Ah, Footbah

For this last 2010 Friday of imagining the scattered road trips for high-school football games around the Commonwealth (all six class state championships are played at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green next weekend), The Heath Post retrieves its dog-eared copy of The WPA Guide to Kentucky from the driver's-side door of the company van. Ours is the 1996 paperback edition of Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State, which was originally published by Harcourt, Brace and Company in October 1939--in an obvious hustle to the bookstore shelves in time to capitalize on the business opportunity of serving football fans who would be driving all over the state the following month for the KHSAA playoffs.

Class A

-- Mayfield at Fort Mitchell Beechwood. Tune in early, at 5:30 p.m. Central, to hear the kickoff from this "residential suburb," as the WPA Guide describes Fort Mitchell. "During the War between the States, when Confederate forces, in 1862, were threatening an invasion of the North, Gen. Lew Wallace--the author of Ben Hur and the commander of the Union forces assigned to the defense of Cincinnati--led 15,000 men across the Ohio River at Bromley on the west to the banks of Licking, then to the Ohio near Fort Thomas. These temporary defenses were under the direction of Professor Ormsby Mitchell, and were called by his name. The FORT MITCHELL COUNTRY CLUB, Mitchell Ave., has a nine-hole golf course and is the local center of social life." (Page 263)

-- Lexington Christian at Hazard. "The French-Eversole feud, which began in 1882, was principally confined to Perry County. The worst conflict occurred in Hazard (1888) where members of one faction barricaded themselves in the courthouse and the other faction occupied nearby dwellings and stores. Twelve men were killed and several were wounded in this battle. Between Hazard and Whitesburg the highway leads through rugged hills and short fertile valleys. Lonely little cabins with their small patches of corn perch on the ridges or nestle in the coves. This is the region of Chaucerian English, old ballads and the dulcimer." (245) (Though, of course, this is not covered in the WPA Guide, Sorrell Booke--Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg in The Dukes of Hazard--once served as grand marshal of Hazard's Black Gold Festival parade, as documented by the below postcard published by Glenn Durham.)



Class 2A

-- Newport Central Catholic at Corbin. This trip is an excellent opportunity to splice the WPA Guide's Tour 3 (U.S. 27 from Ohio, into Newport, and on to Tennessee, through Somerset) and Tour 4 (U.S. 25 from Ohio, into Covington, and to Tennessee, through Corbin and Williamsburg). The tours intersect at Lexington. Here's what the Thoroughbreds and their fans can expect to see on the Tour 3 first half of their trip: "US 27, bordered by white rail fences or old stone walls, passes fine farms in central Kentucky with their stately old mansions; great stables kept with the tidiness of a Dutch kitchen; sleek horses, purebred cattle, and sheep browsing in blue-tinted fields; and broad acres of waving grain, tobbaco, and hemp." (246) And on the Tour 4 second half: "US 25, locally called the Eastern Dixie Highway, ... passes rolling orchard land and prosperous country estates with waving bluegrass meadows, and between the great gorge cut by the Kentucky River and the rugged foothills of the Appalachians, follows Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road." (261)

-- Owensboro Catholic at Danville. The Heath Post regrets, in last Friday's "Kentucky Minute" coverage, erroreously assuming that the Danville High Admirals played their games at the school. Not so. Meanwhile, of "Titletown," the WPA Guide offers, "In the McDOWELL HOUSE, 123 S. 2d St., on December 25, 1809, before the discovery of methods of anethesia, Dr. Ephraim McDowell performed the first successful ovariotomy. ... Ephraim studied anatomy and surgery with Dr. Alex Humphreys of Staunton, Virginia, and in 1793-94 attended the University of Edinburgh, where he was for a time the private pupil of Dr. John Bell. He left the univesity without his degree, and returned to Danville, where he began the practice of medicine. In December 1809, called to treat Mrs. Jane Todd Crawford of Greensburg, Doctor McDowell told his patient an examination had convinced him that her only chance for relief was a dangerous internal operation that he had never performed, but was ready to undertake if she would come to his home in Danville. Mrs. Crawford, frantic from pain, set out immediately and made the journey of 60 miles on horseback in a few days. The doctor improvised an operating room in his home. The patient was placed on a long wooden table covered with a blanket. She was fully dressed and perfectly conscious of every movement of the surgeon and his assistants. To restrain her involuntary muscles, and permit the surgeon to work, men held down her arms and legs with force. During the operation Mrs. Crawford repeated the Psalms. Later Doctor McDowell reported, 'In five days I visited her, and much to my astonishment fournd her engaged in making her bed. I gave her particular caution for the future and she returned home as she came, in good health, which she continues to enjoy.' Mrs. Crawford was 47 at the time of the operation and died at the age of 78." (285-86)

