Kentucky by Heart: Day trips around Kentucky offer plenty of ‘muse-worthy’ material for any writer

By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

I’ll often sit deep in thought at the keyboard, focusing on what I’m writing at the time. At other times, I simply muse about recent activities experienced and consider them as possible future writing topics.

In the last month, my most “muse-worthy” times are about traveling and doing interviews about World War II veterans. The interviews and research will hopefully supply enough background information to craft a compelling feature for Kentucky Living, a magazine for which I’ve recently had pieces published. And though only in the beginning stages of putting the article together, the experience has already rewarded my Kentucky-centric sensibilities.

Steve at a tank exhibit at The Western Kentucky Veterans Center, in Hanson, Ky (Photo by Suzanne Isaacs)

My wife, Suzanne, has generally been a part of this project, going with me to veteran centers in both the western and eastern parts of the state. I will purposefully be sparse about some of the details of those trips in respect to what I’ll later share in the magazine.

My musing about trips to the western part of the state always features the element of accommodation the region shows to visitors. Western Kentucky, I’ve been told by a reliable source, has strong cultural ties to the South, and I believe that their demonstration of “Southern hospitality” springs forth generously.

I once walked into a shop in downtown Henderson and asked for directions to another store in the area. The attendee smiled graciously and began to offer directions, but soon said something to the effect of, “Here, let me just walk you over that way.” And the person did. As I recall, our walk was about a block or more, and the shop attendee seemed exuberant that she was able to help a stranger. Additionally, I don’t remember any other person attending her shop while she ventured away, so she must have felt enormous trust toward her customers while she was absent.

Whether it’s stopping at a gas station, store, or even once at a bank, I’ve found people in Western Kentucky to almost fall over themselves trying to give a traveler like me directions. I almost never feel “brushed off,” and now, when I come across younger people to ask directions, they’ll smile, pop out their smartphones, and use their expertise to quickly find where I need to go. Experience after experience there in nearly two decades of collecting stories demonstrate this; I believe it’s in the DNA of the region. Yep, I muse about things such as this because they help define Kentucky in a positive way.

And heading down Eastern Kentucky way last week on the Mountain Parkway and Highway 15 toward Hazard, I was struck by the natural beauty surrounding the hills and mountains—in a way that I hadn’t before. There’s a “clean” feel about the area, something I couldn’t honestly say back in the mid-1960s as a child when my father regularly led our family in travels across the state. In those days, I recall junk and litter strewn across creek banks and hillsides, and it wasn’t an inviting place. Roads today are better, services are less remote, coal reclamation projects have helped the landscape, and there’s a modern feel—something for which to muse in a pleasant way, and I do.

Eastern Kentucky has always had great people, and I know that from rubbing shoulders with them as college classmates, schoolteacher colleagues, writing friends, and a whole host of others I included in my Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes book series. My hope is that the economy of Eastern Kentucky will grow more diverse and allow for natives of the area to stay if they’d like and to attract more to come and enjoy a land rich in culture and down-to-earth goodness.

Suzanne muses about another thing she likes about Eastern Kentucky, and that is a special bottle of water produced by a company in Middlesboro called Cumberland Gap Mountain Water. The water, according to the company’s web site, “comes directly from deep within the mountains of Cumberland Gap National Historic Park,” and notes that Daniel Boone likely drank that water, as other pioneers did.

And though I tend to judge all brands of bottled water as tasting the same, Suzanne sees the Gap’s water as heavenly tasting. For years, she’s asked me to pick up a case or two on my mountain trips, and at times, I had to search a bit to find, especially when I was not near Middlesboro. But on our trip to Hazard, we found plenty of it at the Food City store. Three cases rode home in our car, and I expect Suzanne will invent excuses to head that way again after the supply dwindles.

A couple of day trips around Kentucky won’t generally fit in the “hard news” category, but they sure can count as times of a-“muse”-ment, and it makes me want for more.

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