Graves of Old-Time Country Musicians

Fiddlin' Doc Roberts, Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.


Asa Martin, Hargett First Church of God Cemetery, Hargett, KY.


Bill Monroe, Rosine Cemetery, Rosine, KY.


Armour Cornelison, Jr., Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.

Royal Arcanum of Richmond

Back in my roving antique-dealer days of the late 80s/early 90s, I came into possession of this highly important looking ribbon medal, bearing the words "Royal Arcanum, Richmond, KY, Inst. June 5, 1903."

In those pre-internet days, I was stumped as to who or what the Royal Arcanum were, but I had high hopes of it being some sort of occult secret society who perhaps conducted their clandestine meetings in an isolated field somewhere East of Redhouse, or perhaps in a room accesible only by a secret panel above Jett & Hall Shoes. Who knows what their arcane rites might involve, I mused to myself - perhaps they were an offshoot of the Knights Templar or the O.T.O. or the Brotherhood of Saturn or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn or the Thule Society or Ordo A∴A∴ or the Hibernians or the Loyal Order of Moose or the Knights of the Golden Eagle or Aurum Solis or the Bohemian Club or the Council of Nine or the JASON Society or the Cult of the Serpent or the Vril Society or the International Order of Oddfellows or the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo or the Rosicrucians or DeMolay or the Lions Club or the Shriners or the Elks Lodge or the Rotary Club or WISE or the Ruritans or Kiwanis.

Flash ahead to 1998, during my non-roving married-man days, when I put it up on eBay for a reasonable price (I don't recall exactly - probably $9.99) and no one bit. I also did a Yahoo search back then (remember those pre-Google days when Yahoo and AltaVista were the only major search engines?) for the Royal Arcanum and found nothing. Deciding that this must not be as exciting a find as I had hoped, I stuck it away somewhere and didn't think about it again for 13 years.

Now I've stumbled onto it again while rummaging through boxes of junk in storage, and now that we're in a Burroughsian future where everything is online, a quick Googling determined that the Royal Arcanum is still around today and is in the "fraternal life insurance business" and is not all that terribly interesting. At least not compared to, you know, the Illuminati, the Bilderbergers or the Priory of Sion.

Nevertheless, they sure had a cool ribbon back in the day when we Richmonders, along with the rest of the civilized world, understood the importance of pomp and ceremony. Not to mention the true meaning of membership in a true group.

More Kangaroo Sightings

Is it possible that kangaroo escapees from the circus could continue to live and thrive in Kentucky's climate over generations? Wouldn't people see these Kentucky kangaroos? Well, some people apparently have.

We've reported here and in Kentucky Monthly on the anomalous kangaroo sightings in Kentucky, circa 1899 and 1974.

Now there's a new report, from Unusual Kentucky reader Erin Kelley Henry, about kangaroos that she and her mother were eyewitnesses to in 2002. On three separate occasions, a kangaroo was seen hopping around residential areas in Richmond.

Anyone else have a kangaroo sighting they've been withholding all these years?

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.

Kentucky's Deadliest Tornadoes

Since we're not in the tornado-heavy plains states, some might find it rather surprising that Kentucky has placed two entries in NOAA's top 25 deadliest tornado systems in U.S. history.

We bottom the list and then top it: Kentucky squeaks in at #25 with Louisville's tornado outbreak of March 27, 1890. This tornado family spawned at least 24 tornadoes that killed 76 people and destroyed 766 buildings between Parkland and Crescent Hill.

Falls City Hall on Louisville's Market Street was destroyed in the storm, killing at least 55 people by one source's tally but around 200 by another. This also has the distinction, by some estimates, of being the highest death toll due to a single building collapse from a tornado in America. Historian Bryan S. Bush writes:

"Most of the lives lost occurred at the Falls City Hall, located on Market Street, within five minutes the building collapsed with two hundred victims trapped in the rubble. Several activities occurred when the tornado hit the building. The Falls City Hall had a dancing class, which took place on the second floor, with sixty mothers and small girls occupying the class. Only twelve escaped the carnage. In another room the Roman Knights held their meeting, in which seven members were present, the Knights lost one man. On the third floor, the Knights and Ladies of Honor held a meeting with 150 members present, but only a few escaped. The Ancient Order of Foresters had eighteen members present in another room, with all members lost."

