Missing Hands (and other stuff)

With a topic like this, I thought maybe this would be a good occasion to use this image of Kali.

UnK reader "Old" posted a comment to yesterday's entry about the mysterious death of Secret Service agent Gary Joe Bergsen:

"I don't know if you know much about this, but there have been reports of people going missing in between Jackson County and Rockcastle County in recent years and if they find the bodies they generally find that their hands have been cut off."

Well, removal of a corpse's hands is an antiquated gangster-style method of making identification of a body difficult, apparently done by persons who forgot about toeprints, teeth, DNA, and other identifying factors. I don't know of any instances of it of occuring down in Jackson/Rockcastle counties, but I don't doubt that such cases exist. We tend to only hear about the ones where the bodies remain unclaimed and unidentified, on websites that keep track of John Does and Cold Case Files, such as:

Henderson: "The remains of a severely beaten young man who had his hands and feet cut off and his teeth knocked out remain unidentified despite an earlier, false identification in 2007 that named the victim as Indianapolis area resident Scott Michael Morris."

Madison County: "1993. White male between 25 and 30. Asphyxia from bag tied around head with belt. Missing hands. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1963-68."

Grant County: "1989. White male in 30's. 6 1/2 feet tall and weighed 220 lbs. Body found in tobacco barn. Hands cut off and multiple gunshot wounds, blow to the head. ESTIMATED YEAR OF BIRTH 1949-59."

Last November, I also reported on a case where the body of a male with hands and feet removed was found in a briar thicket in Daviess County.

The Ten Commandments

The hubbub over the Jackson County courthouse's prominent display of a list of Christian moral precepts popularly known as The Ten Commandments is over for now, but those moral precepts are more popular than ever.

According to the great Kaintuckeean Blog:

McKee was most recently in the news when the Ten Commandments were removed from the courthouse after a federal lawsuit was filed. As a result, the Ten Commandments are EVERYWHERE in Jackson County, including this monument on private property just off the courthouse square.

I really don't see why there has to be such a fuss about this, from either side of the debate. If the Jackson County courthouse - or any courthouse, for that matter - wants to get around the ruling, they could conceivably put up an educational exhibit of all the world's religions, safely couching the Ten Commandments amongst the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Seven Pillars of Ismailism, The Eight Dynamics of Scientology, various Zen Koans, the Five Sikh Symbols, the Thirteen Mormon Articles of Faith, the Nuwaubian Tablets, the Zhen-Shan-Ren of Falun Gong, the Holy Measures of the ODF, the Jehovah's Witnesses Eschatological Chart, the Hare Krishna Mantra, the Transmissions of Aetherius, the Five Precepts of Aleph (aka Aum Shinrikyo), the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints and Feast Days, the Astara Prayers, the Eight Words of the Wiccan Rede, Kabbalah's 72 Names of God, the Seven Planes of Shamballa (Unarius), the Six Precepts of Ahmadi Faith, the Discordian Law of Fives, the Subgenius "Prescriptures" and even The Church of Satan's Nine Satanic Sins.

Not to mention the doctrines of Wayne Bent, Savitri Devi, The Branch Davidians, The Unitarians, Subud, Heaven's Gate, New Thought, Santeria, The Rosicrucians, The "I AM" Churches, Christian Science, Galactic Messenger Network, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Dianetics, TM, The Temple of the Presence, The Federation of Damanhur, Church of All Worlds, The Juche Idea, Eckankar, Sai, The Way to Happiness, Meher Baba, Odinism, Voodoo/Voudoun/Vodun, The Temple of Set, and The Urantia Foundation.

And also Shamanism, Ordo Templi Orientis, Predestinarians, The Sufi Order, Archeosophy, NXIVM, Barbara Marciniak, MorningStar Ministries, The Nation of Islam, Fiat Lux, Dahn Yoga, The Ancient Order of Druids, The Golden Dawn, WATV, The Grail Message, Hinduism, Apollo C. Quiboloy, The Book of Ruhnama, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Luciferianism, The Samaritans, House of Yahweh, Raël, Galac-Patra, the Hidden Words of Bahá'í, and of course, the channelled messages of Ashtar Sheran and the Ashtar Command Crew.

Can't we all just get along?


Since Christianity is pretty much an "open source" religion - that is to say, it's not copyrighted nor under exclusive control of any unified governing ecclesiastical body, thus freely modified - keeping the list of valid moral lessons intact while removing the overt references to the Judeo-Christian God would go far towards making the list more palatable to the ACLU. I wonder what would happen if the list were repackaged for courthouse use as, say, "A secular common-sense list of stuff to not do"? One's cake could be had while eating it too, since theoretically you'd be presenting a secularized version of the Ten Commandments, thus skirting illegality, even though you know and I know (and even people living under a rock in Tierra Del Fuego know) all about the list's religious basis anyhow.


