The Final Frontier

It's entirely fitting that Daniel Boone should be the person most recognized as a symbol of Kentucky. Like the greatest men in history, his legend has merged with his original life until even historians aren't entirely sure what's what sometimes. (And some interpretations of quantum physics suggest that even if parts of his legend weren't originally factual to begin with, they retroactively are true now in some sense.)

Imagine what men like Daniel Boone had to endure just to survive in a world that wouldn't slow down and just kept changing, again and again and again. Even the very calendar by which men marked time changed in his lifetime, from the Julian to the Gregorian in 1752. This meant that although his birthdate had been October 22, suddenly everyone around him went along with this new-fangled idea that his birthday was now November 2. It must have truly seemed to him, at that point, that the entire world had well and truly jumped the shark, drunk the Kool-Aid and gone utterly mad. (I know just how he feels.)


Between his birth in 1734 and his death in 1820, he saw a mysterious new land - with thirteen British colonies fighting to survive - turn into an independent nation by way of violent revolution; then he worked to impose order on the chaos of the frontier by forging a new land called Transylvania, only to have it stolen by the state of Virginia. He saw that land eventually wrest itself from Virginia's grip and call itself Kentucky, but then he watched in disgust as it quickly became tainted with the very same governmental bureaucracy and cronyism that had forced the American Revolution to cast off despotic rulers in the first place. Frustrated with lawsuits and debt, Boone fled even further out - into the wilderness that would eventually become Missouri, where he died defeated, disillusioned, and truly terrified of what this continent had so quickly become.

That's not to say that his life was miserable and misspent - by no means. Boone had a blast. You've got to have some real joie de vivre to go boldly where no Pennsylvanian has gone before, and Boone went with a smile. A story is told, reportedly by trailblazer Kasper Mansker, that when one of his expeditions cut their way into a section of the Cumberland area for what they thought was the first time by any white man, they heard a terrifying animal-like yodeling call in the distance. Fearful but undeterred, they bravely trudged on until the horrific caterwauling grew louder. Finally Mansker himself told the party to fall back while he went ahead to investigate. What he found was Daniel Boone, sprawled out on a deerskin blanket on the forest floor, drunk out of his mind and singing at the top of his lungs. Sadly, history does not record what song Boone was butchering.

In his younger days, his kinship with this strange "Dark and Bloody Ground" was strong. He and his brother Squire entered the region at around the spot where Elkhorn City currently stands, and spent a good chunk of the rest of his life here, exploring, trekking, ekeing out a living in terra incognita where he experienced strange prophetic dreams, burning springs, and the devious spirits of the coal and the corn.

Countless more men like Boone tried to tame this soil and its ghosts, each with some success but not quite enough to stave off what was to come. Men like Kaspar Mansker, Henry Scaggs, and John Montgomery aren't household words today like Boone's, but they should be. Unfortunately, that is not the way of history; the names and data of frontiersmen are not memorized in the manner afforded basketball players and rock stars, not in the average man's home and probably not at the Filson Club either.

And though adventurer-explorer-rogue Kit Carson took his six-guns West and didn't do much Kentucky scouting, he was born here - in Madison County, to be precise; Richmond, to be even more so.


The mountain man Jim Bridger also traipsed through a post-Boone Kentucky before finding further freedom out West. However, at the end of the road, Bridger found himself holed up in Missouri, just like Boone, dogged by thievery from the cold unthinking machine of governmental bureaucracy. I'm especially intrigued by a story Bridger liked to tell in his old age - one that has been cited of an example of his sense of humor and proclivity for tall tales - but I see something even deeper and poetic in it.

As Bridger would tell the tale, there was a time he was being doggedly pursued by one hundred Cheyenne warriors out for blood. After being adventurously chased for several miles, during which time he narrowly eluded them at every turn, Bridger suddenly found himself stuck at the end of a box canyon with nowhere to go. The war cries of the Indians grew louder as they closed in on him. At this point in telling the story, Bridger hung his head sadly and let his voice trail off, going silent. After an uncomfortable silence, this prompted his listener to ask, "What happened then, Mr. Bridger?"

Bridger's response: "They killed me."

Another legendary larger-than-life figure was Jesse James (pictured at right with brother Frank.) He was not a Kentuckian per se, but his mother was (she was from Midway in Woodford County) and he spent a lot of time in Kentucky during his checkered career of carousing and crime; enough so that I feel quite comfortable considering him an honorary Kentuckian. It's in that same spirit that I call myself an Estill Countian because my mom's from there and because I spent so much time there in my formative years, even though I technically lived just on the other side of the Estill-Madison border in Waco, and even though I attended school a fur, fur piece away, all the way out to Richmond's Model Laboratory School. And Boone himself was, after all, born in Pennsylvania.

