Morgantown, Kentucky

Shy of twenty miles north of bustling Bowling Green is typical Morgantown. Typical in that it is similar in size to the rest of the towns that dot Kentucky outside of our dozen or so large cities. Kentucky lacks for a huge metro on the level of Chicago or Houston. Louisville is as big as it gets here. The Commonwealth is a wealth of the towns under 15,000. Or 7,500. Even under 2,500. My hometown county seat down in Hickman fits that bill. So too does Morgantown.

It welcomes you with a green sign off the William H. Natcher Parkway. Past the Butler County High School and another sign proclaiming itself as “Catfish Capitol of the World.” There’s a pull off drive at the sign for selfies or family photo. An old river town that hasn’t strayed. Grain silos dominate a side of the commercial strip opposite a Subway, McDonald’s, Family Dollar, Sonic Drive In, Dollar General Market, IGA, and other newly sprung establishments. An impressive spread for a town this size. It continues to the tiny cluster of downtown near the courthouse. Call it three blocks of the city center, give or take a half. Every other storefront full. Every other storefront empty depending on how you look. A few “coming soon” flyers in dusty windows. A Civil War solider statue standing guard over the whole scene. Progressive brickwork in the crosswalks. Honest to goodness stoplights.

Banks, a newspaper, a FM radio station, churches, library, men’s wear store, insurance office, therapists, pharmacy, and a couple of auto parts stores continue the layout. Then it’s back towards the next parkway exit. On the way, a Hardee’s, and other local restaurants including the Farmboy. An industrial spread with full parking lots and open gates shows a population at work, whether in the service jobs throughout town or assembly lines here. And not to forget those silos, the ever obvious farm economy present as well. A city, while not as booming as its southern neighbor, is not faltering either. Paychecks are earned here, and by the looks of things openly spent here.

I like the slow pace of the town. The lack of traffic on the main drag. The ease of a drive across town or a walk around. The friendliness of folks in stores where I stopped in. Those small town virtues lost on larger towns, no matter how much they strive to contain them.

To the next dot on the map…

Requiem For Rabbit Hash

A well-aged country store with whiskers is more than a part of the community it serves. It becomes the community. It’s the very identity of the geographic place. And the longer the establishment has been open, all the more meaningful to insiders and outsiders alike. To have to replace the structure or contents of the establishment would be the equivalent of tossing out a century old cast iron skillet and replacing it with shiny new Teflon. There is much to be said about place and continuity.

Rabbit Hash, Kentucky suffered a blow to its soul last Saturday night into Valentine’s morning. Its centerpiece country store, open since 1831 and only shutting its doors a few times when Ohio River floodwaters reached the rafters, burned to the ground in a couple of hours. A new chapter in its Legend that nobody wanted to read.

It had been the pattern for new tourist trap type general stores to follow. Because it was the real deal. No chain store ever came to town. No dollar stores with bright lights and fresh swept tile floors. For those people who called the backroads of Boone County home, the Rabbit Hash General Store was still the place for a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk before a snowstorm. That it had become a destination in itself for nostalgia seekers was a bonus. It wasn’t an arts and crafts store or an antique store or a t-shirt shop, though it contained those things. It was the Honest to God general notion and potion store for the hamlet.

Think of 1831. That’s when the place first opened for business. Much of western Kentucky was only a decade of so out of still being Indian Territory. Daniel Boone had only been dead for a decade. Lincoln was 22 years old. The Civil War was still thirty years out. Tiny stores sprang up a couple of miles apart same as church houses all over developing Kentucky. And only a handful of those stores made it as long as this one did. Through wars, through floods, through a Great Depression, through the changing tastes of the finicky public.

And now that collected history in a literal flash went from a material one to an oral one. The store is still alive in the hearts and memories of those it has touched over the decades. Perhaps it will return in a building similar to the one lost. Perhaps facades and signage can be duplicated. Perhaps a new cast iron skillet can collect fat into its pores slowly once again. We will all have to see. And then contribute what we can to their fresh next chapter.