends, specifically my friend Jonah’s wife, Marissa, who’s from Kentucky and has much better suggestions than Grease Face yesterday. I’d repeatedly texted Jonah himself for suggestions which was a fool’s errand since anyone who knows Jonah, including his wife, knows there’s no task big or small he can be entrusted to complete. This is why my chat group from growing up has assigned him this year’s Commissioner of our eleven person Secret Santa dubbed “Mysterious Moishe” due to the preponderance of Jews. Rather than hitting him up a third time, I cut right to Marissa who fires back all night with every manner of attraction…
“Natural Bridge State Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, Heaven Hill Distillery, Berea, Snug Hollow, the Abbey of Gesthemani where Thomas Merton hung out…” (I’m too ashamed to admit I don’t know what that last one means.) “Favorite driving is the Bluegrass Parkway to 31E and South, gorgeous, if you want to do Lexington I can hook you up with my sister in law. She’s the tourism director. You do Cumberland Falls? They have a moonbow.” (I do ask about that.) “Rainbow at night. I love Big South Fork there’s an old mining company town there and you can float the river. My brother says to eat at the Wrigley in Corbin, tell Kristin that Jeff sent you. He also says drive old 25 or cut over to Harrodsburg/Shaker Village drive 68 and cross the KY River. Get burgoo if you can. Go to Bardstown and do the Bourbon Trail. I can stop anytime.” (That last part probably isn’t true. She doubles back to Berea in deeper detail and concludes with “Somewhere on 31E near Hodgenville is Abe Lincoln’s birthplace.”
That is news to me.
Every time you enter a new town in Kentucky there’s a sign that says “Home of the…” The Doctor of the Year. Mr Basketball 2015 Camron Justice. Published Author Silas D. House. Cheer Champions. As I’m pulling outta Corbin, I spot The Birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It looks a lot like a Lowe’s. Lincoln, though, Abraham Lincoln, the guy from the penny and the Charleston, West Virginia Statehouse steps and the Memorial I like to hang out at on DC winter nights. The President who held the country together while slavery ripped it apart, who beat back the Confederacy, who grew up in a log cabin and was murdered by a piece of shit actor in theater who yelled sic semper tyrannus, “thus always to tyrants,” before jumping to the stage and breaking his leg. The man who created the Secret Service and before that created modern day debate. The Daniel Day-Lewis guy.
Yeah, it seems absurd, but it’s news to me that he was born in Kentucky.
I head North on South 25E (god damn it) as the day’s taking shape, running away from the Chain Stores, bound and determined to stamp every town into sameness, broadcasting their epithets of homogenized pride. London, Livingston, Rock Castle County. Town after town that’s atrophying. there’s not enough blood getting to these places. The major arteries have all been cut off and replaced by I-75 running through the Daniel Boone National Forest. Not even the service stations, not even the ones with the giant tower signs visible from the highway can stay in business. Yet I still can’t stop thinking about abundance. All the wrecked cars sitting and rusting in front yards and driveways. Salvage shops making the most of what they can, picking everything clean. Empty storefronts, just the occasional restaurant in business. The life blood of these towns comes out of the ground. What can be found in the ground, what can be grown in the ground, out of the weather, out of the water that falls, that flows and the people that do the work. That’s what’s missing. It’s just missing people. It’s quiet and lush and as hard as the living could be, there are people in the world desperate for a chance to make a life this easy. I get mad at the Confederate flags. They’re basically a giant fuck you to so many, to so-called outsiders, to anyone who doesn’t already share the heritage, when what’s really needed here are people of a different heritage. Variety, improvisation, shake it up, mix it up… damn, I gotta go fishing.
We make Berea for lunch rolling past the arts district and Waunelle’s alma mater until we find Marissa’s recommended noodle house… closed. Uh oh. It’s Sunday. All Kentucky Christendom is in church, save myself. This may put a serious crimp in Marissa’s plans for me. Fortunately, nature is open for business and I’m buying.