While sitting around drinking at the infamously haunted Talbott Tavern in Bardstown one evening, Jesse James claimed that he saw the murals painted on the walls of an upstairs room coming to life, and shot the walls full of holes in his panic. (Then again, it may have just been the fact that he was three sheets to the wind. And maybe hallucinating on a bad batch of bourbon.) Some speculate he still has buried stolen loot somewhere in the vicinity of Mammoth Cave; perhaps even in the cave itself.

Jesse was no hero and no saint, but he was in possession of a free spirit and an indomitable will, for better or for worse - which is probably more than can be said for an increasing number of American males whose brain's way of processing information is so radically different from his ancestors that he almost cannot be said to be the same species of life form as Mssrs. Boone and James.

"United We Stand, Divided We Fall", says Kentucky's state slogan. And if this pithy saying is merely intended to be applied to the two gentlemen depicted on the flag, well, that's fine. After all, even Lao Tzu, Napoleon and Caesar knew the importance of "Divide and Conquer" as a military motto.

But let us never kid ourselves that it should ever, even for a second, mean that it's better to put one's own personal principles aside in the interest of "making peace" and seriously compromising yourself. Making a contrived sort of peace when you don't really mean it only leads to more bitter battles down the road - just look at international politics or romantic relationships. (Interestingly, the original seal simply showed two gentlemen with arms locked, sometimes actually hugging. Somewhere along the way it became our present seal with a Daniel Boone-looking frontiersman shaking hands with a fop.)

Bill Monroe wasn't the compromising type, and neither were the Everly Brothers. They both dug their heels in for the long term with McCoy-Hatfield sort of feuds - Monroe with the Stanley Brothers, Phil and Don with each other - and though part of me loathes the negativity of the grudge-clinging mud-slinging involved, another part of me respects their determination to stand up for whatever it was they thought was right. (Ultimately, all parties involved finally figured out, a little too late, perhaps, that other unseen outside factors were conspiring to cause their disagreements.)

Maybe the state slogan really means that you yourself, each individual, should be united in your beliefs, your thoughts, your moral and ethical principles, and that you should not be internally divided. Cast off doubt and get yourself some certainty.

"Where is all this leading, Mr. Holland?"

Well, once again we seem to be at one of those times in history where everything is changing so rapidly that we can't seem to keep up with it all and it's messing up a LOT of people's lives - weird thing is, most of them aren't even aware of it yet. But I have hope for the future, because part of my love for this state comes from its power of intention, its will, its backbone - a backbone that's sorely lacking in some other parts of the country. Used to be, Kentucky and Texas were often held up as two of the best examples of the national spine. Texas isn't what it used to be, but I still believe it will also return any day now to its former glory. Kentucky's still one of the best places going on the planet, despite doomsayers, gloomsayers, naysayers, negative nellies and numbskulls who can't see the same things Jesse James saw, who can't feel what Daniel Boone felt.

I feel it. You feel it too, don'tcha?

Graves of Old-Time Country Musicians

Fiddlin' Doc Roberts, Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.


Asa Martin, Hargett First Church of God Cemetery, Hargett, KY.


Bill Monroe, Rosine Cemetery, Rosine, KY.


Armour Cornelison, Jr., Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.

Secret Service Suicide

With all the talk of the Bill Sparkman case, I wonder if anyone thinks the case of Gary Joe Bergsen might need to be reopened, or at least reexamined. (Thanks to Dan Brandenburg for reminding me about this old X-file.)

In September 1990, Bergsen, a Secret Service officer from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, was found dead of a gunshot wound in a remote rural graveyard (Mountain Springs Cemetery) in the Daniel Boone National Forest. The cemetery is outside of Furnace, KY, near the Estill County-Powell County line.

Bergsen was on annual leave at the time and was not in Kentucky on official business, according to Secret Service spokesman Mark Rupert, quoted in the Washington Post. Neither the State Police nor the Secret Service could say what he was doing in Kentucky, especially in an obscure cemetery in the mountains. Previously, he had allegedly been visiting relatives in California, and went on a deer hunting trip while there. His hunting and camping equipment were still in his vehicle.


Kentucky State Trooper Ed Robinson told the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star that all tests indicated that Agent Bergsen committed suicide with his own .38 pistol while sitting at the wheel of his own pickup truck. However, Robinson was also concerned about sightings of a 1976 Ford Sedan with Virginia license plates seen in the area that morning. Robinson noted it was unusual to see a car with Virginia plates in that area, but it may have been just a coincidence that two of them were around Mountain Springs Cemetery at the same time.

