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The Home Stretch (for This Trip)

The bootheel of Missouri is cotton country. We saw fields of stubble with bits of cotton bolls still sticking to them; they haven’t sowed new cotton plants yet this year. Cotton, I have learned, is botanically perennial when it grows naturally in the tropics, but it is almost always grown as an annual crop when cultivated in temperate climates. Interesting factoid.


Cotton is the main crop in the bootheel of Missouri,
the southernmost part of the state (Wikimedia)

Beyond that, well, we crossed the Mississippi, wide and muddy down there below the confluence of the Ohio River, and spent a couple of hours in Tennessee, in the far northwestern corner. From there, we crossed into Kentucky and went north to Paducah, where there’s a lot of quilt stuff. I was trying to figure out a way to connect that with King Cotton in the Missouri bootheel, since many quilts are made of cotton material, but we’re two states away from Missouri now, so I don’t think that’s going to work.

But I did have the opportunity to partake of the quilt attractions in Paducah. First a stop at Hancock’s of Paducah, probably the largest fabric store I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen some big ones). Not affiliated with the old Hancock Fabrics that is no more, this place is going strong. And yes, purchases were made . . .


The National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky

Then on to the National Quilt Museum, which opened in 1991 to showcase current quilts and quilters—not just the old, vintage style quilts that are occasionally seen in museums. They have changing exhibits, so even though I was there ten years ago, I saw all new quilts this time. I probably took 50 photos, but I’ll just put a few here, especially the really wild things I saw, like a 3D quilted pelican and Carmen Miranda.

    
Just a few of the quilts/quilted items on display now at the National Quilt Museum

I thoroughly enjoyed the exhibits, and how’s this for an odd coincidence—when I was here ten years ago, there was a quilt made by Jane Burch Cocoran, a lady from Rabbit Hash, who always appliques gloves on her quilts, which are also embellished with beads and buttons. Well, she had another quilt on display this time.

A quilt made by Jane Burch Cocoran of Rabbit Hash

After perusing all the quilts at the museum, I met up with Mike and we walked into town and found lunch at the Gold Rush Café. It was a good lunch; Paducah is an interesting place. Sort of like Over the Rhine in Cincinnati, there are areas where buildings have been renovated and the businesses seem to be thriving, with shops and restaurants, then other areas that have empty buildings that need some fixing up. We did pass one empty lot that had a rather sad old mosaic saved in front of it for Kresge’s (the Delhi Kresge’s was my favorite store when I was a kid).


A Kresge’s mosaic, all that remained of an old
five-and-dime store in Paducah, looked like
something that had survived in Pompeii

Lewis and Clark stopped near where Paducah is today, recruiting men for their Corps of Discovery, including an interpreter. That reminded me of a song by a Blackfeet Indian singer we met at Glacier National Park (and we were listening to his CDs on this trip). The song, by Jack Gladstone, calls the interpreter “the High Plains matador of metaphor” which I thought was a nice turn of phrase.


Lewis & Clark historical marker

Paducah’s other claim to fame is as the home of Alben W. Barkley, the 35th vice president of the United States, under Harry Truman. Alben Barkley knew the folks who owned my grandfather’s cabin in Rabbit Hash before he bought it, and Barkley stayed at the cabin once while on a hunting trip. Or so we were told, and there’s a homemade historical marker that says so in the cabin.


Vice President Alben Barkley, a native son of Paducah

We made the run from Paducah to Elizabethtown; not a long trip but we try not to go too far in a day—we’re usually not in any hurry. So when we see something interesting, we wander off course a bit. On this leg of the trip, Mike saw a sign for Mineral Mound State Park not long after we crossed the Cumberland River. We do like to see Indian mounds, so we took the exit and made our way to the park. Well, it was an exciting disappointment. First we got semi-trapped in a maze of narrow streets on a cliff above the Cumberland/Lake Barkley. We thought we’d found a way out, but there was a bulldozer blocking the end of the street, so Mike had to back the van and trailer uphill around a corner between two ditches filled with big rocks. Not fun at all. I went down the next street to see if we could get through, but it didn’t look good. The third street took us right along the water but then up again and out of the cliff area, so we headed back.

It seemed like all there was to the park was a golf course, but as we headed out, we saw a plaque explaining that the home of Willis Benson Machen, a Confederate Senator and later a U.S. Senator from Kentucky, had been built on a naturally occurring mound (not an Indian mound) near a mineral spring on the banks of the Cumberland, which is why it was called Mineral Mound. The house burned down in 1947, but there is some evidence that F. Scott Fitzgerald, who married Machen’s granddaughter Zelda, had visited the house and used it as one of his inspirations for Gatsby’s flamboyant mansion in West Egg. A strange and interesting side trip, even if there were no Indian mounds.


Mineral Mound in Kentucky, home of
Zelda Fitzgerald’s maternal grandfather

We took the Wendel Ford Western Kentucky Parkway most of the way to Elizabethtown, and also passed the birthplaces of the Everly Brothers, Bill Monroe, and John Prine’s parents, as described in his song “Paradise”:

“When I was a boy, my parents would take me
down to eastern Kentucky, where Paradise lay.”
It’s quite a musical stretch of highway.

When we got to the motel we were staying at in Elizabethtown, we discovered that there was a softball tournament over the weekend at a big sports complex they built for just such events. So the hotel was filled with preteen girls who play fast pitch softball. And who run around the halls a lot. C’est la vie.

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