And if you've ever wondered what the heck this less-than-impressive minimalist sculpture is (see image below) in downtown Louisville, now you know: it's a monument to the 1890 disaster.


Kentucky was also involved in the #1 tornado, which is generally called the "Tri-State Tornado of 1925" but actually struck more than three states: Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Kansas, and possibly other states were hit by this storm system on March 18, 1925.

Louisville wasn't the only part of Kentucky affected by this group of tornados: at least three people died in Pewee Valley; 39 died in an F4 that swept away farms and homes across Allen, Barren, Monroe, and Metcalfe counties; and an F3 passed throgh Marion, Washington, Bourbon, Mercer, Jessamine, and Fayette counties, killing two and injuring 40 before it finally sputtered out near Lexington.

Southern Indiana was also badly ravaged by the twisters. The town of Griffin was nearly completely wiped off the map, and the town of Elizabeth suffered devastation of several farms.


I'm puzzled why the Super Outbreak of April 1974 didn't make NOAA's top 25 charts, because by all accounts 330 people were killed from a series of 148 twisters in 24 hours. Can someone explain this omission to me?

Apparently NOAA is choosing to count each of these tornados as a stand-alone event rather than grouping them all together, yet it is by grouping twisters together that they arrive at the aforementioned "Tri-State" event and the 1890 one.

The photo below shows a tornado from the Super Outbreak approaching Richmond, from Mike Schwendeman by way of april31974.com.

Welcome to Your Depot

The Richmond Register is reporting that the Blue Grass Army Depot wants to "give back to the community".

Seriously, guys, you've given us enough already. No, really. We'd like to re-gift some of your previous presents, like nerve gas explosions, broken deadline promises, Raytheon, black helicopters, and as the Los Angeles Times has been reporting, disastrously unsafe conditions and terminated whistle-blowers. Not to mention the Men in Black.

The Depot's latest attempt to put a good PR spin on things: "Lake Buck Lodge", a 4,420 sq. foot building with restaurant, pool and golf course. The Register quotes Col. Brian Rogers:

“What’s important about this plan is that it’s not just big and has a beautiful view and is located smack dab in the middle of Berea and Richmond and that it seats 200 and has a full kitchen, but that we’re reaching out to the community and saying welcome to your depot."

Sounds lovely. But on the exact same day, the same paper also reported that unstable and defective mustard-agent rockets stored there are posing a problem for their eventual disarming and destruction.

The 15,000 mustard-containing artillery projectiles now housed in protective igloos at the depot once were stored outside where they were exposed to rain, heat and snow, according to Jeff Brubaker, the military’s civilian manager of the depot’s destruction program.

Exposure to the elements led to some corrosion that may make difficult removing the chemical warheads of the projectiles from the “bursters” designed to disperse the mustard agent, the project’s citizen advisory board was told Tuesday...

If detaching the warheads from their bursters is not possible in the automated destruction plant, workers would have to enter the building to retrieve them, slowing the process. If the chemical warheads are unstable, the workers, even if wearing protective suits, could be put at risk.

Nevertheless, all criticism and ribbing aside, Lake Buck Lodge does sound a pretty cool place. I do look forward to checking it out; playing golf in the shadow of enough chemical weapons to kill everyone in Kentucky definitely sounds like a destination for some unusual road-tripping. Come spring, I'm so there.

Richmond Cemetery Vandalization Update

Back in April, we noted that Richmond Cemetery in Madison County had been attacked by vandals causing widespread destruction. Now UnK reader Patricia Bergman has submitted to us some photos of the damage done to the graves of her own kinfolk.

Above: Grave of Lucy A. Collins and Nannie Stone. Below: Grave of Mildred Stone.


