Old Coca-Cola Building, Shelbyville

Oh, for the good old days when every town, great and small, had a local Coca-Cola bottling plant. Even my small hometown of Richmond had one on Big Hill Avenue (it's now the Richmond Register offices).

This fine intact specimen, built in 1930, can be found in Shelbyville, KY, on your right as you head East out of Shelbyville on US 60.


There was a "for lease" sign out front but some activity was visible inside, so I'm not sure if they meant the whole building or just individual spaces inside it. This realtor's page says it's now "off market".

Kentucky State Capitol

The best place to get a good photo of the Kentucky State Capitol is not actually at the building, but from a considerable distance from it in the mountains that surround it. There's a lookout point along U.S. 60, where I took these, and Frankfort Cemetery also provides an excellent view.


Kentucky hasn't had good luck with capitol buildings. Between 1792 and 1830, Kentucky had two buildings serve as the capitol, and both of them burned down. Then from 1830 to 1810, we had a third one that was discontinued a few years after Governor William Goebel was assassinated in front of it. In 1910 the current capitol building was completed, with a dome patterned after Napoleon's tomb in Paris.

Pisgah

Pisgah is a very small spot on the map on Highway 60 between Versailles and Lexington, but there’s a lot of Kentuckiana of note here:

Happy Chandler is buried at the local Pisgah cemetery, William Shatner’s horse farm is nearby, and one of my favorite donut places in the entire universe - Doughdaddy’s - is located right next door. (Shatner donut-run sightings are rampant, not surprisingly).


But what most people are drawn here for is the famous castle overlooking Versailles Road. Known for years as “The Martin Castle,” it sat abandoned for decades and was long the subject of myth and speculation regarding its purpose and its reclusive creator, who died a few years back. Although temporarily set back by a fire, the new owner is renovating it and hopefully soon we’ll be able to do more than just peer at it through the majestic front gates and wonder.

And hey, if you find yourselves underwhelmed by all this excitement, don’t forget Keeneland racetrack is just minutes away from here as well.

Bigfoot twins in Baskett

In 1999, there was a report of a pair of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) being seen in a field of beans close to Highway 60 in Baskett, KY. According to researcher Bart Nunnelly, "Both were brownish-gray in color and were positioned with their backs towards witness. One BF was squatting down,apparently doing something to the ground which was obscured by beans."

This incident illustrates well the "hidden in plain sight" axiom which applies to all paranormal phenomena: the person who reported the creatures noted that traffic was heavy that day, with lots of cars in front of him and behind him, and yet no one else bothered reporting the incident that day.

Smitty's Trading Post

So it's late Summer 2007 and I'm way past deadline on the final draft of the Weird Kentucky manuscript and the editor still wants more material to choose from. I'm drivin' eastbound on Highway 60, thinking about heading to Frankfort to grab me some grub at the White Light Diner.

And then I screeched on the brakes and realized that one of Kentucky's greatest sights had not yet been written about in my book.

No, not the Red River Gorge, not Cumberland Gap, not Wigwam Village or even Penile.

Smitty's Trading Post.



It's an antiques emporium, flea market, or just plain junk store, depending on your choice of nomenclature. It could also be described as a public art installation similar to that of the Frankfort Avenue Art House (which is on the same road, but many miles away in a different county).



As I wrote feverishly in the book:

Taken individually, many of the items on open-air display out front may or may not dazzle you. But taken as a whole, each bit of bric-a-brac has a synergetic effect and forms a part of an exquisite mosaic, making this no ordinary flea market but rather, a cathedral of discarded Americana, a shrine to the human condition and all its follies and foibles.

It's also like a Rorschach test of aesthetic aptitude - just as William Blake said "The fool sees not the same tree the wise man sees", not everyone sees the same thing when they gaze at this secondary-market museum of Earthly effluvia that this elusive "Smitty" has nobly archived for the inspection of us all.

(And to think you thought it was just a yardful of rained-on furniture, rusty farm implements and fast food kids meal toys!)

It's over a year later, and half a year since the book has hit store shelves nationwide, and I still haven't been able to catch Mr. Smitty open for business so's I can hand him a copy of the book and proudly show him my personal tribute to his magnificent collection of crap. Apparently catching Smitty keeping business hours is something of a challenge. I didn't realize it at the time I wrote the book, but Smitty's Trading Post had already made an appearance in Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon:

I came to a ramshackle place called Smitty's Trading Post. Smitty was a merchant of relics. He could sell you a Frankfort, Kentucky, city bus that made its last run down Shively Street, or an ice cream wagon made from a golf can, or a used bulldozer, or a bent horseshoe. I stopped to look. Lying flat as the ground, a piebald mongrel too tired to lift its head gave a one-eyed stare. I pulled on the locked door, peered through windows grimed like coalminers' goggles, but I couldn't find Smitty. A pickup rattled in. A man with a wen above his eye said, "Smitty ain't here."
"Where is he?" I was just making talk.
"You the feller wantin' the harness?"
"Already got one."
"What'd you come for then?"
"I don't know. Have to talk to Smitty to find out."
"That's one I ain't heard," he said.

The Metal Man of Clayvillage

This fun folk-art metal ductwork robot can be found greeting passersby along Highway 60 in Clayvillage, KY. Ferrell's Air Conditioning and Heating, which operates in a nice old historic schoolhouse, constructed him to decorate their lawn.