Road Trip Two

My Dad, born in 1909, used to talk about the Tennessee Valley Authority and big government public work projects like Kentucky Dam created by the Corps of Engineers. He was solidly behind and spoke fondly of all the initiatives FDR undertook to create jobs and make life better for America’s poor. He told stories about the TVA. He said the government sent agents into those Kentucky and Tennessee hills to persuade the people who lived there to move out before their homes were flooded. He claimed that some shot at the government men, flatly refusing to believe them and leave their homes, modest as they might have been. He didn’t call them “the people who lived there.” He called them hillbillies.

Dad had a low opinion of Kentucky. He maintained that Southern Illinois and Southern Indiana were actually Kentucky, along with the Ozarks in Missouri. Kentucky to him meant bad English and little education. He said Kentucky was 75 years behind Illinois. What will be the prejudices and stereotypes my kids remember about me?

I don’t think my Dad spent any, or if any very little, time in Kentucky, but he encountered people from there moving up to Illinois, mostly poor men seeking work and being used by established farmers as “hired men.” A hired man was given an old house on the farm kept livable for that purpose, meat from the farmer’s cows and pigs when they butchered, as many in kind benefits as possible to offset very low pay for the hard work required to make small Midwest farms profitable. They often had large families, little schooling, and spoke English in a manner different from us. As agriculture mechanized and farm equipment improved the need for hired men faded quickly. The hired men and their families from Kentucky blended elsewhere into the Illinois workforce seamlessly. But my Dad’s opinion of Kentucky as a backwards place stayed fixed in time.

The Kentucky I have experienced in my life seems just fine. While going to the Kentucky Derby and passing through the State on our way to points south on family vacations, Kentucky has been clean and inviting. I especially appreciate and value the whiskey making skill of Kentuckians. The part of Kentucky I experienced on this road trip was unexpectedly beautiful. But l had to wait to see it.

I found myself wide awake, unable to return to sleep, before 5:00. I’d barely unpacked the night before so I got up, quickly gathered my things together, put my bag in the Buick, got my bearings from the night clerk at the hotel desk, and set off back across the dam to the entrance of Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area. As I entered the park it was still dark. I hung out at the closed welcome center to kill a little time. I read the big map, perused a few pamphlets, took a walk around the very edges of the parking lot; and still no hint of the sun. I got back in the Buick and backtracked to the Kentucky Lake Scenic Loop Road, an extravagant use of asphalt designed to give the drivers who take it nice views of the lake while going nowhere.

Kentucky Lake is gigantic. The dam I crossed, deep and wide, must have flooded so much of the Cumberland and Tennessee River valleys, so many hollows and mountain hideaways, that it’s no wonder the inhabitants of those mountain haunts didn’t want to move. Life may have been tough there for early Kentuckians, but it was no doubt their own, free and independent. Plenty of hills still remain, as I was about to find out. Standing there, gazing at that vast lake, I saw the first hint of red in the clouds above the horizon. I got back in the Buick and headed down the road.

As the sun came up I was greeted by a dense hardwood forest and a deserted twisting two lane highway. I felt totally alone. I was totally alone. I decided it fitting for Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan to join me, so I put “Nashville Skyline” in the CD player, knowing the deep strum of those acoustic guitars by heart, along with the lyrics, of the opening song.

If you go-o, where the snowflakes fall
And the winds hit heavy, on the borderline
Please see for me that she’s wearing a coat so warm,
To keep her from, a the howling wind.

The Buick and I rose and fell, curving down between the cut rock and exposed red clay, up along the ridges, moving through the trees, quietly making our way South. It was a beautiful drive. I had a little cold coffee from the day before. I sang loudly along to “Peggy Day.”

The hardwood trees thinned a bit and prairie grass began to appear. A rare road sign told me the road to the Bison and Elk Refuge was in a half a mile. Bison and Elk? It is difficult if not impossible to pass up such a roadside attraction on an open ended trip like mine. I took the turn and encountered a smaller paved road equipped with a turnstile not unlike those seen in parking garages. Big arm blocking my path, credit card slot, pay five dollars, take a ticket. All in perfect quietude, just me and the automatic, micro chipped machines. I paid my money and the arm went up. Next sturdy metal gates swung toward the Buick and I drove over a pit covered by pipes. A cattle guard. I drove in, the gate closed behind me, and the road took me over a small ridge. Before me lay a beautiful little valley, a rock with a plaque, and a gravel parking area. I got out and read the story of early settlers and their relationship to buffalo. I imagined the valley covered by buffalo. It was empty of everything but plants and me.

Back in the Buick, I proceeded down into the valley onto a road that carried me to the ridge. As I topped the hill the road was covered with buffalo, on the road, on both sides of it, spaced apart, grazing, absolutely unconcerned that a four door 2000 LeSabre carrying a bearded man was in their midst. I rolled down all the windows and turned off Bob Dylan. A buffalo calf stepped onto the pavement, stopped in the middle of the road, and slowly turned its head to look at me through the windshield. It looked at me for a long time, chewing its cud in that serene bovine way. I turned the engine off.

It was me and a hundred buffalo somewhere in the wilderness of Kentucky, just past the credit card reader and the cattle guard. I tried to imagine how the frontiersmen felt when they first experienced this prairie and the buffalo it supported. Hungry I imagine. Reaching for their rifles. It was 6:30 in the morning and I was parked in a buffalo herd on the second day of my road trip. You never know what’s going to happen do you? If you start thinking you do, put yourself on a road you have never traveled. Good things emerge.

Eventually I made my way out of the bison herd and down into the next valley. Still no Elk. At a place in the road that warned of high water during rains, a ford in the creek, something caught my eye on the ground, something black and moving. A closer look revealed a flock of wild turkeys. I got out of the Buick. I heeded signs that warned not to leave your vehicle when encountering buffalo and elk, but I wanted a closer look at the turkeys. Thanksgiving just passed, they were still much on my mind. The turkeys were more wary than the buffalo, keeping a safe distance. One of the toms turned toward me and flared out his tail feathers, making quite a display. They moseyed on down the creek bank, pecking at the ground. I was able to get a little closer to them and experience a personal turkey moment. It was rare for me to be so close to wild turkey not in liquid form. The sun was well over the ridge, lighting a beautiful part of America and marking the start of a beautiful day. I returned to the Buick.

Somewhere out there on that empty road I crossed in to Tennessee. I had encountered more Kentucky buffalo and turkeys than people, but not one elk. The day continued.