I’m a pretty laid back guy…
Aside from hanging out long ago with the Prime Minister of Canada on the stern of my parent’s yacht, dating a girl long distance in Torino, Italy in the ’80s, running The Pitch, then choking out the highest read column in the Kansas City Star for 16 years, passing out with COVID 19 a year ago just before Christmas while returning a rental car in Arizona and getting married to an amazing, beautiful lawyer who works for the Attorney General of Arizona, “Vanilla” has pretty much been my middle name.
Ah, but once upon time in the early 1970s I loaded up my dirt brown Fiat X 1/9 sports car with as much Coors beer as it would hold and enough clothes to last a year and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky.
You know, last weekend’s Tornado Town.
It was a storybook, small southern city in what is called the “Jackson Purchase.” I went there to learn as much as I could about grading grain and running what is called, a “country grain elevator.”
The Coors was my ticket to ingratiating myself to the elevator owner and locals of the dry county, where they prized the “pure Rocky Mountain spring water” from which it was allegedly came. At the time Coors wasn’t sold “east of the Mississippi.”
Like the early Pilgrims trading beads for Manhattan Island I supplied my rare brewskis and locals reciprocated by introducing me to equally rare, illegal moonshine and the saltiest country ham you probably never ate.
After a few months of living in a small motel just off the main drag downtown – which as of last Friday night is history – I rented a tiny mobil home just west of town, and settled in for a year.
Needless to say, it was a bit on the unglamorous side.
Still lI loved hanging with the farm folk ands locals in Mayfield and fanned out on weekends for exotic places such as Memphis or Nashville to hang with luminaries like Wolfman Jack (honest) and southern belles who had possibly less romantic interest in me than I appeared to have in them.
TMI, anyone?
It was almost as dramatic a life lesson as going into the Navy and through bootcamp in San Diego with walking pneumonia a couple years earlier.
I took grain grading lessons at night from the Illinois State grain inspector in nearby Cairo, Illinois, and got to see a crooner named Percy Sledge belt out hits like “When a Man Loves a Woman” and “Take Time to Know Her,” up close in a tiny Memphis club.
I toured the local facility of a St. Louis based company called Curlee Clothing and picked out a tacky, plaid sport coat made of 100% polyester. I later bought some super wide General Tires for my ’74 Plymouth Road Runner that were made at a nearby plant where many Mayfield locals worked.
I attended middle school boys and girls basketball games in the middle of nowhere that were so packed and noisy they made the KU games at Allen Field House seem tame.
Never made much of a mark in dating, in part because in small towns like Mayfield – the women who opt not to leave town after they get out of high school, were for the most part engaged or about to be married…so the pickings were slim (at least that’s my excuse).
All of that said, it was a beautiful, quaint, small southern burg – just like the post tornado reports have said – of about 10,000 people.
There were no McDonald’s, but there was a Burger Queen. And the tiny Mayfield Country Club had a beer vending machine that I couldn’t quite decide was either tacky or charming.
Mayfield was a lovely small city, tucked between other small towns like Fancy Farm and Murray, Kentucky – where in a small field house I saw a young, not yet fully famous Billy Joel perform.
Long story short, late last Friday that tornado at all but wiped out Mayfield, Kentucky and took or erased many of my fondest thoughts and feelings in the town.
I still go or pass through Mayfield every few years, but there’s no way anybody’s bringing that nearly all brick downtown back anytime soon…or probably ever.
Too bad, because may heart goes out to everyone who went through a tornado that made the one I saw the results of first hand in Joplin several years back look like a walk in the park.
Well done, HC. As the son of parents who both came from small towns in Missouri, I understand how quirky and wonderful the culture of small-town America can be. Quite a loss for the people of Mayfield. Damn.
Yeah, but that town has been fading fast in recent years.
The old General Tire factory went away nearly 15 years ago. The Curlee Clothes factory was on its last legs in the early 1970s.
Never even knew about the candle place in passing through.
It was always a somewhat poor town – in a dry county, no less -but now I think it’s “dirt poor.”
When I lived and worked in and out of there well into the 1980s, there were middle class-looking types floating around to a small extent.
Judging from the folks I’ve seen being interviewed, that ship has long since sailed.
I dealt mostly with farmer types – modern day farmers who owned expensive equipment and were pretty well educated AND who had most of their teeth, etc.
Every place has it merits and demerits, including weather concerns. I remember well the tragic Topeka tornado of June 1966 (tornados & humidity are a couple of things I don’t miss about living in the mid-west (left Kansas many winters ago, when Docking was still Governor.)
Now, a couple of asides, i.e., errant, disjointed thots…
So your better half works for the Arizona AG, Brnovich? You name dropper, you! No comment required, just want to say: wish I could be a fly on the wall re: whatever ‘is’ (or isn’t) transpiring re: the abundant fraud which took place there in 2020, as well across the United States. Course, if you should want to leak anything… 🤐
Lastly: HC, anybody ever tell you Clark Kent could be your twin brother/you his? Re: the pic up above, uncanny. Serious: the (x-ray?) eyes, pensive expression… I watched enough Superman episodes 50’s with George Reeves to note the similarity (just don’t try jumping out any windows in tall buildings, trying to fly 😀
Well, the AG is in Phoenix and Janet works in the Tucson office, so it’s quite a bit different, I would imagine.
Tucson, by the way, is a VERY liberal town. Think maybe it always has been in recent years anyway.
Phoenix is more conservative but that has been changing quite a bit in recent years.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I have no idea who said that but it isn’t always so. One can look at the pictures of Mayfield today and think they understand what they see and how it must feel. But you never understand what it really truly feels like or understand it all till you have walked amongst the carnage. You Hearne, got to share a part of your life in a small town greatly different than the town you grew up in, but it left a lifetime of memories still strong in you today. It had to hurt to see those pictures played out before you as you know in your heart you will probably never see any of it as you once did.
It was beyond shocking, Super Dave…
Closest thing to it I can imagine would be for something like that to happen to downtown Lawrence.
Far larger, of course, but of a similar nature
Nice memories and stories. True tragedy.
Indeed…
Pass through there prolly every other year or more. That downtown destruction was beyond belief to anybody familiar with it. No way they even would try to begin to restore it given the economy down there , etc
This is a good read.
Thanks!
Prego!
I remember meeting you when you came to Mayfield. I actually have a couple pictures of you. One of our friends, Jim Abernathy, became editor of the local paper. Sadly, Jim had a myriad of health problems and passed away in 2020. Wondered if you were still around. I have been married over 45 years and still live in the county. We are devastated by the recent tornado damage and it will take time but this little small town will recover. Hadn’t thought about the Clark Kent twin but think that’s right. Good to know you’re still writing.
Holy Smokes, talk about a flashback!
Yes, I had fun getting to know Big Jim. Years later he emailed me at The Star and told me he was in the news biz as well. Can’t recall if we spoke or not, but I was sorry to read post the storm that he had died. Very sad.
So how do we know each other?
My email is hossjr444@gmail.com if you’d like to contact me.
Yes, I write a weekly column for a newspaper up North of the River in KC still. Kind of chilling down here where I graduated from high school and went to college.