Pete "Buckhorn" Gross

The interesting characters, past and present, that have populated Madison County's downtown area (especially the bars and pool halls) could fill an entire book or an entire blog all to themselves. (And sooner or later, I will do just that. All in time.) I know, or have known, men of mythic grandeur who walked the streets of Richmond bearing sobriquets such as Pee Wee, Peanut, Beech-nut, Shorty, Wavy, Popsicle, and Buckhorn.

The mysterious and often inscrutable Buckhorn, now deceased, was a good friend of mine, loved by all who knew him in Madison County. And just about everybody knew him.

In the 80s and 90s, if you drove kids to school in the mornings or got up early for work, you probably heard his morning radio show on Richmond's WEKY-AM. His avant-garde rendition of "Happy Birthday To You" was a notorious local hit of sorts, and kept the station console's VU meters laying in the red. Often people would call in fraudently claiming it was their birthday, just to hear the man belt it out, his way, one more time.

He gained great notoriety for zipping all over town on his motorcycle (and usually ignoring all traffic laws). It's doubtful Buckhorn even had a license, but he had a sort of a "Jedi Mind Trick" aura around him that made everyone just accept it. He was befriended by everyone from bankers to farmers in his day to day travels, and college students revered him as the eccentric custodian at several local bars as they closed each night.

However, Buckhorn’s true glory lay on two other fronts:

First and foremost, Buckhorn was the quintessential wheeler-dealer. Buckhorn always had something to sell, and like "Skinny" in the famous Residents song, Buckhorn sold something every single day. He would swagger into Taylor's Billiards, open up his coat to reveal an entire store inside, like a bad old movie's "wanna buy a watch?" street hustler. He had watches, coins, pocket knives (Case XX ones were his favorite), old collectible cigarette lighters, antique silver cigarette cases, etc. All day long Buckhorn sped on his cycle from flea market to bar to junk store to pool hall, endlessly buying and selling like a one-man pawn shop a-go-go.

And secondly, Buckhorn had a special place in his heart for radios. He loved to fix, repair and restore antique radios, and proof of his occult powers is the fact that he repaired them often, and repaired them quite well, even though he knew little or nothing about the fundamentals of electronics except what he had taught himself through trial and error, and had little formal education (he apparently could not read or write, at least not very well).

"I just wuk on 'em till they do right," Buckhorn said of his repair technique. He had a huge collection of old tubes and parts, but his methods for choosing appropriate replacement ones for radios were a cryptic, mysterious, spiritual matter, the mechanisms of which were known only to himself. He usually polished his tubes until the serial numbers were worn off anyway. And yet he conjured and coaxed new life into dead radios. How he did it remains a mystery. "Wal, I reckon it's got that Buckhorn Quietus on it," he would say when a piece was finished.

For those who did not have the opportunity to hear Buckhorn's voice, it was a powerful thing: a deep-south Louisiana-like upwardly-lilting drawl utterly out of place for someone who'd never left Kentucky in his life, creaky and full of character like a merging of William S.Burroughs, Justin Wilson and Emo Phillips. Add to this the trait of repeating some words and phrases twice, and a delightfully squeaky and childish laugh that clashed with his rough, grizzled appearance.


Buckhorn died on his motorcycle in an accident in 1997. The story is told, whether apocryphal or not, that he smashed into a lamppost in an effort to swerve and avoid a young girl who walked directly in front of his motorcycle's path.

Some video footage of Buckhorn was preserved on a short project done by an EKU student for a class in the early 90s. I have a copy - probably the only copy - and will put it on YouTube eventually as a tribute to Buckhorn's memory. Stay tuned.

Death of Taylor's Billiards

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??

The last great old-school pool hall in Madison County is gone. I just happened to be in Richmond recently and decided to get a couple of "Jasonburgers" (so nicknamed by fans of the owner and cook) and found it closed down and empty inside. How could such a thing happen?

Then I realized that ALL the shops on the whole First Street block were shut down. One's even in the process of being torn down. Since First Street was one of the last interesting and useful blocks in Richmond that still had any character or integrity, doesn't it just figure that someone would of course want to get rid of it? I've gone to see many a band on that block over the years, from the silly (A Styx cover band) to the sublime (Southern Culture On The Skids), and I've even BEEN that band several times, with my old musical combos like The Kentuckians, Cheeseburger & Fries, and Formula LX-321.

Most importantly, historically speaking, the great Kentucky author Walter Tevis used to do much of his drinkin', smokin', and pool sharkin' here back in the day, and for that reason alone, this place should have been named a protected historic site.

The mysterious motorcyclist-savant "Buckhorn" (see page 110 in the Weird Kentucky book) also dwelled here daily, hawking wristwatches, fountain pens, pocket knives, zippo lighters, antique silver cigarette cases, and other doodads from the virtual general store that was the inside of his denim coat.

You'd walk through the filthy screen door to find an ancient green countertop, with discolored places worn from decades of elbows. You'd find a seat on an ancient stool held together with duct tape, and you'd be likely to have a tobacco farmer sitting beside you on your left and an attorney on your right.

The mighty Jason would open the fridge, pluck balls of raw burger that had been prepared in the early morning hours, and spatula them flat on an ancient grill that was caked in the carbon-black grease of a century, much like the one Kerouac described in Visions of Cody. Then he'd reach into a huge bucket filled with freshly hand-cut french fries immersed in icewater, and drop them onto the grill as well. A dozen oddball characters shouting orders at him (and calls for "another beer over here!") and Jason always managed to keep his cool and never screw up a single order. I heard rumors that he's a master golfer when not in his cook's apron, and this cool probably serves him well.

If you ordered a beer, it came from a glass-doored cooler unit right in front of you. If you ordered a soft drink, Jason or one of his minions would get fifty cents out of the cash register, walk all the way down to the pool-table area to a Coke machine there, purchase your drink from it, and come back to the counter to bring you the can. I always thought that was a peculiar and wonderfully Southern way of doing it.

People smoked at Taylor's. Hard to imagine in this confused and sterile modern world, but they gleefully smoked like chimneys at good ol' Taylor's - cigs, cigars, pipes, not to mention dip, snuff and chaw. They drank and they smoked and listened to George Jones and smoked some more, then they ate meat and consorted with whores and then drank some more. Some even occasionally played pool.

There were photographs of the place's early history on the wall, along with an old sun-bleached and nicotine-stained nude photo of some woman with a 1960s hairdo. There was still an antiquated cigarette machine, even though political correctness had eliminated them from most other places in America. There was a 1920s-looking wood-and-glass showcase filled with sad-looking store-bought snack cakes that nobody ever ate. There was a giant greasy old handpainted menu overhead whose prices were no longer correct but they left it up for show. There was also a greasy sign above the grill that said "We serve the best burgers in the Universe".

And with that, I'd have to agree. I will miss Taylor's. Goddamnit.