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Tom Chaney No. 232:: Who We Are. Horse Cave, KY Tom Chaney essay, today, Who We Are: Reflections of Horse Cave, KY about his hometown, Horse Cave, KY The next earlier Tom Chaney essay is Think Books for Christmas By Tom Chaney It is most interesting to sneak about and listen to folks describe Horse Cave. I wonder what Elizabeth Wilson and her family thought when they first came from Virginia to find the massive sinkhole in the middle of their property. Surely nothing in their experience matched it. But we don't know - they didn't leave word. We do know that tobacco was grown and marketed here as early as the 1840's, and that Horse Cave for more than a century and a half was known as a tobacco town. Join Edwin Muir in his "One Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf" one hot September afternoon in the 1870's when he found the entire town taking the cool cave air just below a deserted town. Was he the first recorded tourist come to visit? By the time Muir arrived Horse Cave was not just a tobacco town, it was a railroad town. Major Anderson made the deal with the railroad some 20 years before -- giving the Louisville and Nashville line a right-of-way through town and a park to boot for a station named Horse Cave in perpetuity -- almost. Muir doesn't mention the confusion at the time of his visit. Folks had got uppity. "Horse Cave" was too crude a name. The government of Andy Johnson changed the post office to Caverna. Of course it didn't stick. Just how long can one be expected to write to a relative at Caverna with notice of arrival at the Horse Cave depot? The town's business thrived with tobacco, with mills, with wholesale houses. In the 1930's there was oil -- crude oil brought by pipeline and shipped out by rail or refined into gasoline by the Stoll Oil Company. Tourists came to see the cave and the caves near by. They stayed in the hotels and ate in the cafes. Farmers spent their tobacco money on next year's crop and this year's necessities. Good schools and their fine teachers too often sent the best young folks to other places to live and work. Poke about in the records, stroll through the graveyard and one turns up interesting achievement -- much of it done away from Horse Cave. Find the grave of the leader in physical education who was first the first coach of basketball at the University of Kentucky and who died in 1910 in Albany, New York, where he was responsible for establishing that state's high school physical education program. Remember the famous coach of the Praying Colonels at Centre who beat Harvard at football and who had coached Texas A & M successfully before a career as a major league umpire. Look at the grave of the explorer who not only tamed our caves but who rode the rapids of Grand Canyon upstream and who knocked about in the winter ice of Antarctica -- who also brought performing arts to his home town. And consider the musicians -- composer and teachers who gave music to the lives of generations. Look to France where one of our painters lies. Think of the merger of art and tobacco in that warehouse in 1979 when critics and buyers of Europe and America came to town. And how, then does one define Horse Cave? Now, in large part, by its place in the world of art -- painting and performing. Not by chance did the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kentucky Arts Council select this little oil, tobacco, basketball town as the site -- one of three in Kentucky -- of a new downtown arts district. For the first time we sport an art gallery on Water Street. And for the first time that gallery is showing the works of a local artist. From this past week through January 31, 2010 the paintings of Cattie Lou Miller are being shown. After a long and distinguished career in state government Ms Miller has returned home to rest and paint. Come. Enjoy her work. See how the artist makes us see the world more clearly - and ourselves as well. Tom Chaney can be found telling stories, planning his next meal, and occasionally selling books at: The BOOKSTORE in Horse Cave, KY Box 73 / 111 Water Street Horse Cave, Kentucky 42749 (270) 786-3084 Email: Tom Chaney bookstore@scrtc.com To read other Tom Chaney book reviews and essays, enter "Tom Chaney" in the searchbox. This story was posted on 2009-12-06 09:03:34
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Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books:
Tom Chaney, 30 November 2009: Think books for Christmas Tom Chaney: The Ledger of a Country Store Tom Chaney: Getting High in Horse Cave: Helicopters and Chemicals Tom Chaney No. 43: A Mirror Unto Life Tom Chaney No. 230: Review of Grand, Gloomy and Peculiar Tom Chaney No. 229, 1 Nov. 2009: Hosannas to the Herb Divine Tom Chaney: 25 Oct. 2009. Faith and Politics Tom Chaney No. 226, Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol Tom Chaney No. 225, Cussing with Imagination Tom Chaney No. 225, Sept. 27, 2009: Bonnie and Clyde View even more articles in topic Tom Chaney: Of Writers and Their Books |
 
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