Hmmmm.

The Bergsen case was ruled a suicide, but the other troubling questions were never resolved. His sister said that during his visit in California just prior to his death, he was in great spirits, thrilled about his job and his life, and was, quote, "happy-go-lucky".


Two years later, the Free-Lance Star ran a follow-up piece about Bergsen's house at 7018 Soulier Lane, Battlefield Green subdivision, Fredericksburg, VA. Neighbors were starting to complain about his empty home falling into disrepair, and it was reported that after Bergsen's death, the house had been purchased by a pair of men named Carl Schleicher and Alton Perkins, both of whom were with an organization called the Mankind Research Foundation from Silver Spring, MD.

Although Schleicher told the paper that his organization's purpose was to provide low-cost housing to low-income families, a cursory Google search shows something quite different. This link describes them as:

"A New Age organization that aims to combine the efforts of leading researchers and experimenters in the multi-disciplinary and interacting fields of human development and humanistic psychology which include research involving the body, mind and those forces and phenomena acting upon the health, education and welfare of mankind. Areas of study include biocommunication, biocybernetics, biophysics, psycho-physiology, educational development, cancer research and mind-body developments. It is located at 1315 Apple Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20910."

And this link opens up more cans of worms than I want to think about right now. And then there's mindcontrolforums.com, which states that the late Christopher Bird, co-author of The Secret Life of Plants, was a member at some point.

Now, I don't mean to imply any connection between Agent Bergsen's death and whoever bought his house - I mean, someone had to buy it, right? - and I certainly do not go along with the above-linked conspiracy-kook websites that automatically classify any Remote Viewing, Psychotronic, or Parapsychological project as being inherently suspicious. (Christopher Bird, in fact, has always been a hero of mine and I corresponded with him sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s about Orgone energy, plant intelligence, and pleomorphic organisms.)

But that Agent Bergsen's house was taken over by a group with such a mysterious, controversial, and self-contradictory mission statement is, to me, very interesting for its own sake. Why did they tell the newspaper they were a provider of housing to low-income families when there's every indication that they were not, and never have been, in that line of work? Or did the paper just get the facts wrong?

The DC/MD/VA area is so filled with all manner of weird researchers, Remote Viewers, and triple agents of shadowy orgs, that it's probably just a coincidence. But a fascinating one nevertheless. If nothing else, it's an illustration of just how easily one thing leads to another when examining "fellow travelers" in such circles.


Meanwhile, back in KY, you can find the Mountain Springs Cemetery at Latitude 37.73640, Longitude -83.80550. How the heck did Agent Bergsen get here, halfway between two extreme rural locales as Cobhill and Furnace?

Was he there to visit a certain grave? Whose? Why? You can get a partial list of who's who six feet under at the cemetery here.

Why didn't he tell anyone about this unplanned trip? What was out here that brought him to this place, and then what possessed him to place his Secret Service revolver behind his ear and pull the trigger?

The Mystery of James Harrod

Nick Tosches spent years researching the 1920s musician Emmett Miller, who had been quite famous in his day yet left almost no trace of his existence just a half century later. His quest to know more about the man became an obsession that spanned decades, and finally bore fruit, as detailed in his book "Where Dead Voices Gather".

Perhaps one day scholars will plumb the depths of the mysteries of Kentucky's James Harrod as well - but I wouldn't bet on it. Harrod is a key part of Kentucky history, yet one whose record is smudged in places and completely blank in others.

We dont know when he was born and we don't know when he died. We have no photographs or paintings of his likeness. We know almost nothing about his early life. We do know he served in the French and Indian War, and was probably underage when he did so. We also know he was an important early settler of Kentucky, in every way a peer of Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, yet his name is not a household word. (Well, then again, in a way it is for some: Harrod founded the first permanent settlement in Kentucky in 1774 and we know it today as the city pictured above.... Harrodsburg.)

In February 1792, Harrod left on a hunting trip in the wilderness of Kentucky and was never seen again.

There are as many theories and explanations for his vanishing as there are JFK conspiracy theories, and we'll probably never know the truth.

Some say he was a bigamist and had another wife and family, to whom he returned to under another name, and was likely buried under this pseudonym. Others tell of a pair of woodsmen held captive by Indians in Michigan meeting a fellow prisoner referred to as "Colonel Harrod." And yet another account has it that Harrod had been killed by one of his fellow hunters, a man named Bridges, and that the secret purpose of their hunting expedition was to search for Jonathan Swift's fabled silver mine. Supposedly this Bridges guy was caught selling silver buttons from Harrod's coat, conveniently engraved with the letter "H", at a Lexington shop.

