Blue Highways: Lexington, Kentucky

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

Meandering around Kentucky, we accompany William Least-Heat Moon (LHM) on his drive around America in his van, Ghost Dancing.  Check out the map for our current locale.

Book Quote

"Along the Leestown Road, near an old whitewashed springhouse made useless by a water-district pipeline, I stopped to eat lunch.  Downstream from the spring where butter once got cooled, under peeling sycamores, the clear rill washed around clumps of new watercress....

"Had I gone looking for some particular place rather than any place, I'd never have found this spring under the sycamores.  Since leaving home, I felt for the first time at rest.  Sitting full in the moment, I practiced on the god-awful difficulty of just paying attention.  It's a contention of Heat Moon's - believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he's going to get - that a man becomes his attentions.  His observations and curiousity, they make and remake him...

"....Maybe the road could provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one.  STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, the old railroad crossing signs warned.  Whitman calls it 'the profound lesson of reception.'

"....In Lexington, I passed row after row of tobacco warehouses and auction barns on my way into the thousand square miles of bluegrass wold once called "God's footstool," a fertile land where pumpkin vines grow so fast they wear out the melons dragging them along.  So they say."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 10

Downtown Lexington, Kentucky

Lexington, Kentucky

How do you travel?  Do you travel with the idea that you must see as much as possible in places that you go?  Or do you travel with minimal goals, rest and relaxation in mind?

My wife and I are often of two minds about our vacations.  When we go someplace, she wants to do as many things that are available and which we have time to do.  If she plans our days, then we are usually going from one place to another - breakfast at a nice restaurant, then the morning looking at an outdoor public art exhibit, lunch, afternoon at a museum, dinner, then perhaps a play or some other activity for the evening.  She is very active, outgoing and wants to see as much as a place has to offer.

I frustrate her a lot, because I am less of a planner.  In truth, I tend to let her plan things and go along, but at times I find myself getting tired keeping up with her boundless energy for sights and activities.  An afternoon sitting at an outdoor cafe and watching people go by would be something that I would schedule, but doing so might mean we miss something.

There's nothing wrong with either way of traveling.  Some travel for rest and relaxation, and some travel for sights and activities.  It depends on what we want.  But the quote by LHM that I pick above is a good reminder of keeping our perspectives no matter how we travel.  Sometimes there is beauty in the ordinary and obvious.  Sometimes the quiet and mundane hold secrets.  Does it matter if we are spending two hours examining a painting in a museum - just sitting there and letting the color and technique and image wash over us - or sitting in a living artwork of a wooded spring and hearing the sounds of the birds and the buzzing of the insects?

My own experience of this beauty in the ordinary came under most extraordinary circumstances.  In Big Bend National Park, on the west side of the Chisos Mountains, the road heads straight for the Rio Grande until you descend off a mesa down into the river valley.  At the top of the mesa, you can look over many square miles of desert where the vegetation is very sparse.  But in the middle of it, seen from probably twenty miles away, is a huge cottonwood tree.  It stands out in the desert like a beacon.  I promised myself I would hike to it someday.

My chance came with a friend.  I told him about my goal, and he was willing.  We set off down the Chimneys Trail and at the Chimneys, a set of rocks that poke out of the desert, we went off trail and headed toward the tree rising in the distance.  In the desert, the distances are not what we seemed.  We hiked for probably 2 hours, crossing five arroyos each deeper than the last.  At the edge of the last arroyo, we reached the tree, but it was surrounded by impenetrable brush on each side, until we went to the west side where there was a way in.  The tree had its own amazing little ecosystem.  Clearly it drew from an underground spring, and it was so lush it literally dripped water on us.  We rested and slept under the tree for probably two hours, completely refreshed after our ordeal through the desert to get there.  Insects buzzed, birds twittered.  In the midst of the sun-blasted silence of the desert it teemed with life that anywhere else would have seemed ordinary, but there seemed like an amazing miracle.