Additionally, Patricia provided some interesting background on these ancestors:

Lucy Ann Collins was born on the 21st of February, 1846, in Madison County, Kentucky. She was born the third child and only daughter of the five children of William Smith Collins and Mary Ann Bronston Collins.
Her childhood was a time of innocence, both for the nation and for Lucy, who formed an inseparable bond with a playmate by the name of Nannie Stone. Lucy and Nannie grew up together, learning lessons that would serve them well as wives, playing with their porceline faced dolls, and spending time enjoying the hum of small town life.
However, just as Lucy and Nannie began to mature and become marriageable young women, other forces were growing into fruitition as well--political tension between abolusitionists and those that supported the rights of states began to clash. In Kentucky, the true brother-against-brother state, the Collins family cast their lot and openly sympathized with the Confederate States of America, despite Kentucky’s official status as a state in the Union.

Like the daughters of many of Kentucky's Confederate sympathizers, Nannie and Lucy were sent further south, specifically to Colonel Churchwell's School in Knoxville, Tennessee, where it was felt by their families that they would be safer, as they were further from the border and thus the troops that were sent into Kentucky to protect it for the Union.
The war had transformed the school from a place of education to a makeshift hospital, a place of disease and disfigurement. As women on both sides strove to treat the wounded, sick, and dying men of that terrible war, Lucy and Nannie did the same. The risks were great and, sadly, both women contracted tuberculosis and succumbed to the disease.

Lucy's funeral notice read:

"Died at Col. D. W. Churchwell's near Knoxville, Miss Lucy A. Collins, of Richmond, Madison County, Kentucky, and aged 17 years, 2 months and 17 days. Her friends, and Kentuckians, are invited to attend her burial at the cemetery, this evening, 21st inst., at 4'oclock, P. M. The procession will form at Col. Churchwell's residence at 3:o'clock P.M."

However, Lucy Ann and Nannie were not buried where they passed away, in an unfamiliar Tennessee, due to the actions of her younger brother, William Joel Collins. He was a mere slip of a man at the age of fifteen, and, upon seeing the grief of his parents and Nannie's, young William traveled in a spring wagon from Richmond to Knoxville to collect the bodies of his sister and her beloved friend, despite the clear danger of such travel in 1863. The women were interred together, with one gravestone for the two, displaying their names, protected by two angels. These two angels protected Lucy and Nannie’s final place of peace together--together until April 3, 2010.

Above: Portrait of Lucy Ann Collins. Below: Grave of Mary Ann Bronston Collins.

Richmond Cemetery Vandalized

The growing trend of cemetery vandalism rears its ugly head once again - this time in one of my very favorite graveyards.

From WLKY:

RICHMOND, Ky. -- The groundskeeper at a central Kentucky cemetery says more than 100 gravestones have been toppled and broken, and some are irreplaceable.

Mike Rice, director of grounds for the Richmond Cemetery, tells the Lexington Herald Leader the overturned stones were discovered Saturday morning.

Rice says the stones date from as recently as last year to back to the 1800s.

Rice was gathering names from the stones Monday in the hope of contacting descendants that might be in the area. He said he couldn’t give an estimate of the damage.

It just goes to show, despite the unusually strict rules for visiting the cemetery, it doesn't mean a thing if you don't have proper security to enforce them.

I'm not going to be able to make it to Madison County this week, but if anyone out there gets a chance to swing by Richmond Cemetery and take some photos, I'd really like to see just how bad the damage is, and which of the historic stones were destroyed. E-mail me.

Crossdressing Bankrobber Indicted

Troy Noel Lear, the crossdressing bankrobber we previously reported on here and here, has been indicted by a grand jury in Richmond. According to the Associated Press:

Indictments from the Madison County grand jury Wednesday charge 40-year-old Troy Noel Lear of Brodhead with two counts of first-degree robbery for holdups at a Berea bank and a hotel in Richmond. Investigators told The Richmond Register that the robber in the bank heist showed a gun and an electronic stun device was the threat in the hotel robbery.