I spot a rack of salvaged fishing poles leaning on the back of a pickup swap off old 25 and for 15 bucks I get a brand new, slightly damaged gen-u-ine Matzuo and a tackle box. Now all I need’s a stream. And a license. I follow a trickle of water between corn fields and rolling hills until I pop over a short bridge into the faded frontier town of Paint Lick. I’m talking to a couple little old ladies who are dropping off end tables they don’t need anymore on the porch of the old post office because that’s where you leave things you don’t need anymore and they ask me where I’m from. I’ve been juggling this answer while I’ve been out here, sometimes saying DC, sometimes saying LA, occasionally landing on the too clever by half version of DC and LA so I live in between. I throw DC out this time and Mary-Etta who goes by Cricket since she was so tiny when she was born maybe 60something years ago, well Cricket just tears into Trump. “He’s not a good man and he’s wrecking everything,” she rails, somehow cheerily. I’d love to spend all day with her, but she’s on her way back to the farm to help her sister so I’m left to wander the one block art exhibit photographing quilt boards and storefronts. Only one brick shop seems open, a couple out front watering potted tomatoes and, well, because this is how it works when you’re manifesting positivity on the road, the man is bending and shaping bamboo and I’m about to get a free fishing lesson from a Master.
Dan Weber is a Welshman, a professor, a woodworker and a metalworker. He’s taught all over California from Mendocino down to Anaheim, had his Viking toolbox published in magazines, been featured on HGTV and how he ended up in Paint Lick is a mystery beyond either of us. It may have something to do with the fact that he bought this entire building including the vintage brick-painted Coke advertisement on the sign, the warehouse out back and the field and a piece of the stream for 25k. It took him less than 5 years to pay it off clear. In another 10 he’ll probably have the block. He and his wife live in the apartment upstairs with her little dog while Dan’s converted the entire ground floor former general store into his workshop. He orders his bamboo special from China, cuts it and shapes it with tools he forged himself from raw metal, then gets in a canoe he built and paddles out to fly fish. He’s got a loosely buttoned down hanging open to the left same way his lower lip does, dirty linen pants and constantly working hands. The workshop is a mesmerizing cacophony of handtools and manuals and wood shavings whose aroma is circulated by the ancient metal fan mounted above the doorway. Sadie finds the spot behind the bench where Dan’s dearly departed used to curl up and watch him work and Dan quickly falls in love with her. It’s been a year. He’s just about ready for another dog. “We’re just taxi cabs with these guys,” I tell him, “When our light goes on the right one hails us down and hops in.” I’m admiring the row of poles he’s got in the window and regretting my impulse purchase unnecessarily when it dawns on me that each of these fishing poles is Dan’s depending on the conditions and the prey. Also, if I want one of these bamboo specials I’m gonna have to get in line at the back of a long list. I do confess to him that I’ve never learned to fly fish.
Dan Weber’s morning meditation consists of standing in the grass behind his warehouse and finding the rhythm of the bamboo and the line and casting out hitting bank shots off of trees and pinpointing rings in the lawn. He keeps a little piece of cork on the hook to save the bother. And he talks a lot of shit about how stupid A River Runs Through It is. “If you’re an expert at a thing, you shouldn’t make it sound impossible. It should be easy for you to make it sound possible.” After demonstrating the 9 to midnight motion, the taut wrist, the whip of the line, he hands it over to me. “Watch the pole when it comes behind you, let it come back before you move. You want the line to unfold all the way.” I spend ten minutes casting and Dan coaching while Sadie relaxes in the shade.
I lose all track of time. It’ll cost me later. I don’t care.
We hit the re-booming Bourbon boomtown of Bardstown where every vintage storefront and soda fountain and Flemish jointed stone building is closed except for the bottle shop. So it’s fine. Bev behind the counter urges Sadie inside even though the door says ‘no pets’ and she picks me out a couple of local bottles, and a four pack of ale brewed in bourbon barrels. There’s new distilleries opening all the time here. A million and a half tourists came through last year. Bev’s got a worldly air, turns out she’s lived in Texas and New York, asks me what I write and when I tell her some television she tells me Jerry Bruckheimer lives in the next town over. His wife’s from around here and they’ve bought up pretty much the whole town, built a skating rink in one of the barns, Bev says, because he likes to skate. I think he’s got a Hollywood ice hockey league back in LA. Pretty sure I remember some people who’ve played. Anyway, if I wanna see it just roll on out there and look for the old tree from the logo ‘cept without the lightning hitting it. I’ll pass. She wraps each bottle in decorative paper and and individual brown bag and all I can think is that’ll make good fire starter later. Living with your own garbage for a week instantly changes how you see objects, especially the weird items that strangers give you to complete transactions. Receipts and plastic bags and styrofoam containers… why are you handing me garbage?
