Triangle UFOs over Kentucky

On March 18, a citizen in Stanton had a sighting of a triangular-shaped unidentified flying object. According to the NUFORC report that was filed on the encounter:

I was on my way to work driving along the Mountain Parkway when i saw something large in the sky ahead of me. I wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't for the lights on the front. It was just above the trees and sat motionless. From the distance I thought it was perhaps a plane or a helicopter but as I drew nearer I saw that it had a triangular shape and didn't wasn't making any sound. I pressed the gas harder and quickly hurried on down the road. I chanced a look back and was shocked to that it was gone. Where could something that big go that fast?

Just the day before, a very different-sounding UFO had been spotted over Lexington:

I saw a bright dark blue light in the skies, about 100’ (rough estimate) in the sky over a wooded area next to the freeway in Lexington, Ky. The light was not extremely bright, like a police light or the sun, but rather like a blue runway light at the airport. The light was steady and there were no other lights, flashing or otherwise. It appeared as though the light might have been suspended under a small, white parachute, but it did not seem like the movement of the light was consistent with a parachute.

And a week before that, an egg-shaped UFO was allegedly seen over Virgie, KY. This was "shaped like an egg, with the pointy end pointing forward", which, if you think about it, sounds somewhat like a cross between the triangle UFO and the white parachute UFO.

It's possible there's some connection between these sightings, but the great variance in the descriptions leads one to be skeptical. However, on March 30, almost two weeks after the Stanton sighting, a Louisville man reported another triangular UFO that sounds very similar:

"It was shaped like a triangle with a dent in the middle, like a mouse pointer. There were a row of white lights from the tip to the end and a red light at the very end. I could tell that it was dark grey at the top and light grey on the underneath. As I slowed down to watch and to try to get a picture, the object moved behind a row of houses and some trees then it hovered over one houses roof about a foot from it. None of the houses had lights on.

I turned down a side street to try to get closer and watched another object with similar bright lights fly very quickly across the sky far in the distance for about 50 seconds. I turned back down the main road from before and onto the same side street and another object was flying directly above my car. It was shaped exactly like the object from before, triangular and with a row of white lights with one red light at the end. There was no noise, as with an airplane and the object flew very quickly as I guess it realized I was there and took off to quickly for me to see or follow. I continued down the road and parked in front of my house when I saw at least 3 more objects. When I finally came inside it was about 11:40PM. After coming inside, I have seen at least 5 normal planes flying across the vicinity in the past 5 minutes."

Puzzling evidence? Or is the triangle shape just the current fad for swamp gas hallucinations? (Although Unidentified flying black triangles have been reported since the 1940s, the meme has taken a definite spike upwards since the 1990s.)

Oh, and then there's this.

The Sherley Family Plot

Recently spent another day on safari, deep in the heart of darkest Cave Hill, just before a rainstorm of Biblical proportions dropped on my head.

Visited the Sherley family plot, which has a doorway-to-nowhere portal that I find very interesting for a lot of reasons, probably deeply ingrained in childhood pop culture imprinting of walking through magical doorways (The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, etc.) and maybe a few past lives as well.

Z.M. Sherley's grave is also very eye-catching, being a roughly hewn round-ish boulder with his name spelled out in copper appliques in an exquisite font. Z.M. Sherley's name is a memorable one to local historians, not just as a Civil War figure, but for his involvement with U of L's Medical Department and The American Printinghouse for the Blind, for the ferryboat named after him, and for his philanthropic contributions that helped maintain and beautify Cave Hill Cemetery itself during his lifetime.

According to the book Gould's History of River Navigation by Emerson W. Gould, Z.M. Sherley had an identical twin named Thomas, and so identical were they that not even Thomas' wife could tell them apart. Thomas drowned in the Mississippi River while transporting cattle via barge.

Meanwhile, George Douglass Sherley's grave - a large stone cross laying flat on the ground - has a great inscription: "Whatever is, is Best". It immediately struck me as almost Buddhist-like in its transcendent acceptance, but I did a little research and found it's actually quoting a Rosicrucian poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I know there are no errors
In the great Eternal plan,
And all things work together
For the final good of man.
And I know when my soul speeds onward,
In its grand Eternal quest,
I shall say as I look back earthward,
Whatever is, is best.

George Douglass Sherley was a writer and poet who attended Centre College in Danville, and authored several books including The Valley of Unrest, The Inner Sisterhood, and A Spray of Kentucky Pine.

Abandoned Horse Farm

Lately I've been driving down Ellington Road on the outer Eastern fringe of Jefferson County and have been very curious about a certain horse farm there called Betsy Webb Stables, which had been seemingly abandoned and left to rot. Fields unmowed and waving in hay, debris everywhere, the fence falling apart, and nary an Appaloosa in sight.

