Cemetery Deer

What is it with deer? They're stalking me. Everywhere I go nowadays, I encounter deer, even in the city. I never used to see them so often, not even when I lived in the wilderness of Waco, KY - with the sole exception of the now-infamous "Devil Deer" incident.

But now I see them everywhere (to quote Hank Thompson) and they're popping up in urban settings with greater frequency as mankind continues to encroach on what dwindling wild space is left to them. One even barged into the Middletown Fresh Market a few months ago.

And last fall (holy moley - I just checked and it was exactly a year ago today and I didn't even realize it when I started writing this. Now that's weird!) I was driving Westbound on I-64 at night through Franklin County, and ran over an enormous deer. I didn't run into it, I ran over it. Now, the impact was great, to be sure, but aside from a really skull-joggling staccato double-WHAM!! as each set of tires bounced over the unfortunate buck, it was relatively untraumatic. I have pretty darn good reflexes, or so I like to flatter myself, and managed to keep the car straight and continue driving with relative calm.

It wasn't until I got home that it really started sinking on me how incredible the whole thing was. It's like in Pulp Fiction where John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson look at the bulletholes in the wall behind them and can't figure out why they aren't dead. I kept picturing - and still picture to this day - the frozen-in-time snapshot my mind took of the moment just before impact. The deer's considerable rack should have been run over by my driver-side tires, and it's a minor miracle that my tires weren't punctured by them.

But then it's a major miracle that I'm even alive at all. When I tell the story to people, many have been incredulous - "you ran over a deer in a Volvo station wagon and didn't wreck? Is that even possible?" I admit it doesn't sound possible at all, and yet it happened. And all I lost was a muffler.

I recently saw a news story where a Brownsville man driving one of those monster-sized heavy-duty pickup trucks collided with a deer in Grayson County. If any vehicle could squash a deer, you would expect it would be one of those, right? Nope. The impact sent him flipping over repeatedly, totalling his vehicle.

And just this past weekend, someone died in a deer collision in Harold, KY (Floyd County).

The statistics for deer/vehicle impact fatalities are so grim that a number of organizations exist to monitor the problem, such as Deer Crash.



Anyway, I said all that to say all this: I was in Louisville's Calvary Cemetery the other day, and came face to face with Bambi. We stared each other down for a couple minutes before the little doe decided she didn't want her picture taken.

Betsy Layne, KY

So, who was Betsy Layne, and why is there a town named after her in Floyd County?

According to UK's Kentucky Atlas, "Betsy Layne is an eastern Floyd county village on the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River. It was founded around 1875 and named for Betsy Layne, a local resident. The original location of the town may have been nearby on Betsy Layne Branch. That site is now known as Justell. The Betsy Layne post office opened in 1908."

A "local resident". Okay, but... but... what else? What's so special about Betsy?

Just south of Betsy Layne is Laynesville, which, according again to UK's Atlas, "was founded in the early nineteenth century and named for the settler James Shannon Layne".

Hmmm. Okay, so as it turns out, James Shannon Layne was an important early settler of Kentucky:

James Shannon Layne of Amherst County, Virginia arrived near the present day Betsy Layne about 1796. he had married Caty Hager, daughter of John Hager, who himself immigrated here a few years later. Col. Harry Stratton was here and located nearby the mouth of Toms Creek, as was Cornelius McGuire, the first Methodist preacher who settled near the same place. McGuire constructed a cabin nearby, but soon moved to upper Johns Creek He preached the first Methodist sermon in the valley at the house of Henry Stratton, near the present Ivel in 1796. Tandy Stratton, who had married Mildred Layne, a daughter of William S. Layne, and a sister to James S. followed his brother·in-law - if indeed, he did not arrive at the same time. Also came Solomon Stratton, veteran of the Gen.George Rogers Clark Illinois Expedition, as did Richard Stratton, his son. Thomas Johns, who had married Nancy Layne, sister of James S. followed after his in-laws, and founded an influential family.

But still no explanation of who Betsy was. Could she have been James' mother, perhaps? That's my guess, because Knott Kentucky Kinfolk lists his descendants as being Tandy Middleton, Jennie, John Lewis, William Henry, Lindsey, Sam George, Nancy Porter, Solomon, Mary, and Arminta. Nary a Betsy in the bunch.

I wonder if the locals are so used to it that they don't even think about the name anymore, or if they're always, in some recessed part of the backs of their minds, aware of this mystery woman. There's no escaping her: a glance at the city directory shows a Betsy Layne Auto Sales, Betsy Lane Pharmacy, Betsy Layne Dairy Bar, Betsy Layne Elementary School, Betsy Layne Volunteer Fire Department, Betsy Layne Flea Market, and of course, the Betsy Layne Church of Christ.

(I also wonder if locals often encounter the typographic error of "Besty" for Betsy, since humans seem to have something hard-wired in them to type "Pasty" Cline instead of Patsy.)

Death Row

Fayette County prosecutor Ray Larson keeps tabs on Kentucky's 37 "death row" inmates on his website. Read all about it here, but only if you're extremely strong of stomach; the rogue's gallery of Kentucky's condemned men and women includes such nutcases as:

Floyd County's Donald Johnson, a 22-yr-old who killed a 61-year-old woman in a laundromat and mutilated her private parts with a ball-point pen.

Knox County's John Mills, who clubbed his 79-year-old landlord over the head and stabbed him 29 times, in order to rob him of $4.60.

Jefferson County's Melvin Lee Parrish, who stabbed a pregnant woman and her eight-year-old son to death.

Breathitt County's Karu White, who beat three senior citizens to death so brutally that their bodies were in pieces and had to be buried in bags.

Henry County's Parramore Lee Sanborn, who kidnapped, raped, sodomized, and murdered a mother of three. He ripped out all her hair and dumped her body on a rural road.

Burning Springs

Back in the glory days when Kentucky was being explored by Europeans in the 1600s, the early settlers were dazzled by natural gas vents in the Earth, also known as "burning springs". I'm not sure if history records how someone first figured out there was highly flammable gas spewing from these vents, but if a frontiersman bearing a torch happened to walk up to one, I'm sure what happens next would be quite a shock!

Today, Kentucky still has a town named for one such gas vent: Burning Springs, KY in Clay County. Burning Springs was once a bustling place, but its post office closed in 1965 and it's currently listed as an unincorporated community. According to Robert Rennick's "Kentucky Place Names" book:

"A very early settlement, it was named for the ignitable springs of natural gas, in seemingly inexhaustible supply, discovered before 1800 at several sites in the area."

Another Kentucky burning spring was in Magoffin County, which dried up in 1900 after being tapped by an oil & gas company in the 1880s. Today the small community named Burning Fork is a remnant of those days. This spring was a literal spring of water, which emitted from the ground mixed with the natural gas. According to "A Library Of Wonders And Curiosities Found In Nature And Art, Science And Literature", by I. Platt:

A spring here breaks out at the foot of a hill, forming a basin of water about six feet in diameter and two feet deep, at the bottom of which issues a stream of gas, which in volume and force is about equal to the blast forced from a common smith's bellows; but there is no cessation of its force, which is such as to create a violent ebullition in the water. Being heavier than common atmospheric air, the gas, on passing up through the water, constantly occupies the surface, which is still the lower part of an indenture in the earth at that place. On presenting a taper, this gas instantly takes fire, and burns with great brilliancy.

Yet another one was near Beaver Creek in Floyd County, mentioned by Lewis Collins in 1847 his "Historical Sketches of Kentucky". According to Collins, the local gas vent was known as a "place of notoriety" to the early residents of Floyd County, and marveled at how the site "instantly ignites on the application of fire".