It's not known whether Lear's crossdressing is an Ed Wood-esque habit of his own, or merely intended as a clever disguise, but the AP report also seems to contain a subtle dig, as if to say "Sorry, Mary, but you just aren't passable":

While the robber dressed as a female, police said witnesses knew he was a man.

No mention was made in the WLKY article of a Danville incident in which a robbery was committed by a crossdressing man, and in which Lear had also been suspected. It's also unclear whether this Troy Lear is the same Troy Lear who figured in this puzzling case.

BGAD to Blow Up Nerve Gas Stockpile?

From the Los Angeles Times, yet another disturbing story about our very own Blue Grass Army Depot:

Under the gun to destroy the U.S. chemical weapons stockpiles — and now all but certain to miss their deadline — Army officials have a plan to hasten the process: Blow some of them up.

The Army would use explosives to destroy some of the Cold War-era weapons, which contain some of the nastiest compounds ever made, in two communities in Kentucky and Colorado that fought down another combustion-based plan years ago.

Some who live near the two installations worry it's a face-saving measure, driven by pressure from U.S. adversaries, that puts the safety of citizens below the politics of diplomacy and won't help the U.S. meet an already-blown deadline.

106.7 Goes All-Elvis

The Wallingford Broadcasting Company has made the wacky decision to change the programming of their Richmond, KY station 106.7 to an all-Elvis format. Though it smells like a publicity stunt - they're urging listeners to give feedback on the website - the change is said to be permanent.

You might think an Elvis-only station would quickly get monotonous and redundant, but Elvis' catalogue consists of approximately 1000 different songs, and that's not even counting bootlegs and marginally-released material. Furthermore, this number skyrockets exponentially when you consider E's voluminous wealth of live versions and alternate takes.

(The Beatles, by comparison, only released approximately 300 songs and made only a handful of live recordings.)


Then again, some of the arcane material in the King's mighty oeuvre is pretty out-there. The common radio listener who might tune in expecting "Hound Dog" or "Suspicious Minds" might be a tad confuzzled by such obscure Elvis tunes as "Queenie Wahine's Papaya", "There's No Room to Rhumba in a Sports Car", "Dominic the Impotent Bull", "He's Your Uncle Not Your Dad", "Petunia The Gardener's Daughter", "The Fort Lauderdale Chamber Of Commerce", and my personal favorite, "Do the Clam".


You can listen to 106.7 online by clicking here.

Crossdressing Bankrobber Caught

Well, that was fast! The crossdressing bankrobber reported on here yesterday has been captured. Troy Lear of Brodhead is being held at Madison County detention center on three counts of 1st degree robbery, having confessed to the robberies of a bank in Berea, a Danville Check Exchange, and a Richmond hotel. According to WTVQ-TV's report:

Surveillance pictures taken at the scene show the suspect wearing a wig, a green coat with fur trim and makeup. The pictures also show the suspect using a silver semi-automatic handgun to rob the bank.

We had a witness that was at the scene that got a tag number that identified the vehicle," Chief Gregory said.

Police were able to use that tag number to track down the suspect's vehicle at a Berea KFC on Friday.

Crossdressing Bankrobber

Does Central Kentucky have a crossdressing serial robber? On Thursday, a man in drag entered Cumberland Valley National Bank & Trust on Big Hill Road in Berea, brandishing a handgun and demanding money.

The robber, who got away, was described as a tall thin white man, about 6 foot 2, probably in his 30s. Part of the money was recovered after he dropped some of it on the way to his getaway car.

Two other recent robberies have taken place in Richmond and Danville, by a similar man wearing women's clothing.

Men in Black

In the course of researching the Weird Kentucky book, I spoke to a man in Madison County who told me an interesting tale. He didn't want to be named on the record, and I lost track of the story while hoping he'd reconsider going on the record. Now I've lost track with the guy entirely.

