The Big Mac Bridge

Though it was officially named the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge (after the co-founder of the Boy Scouts and the Sons of Daniel Boone), the public in Newport quickly began calling this the "Big Mac Bridge" shortly after its completion in 1976. The twin yellow arches of the structure recalled the double "golden arches" of the McDonald's logo in many people's minds. According to Wikipedia, "McDonald's considered opening a restaurant at the base after the nickname caught on, but never went to construction."

I'm not sure why the bridge was painted bright mustard yellow in the first place; perhaps the same "focus groups" were hired to determine its color as with the Purple People Bridge.

Killer Pleads "Caffeine Insanity"

This from WXIX-TV: " A Northern Kentucky man accused of strangling his wife is poised to claim excessive caffeine from sodas, energy drinks and diet pills left him so mentally unstable he couldn't have knowingly killed his wife, his lawyer has notified a court."

According to the story, Woody Will Smith, 33, goes to court today for the May 2009 death of Amanda Hornsby-Smith. Woody's attorney, Shannon Sexton, has filed notice with the court of the defense's intent to argue that Mr. Smith was rendered "temporarily insane" because he ingested large quantities of caffeine for several days before he snapped.

Sound idiotic? Of course it does. And yet, it's not impossible that Smith may walk. In 2009, a man ran down two WSU students in his car, pleaded insanity induced by having consumed two cups of Starbucks coffee, and got away with it.

According to the News-Tribune, Smith used an extension cord to strangle his wife, then used extension cords to bind her hands and feet together. Smith claims to have been drinking a half-dozen soft drinks and energy drinks per day, plus diet pills.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, say they can prove Smith is lying, and that their own medical expert is prepared to testify that there was no evidence Smith had consumed diet pills or energy drinks.

Newport's "Bizarre and Beautiful"

This past weekend, the Newport Aquarium upgraded its "Bizarre and Beautiful" exhibit of rarely-seen deep-sea creatures. Over a dozen new species have been added, including the electric flame scallop (pictured above) and the Japanese spider crab (pictured below).


The centerpiece of the exhibit, however, remains their famous giant Pacific octopus, which they keep on display in two aquarium tanks which connect by see-through tubes - and the octopus can move from tank to tank by squeezing through them.

Reportedly, the new and improved exhibit also gives children better access by putting some of the tanks closer to the floor at kid-height.

Goetta

Goetta is a food item that's little known outside of areas historically populated by those with German ancestry. Here, it's most commonly found in the Northern Kentucky area and in a few select spots in Louisville. Over the river, it's hugely popular in Cincinnati, and it can also be found in several places in Southern Indiana.

What is it? It's highly seasoned ground meat (usually pork, sometimes pork and beef) mixed with steel-cut oats and onions. It's most commonly seen in a wrapped log, much in the same way polenta is offered, but also can be found in smaller sausage-like links.


In recent years, Goetta burgers and Goetta pizza have been growing in popularity at German-themed fairs, and it also has two fairs dedicated completely to it: the Glier's Goettafest is held every year in Newport, and the Original Goettafest is in Covington.

Ride the Ducks

"Quack-tacular fun", it says here. Basically, it's a sightseeing tour of the area taken by boat, which sounds like fun to me, but I actually had previously assumed the whole deal was some sort of action water-ride thing. The website says, "Your Captain will en-tour-tain you with stories of past and present. Learn about Newport and Ohio history, the Ohio River, its famous personalities and its impact on the state and our nation."

The Ride The Ducks attraction's starting point - "Duck Central", they call it - is located at the Newport on the Levee Entertainment Complex outside Newport Aquarium.

St. Anne Convent

St. Anne Convent, located in Melbourne, KY, is affiliated with the Catholic organization Congregation of Divine Providence and is described on their website as a "spiritual gathering place for liturgies, retreats and celebrations" for over 600 sisters. Their website also says they were founded in 1889 "by a group of pioneering French women in Newport, Kentucky, along the Ohio River".


But most people on Earth's frame of reference for St. Anne's, whether they even know it or not, would be its appearance in the classic film Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Kentuckian Tom Cruise. St. Anne Convent was used by the filmmakers as the location of "Wallbrook", the fictitious mental institution where Hoffman's autistic character resides.

"Treasure Chest" West

From our Voraxica blog:

Burlesque stripper Evelyn "Treasure Chest" West was born in Elroy, KY (Adair County) as Amy Mae Coomer. Although she worked small jobs like circus sideshows and did some performing in bit parts for films like Rhythm on the River (1940) and Birth of the Blues (1941), it wasn't until after World War II that her career really took off as a stripper, working San Francisco clubs and posing for Bunny Yeager.


According to Wikipedia:

Evelyn West was also an ardent publicity seeker. She tried to legally change her name to Evelyn "$50,000 Treasure Chest" West at the Menard County Circuit Court,[3] threw a tomato at rival Anita Ekberg, appeared at nudist weddings, charged with indecent exposure, threatened legal action against contemporaries Tempest Storm and Jane Russell, and openly criticized Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

Evelyn also occasionally returned to her home state to perform in the delightful sleazy drink-dens of Newport, KY during its "Sin City" days.