Usually when passing by it, I happen not to have my camera with me (When, oh when, will I learn to keep it with me at all times?). But this morning, after getting all tanked up on caffeine after Catclaw's daily morning meeting at Starbucks, I was all set for a photo expedition.

But when I got there, I'll be damned if they weren't bulldozing the place! I watched in horror as a couple o' Komatsu excavators made a mess of what had been a lovely blue barn.



However, all is not quite lost. Doing some research online just now, I found the site is not abandoned after all - the existing farm is being razed to make room for Webb's newer and grander project - the Louisville Equestrian Center, which will reportedly consist of "a single-purpose riding complex with three buildings — two large indoor riding arenas and a barn with 100 climate-controlled stalls". Could be a pip.

Tomato Stop

There's something kinda different about the stop signs in the vicinity of the Papa John's Pizza Corporate Headquarters, but I can't quite place it.

Colonel Sanders Impersonators

Two ersatz KFC mascots have caught my eye lately.

Colonel Bob Thompson (photo above), former mayor of Lawrenceburg, is in demand these days as a Sanders impersonator. According to his website:

"Thompson has appeared as the late Col. Harland Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, in promotional events marking the 50th Anniversary of the KFC restaurant chain. Thompson has also won several look-alike contests, most notable was the World's Chicken Festival.

Colonel Bob makes many personal appearances. Please contact him for your special event!"

I found Colonel Bob's business card in the parking lot at Claudia Sanders Dinner House recently.

And then there's Don Decker (photo below) who LEO Weekly recently profiled. According to the article, Decker is a man with a criminal past who found redemption in imitating Harland Sanders for tourist photo-ops at Louisville's Fourth Street Live (Much to Fourth Street Live's dismay.)



A third Sanders mimic, one Thomas Rost, is mentioned on numerous websites that all seem to be referencing a now-removed Wikipedia entry. Aside from that, I can find no info on Rost.

At this rate, professional lookalikes of Sanders could one day be as lucrative a gig as Abraham Lincoln impersonators.

Fake Cops Robbed Drug Dealers

Something that's always bothered me about the nature of police is that we're all expected to drop whatever we're doing and go into submissive "sir, yes, sir" mode just because someone says they're a cop. Or just looks or acts like one.

The entire security guard industry takes advantage of this socialized Pavlovian response by deliberately dressing security guards in police-style uniforms. Campus "toy cops", Impotent "mall cops", and all-purpose paunchy dudes hired to stand around looking vaguely official - they all depend on the appearance of being cop-like, in the hope that the illusion will bluff the public into cooperating with them.

Sure, real police are supposed to identify themselves as such, but really, anyone can put on a cop suit and flash a badge and say they're a cop. And some enterprising louts in Pikeville recently did just that. According to Kentucky.com:

A welder and former coal-company employee pleaded guilty Monday to using a gun in a scheme to impersonate police and Operation UNITE investigators and rob people of pills and cash in Letcher and Knott counties.

Tony Ray Herald said he worked with Vernon Todd Griffie, a former Perry County volunteer sheriff's deputy, to go to the homes of people they suspected of being drug dealers. They would scope out the houses and arrange to buy drugs, he said.

Later, the two would return dressed as sheriff's deputies or police officers, claiming to be part of the Operation UNITE Eastern Kentucky drug task force. They would put the victims in handcuffs and take cash and pills.

A federal judge in Pikeville set Herald's sentencing date for Aug. 17. The charges carry a penalty of at least seven years in prison.

The hilarity of druggies pretending to be cops so they can steal from other druggies is so great, it almost begs to be made into a movie, a play, or an HBO series.

But I'd love to know what happened after the fake cops left their marks. Didn't the druggies wonder why they hadn't been taken to jail? Didn't they think it was weird that the cops would confiscate their drugs AND their money, but then set them free? Perhaps they also wondered why these cops were driving an old mud-covered pickup truck instead of a cop car.

But even if they figured it out, what were they gonna do - call the police and say "hey dude, somebody robbed our meth lab"? Because of this Catch-22 inherent in criminals being robbed by other criminals, there was really no reason to impersonate cops in the first place. I suppose they just liked playing dress-up.

"His Column is Broken"

Although I'm not sure what quasi-architectural rigamarole the phrase refers to, "His Column is Broken" is apparently something traditionally said among Freemasons when one of their brethren dies unexpectedly and prematurely.

PETA Protests Kentucky Derby with 256 Headstones

Those kooks at PETA were at it again during Derby, erecting 256 headstones at the Kentucky Derby in some sort of misguided protest about the ethical treatment of race horses.

"Bodies may not be buried at Churchill Downs, but with so many horses having drawn their last breath there after having been run to death, it might as well be a cemetery. And for two days it will be, when PETA erects 265 headstones outside the racetrack this week.