In a nutshell, he claimed that in the 1970s he was visited by a pair of suspicious-acting, pale, cadaverous men wearing dark glasses and dressed in old, musty-looking black suits and ties.

In other words, the classic Men In Black mythical archetype. As Wikipedia describes them:

Men in Black (MIB), in popular culture and in UFO conspiracy theories, are men dressed in black suits who are government agents who harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. It is sometimes implied that they may be aliens themselves. The term is also frequently used to describe mysterious men working for unknown organizations, as well as to various branches of government allegedly designed to protect secrets or perform other strange activities.

The fellow in Madison County said the men were claiming to be selling subscriptions to the Richmond Daily Register and other periodicals. However, their patter was rambling and unpracticed, like someone uttering the words for the first time rather than someone who had been saying the same thing over and over at every door he knocked on. Rather than have a stack of "take one" flyers with more information, they had only one flyer, and it looked water-damaged and dog-eared as if they'd found it on the ground. And he definitely felt as if one MIB was craning his neck to peer inside the house while the other MIB was distracting him.

I can't go into why he felt the men were part of some secret agency, without divulging key information regarding his identity. But I found his story compelling.

That's because I had an MIB experience myself.

In 1991, I was living with a girlfriend in a house in Lexington's Bell Court, and hosting a weekly rockabilly radio show on WRFL. I was just wrapping up my show at the station when I got a phone call. It was a man from Richmond, who said he just happened to be driving through Lexington and just happened to hear my radio show and just happened to have a carload of ultra-rare rockabilly records that he'd like to get rid of, cheap. Would I be interested? Oh hell yeah.

I gave him my address and told him I'd be right home in minutes, since I lived close to the station. Did he know where Bell Court was? "I think I can find it." He was already waiting there when I rolled up just moments later. He was of average height, short dark brown hair combed back, mustache. He was very friendly and professional-seeming in a nice dark suit and tie.

I invited him up, and we hauled the boxes of records up to my room. It was a treasure trove of some of the rarest vinyl possible - Elvis on Sun, super-rare Elvis white-label RCA DJ copies, Bill Haley DJ copies on pink-label Decca, Gene Vincent LPs, and various valuable 45s of obscure artists. And all in fantastic condition. We're talking thousands of dollars worth of classic rockabilly vinyl.

I told him I couldn't even begin to be able to afford to buy the collection, but if he'd let me cherry-pick some of the best ones out, I'd buy those now and try to buy more later. He smiled a warm and friendly smile and said, "Tell you what. I'm in Lexington all the time. I live in Richmond and work at the Blue Grass Army Depot. You keep the records and I'll stop back here in a couple days. That'll give you a chance to look through them and make your decision."

I was stunned that he would trust someone he had just met with all these valuable records, but gladly agreed. He wrote his name and number down on a scrap of paper for me, we shook hands, and he headed to his car. And I never saw him again.

When he didn't show up after a few days, I called the number he'd given me. I got the loud shrill three notes and the recorded robotic message: "We are sorry, you have reached a number that is disconnected or is no longer in service." I looked up the name he'd given me in the phone book. He wasn't there. I called the Depot and asked for him but was told they'd never heard of him.

What the hell?

At the time, I hadn't connected him with the Men In Black myth. I was just thinking "Well, I guess the records are mine now." But it bothered me that he knew exactly how to find me, so why wasn't he trying? Even if he lost my number, he knew where I lived. Even if he forgot that, he knew I worked at WRFL. Even if he forgot where that was, he knew I did a rockabilly show there and could have called the station.

For a third Kentucky MIB story, there's purportedly one in Bart Nunnelly's Mysterious Kentucky, but I haven't read it yet because Bart never sent me my copy ;)

And then there's yesterday's Masked Ninja Home Invasion story.

View from Richmond Courthouse

Another high view (well, sort of): a photo taken from the top floor of the Richmond Courthouse in Madison County. I believe I took this around 2003.