STOP, LOOK, LISTEN is what we had to do in that extraordinary place in Big Bend.  I think perhaps all of us should do more of that.  And speaking of stopping, looking and listening, Lexington is an excellent place to try it.  I've been there twice, though the second time was the time I got a more in-depth view of the city.  My wife finds her stop, look and listen moments at farmers markets, and Lexington has some nice architecture downtown.  And, if you like rolling hills with lots of horse farms and beautiful horse, Lexington will please.  Finally, the Keeneland Horse Racing Facility holds a horse sale and at those times, you might see Lexington locals mingling with famous American horse-racing aficionados, Arabian princes and European royalty.

If you want to know more about Lexington

Ace Weekly (alternative newspaper)
City Guide (alternative newspaper)
Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau
Lexington Farmers Market
Lexington Herald-Leader (newspaper)
The Lexington Project (blog)
Life in Lexington, Kentucky (blog)
Now Eat This! (blog posts about Lexington restaurants)
Transylvania University
University of Kentucky
Urban Spoon Lexington (food)
Wikipedia: Lexington

Next up: Brooklyn Bridge/Kentucky River Palisades

Blue Highways: Frankfort, Kentucky

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

We hit the Kentucky state capitol today.  Let the map at right guide you.

Book Quote

"The river loops from the east bluffs to the west bluffs and back again, a serpentine among old buildings that almost makes the town a little Venice.  Had it not been for the last thirty years, Frankfort would be an architecturally distinguished capitol city with streets of forcefully simple, aesthetically honest houses and shops.  But the impulse to 'modernize' nineteenth century commercial buildings, an impulse that has blasted the business districts of almost every town in the country, defaced Frankfort.  The harmonious, proportioned, historic lines of the buildings now wore veneers of ceramic tile, cedar siding, imitation marble, extruded aluminum, textured stucco, precast concrete; and the street level had become a jumble of meretricious, tawdry forms.  But at the second- and third-story levels, graceful designs in brick and stone remained; disregarding the plywood over the upper story window, you had unrenovated history."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 8

Downtown Frankfort at night

Frankfort, Kentucky

William Least-Heat Moon (LHM) writes about driving into the Kentucky capitol as if he is driving into a bowl whose depression conceals the capitol building.  He calls it a "hidden statehouse."  Writing 30 years ago, he couldn't have envisioned the bigger stage that Kentucky plays on the American scene now, where Mitch McConnell is a power player in the Republican minority and was when the Republicans had the U.S. Senate majority, and those interested in politics watch as Republicans in power scramble to distance themselves from their newest Kentucky political player, Rand Paul.

I wrote in a post a while back about how cities in America are often named after cities in Europe.  I assumed this was the case with Frankfort.  After all, there is a city in Germany called Frankfurt, and I thought that perhaps Frankfort was originally settled by a German or Germans.  But I was wrong.  Instead, Frankfort was a derivation of Frank's Ford, after a settler killed by Indians as he crossed the Kentucky River.  The name was changed by residents who wanted something more modern sounding so, as LHM says, they picked something that kept the barest of their history but which didn't make any historical sense and "cut something between them and their beginnings."

I've often written about the modern aesthetic, and so what most appeals to me about LHM's chapter is the quote I've picked above.  Later on in the chapter, he highlights another aspect of modernization to me, the New Frankfort strip with the chain stores and fast food joints.  His quote, however, focuses on the urge to modernize by "sprucing up" old buildings.  Towns and cities all over America did it, adding new materials and losing something of their history in the process.  If it wasn't retrofitting historical buildings to meet modern aesthetics, it was destroying them entirely.  Sometimes it became hard to believe.

An aside to where I live now, in New Mexico.  In Albuquerque, we had a grand old Harvey hotel called The Alvarado that existed until it was demolished in 1970.  It occupied an entire city block downtown right along the railroad tracks, and evidently was a jewel.  But progress couldn't be stopped, and wrecking balls reduced it to rubble.  Years later, when a transportation center was planned for that spot, the design was made to resemble the old Alvarado Hotel.  The center is just a shell compared to what once stood there, but I like to think that the city realized that it had lost something special.