Why 265, you ask? We are including 263 headstones to represent the horses who have died on the track since last year's Kentucky Derby and whose names we know, one headstone for the approximately 832 other horses who have died but whose names are not known—because racetracks are so bad at reporting breakdowns and deaths—and one headstone for the approximately 12,000 thoroughbreds who are sent off to slaughter each year."

"Something Calls...."

This stirring couplet, found today in Louisville's Calvary Cemetery, is one of the most fascinatingly ominous and enigmatic I believe I've ever encountered on a gravestone:

Up one more ridge...
And down the hollow
Something calls...
And you must follow.

All at once, I'm reminded of H.P. Lovecraft, Children of the Corn, W.B Yeats' "The Second Coming", and any number of "Southern Gothic" novels.

The grave is that of one John L. Olges, Jr., so presumably he is the "J.O." that authored his own epitaph.

Inflatable Ape

Normally, inflatable promotional gee-gaws don't impress me. I loathe the inflatable snowmen, santas, and reindeer that clog up people's yards at Christmas time, and those air-powered humanoid figures that flail around wildly in front of auto shops, BBQ joints and car washes really give me the heeby-jeebies.

But something about this giant inflatable gorilla struck a resonant chord with me. I don't know why. It certainly helps that he's big as a house.

The soiree is just down the street from me. It's the Hillbilly Outfield Derby Party, raising money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

The Dangerous Political Pull of Kentucky Bootleggers?

Justin Thompson has a scathing critique of Kentucky's bizarre new liquor tax increase in his essay "You Watch my Back and I’ll Stab Yours: How KY Lawmakers Have Started Another Whiskey Rebellion", printed in the currest edition of The Bourbon Review. An excerpt:

On April 1st of this year, the booming bourbon industry was delivered a low-blow by its lawmakers when Kentuckians were required to pay an additional 6% sales tax for the first time on alcohol. The tax was passed and quickly signed by Governor Steve Beshear in an attempt to cover the state’s 454 million dollar shortfall in the budget. So what’s the big deal you ask? Local, state and federal taxes gobble up an average of 53% of what is paid for a bottle of bourbon in the Bluegrass State which was the third-highest effective tax rate in the nation BEFORE the 6% sales tax was added according to the Kentucky Distillers Association. The timing of this tax could have not come at a worse time either. When small-business owners and retailers are doing everything they can to attract consumer traffic and stay in business, lawmakers have crippled the efforts of the 3,400+ liquor retail stores and countless restaurants and hotels who rely on liquor sales to pay bills. Not to mention the negative effect this will have on the Midwest’s largest growing tourist attraction, The Bourbon Trail, by threatening the 500,000 visitors who might not choose to visit as many distilleries because of the higher prices. There is also the competitive advantage that now has been lost to our border states who used to drive from Cincinnati or Southern Indiana into Kentucky to do their shopping for alcohol. Chances are those densely populated areas will see a reversal in business as more Kentuckians will go across the river for their booze to save a few dollars during these tough times.


Why would lawmakers make such a quick decision (it took only about a month to debate and pass the tax) even though several national and local economists believe raising taxes during a recession is a counter-productive move? First, you would have to examine the hypocrisy that is Kentucky politics. Kentucky is composed of 120 counties: 30 of which are wet and 90 that are dry. Those 30 counties include the most populated areas and enjoy the majority of the residents. Even so, there is a large portion of Kentucky that is dry and the vast majority of the lawmakers from these regions voted for the tax increase. Why are there so many dry counties in one of the largest alcohol producing states in the nation? One reason is bootleggers. In every single one of those 90 counties, bootleggers operate unbothered by the law, unregulated and untaxed. In most cases, they infiltrate the political circles and ensure that any talk of a county voting wet is squashed very fast. I grew up in one of those small dry counties and was shocked to find that alcohol was harder to score as an under-age freshman in college than it was as a freshman in high school. If you don’t believe that bootleggers have political-pull, then think about the last time the local news did a story about police busting a bootlegging operation in one of those rural counties. These dry counties do nothing to generate alcohol sales tax receipts, but they are more than happy to accept the tax-money that wet counties produce.

Did I read that wrong? Is the Bourbon Review actually stating what I think it's stating?

Fudge, KY

Ever heard of of Fudge, KY (not to be confused with Kentucky Fudge)? It's now said to be a ghost town, but it reportedly was once a small community in Fulton County, approximately 4 miles southwest of Hickman.

According to Wikipedia:

A small town in the 1850s and 1860s with a population of less than 50, Fudge was abandoned after a few years after settlers determined that the land was inarable. Poor drainage and salinity on the site rendered the soil inadequate to support sustained farming cycles. The earth beneath the site is rich in limestone, with collapsing (slowly dissolving) caverns beneath.

Several of Fudge's abandoned farmhouses and structures still stand today, and have served as a backdrop for several rock band videos, including The Flaming Lips' "Chrome Plated Suicide" and Big Red Bouncer's "Animal Child".