According to an article in the February 1956 issue of the men's magazine Sir!, West invested $5,000 in a plan her boyfriend Steven Vitko had for building an experimental flying saucer for the U.S. Government. He never built the flying saucer, nor repaid the investment, so she sued in 1952 to recover the money. Sir! Magazine doesn't say whether she won or lost the suit.

She lived a tranquil live in her final years in a modest home in Florida, and was reportedly an avid eBay seller.

View: Evelyn West film footage

Kentucky's "Sin City"

It may seem hard to believe now, but it wasn't all that long ago that Kentucky was one of the nation's top places to go for illicit nightlife, probably second only to Atlantic City at one point.

Between the 1920s and the 1950s, people didn't automatically think of Las Vegas when they thought of casinos and strippers, they thought of Newport, KY and its surrounding areas. Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack came to Kentucky to have fun, and most top entertainers of the day made Newport part of their touring circuit. Gangsters maintained near-total control of the city in a surreal Miller's Crossing-style milieu, with police and politicians looking the other way even to the point of total absurdity.

How absurd? Well, in 1951 the Kefauver Organized Crime committee asked Newport police chief George Gugel about it, and he swore on the stand that he had no idea that any gambling was going on in the city. This despite the fact that Newport was as world-famous for its gambling scene at that time as Las Vegas is today. From the Saturday Evening Post, March 26, 1960:

Rudelph Halley, chief counsel of the committee, asked the police chief if he wasn’t familiar with the fact that any local cab driver could take a customer to a gambling emporium in a matter of minutes. Gugel said humbly that never in his life had he ridden in a taxi.

After several equally unrewarding exchanges, Halley asked with some awe, "Would you be surprised to know there is gambling going on?"

"For me, yes, because I’ve never been in there," Gugel said virtuously. "All I know is what somebody told me."

A curious incident which took place a few years later revealed that during the interval Chief Gugel had become at least partially acquainted with the seamier side of his city. Some background information will be helpful in understanding what follows. It seems that for years the police force and the detective bureau had operated more or less independently and coordination of activities was often lacking.

In any case, detective Jack Thiem, for reasons still unknown, decided to raid Glenn Schmidt’s Playtorium, one of Newport’s better-known gambling spots. To witness and record the projected triumph of virtue over vice, Thiem invited a photograper from the Louisville Courier-Journal to accompany him—there is no local newspaper.

When Thiem and his companion burst into the casino, the officer was astonished and embarrassed to find Chief Gugel and three detectives from Thiem’s own office among those present. The photographer, of course, snapped a picture of the encounter, but it never saw publication. Gugel immediately placed the cameraman under arrest and destroyed the film.

And in 1958, The Louisville Times published a series of investigative reports on the rampant gambling, sleaze, sex and corruption going on in Newport. When Christian Seifried's Social Action Committee (a Christian faith-based "Clean up sin in Newport" campaign) presented these newspaper stories as evidence to Governor A.B. "Happy" Chandler, he dismissed them with, "We have no information of the truth or falsity of his [the reporter’s] statements — officially or otherwise".


The haunted roadhouse Bobby Mackey's Music World, already infamous because of its alleged connection to the Pearl Bryan murder, was also a part of this scene. The building, located in Wilder, was Buck Brady's Primrose Club in the 1940s and then the Cleveland mob-run Latin Quarter Club in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Las Vegas was growing steadily and all the mob action was gradually moving out there (the mob's influence in Vegas had been already ongoing since 1931). This, combined with the increasing pressures on Newport to shed its "Sin City" reputation, led to a decline in its fortunes. By the 1970s the glory days were over and all that remained were a few dingy, dirty strip clubs. In the 1980s Newport began reinventing itself as a new, shiny, clean "family-friendly" city, and today it's a great place to visit, especially since the $40-million Newport Aquarium opened there in 1999.

I still miss the good old bad old days though.

(You can also see some old postcards from those good old bad old days on our Voraxica blog.)

The U.S. Army vs. Kentucky bootleggers

On February 21, 1922, the U.S. Army was called in for this publicity stunt, to make a big showy deal out of destroying these confiscated moonshine stills in Newport, KY. The hope was that the media publicity of a tank crushing metal drums would help deter people from making their own alcoholic beverages. It didn't work.

I'm not exactly sure that this is the sort of thing that our military was intended for, but there it is.

Irene Dunne

Five-time Academy Award-nominated actor Irene Dunne is another Kentuckian who did good in the big city of Hollywood.

She was born in Louisville, the daughter of a riverboat inspector and a concert pianist from Newport. Dunne has been described as the best actress to never win an Academy Award, receiving five "Best Actress" nominations during her career: for Cimarron (1931), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and the film she's most remembered for today, I Remember Mama (1948).

Her final feature film was in 1952, a surreal film called It Grows on Trees, a about a couple who discover a tree in their back yard with actual money growing off of it.

Read more about Irene on our Voraxica blog.

The Southgate House

Newport's Southgate House is a historic old edifice that is currently home to a rock club that has a strong reputation for being one of the region's best.

