Man Goes Fishing, Catches Bison Skeleton

According to the Associated Press, a man named Charles Ruphard from Owensboro went on a fishing trip but instead wound up hauling home a giant intact bison skeleton.

Ruphard and his wife, Lee, went fishing June 10 and decided to walk along a river bank, which he declined to identify to protect the site. Ruphard told The Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer his wife saw some bones sticking out of the bank about 10 feet from them and realized the bones were large.

"You could see places of bones sticking out for 7 or 8 feet, and we thought this could be interesting," Ruphard said.

William Silvia, a University of Kentucky animal science professor and researcher in the school's College of Agriculture, reviewed photos of the bones, then retrieved them. Silvia said the bones were a bison, and a colleague who is a state parks naturalist believes that the animal is less than 10,000 years old.

Two hundred years ago, Bison were plentiful in Kentucky, but became scarce in these parts around the very early 19th century. There are several efforts to reintroduce them to Kentucky, with herds at Big Bone Lick and Land Between the Lakes (pictured above.)

Kentucky is also home of the nation's largest bison-farming operations, the Kentucky Bison Company in Goshen.

Christian Country Cowboy Church

Whizzing down 146 in Oldham County this morning, a sign caught my eye that I'd never noticed before. Its words still echoed in my head as I drove on - "Cowboy Church". Did it really say that? Cowboy Church? Awesome.

I turned around immediately and went back.

The sign is at the top of a gravel road that branches out in several different directions, including a local American Legion hall and various buildings related to the Oldham County Fairgrounds. I didn't see any building that had a "Cowboy Church" sign on it, but I'm hoping it's this barn with horse murals painted on it.




When I got home, I Googled it. I found out that the CCCC is, like apparently everyone in the Universe except me, on Facebook. I also discovered that there's a huge nationwide network of these Cowboy Churches, which originated in Texas. According to Wikipedia:

"Cowboy churches are local Christian churches within the cowboy culture that are distinctively Western heritage in character. A typical cowboy church may meet in a rural setting in a barn, metal building, arena, sale barn, or old western building, have its own rodeo arena, and a country gospel band. Baptisms are generally done in a cattle tank. The sermons are usually short and simple. Some cowboy churches have covered arenas where rodeo events such as bull riding, team roping, ranch sorting, team penning and equestrian events are held on weeknights."

As a fan of anything rustic and retro in American culture, and especially anything that glorifies a frontier spirit in today's homogenous nutrasweet styrofoam culture, I wholeheartedly approve and endorse the Cowboy Church concept. Let me go put on my big purple Hawkshaw Hawkins outfit and I'll see you in church this Sunday.

Fortitude Lodge #47

Seen in downtown La Grange: a nice triumvirate of old signage for the Masonic Fortitude Lodge #47, the Scottish Rite Albert Pike Club, and the Rob Morris grand chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star. (The only thing that could make them even more fun is if they were neon.)

La Grange was named after Freemason Marquis de Lafayette, whose wanderings around Kentucky seem to have had quite an influence - one that may be continuing to reverberate to this very day via the so-called "Fayette Factor".

Shears 2 You

So, this morning I found myself walking down an alley in downtown La Grange, when I unexpectedly encountered this wild little hair salon with some very unique architecture and idiosyncratic black-and-blue color scheme. Who can say it isn't beautiful?

Pig Stump

Somewhere in the vicinity of the Oldham County - Henry County border, this pink lipstick-wearing pig was seen in someone's yard, apparently sculpted from a tree trunk.

Pee Wee

I've always wondered about the nickname "Pee Wee" - from whence did it come, and with what was it associated?

One of baseball's all-time greats, Pee Wee Reese, was born in Ekron, KY (Meade County) in 1918 and was living in Louisville at the time of his death on August 14, 1999.

Just two days later, on August 16, 1999, the country music star Pee Wee King, also living in Louisville, also died.

King was best known for "You Belong To Me" (you know the song - "Seeeee the pyramids alonggggg the Niiiiiile....") He also wrote "The Tennessee Waltz" in an attempt to capitalize on Bill Monroe's success with "The Kentucky Waltz", but he also had many great Country and Western Swing songs over the years such as "Dragnet", "Slow Poke", "Why Don't Y'all Go Home?" and "Unbreakable Heart".


And then there's bluesman Pee Wee Crayton, and of course, that Pee-wee Herman guy. And growing up, I read Richie Rich comics, which had a character named Pee Wee. I also used to know a bonafide Kentucky Pee Wee: back in the 90s when I had antique-mall booths all over central Kentucky, I knew a fellow known only as "Pee Wee" who dealt in antique tools, hardware, coins, locks, and railroadiana.