In Santa Fe, a variant of modernization actually tries to hearken back to what New Mexico originally was, a Spanish colony of adobe buildings.  However, Santa Fe itself became a sort of "Western" town, with buildings that you would expect in the old West.  However, many of those buildings have been stuccoed over to resemble adobe buildings in an attempt to recall an even more distant past, and building codes make any new buildings fit the popular aesthetic.  Does this really recall a past or does it lose some of the history?

Call it what you will - progress or destruction - but cities and towns all over America remake themselves, often under the rubric of "revitalization."  All the places I've lived and work have experienced this.  My hometown looks different than it did when I was growing up.  Milwaukee remade its downtown.  New Orleans seems to live in its somnambulent past while modern growth springs up around it in the adjoining parishes.  San Antonio created the Riverwalk and is trying to revitalize its downtown.  The goal is to draw new people with new needs and desires into these areas, and to do so, cities and town must make their downtowns appeal to them.  Frankfort is probably no different.  However, any revitalization also means denigrating some part of the past to the shadows, until it might get popular again and rise to the surface.  Is this bad or good?  I think it depends on who is observing and what they miss the most.

If you want to know more about Frankfort

Destination Frankfort
Gravesite of Daniel Boone
Kentucky Historical Society
Kentucky State University
State-Journal (newspaper)
University of Kentucky: Frankfort history
Wikipedia: Frankfort

Next up:  Lexington, Kentucky

Littourati News: Blue Highways photo essay

I was tipped off by a reader that a photographer named Ed Ailor is writing a book where he retraces William Least-Heat Moon's journey.  CNN reported this on its website, and you can see a few images from the book here:

Blue Highways Revisited by Ed Ailor

Blue Highways: Shelbyville, Kentucky

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

After a tough day's drive, we'll stop with William Least-Heat Moon (LHM) in Shelbyville to get a bite to eat and spend the night.  We'll see a little of Kentucky in the process and reflect on the meaning of a job and work.  Click on the thumbnail to your left to see where Shelbyville is, and the path we've taken.

Book Quote

"At Shelbyville I stopped for supper and the night.  Just outside of town and surrounded by cattle and pastures was Claudia Sanders Dinner House....

"....A man, in a suit of sharp creases, and his wife, her jacket lying as straight as an accountant's left margin, suggested I join them....

"'What do you do?' the husband asked.

"I told my lie, turned it to a joke...

"He said, 'I notice that you use work and job interchangeably.  Oughten to do that.  A job's what you force yourself to pay attention to for money.  With work, you don't have to force yourself....You know what my work is?  You know what I pay attention to?  Covering my tracks.  Pretending, covering my tracks, and getting through another day....'

"'....There's no damn future whatsoever in what I do, and I don't mean built-in obsolescence.  What I do begins and stops each day.  There's no convergence between what I know and what I do.  And even less with what I want to know.'"

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 5

Shelbyville, Kentucky

Shelbyville, Kentucky

LHM spends a bit of time on Shelbyville, which encompasses the end of Part 1, Chapter 5 and goes through Chapter 6.  He writes about spending time at the Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which still exists by the way, and is a restaurant started by the wife of Colonel Sanders of chicken fame.  While there's only one Claudia Sanders diner, and you have to go to Shelbyville to partake of its menu, you can find Kentucky Fried Chicken everywhere.  Claudia Sanders Dinner House and KFC is an interesting contrast between restaurants, one that is very local and specific to the community in which it is situated, and something that I've railed on before, the sameness one finds in cuisine around the the country because of the fast food chains.  And they were born in the same household!

He also walks the streets of Shelbyville, and speaks to some men exposing a log cabin under siding.  He muses on how they are uncovering the past in smells and the feel of the wood while they build and work, and how he envies them.  In Chapter 7, he devotes most of the chapter to Smitty's Trading Post, a roadside stop farther down the highway.  And being of a certain generation, one cannot forget that Shelbyville is Springfield's neighboring town and archrival in The Simpsons.

