Every historic building has a story to tell
Despite my rural background, I did not grow up frequenting small country stores. While I slam the brakes now to photograph any and all that I pass in Kentucky, the grocery store of my childhood was…Kroger. Once or twice, I vaguely remember accompanying my grandmother to Toy’s Grocery in downtown Mt. Sterling, but I am (read more)
Categories: Country Store, Elliott County
I pulled over when I first saw the store. The gravel parking lot into which I veered belonged to a very interesting 20th century church, and after getting out of the car, camera in hand, I noticed the school. It was gray day, threatening rain, but my temper soared like it was the sunniest of conditions. (read more)
Categories: Country Store, Crossroad communities, Kentucky Places, Schools, Wayne County
When the news media reports a winning lottery ticket, my imagination shifts into overdrive. My plans for my imaginary lottery spoils include buying up lots of farmland for preservation, endowing numerous non-profits, and buying my own country store (adjacent to my farm, of course). In the preface to Pills, Petticoats, and Plows, the late state (read more)
Categories: Architecture, Country Store, Crossroad communities, Historic Preservation, Kentucky architecture, Kentucky history, National Register of Historic Places, Vernacular, Warren County
Tags: Bowling Green Kentucky, Country stores, historic tax credits, Houchens, Thomas D. Clark, Warren County Kentucky
My trips across Kentucky require no skill greater than the ability to drive, navigate, and gawk out the window, looking for a building with a story. Sometimes, it is a place with a story, like the small community of Arthurmabel in southern Magoffin County, Kentucky. The old store was what caught my eye – and (read more)
The familiar landscape is the one that often receives the least notice. But when that landscape changes, the disorientation strikes with ferocity, and a palpable sense of loss. For all my love of crossroad communities – places not quite a town, grown organically at the intersection of two roads – the one closest to me (read more)
Categories: Clark County, Country Store, Crossroad communities, Kentucky architecture, Vernacular
Tags: Clark County, Crump, Dykes, Sewell Shop
Roads are curious thing – and in Kentucky, they are big business. A new road delivers up promises of jobs and economic development; sometimes the premise for a project seems to be nothing more than “if you build it, they will come.” A road also takes away – a new road bypasses a community (this (read more)
My great-great-great-grandfather’s farm, originally christened “Mt. Pleasant” in the early 19th century, was renamed “Klondike” in the late-19th century, when one of his grandchildren headed to Alaska with dreams of striking it rich in the Klondike goldfields. We have a box of crumbling letters he wrote home to his mother, assuring her of his good (read more)
Anonymity comes easy these days. Shopping on the internet is easy and hassle free, and even in brick and mortar stores, the need for actual human contact can be minimal. Although there are times I am relieved to not see anyone I know when I dash out for an errand, the sense of community that (read more)
Categories: Country Store, Crossroad communities, Kentucky architecture, Vernacular, Warren County
Tags: Bowling Green, Motley, Thomas Clark, Warren County
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