Then there's the bizarre tale that some of Harrod's friends found his skeleton in a cave, wrapped in grass. However, some say the skeleton was wearing Harrod's shirt and some say it wasn't. Supposedly, Harrod's family believed the skeleton to be his, so the question then becomes, why didn't they bury the skeleton and give him a proper gravestone? And why then, when Ann applied for Harrod's pension, did she swear he had died in a hunting accident and that his clothes had been found in a nearby river but his body never found?

The most logical explanation, to me, would be that he simply died in the woods and no one ever found his body, which probably was torn apart by wild animals. But according to the James Harrod Trust, "In the 1880s a rumor circulated that Bridges, who had returned to Virginia, confessed on his deathbed to the Harrod murder and revealed the place of his burial in what is now Estill County, Kentucky".

Or maybe he encountered the Devil Deer.

I'm not exactly weeping copious tears for Harrod, though - he actively opposed Daniel Boone and Richard Henderson's Transylvania purchase, and added and abetted the crooked land grab from Virginia. He went on to represent Virginia's "Kentucky County" in the Virginia House of Delegates. Many people, your humble author included, believe that most of the area should still be known as Transylvania because it was improperly wrested from Boone and Henderson's hands by the state of Virginia before regaining its independence.

Radar Controlled Sign in Ravenna

I always found this sign on U.S. 52 in Ravenna amusing, because my first reaction to it has always been that it's warning pedestrians not to speed. I'm easily amused.

This is the same stretch of road, incidentally, where many of our cherished Estill County religious billboards can be found.

Estill County Religious Billboards, pt.2

Our obsession with Estill County's religious billboards with stick-on applied wooden letters continues! Click here to see more, and also turn to page 147 in your copy of Weird Kentucky as well!

I'm not entirely sure what "dark hours" the above billboard is referring to, and what sort of statement is being made here in observing that churches are remaining silent about it. And the minimalist "Go" billboard is even more bewildering.

The Twin Still Going Strong

After recently learning that the great old ice cream stand Cree-Mee has bitten the dust, I started worrying about my favorite retro snack stand of them all, The Twin, which we discussed just last week. So, I trekked out to Irvine and was relieved to see that it's still among the living, and that their cones are as uniquely delicious as they ever were. As you can sort-of see in the above image, their cones are a custardy, vanilla-beany, off-white color.

The Twin

Here's another installment in our ongoing obsession with old retro ice cream stands.

Still hanging in there since the 1950's without changing its appearance hardly at all in the intervening years, The Twin is a breath of fresh air that you'll find on River Drive in Irvine, KY. Their soft-serve tastes unlike any other I've ever had.

The other major 1950s ice cream stand in Irvine was The Zesto and sadly no longer exists, having closed down many years back. (There are still a few other Zestos still surviving out there, like in Indiana and South Dakota.)

The Twin is about 60 seconds walk from Irvine Cemetery, incidentally, so have a cold frozen treat while you go grave-spotting.

Arnold Dunaway

Gravestones that tell something about the person are very rare, and it's even rarer when they actually tell how the person died. That makes the grave of Arnold Dunaway special in itself, but doubly so because he was apparently a race-car driver of some reknown back in the 1950s. According to the stone, Dunaway died in a crash at Eldora Speedway in Ohio.

Dunaway's grave is in a small cemetery in Winston, KY.

The Wig Wam

The Wig Wam Restaurant has been an Estill County mainstay since as long as I can remember.

Though currently beige, it used to be Forest Green for most of my childhood, and apparently was a more garish assortment of colors way back in the day. Reportedly the building had more accoutrements back then to make it look more teepee-like too. Anyway, it's one of Kentucky's lesser-known examples of classic old-school mimetic architecture, and the burgers are dee-lish. Check it out next time you're in sunny downtown Ravenna.

Anonymous Cross in Oakdale Cemetery

This homemade wooden cross with no inscription is near the front entrance of Oakdale Cemetery in Irvine. Possibly an unknown soldier, or just a general memorial monument to all unknown soldiers?

Estill County Religious Billboards

I adore the removable 3-D cutout letters approach these signs utilize, and someday hope to rip off the idea for some billboards of my own. This one, located in a vacant lot in Irvine, has a different message every couple weeks. See page 147 of Weird Kentucky for more examples.