It also has something of a reputation of being haunted, but this is not so strong and not so well-founded. Reports on the web are sketchy and among people I've made inquiries to in person, most are of a highly anecdotal type: "Dude, a friend of mine said he saw a beer bottle fall over by itself", and so forth. If someone has some
seriously detailed and verifiable reports of paranormal hauntings, I'd love to hear them.

According to the bar's website, the Southgate House story is drenched with historical goodies: built in 1814, it has hosted Abraham Lincoln, John Taliaferro Thompson (he was born here, in fact) and troops of General Sherman's soldiers on their way to fight in the Texan War for Independence.

You can find the Southgate House at 24 East 3rd street, Newport, KY.

John Taliaferro Thompson

The "Tommy Gun", or Thompson Machine Gun, was invented by a Kentuckian: John T. Thompson, who attended Indiana University in Bloomington before going on to a military career. The Thompson gun was popular among everyone - soldiers, civilians, police and criminals - because of its compactness, portability, large .45 caliber, and extremely high rate of automatic fire. Although rendered somewhat unrealistically in many Hollywood films, the Coen Brothers classic Miller's Crossing does a great job of demonstrating the characteristics of how the Thompson gun operates.

In 1904, President Roosevelt and his Chief of Army Ordnance William Crozier gave Thompson, along with Major Louis Anatole LaGarde of the Medical Corps, the mission to scientifically investigate which caliber guns performed the best. At the Nelson Morris Company Union Stockyards in Chicago, Thompson and LaGarde tested several types of handguns and ammo by firing them into human cadavers and live cattle. Cows that took too long to die after being shot were put down by a hammer blow to the head.

The Thompson-LaGarde Cadaver Tests of 1904 are today regarded as barbaric and completely unscientific. In fact, according to this site, Thompson and LaGarde fudged the data to give the desired result to their superiors.

Thompson's submachine gun was greatly popular with gangsters in the 20s and 30s, known in the underworld as a "chopper" or "Chicago Typewriter". The gun became standard issue for the U.S. Army in World War II.

The Purple People Bridge

So, they had this abandoned railroad bridge in Newport, KY, see. And they renovated it as a pedestrian bridge, see. But someone hired "focus groups" to determine what color it should be painted, and the answer came back: purple. That's what you get for having more money than sense, and for not being able to make a decision yourself. Then again, the focus groups recommended a darker purple, and the powers-that-be decided to ignore that part and chose a pale lavender.

More infamous than the bridge itself is the "attraction" they tried to organize around it, which consisted of walking a set of steps that go up and down the top perimeter of the bridge. It might have been interesting, had they not charged 60 bucks for the experience, and not made you don idiotic-looking yellow and purple full-body costumes (in the dead of summer, even!) and made you wear headphones blasting music and ridiculous sound effects into your ears. They also made you sit through a painfully boring hour-long "orientation" video before the walk.

Not surprisingly, almost no one wanted to take part, and they withdrew the program in Summer 2007 due to utter lack of interest. (You can still cross the "Purple People Bridge" as a pedway to Cincinnati, though.)

Squirrel invasion of 1801

In September 1801, Napoleon’s French Army was pulling out of Egypt. Thomas Jefferson was in his first year as President and was probably already pondering his first State of the Union address that lay ahead in December. A battle was fought in the Seychelles between the British vessel Victor and the French ship La Flêche. And inventor Robert Fulton was close to developing the first functional steamboat.

Meanwhile, in Newport, Kentucky, something truly historic was taking place.

It began on September 1st, when a locust-like plague of tens of thousands of squirrels descended upon the city, seemingly out of nowhere. Crawling all over everything in sight, it must have been a horrific experience on a par with scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. If you’ve ever had one squirrel get into your home accidentally and driven yourself mad trying to get this chattering, scampering, spastic creature out, imagine an entire city coated in a thick blanket of living, squirming, squirrelness. My teeth are on edge just thinking about it.

No one seems to know where this impossible quantity of squirrels apported from, or how they all came to be traveling en masse (squirrels are generally solitary animals that do not travel in herds or packs). There were no reported natural disasters nearby such as an earthquake or forest fire, but such an event wouldn’t create a mob of squirrels in such impossible numbers anyhow, nor would it cause them to march together in a specific direction with seemingly unified purpose.

Attempts to stave off their attack were chaotic as people began flailing wildly with all manner of implements, and even shooting them with guns. Wherever you fired, you were certain to hit a squirrel, but the sheer numbers of the rodentlike beasts made it a losing proposition. “We fired our guns and the squirrels kept-a-comin’.”

The Ohio River didn’t mean the end of the line for the squirrel blitz. The newspapers reported that the squirrels, seemingly mesmerized and being summoned by some pied piper, plunged right into the river and swam across to Cincinnati. They’d already been warned by folks on the Kentucky side about the furry armada on the march, and had their own guns ready and blazing to greet the critters.

It took several days to get the squirrels under control, with hundreds per day being killed and countless more finally being scared away and dispersed. I wonder what they did with all the mountains of squirrel carcasses? Burgoo might have been served at dinner tables for countless weeks to come.