BGAD in LA Times

The Los Angeles Times has a new and extensive article on the rapidly corroding nerve gas cannisters at Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond. In addition to the chemical dump, the BGAD is also home to alleged UFO technology, spooky Raytheon projects, and the occasional black helicopter. Choice excerpts:

Behind armed guards in bulletproof booths deep in the Kentucky woods, workers have begun pouring the foundations for a $3-billion complex designed to destroy America's last stockpile of deadly chemical weapons.

The Obama administration has pushed to speed up the disposal operation after decades of delay, skyrocketing costs and daunting technical problems. The arms must be destroyed by April 2012 under international treaty and by December 2017 under federal law. But the Pentagon notified Congress in May that, even under what it called an accelerated schedule, it would not finish the job until 2021...

"We do experience leakers from time to time at very, very low levels," said Lt. Col. David Musgrave, commander of the Blue Grass Chemical Activity, as the storage site is called. He said no toxic plumes have escaped the igloos or threatened the surrounding community...

Concerns about safety at Blue Grass were highlighted last month when lawyers for Donald Van Winkle, a former chemical weapons monitor who claims he was forced out of his job at the facility after he uncovered unsafe conditions, obtained an Army investigative report through the Freedom of Information Act...

Another self-described whistle-blower, Kim Schafermeyer, 59, alleged he was fired as a chemist in 2006 in retaliation for citing safety and pollution problems at Blue Grass. A judge dismissed his lawsuit last year on a technicality.

Schafermeyer contends that the aging munitions are decomposing faster than officials admit. "They are highly unstable," he said. "These things should be destroyed next week."

Read the article in full here.

By the way, in the above photo, note that the BGAD igloo workers have gas masks strapped to their faces but their rest of the flesh on their heads remains exposed to the open air. But nerve gas is readily absorbed through the skin with even the slightest contact, so, uh, WTF?

Shocking New BGAD Revelations

Shocking to some, that is. Nothing shocks me anymore about the Pentagon's toxic dumpsite in Madison County.

Turns out that the Blue Grass Army Depot went for two years without any means to detect nerve gas leaks in their rapidly decomposing nerve gas igloos, then fired a whistleblower who dared to say "hey, Chief, maybe we oughta fix 'em."

From Environment News Service:

WASHINGTON, DC, July 20, 2009 (ENS) - The U.S. Army has acknowleged that the nerve gas leak monitors at a Kentucky chemical weapons storage depot were not working for nearly two years, 2003-2005. The admission is contained in a U.S. Army Inspector General report dated February 2006 but released today.

Managers of chemical weapons storage at the Blue Grass Army Depot, located outside of Richmond, 30 miles south of Lexington, had rendered the detectors inoperative and the problem was remedied only after a whistleblower was forced to file a complaint, according to the Inspector General investigation posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, PEER...

PEER points out that the Army Inspector General's report confirms the chief concerns raised by whistleblower Donald Van Winkle, a chemical weapons monitoring operator at Blue Grass.

Van Winkle expressed his concern that leak detectors were improperly removed from inside the igloos holding highly lethal VX nerve gas.

As a result, from September 2003 to August 2005, after Van Winkle came forward, Blue Grass had no means, other than visual observation, to determine whether the odorless, colorless nerve gas was seeping from the rockets in which the agent is stored.

These changes were contrary to Army protocols and safety standards but only minor disciplinary action was taken against the responsible managers, Van Winkle said.

The Army Inspector General concluded that despite the lack of working leak detectors there was no evidence of worker or public exposure to escaped chemicals, citing the "historically low rate of leakers" in VX nerve gas rockets and warheads.

The Inspector General withheld the report from PEER Freedom of Information Act requests for more than three years due to "an ongoing U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command investigation." PEER has requested information on the status of that criminal investigation...


At the time this report was being finalized, whistleblower Van Winkle was removed from Blue Grass after being stripped of his certification to work with chemical weapons because, according to the base command, he showed "signs of behavior of a disgruntled employee and … lack of a positive attitude."

"In the Army, senior officials who screw up get slapped on the wrist but whistleblowers get banished," said Dinerstein, who is leading Van Winkle's legal effort to restore his chemical weapons program certification.