But I chose to focus on the exchange I highlight above, because it's something that has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  Why, you might ask?  Let me give you the story.  If you've read my About Me page, you know that I am a PhD in Political Science.  I got a bachelor's in English a long time ago, and moved to Milwaukee where after volunteer work, I lived without much direction and worked in non-profit organizations.  It was service that was needed, but it didn't give me much financial security - no retirement and no major benefits most of the time.

After I got married, I moved to San Antonio, worked for another non-profit (at least I had health benefits) but again, no retirement.  During this time I went back to school and got a Masters in International Relations.  I enjoyed the subject a lot, and jumped when I was recruited by the University of New Orleans to go for a PhD.  At UNO, I threw myself into my studies and spent a lot of time helping my fellow graduate students.  I loved the academic atmosphere.  Unfortunately, I didn't spend a lot of time trying to publish papers.  Perhaps it wasn't pressed on me hard enough that publishing as a graduate student would help me immeasurably, or perhaps I didn't listen.  I got my PhD, and went onto the job market just as the worst recession in decades hit.  Universities cut their budgets, making less jobs for more PhDs, and without publications under my belt I was low man on the totem pole.

By this time, I was living in Albuquerque, and I was offered a one-year teaching position at Texas Tech, which I accepted.  In academia, these types of jobs do not get one's "foot in the door."  You can be the best teacher in the world, but publications are what matter most.  I enjoy teaching, love it really, but I was separated by a five hour drive from my wife, and I was lonely.  So I jumped at a job opportunity back in Albuquerque, even though it was in medicine and outside my field, and came back home.

I am now in a job that I am overqualified for.  I am not using my PhD, except when I can get the occasional adjunct teaching gig.  I have a job, which like the man LHM's passage says, I must pay attention to for the money.  There are aspects about it I like, such as working with people, but it's not  teaching about the dynamics between countries or the politics of development in third world countries.  On the other hand, if I were to find my true "work," I would have to adhere to academic conventions.  I would have to put more effort into research and publications, which would probably take away from the teaching that I love to do.  In the Political Science publication world, only about 10% of submissions get published.  Those publications are read by a small number of people.  So, my entire academic employment future is decided by a small group of people who review manuscripts and grind axes if their books aren't cited in my articles, and then read by a small group of people and critiqued and chopped up and commented on and lambasted.

My wife once interviewed a marketing PhD who explained the absurdity of it all.  He said that to get ahead, he has to write articles that if published, will be read by a small number of people in a very narrow discipline.  Yet that's what advances his promotion.  On the other hand, he could write a column or article for BusinessWeek that gets read by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dedicated readers, and that will do nothing for his professional career.  That's crazy.

So, I languish right now.  I go to my job, I make my money and I wonder if I even have the stamina, should I make it through the grueling academic job application process (I did 85 in 2008, got 5 interviews which last 2-3 days, and one offer by a small 2 year college in Wisconsin that wasn't worth my wife quitting her job for), if I will have the wherewithal to endure 5 more years of trying to get published so that I can get tenure.  I'm not sure it's worth it.  At least I have a job right now, unlike many others in our economy.  So for the time being, I must live with "no convergence between what I know and what I do," and dream of the day that educating the paying students in America's colleges and universities is put back in its place as those institutions' primary mission.  To paraphrase the man LHM quotes, perhaps when America outgrows academia, we'll begin to have something.

If you want to know more about Shelbyville

City of Shelbyville
Claudia Sanders Dinner House
Colonel Harland Sanders (founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken)
Sentinel News (newspaper)
ShelbyvilleKY.com
The Simpsons: Shelbyville
Unusual Kentucky: Smitty's Trading Post
Wikipedia: Shelbyville

Up next:  Frankfort, Kentucky

Blue Highways: La Grange, Kentucky

Click on Thumbnail for MapUnfolding the Map

On past Louisville, and into the Bluegrass Country.  We are following the road that William Least-Heat Moon followed on his trip around the country.  Take a look where we are by clicking on the map to the right.

