Springfield: Kentucky's Own

Elvis is alive and well in Springfield, Kentucky. He’s been seen in the same room with Abraham Lincoln and a local moonshiner. More about that in a moment.

Central Kentucky has its iconic images. They begin around Lebanon, well, Loretto and continue in a fair swoop until about Paris or so. The distilleries. The horses. Those pastures and fences. Travel Brochures in the flesh and blood. At the same time, the bluegrass region is confidently predictable. Woodford County reminds of Bourbon County. Fayette outskirts remind of Mercer. Anderson flows into Franklin. It’s by design and hopefully forever. In that midst, there is Washington County. It draws from most but answers to none, an identity all its own.

At the north end of the county is a long, old covered bridge contributing to that identity. At one time, Kentucky had 400 across rivers and creeks from end to end. Today, just 13 are left and one can be seen silent here. It’s cordoned off next to the newer bridge built to replace it. Nothing replaced the nostalgia it created, however. Simply staring at it was enough to bring a smile to the face and wonder what earlier times were like.

In Springfield, those earlier times included much religious study and occasional entertainment. In the 1820s, Catholics set up a school that has today become a sprawling campus of up to date structures called St. Catharine College. As for the entertainment, an Opera House downtown, built in 1900 and still staging productions in 2014 and beyond. An anchor in a downtown that also sports a Lincoln history museum in the old County Courthouse across the street from a statue of the 16^th President. His folks married in the county in those early days of Kentucky history.

The horses are in places here and there, but certainly the local alpaca farm is the most popular with visitors. Here, a couple moved from Idaho along with 20 or so camel looking creatures and began to shear them for their wool to make crafted items ranging from socks to scarves. One can feed, pet, or smile at the animals. Then buy an item made from their fur.

Winemaking has come to Kentucky, and in the valleys surrounding a backroad near Horseshoe Bend, the grapes are harvested for Reds and Whites. The names of the flavors alone are enough reason to sit down and enjoy a conversation with the experts here. "King Kong’s Thong" was one such variety that made it on national television a few times.

Friendliness was certainly noticed here, and back in town at Mordechai’s. A restaurant downtown that had a chef out on the buffet for Sunday brunch that could make an omelet to order. The sort of place where folks said hello to you from the next booth over.

But it was the nightcap that gave the most entertainment. Near that college, an old mansion first constructed by one of the town’s founders, now occupied by one of the town’s most talented. A dollmaker, who, with wool and a needle, had made a figure of Lincoln so accurate he may as well been still with us. Next to him, a moonshiner was still in progress next to his still. Every doll, several of them, had a story to go with them. And marionettes hung on the walls. One was Elvis. At the request of one visitor, Elvis, still in the building, danced the Jailhouse Rock while Lincoln looked on. After that, our host, Norma Campbell had us sit down at her spread of country ham, green beans, hot tomatoes, casseroles, fresh bread, and berry berry pie.

At the last bite I paused to take in the definition of hospitality that the day had been. And how Springfield had certainly contributed to the cultural wealth of Kentucky in a way only it could provide.

-Special Thanks to Carla and Atam Abbi while on site in Washington County.

For more information on these attractions and locations, visit www.seespringfieldky.com

Scottsville: A Town Square With Heart

Scottsville has a bypass, but you wouldn’t know it from the intersection on Main Street. There are four crosswalks, two lanes wide, and a person becomes a modern day version of Frogger to get from one corner to the next. The traffic never lets up. But that's a good sign things are alive and well downtown in the Allen County seat. And not just the typical fare of lawyers and accountants, either. Boutiques, salons, the town library, and several antique stores give Frogger plenty to hop to. Not to mention the second Dollar General Store ever opened, still operating on the square since 1955.

Downtown Scottsville has a group titled “Heart” to keep the décor in shape and promote a sense of place and home, both for folks living and folks visiting. It shows. With every passing season, the old style lampposts are decorated to reflect the common mood. October brings scarecrows a plenty. Christmas sees a tree covered with red balls and topped with a lit star. Railings along the brick lain sidewalks are wrapped in evergreen garland. Multiple Santa Clauses beckon from storefront windows. You could be in a Rockwell painting of a town if you imagined for a second.

A half century ago, the place to be seen in the Heart of Scottsville was the Jacksonian Hotel. Not just for rooms, but for the elegance and parties that happened on the 31E main highway. It’s gone now, but in an old drugstore cattycornered from the hotel site, elegance has returned. Downtown Scottsville has scored a sit down, upscale, great food restaurant. The place is called 1881 On Main and worth a step inside to see the ceilings alone. It’s the old style every building had in the early days. A drugstore sign sits in the shadow of moonshine, well, medicine jugs painted with the new logo. A bar sits under a giant sign that reads “Soda Fountain,” though the stools are hoping for a move towards more in the future. Outside for warmer weather patrons, several of the iron table and chairs that any good downtown should have in their plea for visitors to stay a while. I would.

I sat at the bar and had the fish and chips, looking out the front window at the Christmas Tree centering the square of all the historic buildings and forgot where I was for a moment. The comforts took me to several memories of places where the environment stuck with me for being so well put together. Worth crossing several streets. Worth the trip to Allen County.

For more on the progress in Scottsville, visit them online at http://www.heartofscottsville.org/

The Mintonville Grocery

Mintonville has its own little green sign, up a bend along a two lane road. There’s that sign, a church, a Masonic Lodge, the sunshine, the open air, and an old general store with a Pepsi Bottlecap sign. That’s it. True Map Dot Country.

I was a few sips into Five Star Coffee that I picked up in Columbia off the Cumberland Parkway. At the Nancy exit a half hour later, I delved off the four lane to old Kentucky 80 which used to be the primary route west to east. It took me as far as Kentucky highway 837, where I caught a right and skirted the Casey County border with curves and quick hills that grabbed the pit of my stomach. At the end of the ride, I was parked in the gravel next to rocking chairs and old style gas pumps out of service. Paint flaked off the building with the breeze. Traffic was nowhere to be heard.

The old door creaked and rang old jangling bells when I opened it. The room was dark old hardwood from top to bottom and it filled the senses, with the linger of ham and cheese in the air all at the same time. My peripheral vision caught Ale 8 on a shelf to my left. The place brought a smile before I said hello. It was perfect.

The walls were a mixture of antique and Christmas ornaments per the season. I sipped on the coffee from the modern quick mart while I talked with the owners about the history of the place. Opened in the 1920s, it was the sort of environment where you could trade a chicken for a sack of flour if you didn’t have the paper money on hand. It just meant your chicken would sell a few days later as poultry. One of those places where a man’s word was a good as gold. The building had been vacant for a while before reopening as a functioning grocery store last spring. And though the chickens are no longer accepted as payment, it’s the nostalgia of the place that is noteworthy. Patrons have dropped off items for permanent display. Oil cans, paintings, cannon balls, license plates. Old toy Tonka Trucks still on the shelves they had been on since the 1960s. Things don’t change much around Mintonville.


Outside, not much has changed, either. The old Pepsi sign above the front porch was taken down when the original owner closed the store, but a reproduction was painted right in its place, just like it never left. That’s the way you feel when you’re here. Just like you’ve always been around these parts.


Those looking for a feel of the old ways have come by the tour bus load. Last spring, such a bus pulled into the back road lot on purpose and off came nearly a hundred to peek at the Beenie Weenies propped next to 10W-30 and pocketknives. It’s the attraction of a modern day Mayberry that stirs such an emotional connection to places that still feel like the old days. And in Mintonville, the old days are the newest thing.


For more information about the Mintonville Grocery, visit them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/mintonvillegrocery