She notes that the Inspector General's report contains information at variance with sworn testimony from Blue Grass officials in the Van Winkle legal action. "Given how this case was handled, no wonder major problems go unreported," she said.

And that's not all. Apparently things still aren't been so peachy out there. The article goes on to note:

While the Army Inspector General did not substantiate related operational troubles at Blue Grass, in late 2007, the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection confirmed some of Van Winkle's other disclosures...

Violations verified by Kentucky DEP in 2007 include failure to test spills from rockets containing agent that are stored inside the igloos; improper storage practices which crush the shells of rockets and cause leaks; and failure to ensure employees are properly trained to prevent release of chemical warfare agents.

The state agency also warned that Blue Grass staff may have been exposed to nerve agent but never notified or monitored; managers "scrub" or falsify monitoring reports, and in some instances turn off monitoring equipment to mask problems; and the base routinely transfers or blackballs whistleblowers.

Weird Lizard of Madison County

The Kentucky Bigfoot cryptozoology website went so long without any updates that I'd just about given up on it... but lo and behold, I stuck my beak in there last night and found that a new sighting report had been filed back in February:

"I am a night time truck driver that goes down I 75 to williamsburg, ky. I believe I was south of Richmond, KY. I saw something next to the concrete barrier that divided the north and southbound interstate. I was on the southbound side. I thought at first it might be a rabibit, but this thing either jumped the highway or was so fast I didn't see it running. It crossed about 20ft. in front of my truck, easily getting to the other side and disapeared into the woods. I have never seen an animal like this before. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

It looked like it didn't have any fur on it, looking like it was just grey skin. It to me looked like a small reptile or even a small dinosaur. It may have been a couple feet or so long. It looked like it had small dark eyes on the side of it's head. I also saw a long tail on this thing. It was very very fast and a normal animal I would have hit it, as I was going 65 in a 70 mile speed zone. It happened so fast I didn't notice if it had ears or not. It truly looked like something out of jurisic [sic] park."

Wait, what? Small reptile or even small dinosaur? Was it the Milton Lizard? Or the "Reptilian Wild Man" of 1878? Or William Branham's Biblical Serpent-Dude?

Masonic diary on eBay

For the next couple of months, I'm going to be putting up various and sundry items up for auction on eBay as part of an ongoing fundraising drive for the Catclaw Theatre Company and the cause to which we are all so devoted. Items will range from the trenchant to the trivial, from the massive to the miniscule, for all budgets great and small.

Many of the items may be of interest to collectors of Kentuckiana, such as this old diary kept in a 1942 calendar/dayplanner from the Madison-Southern National Bank & Trust Company, Richmond, KY.

Attached to the upper right corner of the cover is a blue and gold Masonic lapel pin.

The small book is heavily written in throughout, used primarily as a diary but also as an address book, general ledger, and notepad for various philosophical musings. It was the property of one Valley C. Megee, Stanford, KY, who resided at something called the "Blue Cat Tourist Home". (One of the last entries in the diary says "Moved back to Richmond".)


Like most old diaries, it's a fascinating and sometimes sad record of someone's life, and may well be the only remaining tangible legacy left behind by that person.



Click here to view our auctions. More will be added daily, so keep a-checkin'.

Scarecrow Swingset

I'm an aficionado of the old-timey metal playground items, the kind that are rapidly disappearing from our nation's landscape in favor of newfangled plastic monstrosities.

This is a great 1950s specimen from the old "Game Time" company from Ohio. It's clearly intended to be a Wizard Of Oz type of scarecrow, yet it's painted in such a way that it more closely resembles a skull or a clown - note that whoever repainted it last chose to ignore the eyebrows and the dots in the eyes. Its hollow-headed smile also gives it a jack-o-lantern quality.



This lovely artifact of mythic resonance can be found at Clear Creek Park in Shelbyville. There used to be one similar to this, but with an enormous triangular clown head, in Million Park in Richmond.