Book Quote

"...and went into Pewee Valley and on to La Grange, where seven daily Louisville and Nashville freight trains ran right down Main Street."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 5

Freight train rumbles through downtown La Grange, Kentucky

La Grange, Kentucky

I love the picture above that shows the freight train traveling down a main street in La Grange.  I was one of those kids that really liked trains.  Today, when I see a train, I want to experience it by being close when it roars by.

I grew up with trains.  Our property in Northern California is split right down the middle by the California Western Railroad, which runs from Fort Bragg to Willits.  It was originally built to accommodate the logging trains that would bring logs to the large mill that was once in our town, and then transport the lumber back to the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in Willits where it would go on to other places.  I grew up in the summers watching the freight and passenger trains come through our property.  People on the passenger trains took pictures of us as they went by, and sometimes the conductor threw candies and Cracker Jacks to us from the train.  The freight train would usually pass by at about 7 pm, usually with two engines, sometimes one, and we'd count the cars all the way to the caboose.  At about 3 am, the freight train would come back through, and because our property was a summer property and was only improved by a cabin, we slept outside.  I still remember the whine and roar of the engines and the shaft of light from the big main light on the train as it rounded the bend onto our property, and through my sleepy eyes how huge it looked as it towered over me as it went by.  The roar of the engines gave way to the clacking of the rail cars going past, and then the red light of the caboose and occasionally, a drunk railroad man in the caboose singing or shouting as it went past - the red light swaying as the train disappeared into the trees - followed moments later by the mournful sound of the train's whistle echoing down the valley in the darkness.  Eventually, all would be still again, and I'd drift back off to sleep.

A year ago, I was making weekend drives between Lubbock, Texas and Albuquerque.  I taught at Texas Tech during the week, and came back to my wife on weekends.  Over half of the trip was along railroad lines. Between Fort Sumner and Clovis, New Mexico was the busiest one, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and I was always traveling past huge freight trains coming and going.  I always hoped to time one where I could pull off the road at an out of the way crossing, and watch the train come screaming past, but I could never get it quite right.  Once, along this stretch of track, I saw what looked like to be a waterfall in the darkness.  I can't quite describe it, but it was beautiful.  As I came closer, I realized that it was a freight train, and a cascade of sparks was flying out from underneath the length of the train.  It was incredible.  It didn't dawn on me until later that the train was probably making an emergency stop, and the sparks were because the wheels were locked up on the tracks as the train slowed.

Perhaps if I were a kid growing up in La Grange, I would become used to the trains on the Main Street.  I suppose that people living there put up with it.  After all, frequent trains will stop traffic, and if you're trying to get anywhere, you probably have to add to your time the possibility that a train will hold you up.  William Least-Heat Moon said that up to seven trains a day went through La Grange, but I've read that today, it could be up to sixteen.  That might create some delays for the townsfolk.  But as a kid growing up, trains were a wonder to me.  Big, powerful, and moving places that I could only dream about.  I'd hate to lose my continuing wonder of them.

The Louisville and Nashville line that runs through La Grange was one of America's most successful railroads.  I first heard of it in a song by Michelle Shocked back in the eighties that spoke of dying coal towns left high and dry when "the L&N don't stop here any more."  That struck a chord in me.  Though a summer passenger train runs the line through my property in Northern California, the closure of our lumber mill means that no more freight trains come rumbling through at night.  To me, it's a loss.  I envy La Grange it's freight trains.

If you want to know more about La Grange

Aint no Haint (a blog entry about growing up near La Grange)
City of La Grange Visitor Information
Discover La Grange
Oldham County Historical Society
Wikipedia: La Grange
Wikipedia: Louisville and Nashville Railroad
Youtube:  Freight train "street running" down La Grange street
YouTube: Johnny Cash sings The L&N Don't Stop Here Any More

Next up:  Shelbyville, Kentucky