Tater Day

Tater Day is a festival held on the first Monday each April in Benton, KY. But don't be fooled by the name - this is (unfortunately) not a celebration of the noble potato, but the sweet potato. According to the lore built up around the event, it's supposedly one of the oldest indigenous festivals in the state, and grew out of the old "court day" events dating back to 1843, when farmers would set up selling and trading their livestock and produce in the town square.

Above: a float in the Tater Day parade. Below: Tractor tailgate party! (Photos by kilowat1946.)


Wikipedia, at the moment, has a humorous entry about the event that reads like an advertisement, apparently posted by an overzealous promoter:

"It includes Political floats, Marshall County High School marching band, horse and buggies, clowns, vintage cars, horses, Ms. Tater Day, and other things for which Marshall County is known. There is also junior ms. tater that is allowed for little girls ages 5 to 12, and a little Ms., little Mr., tiny Miss, and baby Ms. Tater day pageants and floats for the younger kids. Tater Day also has carnival rides, games, a market, mule pulls, and several other exciting events. Ms.tater announces a speech about how grateful she is to be Ms. Tater. Other exciting events are the biggest potato contest that attracts large potatoes from across the town and a potato eating contest. They find the potatoes from the Potato bake sale hosted by MCHS. All in all The Tater Day festival has a plethora of exciting events and is for tater-lovers of all ages!"

400 Mile Yard Sale Across Kentucky

I live for yard sales, flea markets, junk stores, auctions, trading posts, antique malls, and such. And in this economy, "secondary market" stuff is quickly becoming primary.

So it should come as no surprise that you'll find me somewhere in all the hubbub of the 400 Mile Yard Sale across Kentucky.

The sale follows Highway 68 (though there's always plenty more yard sales going on in the periphery each year) from Maysville to Paducah and hitting all points in between - including Paris, Lexington, Nicholasville, Wilmore, Harrodsburg, Danville, Gravel Switch, Lebanon, Campbellsville, Glasgow, Bowling Green, Cadiz, Hopkinsville, and Benton. Yee-haw!


(By the way, Catclaw Theatre is having a yard sale this weekend at 2107 Lakeland Road in the Anchorage area of Louisville. Come on down and say howdy! And if you can't make it, make a donation!)

Much of Kentucky Still Without Power

Apparently I spoke too soon when I said the current ice storm wasn't quite as bad as the one in 2003. According to the New York Times:

Much of Kentucky remained blanketed in ice Friday as more than 600,000 homes and businesses were still without power after being hit this week by the worst winter storm in memory. Utility officials warned it might take two weeks before all electricity was restored.

Emergency officials in three of the hardest-hit cities — Paducah, Owensboro and Benton — said that utility workers were doing everything they could, but that there simply were too many felled lines, especially in remote areas of the state, to move any faster.

Although the storm left more than 1.2 million people without power as it stretched from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania last Saturday, Kentucky was hit hard Tuesday night and into Wednesday, causing the largest power failure in state history.

And in Time Magazine:

Life has come to a standstill in Kentucky, and it's difficult to imagine just who in the Bluegrass State had the more miserable Super Bowl weekend. For those half-million residents who were still without power Saturday night (and 200,000 who were also reported to be without water), this past weekend involved shuttling between one of the estimated 172 emergency shelters that have been operating across the state since Wednesday.

As for state officials, the weekend involved a rapid reassessment of just how dire the situation had become. Speaking out the day after some local municipalities decried a lack of federal or state emergency relief, Gov. Steve Beshear described the fallout from last week's ice storm as the state's largest-ever natural disaster. He then activated every last member of Kentucky's National Guard, dispatching all 4,600 Guardsman to assist with the statewide crisis.

Most reports of the chaos have focused solely on the numbers: 700,000 Kentuckians thrown into the dark last Tuesday, nearly 200,000 of those concentrated in Louisville alone, with more than a dozen deaths now being investigated.

(First photo: Paducah, KY, swiped from the New York Times. Second photo, Spottsville, KY, swiped from Time.)