The funny thing is, there are a whole lot more commandments in the Bible besides just these ten. The traditional codified list of what we call the Ten Commandments today was a very late arrangement, created by picking and choosing certain commandments given in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament, including the Seven Laws of Noah which predated Moses by, at least, centuries (depending on whether or not you accept the Bible's statement that Noah lived 950 years).

Look it up: the phrase "Ten Commandments" is actually not used in the Bible to describe the litany of laws that we commonly ascribe that term to. It's used, rather, to describe a completely different set of "thou shalt nots" that can be found in Exodus 34:12-26. These Ten Commandments include instructions to destroy places of worship of other religious faiths, to sacrifice all first-born children and livestock to Yahweh, and an admonition not to boil a kid in its mother's milk. This set of Commandments actually supercedes prior ones from which we derived our modern idea of the Ten Commandments from, which Moses smashed to pieces. (In point of fact, the entire Old Testament is superceded for Christians by the New Testament, so the whole matter should be entirely moot anyway.)


As a Christian myself, the most unfortunate aspect of the whole mess for me is not the matter of Church vs. State, but that the controversy has caused a proliferation of plastic Ten Commandments yard signs, and you know how I feel about plastic signs. Sigh.

Stringbean's Hidden Treasure

David "Stringbean" Akeman, star of the Grand Ole Opry and Hee-Haw, was born in Annville, KY (also the birthplace of world champion fiddler Freddie Langdon) in 1916. Although he began his musical career as a banjoist at the age of 12, joined old-timey legend Asa Martin's band, and performed solo on radio stations such as WLAP in Lexington in the 1930s, it wasn't until the late 1940s when he really came into his own as a country music superstar.

That's when he struck up friendships with Grandpa Jones and Uncle Dave Macon, and became a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. A recording contract with Starday Records soon followed, and hit records such as "Chewing Gum". This, in turn, led to his stint on the hugely successful Hee-Haw television show, where he performed his old-timey tunes for a new generation of appreciative ears. He also had a running gag playing a scarecrow with a crow squawking on his shoulder, and did a regular routine called "Stringbean's Letters from Home" wherein he'd read mail (ostensibly) from the folks back in Annville.


Like many who grew up during the Great Depression, Stringbean had a great distrust of banks, and walked around with several thousand dollars on his person, in the front zip-pouch of his ubiquitous overalls (The overalls, by the way, were not a pose or a affectation - that's what he wore pretty much 24-7, onstage and off). It was well known around Nashville that String had his life's savings stashed away somewhere at home.

Some writers have hinted broadly that certain Hee-Haw cast members may or may not have been indirectly responsible for Stringbean's murder because of their blabbing about his money to others; but the fact is, Stringbean himself made it no secret, and often flashed the fist-sized wad of bills. Not out of ostentatiousness or bragging, but perhaps merely out of an innocent naivete about the evil and corrupt nature of his fellow man.

On November 10, 1973, John A. Brown and Marvin Douglas Brown conspired to follow Stringbean to his home as he left the Ryman Auditorium, for the purpose of taking his life's savings at gunpoint. Just as with the Kansas robbery-turned-murder case popularized in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the men failed to find any money in their home invasion, and out of frustration and confusion, ended up killing Stringbean and his wife Estelle for no good reason.


But the question then remained: what did happen to Stringbean's money?

It wasn't in the cookie jar, the medicine cabinet, under the mattress, pressed inside the family Bible, nor stashed in a sock drawer. The murderers had plenty of time to tear the place apart looking for it, but they found nothing. All they got away with was a saw and some of String's gun collection.

For years, fortune-seekers and treasure hunters risked arrest to trespass on the property, armed with metal detectors. They were certain that String had followed the longstanding southern tradition of burying his riches in tightly sealed mason jars somewhere in the yard, surrounding acres, or nearby wilderness. The money has to be here, they all thought, it simply has to be. Where else could it have gone? The house itself had seemingly been thoroughly ransacked, first by the burglars, then by everybody and their brother.

And they found..... nothing.

Had String been fibbing about his wealth? Had he actually secured a secret bank account, and used the "home under the mattress" story as dazzle camoflage to throw snoopers off the track?

23 years later, in 1996, the mystery was solved. Stringbean's lost treasure was accidentally discovered by a man who had moved into the house. A removable brick near the chimney revealed a hiding place in which over $20,000 in cash was found stashed, but the bills were decayed and partially eaten by rats. According to Wikipedia, $20,000 in 1973 was roughly equivalent to $98,565 today. Given String's income and his spartan, no-big-spending lifestyle, it's entirely possible that twice that amount could have originally been stashed, but ended up completely destroyed and lining some rat's nest.


Nowadays, the Stringbean Festival is held every year in Annville to pay tribute to the man. I was fortunate enough to have attended the inaugural event, which featured appearances by Grandpa Jones, Ramona Jones and Porter Wagoner, plus an early appearance by one of my favorite local combos, The Moron Brothers. The black Stringbean t-shirt I got there was my lucky fishin' shirt for years when I used to live in Berea and cast my line out at Owsley Fork.

