UFO Blitz in the Bluegrass Triangle

Found in the labyrinthine recesses of my archives: a newspaper clipping from a 1978 National Enquirer, exact date indeterminate. Says here that central Kentucky was reportedly experiencing a "UFO blitz" back in those long-gone days of disco and punk.


What exactly did this blitz consist of? According to the article, one of the incidents involved a pair of Madison County firemen called upon to put out a grass fire that turned out to be a "blazing red UFO" - which they then proceeded to follow across Richmond in hot pursuit for over an hour. One of the firemen, Robert Murphy, described it as a "classic" flying-saucer shaped spaceship.


Another case was a preacher and his wife who, and I quote, "encountered a gigantic, dazzling UFO on the way to church." Elmer Hardy, then 73 years old and pastor of Bybee United Methodist Church, said they were driving to Sunday night services when the UFO approached them head-on and hovered above them. "It was about 10 stories high and 20 stories wide, with a zillion lights on it," Hardy is quoted as saying.

Then there's 16-year-old Terry Kirby from Irvine, who the Enquirer says was chopping wood when suddenly a glowing oval-shaped UFO descended upon him. Kirby had the quick wits to run in the the house, grab a polaroid camera, and snap a shot. The article also quotes other Irvine citizens like police chief Marcus Cole, who says there have been many eyewitness of flying saucers in Irvine; and Guy Hatfield, publisher of Citizen Voice & Times, is quoted as defending the experiencers: "These were all solid citizens, with no reason to say it unless they saw one".

Another Irvine sighting report was from a Kentucky State Trooper, Jim Whitaker. He spotted a car-sized UFO with red/white/blue/green pulsating lights hovering over a field in Irvine on "February 19" (presumably 1978). "Whitaker, a veteran of 1,500 flying hours in Navy helicopters, said the craft definitely wasn't a helicopter or airplane." He chased the car for two hours in the Estill County night, and made a very interesting observation: "When an aircraft approached it, the intensity of its lights would die down... and once the aircraft was clear, it would light up again!"


The article, although rather well-written for a tabloid rag, fails to mention the presence of the Blue Grass Army Depot at the epicenter of this "Bluegrass Triangle" of UFO activity they posit.

Harry Dean Stanton Fest!

We're all huge fans of Irvine's own Harry Dean Stanton around these offices, so we are well pleased that the first annual Harry Dean Stanton Fest will be held February 2 through 4, 2011 at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington.

The itinerary is as follows:

February 2 - the world premiere of the KET documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Crossing Mulholland by Tom Thurman, the same guy who did the great Hunter S. Thompson documentary Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. Admission is FREE and refreshments are FREE.

February 3 - the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas, followed by co-star Hunter Carson making a personal appearance and answering questions after the screening. Admission is $10. (Also, the Sidebar Grill will be hosting an after-party with Harry Dean drink specials, it says here. I might catch up with you there.)

February 4 - you get two flicks at $5 each: Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke (in which Harry sings and plays guitar!) and the Alex Cox 80s classic Repo Man (Harry plays the grizzled old repo man who hires Emilio Estevez and teaches him the trade).

Lookin' good, folks. Next year let's think about Escape From New York, Cockfighter, and David Lynch's Inland Empire.

Harry Dean Stanton

Get down on your knees, Planet Earth, and thank Kentucky once again for bringing you raw talent at its best. Harry Dean Stanton, one of Hollywood's greatest maverick actors, and known for being a character offstage as well as on, is a Kentuckian.

Harry was born in Irvine in 1926, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in Lexington before moving on to a theatre and film career in California. His long film oeuvre includes How the West Was Won (1962), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Repo Man, (1984), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and Inland Empire (2006), among others. Youngsters today probably know him best as Roman Grant, the elder in the Mormon-themed HBO show Big Love.

While he's still kickin', I'd love to do some research about Harry's Lexington years, and find out what clubs, bars and taverns he frequented - it's entirely possible that he and the great writer/pool hustler/drinkin' man Walter Tevis' paths may have crossed, either knowingly or unknowingly. Tevis was born in 1928, and spent a lot of time in both Irvine and Lexington. Since Winchester and Richmond lie directly between Irvine and Lexington (on Route 89 and Highway 25, respectively) it's a certainty that these cities were part of Harry's teenage stomping grounds as well.