I roll Danville, Lancaster, Peterville getting high on the painted clouds of Kentucky and bemoaning the lack of creativity at the origins of just about every town name. Dan got here first. Peter was there. -Burg, -Borough, -Boro, -Ville, they all just basically mean ‘city’. -Polis too, but I don’t see any of those. I opt against logging extra miles for the photo-op in Sadieville while I’m noodling Jessetown for size when Marissa’s instructions carry me right onto the Bluegrass Highway. For precisely two exits until up jumps the sign for Lincoln’s Birthplace and I’m back on a two lane bound for Hodgenville. I suppose Hodgen got there first.
22 miles of silent meditation where the only thought running through my head is… at what vintage does a front yard rusted wreck become art? I mean, obviously 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, all that is art. 90s definitely not. 80s probably not. So somewhere in the 70s? A truck from the 70s would become art in the front yard? I don’t know. 60s, 70s seems to be a gray area. Case by case basis maybe.
Hodgenville is a ghost town of a roundabout with majestic vintage shops signs for shops that don’t exist and a statue of Lincoln in the center of the hub. I get heckled by my first town drunk when I hop out with my camera, “No pictures!” he hollers. Maybe he’s not drunk, just bored. This may be a dry county, there’s a shocking number that are. “How you doing today?” I ask the bow-legged, shit grinning, ol’ bastard. “If I was any better I’d be twins and I’d be beside myself.” Worth the stop.
We’re chasing the clock to Lincoln’s Birthplace when Lincoln’s Boyhood Home materializes right by the side of the road. We pull over and race through the re-constructed log cabin that may have belonged to one of Lincoln’s neighbors, his boyhood friend who saved him from drowning in a storm-swollen Knob Creek. Sadie races down to check it out, finds the creek mostly dry, picks a puddle, drinks it, jumps in it and after a quick chat with the Ranger (who comes over to thank me for picking up litter… I pick up litter) we’re back on Dumbo.
The Ranger’s parting words bounce around my head as we race the last 4 miles to Lincoln’s Birthplace, “You’re the last visitors of the day.” Finally, we find it, zip up the drive to the gate and for the first time… we get Wally World. Sorry folks, park’s closed. Moose out front shoulda told ya.
It’s 5:27. We missed it by that much. But it just kinda looks like a park. And there’s log cabins and shit. I mean, really, what’s there gonna be? An everlasting flame? A fountain of pure light? It’s a spot in the ground where once upon a time a baby was born. Who gives a shit about Baby Lincoln? What did he ever do? Nothing for nobody.
Around this time of day is usually when I start to figure out where I’m gonna sleep. I target campgrounds near water, lakes preferably, within reach within a couple hours of sundown so I can relax and enjoy some time outside in daylight. For a day that’s been entirely defined by chasing the clock, having the wrong time, it’s about to turn surreal. I get ahold of a Ranger named Raymond at a campground called Nolin Lake and he sets me up over the phone with a waterfront slot and I check the map and tell him I think I can get there before 7 and he makes a funny uhhhh sound that I can’t quite interpret. Rte 31 to Rte 52 through beautiful nowheresville and nothingtown with just a quick stop to gas up and make a friend and fail to find food before descending into miles of barely occupied waterfront and farmland. I pull up to the gate and it’s 5:32.
I’ve time traveled.
Ranger Raymond laughs at my confusion and tells me I just crossed the time line, now I’m in Central Time. I need a drink. “Well, don’t let nobody see you,” Ranger Raymond warns me, “This is a dry county.” Maybe I shoulda gone to church.