The site for the Stringbean Festival consistently spells his name as "Akemon", but his own grave spells it "Akeman".

Hear some Stringbean mp3s by clicking here.

Space Debris in Southern Kentucky?

According to WKYT-TV last night:

27 NEWSFIRST started receiving phone calls tonight telling us a loud boom, or series of booms were heard this evening in Southern Kentucky. So we called emergency officals, to find out what is going on.

Brian Reams of the Laurel county EMS tells us they've had calls from Jackson to London, about a loud boom. He says there are no reports of any injuries or damage.

In the last little bit, Reams says he's been told by the state police in London that according to the FAA, the boom is from falling debris, coming from two satellites that collided in space. The debris re-entering the atmosphere caused the loud boom, and then burned up before hitting earth. Reams says it could have covered a 500 mile area.

I just checked and sure enough, there was a collision between two satellites in space, but it was last Tuesday.

So, if the FAA has indeed advised the police that pieces of satellites are raining on Kentucky, shouldn't that be considerable cause for alarm? It's a bit weird that this news story is more concerned with the 'boom' sound rather than the fact that chunks of hot metal are apparently falling on us, and I don't necessarily accept the assurance that they're all burning up before they reach the ground.

If anyone finds any burnt metal they believe to be a piece of the space debris, let me know! I'd be very interested in examining it.

Weird Artists: J. Todd Dockery

J. Todd Dockery is a rural artist from Gray Hawk, KY, best known for his intensely crosshatched pen and ink drawings and comics. His work has shown at the Kentucky Museum of Arts + Design, the Deatrick Gallery in Louisville, and the Walker Gallery in England. His sketchily surreal creations recall the obsessive and wiggly line work
of underground greats like Basil Wolverton, Joe Coleman, and Robert Crumb.


Born and raised in the woods of Jackson County, Dockery remains rooted to his native soil, straying sometimes to outlying areas like Lexington, Morehead and Conway but never far from the ground zero that is his ancestral home. He's one of the most genuine Southern-eccentric personalities Kentucky has to offer.

Although beset with sometimes-agonizing arthritis, Dockery manages to ignore the pain without the use of major pain relievers - and not only continues the intensive work on his drawings but also plays drums in a number of local garage-punk bands, most notably The Smacks!, Mickey and the Wild Bunch, Kitty Twister and her Hot Dogs and Cheeseburger and Fries, a street-busking duo with yours truly on guitar and he on drums, percussion, kazoo and harmonica.

Henry Faulkner

Henry Faulkner was an eccentric crossdressing painter and poet, who considered his homeplace to be both from Simpson County and from the more exotic-sounding Egypt, KY (a very small town in Jackson County). He moved to Lexington in 1955, where he lived on Prall Street for a time with fellow crossdresser Sweet Evening Breeze before getting his own place at 462 West Third Street, in which he kept a small chicken farm in the back yard.

(Henry's home, incidentally, was directly across from the street from the haunted Hampton Court.)

Throughout his life, Henry seemed destined to be connected to celebrities. He was a cousin of the writer William Faulkner. He was one of Tennesee Williams' lovers. He was incarcerated in a mental ward with Ezra Pound, whom he befriended. Though living in relative obscurity, his art was sought after by many serious art collectors and celebrities, such as Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Nat King Cole, Phyllis George and Vincent Price. Socialite Anita Madden, famous for her wild Derby parties, was a friend of Faulkner’s.

He loved cats, chickens and goats, of which he had many, much to the consternation of some of his neighbors. One of his favorite pets was a goat named Alice who loved to drink bourbon. Alice even accompanied Faulkner to a court appearance once. His favorite watering hole was within walking distance, a place called The Fish Net at the corner of 2nd and Jefferson, where the Wingspan Gallery currently occupies.

Faulkner’s behavior may have seemed bizarre to many, but he lived life to the fullest without the shackles of social convention. Never losing his awe of nature, he often expressed himself in paintings of flora and fauna. By the early 1960s he was earning a living with his art.

Legends about Faulkner abound – and some may be truthier than others. Some say he had a habit of stiffing restaurants by grazing at salad bars and neglecting the check. Another story is told about Faulkner abruptly imploring the driver of a car he was in to pull over, so that he could jump out, strip naked, and frolic in a field of flowers in broad daylight for a long while before finally returning to the car as if nothing unusual had happened.

He was often seen riding his bicycle in drag down Third Street, or reading poetry and singing old blues ballads in bars. Extremely sensitive to beauty, Faulkner was at times given to convulsions while viewing a painting.

Faulkner died in an auto accident at The cursed corner of Third & Broadway on December 3, 1981, at 9:05pm.

(Image of Henry (with two friends in the service) courtesy of Bob Morgan by way of J.Todd Dockery.)