Class 3A

-- Somerset at Belfry. "BELFRY, 3.6 m. (668 alt., 410 pop.), one of the coal-mining communities that are strung out along Pond Creek for approximately 15 miles, is typical of the numerous half-abandoned mining towns of the area. They are unincorporated and, with their unpaved streets and unpainted buildings, come into view like blighted spots on the land. They have all the inconveniences and few, if any, of the comforts of modern towns of equal size, and none of the advantages of agricultural countryside. Small drab houses, most of them in need of repair, huddle close together along the deep valleys or stand undertainly on the mountain sides. Most of them are of boom-time flimsiness, with one thickness of board in the walls that rest on slender, often-tottering, posts, many are papered with newspapers and patched with cardboard to shut out draughts. ... Life in the coal-mining towns is meager and hard. The customary diet of the miner and his family consists chiefly of beans--and more beans--corn bread made without milk, and 'bulldog gravy,' a mixture of flour, water, and a little grease. In the summer those fortunate enough to find a small patch may grow a few vegetables, but for the most part they grow pumpkins. There is little or no milk available even for the children. As a result diseases of malnutrition are common. Leisure is abundant and money scarce. Brawls and an occasional shooting, a bit of penny- and nickel-gambling, all of them usually enlivened with moonshine, are the recreation of the men." (435-436)

-- Paducah Tilghman at Louisville Central. "LOUISVILLE (Loo-i-vil, 463 alt., 307,745 pop.), noted for its fine whisky, beautiful women, and the Kentucky Derby, ... is a border metropolis that blends the commerce and industry of a Northern city with a Southern city's enjoyment of living. The result is an attractive compromise. Louisville is too busy making and selling things to have the languour of a town in the Deep South; but it does have its special graces. Its people are friendly and hospitable." (176-177)



Class 4A

-- Boyle County at Bell County. "An Indian effigy carved out of yellow pine was found on a cliff near Pineville in 1869. This, believed to be the only thoroughly preserved wooden prehistoric image found in Kentucky, is now in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York City. ... Schools, bands, and bugle corps, representing a large sectin of the country around Pineville, meet here for the annual Cumberland Valley Music Festival (May). Contests as well as concerts feature the programs." (276)

-- Allen County-Scottsville at Louisville Western. Scottie followers this afternoon are in for a spectacular, 138-mile drive straight up a "(h)ard-surfaced roadbed. ... US 31E, the Jackson Highway, winds over the central part of the State, which is rolling or hilly for the most part. Towns of any size are far apart, and except for some truck gardening near Louisville, the farms along the highway hold to the typical Kentuckian pattern in that they chiefly produce corn and tobacco, or are given over ot the raising of livestock. The winter scene is flat in tone except for the evergreens and the orange of sage grass; but in April and May, the woods are gay with the bloom of redbud and dogwood, and brilliant through the fall with the contrasting colors of the frosted leaves." (289)

Class 5A

-- Fort Thomas Highlands at Harlan County. The Bluebirds' visit to Baxter entails a southern migration of four hours--at least. Marc Hardin reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer this week on an email exchange between the Highlands and Harlan County coaches: Highlands coach Dale Mueller "wrote me and congratulated me on our win, and told me I gave him one of the worst beatings in his life," (Harlan's Tom) Larkey said. "I wrote him back and told him if he needed directions to Harlan County, just ask. I said I'd make sure to get him lost on his way over here next to the Virginia border."

-- Christian County at Radcliff John Hardin. This is another splice of WPA Guide tours. You start off on Tour 15 and U.S. 68/Ky. 80, one of the nation's great drives: "(T)hrough the southern Knoxs section of the State, the highway abounds with delightful vistas of the upland forests and well-cultivated fields. This fertile agricultural area produces a high grade of dark tobacco and many thoroughbred horses." (382) Then, at Bowling Green, you head north on Tour 7: "South of Fort Knox, US 31W lopes off among tall, ragged cliffs and gorges. It winds through countryside splotched with stands of cedar, pin oak, and scrub pine. Daisies line the roadside, and gentian and trumpet vine break the pattern of the near-by fields. This is good country for uhunting rabbit, squirrell, and quail." (297-298)

Class 6A

-- Louisville Trinity at Union Larry Ryle. Union is not named in the WPA Guide, but it would be on a Tour 12 segment between Covington and Warsaw that is described: "US 42 now runs a course between high hills whose slopes have cornfields staggering up to their tops. Here and there phalanxes of young, slim trees march down from the hillcrest to the road. For a mile the route crosses the top of the plateau, then sinks down between the hills once more. At 30.6 m the road moves to the bank of the Ohio River, which makes a big bend at this point. The Kentucky hills have occasional rock outcroppings above the highway. with a few brief interruptions, road and river move side by side, paced by low, broad bottomlands on the Indiana side that run back to a continuous chain of hills." (336)

-- Louisville Male at Scott County. "GEORGETOWN, 70.4 m. (886 alt., 4,229 pop.), with its many large trees and old houses, is a college town and the seat of Scott County. ... GIDDINGS HALL, the oldest building on the campus, was erected in 1839 as a monument to Dr. Rockwood Giddings, a former president of the college. This structure was designed by Dr. Giddings and errected entirely by student and faculty labor. The bricks, burned and laid by the students, are of clay dug from a corner of the campus. It is said that a quart of bourbon reposes under each of the six Ionic columns of the portico." (264-265)