But what is the etymology of the term "Pee Wee"? Why are these two syllables historically applied to children, or to people who are short in stature? (And many of the people with the nickname aren't even short at all.) According to the dictionary, Pee Wee means "One, such as a child, that is relatively or unusually small", and notes that it's probably a variant of "wee", meaning tiny.

It also suggests that "Pee Wee" is related to "Pewee", which is a type of bird. (Oddly, though, their own description refers to Pewees as "small" and as "large" in the exact same entry!)


Which brings us right back to Kentucky again - the city of Pewee Valley (the setting of the old "Little Colonel" books) in Oldham County is named after that bird. Apparently it was omnipresent enough here that the city's founders gave it that name, although no one's sure how "valley" got into it - the city is actually built on a crest, not a valley.

Night of January 16th

The play Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand is currently being staged at the Little Colonel Playhouse in Pewee Valley, KY.

What's so unusual about that? Well, the story is a courtroom drama which is very loosely based on the untimely and mysterious death of Ivar Kreuger, a wealthy industrialist who at one time controlled two-thirds of the world's matchstick supply. The audience participates in the story, acting as the jury and voting on the verdict, which literally determines the direction of the play they are watching. The play has two different endings, depending on whether the jury finds the defendant guilty or not guilty.

Despite Rand's popularity as the founder of the Objectivist movement, the play is seldom staged.


You have five chances to left to see the show. Three evening shows: January 16, 22 and 23 at 8:00pm, and two afternoon shows: January 16 and 23 at 2:30pm. You can read Keith Waits' review for Theatre Louisville by clicking here.

Cross My Heart...

Also seen during yesterday's visit to Mt. Tabor Cemetery in Oldham County: this breathtakingly beautiful polished red granite and stained glass cross-and-heart grave marker.

D.W. Griffith

Early this morning I happened to be driving in Oldham County towards LaGrange, KY on Highway 22, and noticed a cemetery I'd never investigated before. It was a fairly sizable place, adjacent to the Mount Tabor Methodist Church in a small spot-in-the-road called Centerfield. I had my camera in the car, so I pulled over and checked it out.

I've always been a fan of coffin-sized above-ground crypts, so I immediately gravitated to a large one nearby and started taking photos of it.

"Hmmm...David Wark Griffith", I thought to myself as I snapped the pics, "and he died in Hollywood ? Huh. That's interesting."

Gradually it sunk in on me that I was standing at the grave of D.W. Griffith, the famous/infamous silent film director. I had no idea he was even buried in Kentucky, and had sort-of assumed in the back of my mind that he was at Forest Lawn or something.


Then I noticed the Kentucky roadside marker alerting me to what I had already stumbled onto completely by dumb luck. So I'm not the most observant mug on the planet sometimes.; I still hadn't finished my morning Starbucks.


Griffith's entire life was marred, ironically, by his greatest success: the film Birth of a Nation, which caused considerable controversy by giving the KKK an almost heroic treatment, and presenting a highly stereotyped view of African-Americans. So glowing was the film's handling of the subject, that the KKK even used the film as a promotional recruiting film for their cause for the majority of the 20th century. Griffith attempted to make up for the negative publicity and to show that he was no racist, by making the epic film Intolerance.

It wasn't enough, and the bad karma from the previous film dogged him to his grave, and well beyond. In 1953, the Directors Guild of America instituted the D.W. Griffith Award as its highest honor, but then rescinded the name in 1999, changing it simply to the "DGA Lifetime Achievement Award".


Griffith's grave can plainly be seen on Google Maps - notice the large squarish plot at nine o'clock in the above image.

The 76th Operating Mormon Temple

One of the most unique and visually striking buildings in Oldham County is this Temple for the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints. It has the authentic look and feel of an old marble Temple but was actually built in the year 2000.

The Temple is also known as the 76th Operating Temple, and/or the "Louisville Kentucky Temple", even though it's not actually located in Louisville. According to the LDS Church Temples website:

Elder John K. Carmack of the Seventy and president of the North America East Area who presided over the groundbreaking services for the Louisville Kentucky Temple, spoke on the importance of temples in the life of the eternal family. Joseph Smith was intensely interested in the work of temples in the later years of his life, he noted. Having built the Kirtland Temple, laid the groundwork for two temples in Missouri, and nearly completed the Nauvoo Temple, the Prophet was "preoccupied" with temples and seeing that the Quorum of the Twelve had received the ordinances. Elder Carmack pointed out that "the way we live here has consequences in the next life." He then quoted Hugh Nibley in saying that ordinances create order from chaos, and that like an observatory, the temple helps one get a bearing on the universe.

The exterior of the edifice is white marble (quarried in Vermont) with a solid gold statue of the angel Moroni on its spire. Joseph Smith said this angel visited him on September 22, 1823 and several other subsequent occasions.