Walter Tevis

Walter Tevis was a good ol' Madison County boy who served in World War II at a young age, attended Model High School (now Model Laboratory School) in Richmond, and went on to college at the University of Kentucky. His two biggest passions were playing pool and writing, and he somehow managed to juggle the two well enough to earn his Masters degree. Tevis spent a great deal of time in the smoky, dirty pool rooms of Richmond, even after becoming a schoolteacher in small towns like Science Hill, Irvine, and Carlisle. Later, he went on to become a professor at UK, and then Ohio University. His pool shark's life of drinking and smoking caught up with him in the end, however, and in his final years he battled alcoholism and lung cancer. He died in New York in 1984.

Oh, and he also just happened to be the author of three blockbuster novels: The Hustler, The Color of Money, and the Science Fiction classic The Man Who Fell to Earth, all three of which were also made into equally blockbuster Hollywood films.

The nationwide pool craze created by Tevis with his book The Hustler and the subsequent movie version single-handedly revolutionized the billiards industry, making it what it is today and giving it enormous new popularity and respectability.

For what it's worth, Tevis also inadvertently gave the world "Minnesota Fats", AKA Rudolph Wanderone Jr., the world famous pool player who achieved fame by appropriating the name of a character in The Hustler and claiming that Tevis (whom he had never met) had based the book on him! Tevis denied this and called Wanderone a fraud, stating, "I made up Minnesota Fats just as Walt Disney made up Donald Duck."

Tevis is buried in the Richmond Cemetery in Madison County, not far from where the last of the great old Richmond pool halls - Taylor's Billiards - still existed up until just last month.

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.

Taylorsville Road

Better known as Highway 155, this road starts out well-traveled in the bustling Highlands of Louisville, then takes you out to Hikes Point and Jeffersontown before you find yourself out of the middle of glorious nowhere. If you follow it long enough you’ll end up in - you guessed it - Taylorsville.

Nearby Taylorsville Lake is a popular fishing destination and has the added bonus of being nestled in a particularly eerie wooded part of the state. Other points of interest along the way include:

A veteran's park in which enormous anti-aircraft guns and tanks are curiously juxtaposed side by side with a children’s playground.

Floyd's Fork Park, a 102-acre park that's often a haven for cross-country bicyclists, but is most notable to Unusual Kentucky as the site of alleged manifestations of a black floating "blob", floating slowly above the ground and moving as if possessing an intelligence. (Curiously, there have been "floating black blob" sightings with very similar descriptions that are said to have occurred many miles away on Stacy Lane in Irvine, KY.)

That special stretch of nowhere alongside the haunted railroad trestles where the Pope Lick Monster supposedly lurks. (See page 85 in your copy of Weird Kentucky.)

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.

Bybee Pottery

Bybee Pottery is the oldest continuing pottery business west of the Alleghenies, and their primitive and rustic pieces have a considerable following around the world. Even in Japan, there are collectors who know of the work done in this ancient building that looks much as it did when the business began in 1809. Unlike many attractions whose patina is faked for the tourists, this place is the real deal.

Many who have purchased Bybee's creations around the world are shocked to find this global empire is still run from this tiny run-down shack in rural Kentucky.

Bybee also happens to be part of a concentrated cluster of small spot-in-the-road towns between Richmond and Irvine, with great local reputations for hauntings: Bybee, Moberly, Robinsville, Estonia, Drowning Creek, Sand Hill, Panola, Speedwell, Brassfield, Waco, College Hill, Winston, and Wisemantown.

A number of other Kentucky potteries, spurred on by Bybee's success, also operated in this region for many years. The most famous was Waco Pottery (actually, there were three different Waco Potteries and one was actually connected to Bybee Pottery itself, but that's another story), whose creative glazes and shapes often rivaled those of higher-end companies like Teco or Van Briggle.

Rumors are, Bybee Pottery may close its doors in a few years. Being family owned and operated, they're reluctant to turn the project over to anyone else if the next generation in their family doesn't want to take it over - and word is, they don't. So visit this American cultural landmark sooner, not later, before its reign of two centuries comes to an end.

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.