Central City, Kentucky

 

These days of largely forested terrain have me anticipating where I’ll end up camping with a little extra anticipation knowing how nice it will be.  I have to resist the temptation to stop mid-afternoon and disappear into the forest at any number of inviting, isolated  spots.  I generally have a target for the day that precludes early stops, so I keep riding and never with an iota of regret, happy to be pedaling onward and knowing I’ll be happy with wherever I end up snuggling into for the night.  It is nice to have trees to the left and to the right as I glide along knowing I’ll eventually be within them. 

I did have a twenty mile semi-urban stretch into and out of Paducah, a city of 27,000 at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers.  After days of passing through small, manageable towns of less than a thousand, such a population seems enormous and not all that alluring.  At least Paducah’s historic downtown near the river had some charm.  It was enlivened by packs of grey-haired ladies roaming the streets in town for Quilt Week sponsored by the expansive National Quilt Museum.

A walled barrier above the river bank provided a pallet for mini-murals of the town’s past.  

As a prominent river town in the early 1900s, it earned an extra large grant from Carnegie for a most-distinguished library.  Unfortunately, it is no more, as it was destroyed by a fire on December 30, 1964 caused by faulty Christmas lights.  It was six years before it was replaced by the current library a few blocks away. 

Across the Ohio in Illinois is the much smaller town of Metropolis, which has anointed itself as the hometown of Superman since it is the lone community that bears the name of that factionalized comic book city. It has a Carnegie that still functions as a library that I visited in October of 2017.  Before the Tennessee River joins the Ohio, a large dam twenty miles away impedes its flow.  A few fishermen in boats were taking advantage of its still waters.  It always gladdens the heart to see others engaged in a pastime that brings them peace and pleasure.  

Without a Carnegie for nearly three hundred miles to beyond Lexington, I had to rely on small town libraries that weren’t much more than tokens.  This was a stretch of people living on the margins, many in trailers, which often means kindly, good-hearted folk. As was the case in Mississippi, and other places below the poverty line, people look after those who seem to be down on their luck, though they aren’t the best at perceiving that I am one who is way up on his luck.

For the first time since Easter someone approached me with an offering as I sat against the wall of a convenience store/gas station having a snack.  An older lady handed me a box of Kellogg apple/cinnamon breakfast bars with the words “Can I give these to you?”  Not wanting to disappoint her impulse of generosity, I happily accepted them.  A couple minutes later, after entering the store, she returned with a bottle of Gatorade and said,  “I’d like to give this to you too.”

Curiously enough, for just the second time in these travels I harvested a few silver coins from the road after Paducah.  The first occasion had been entering the college town of Pittsburg in Kansas.  I had been on alert for coins, as I needed eight cents to supplement the coins I had left from the young man who had given me a bundle on Easter, to have enough for the ninety-nine cent any-size soda special that Pete’s service station was offering, not wanting to pay with a bill, but to rid myself of the clunk of change I was carrying. If I’d really been desperate, I could have swung by any drive-up window of a MacDonalds or Taco Bell or Burger King, where there are invariably a few coins dropped in the purchase exchange. With these recent coins I can now purge myself of the weight of coins I have left at the next Huck service station, a Kentucky chain that has a similar ninety-nine cent deal.

After riding stretches of the Pony Express and Santa Fe Trail and Trail of Tears I am now riding through the Bible Belt.  Small Baptist churches can turn up anywhere.  Along with the ones I pass, often on a rise, signs indicate others down a county road.  An occasional mega-church is almost a blight on the land.  An older gentleman outside a grocery store asked if I was a Christian and if I had been baptized.  I had no wish to be given a sermon, so answered affirmative to both.  

Along with the Bible-thumpers are the gun-toters.  Firing ranges and gun shops are in no short supply.  Whatever gun mentality may prevail does not reflect itself in any outward hostility.  Women at checkout counters invariably call me “Honey” or “Sweetie.”

The forecast had been calling for an all-day rain starting at nine a.m. that was to continue through the night.  I camped fifteen miles before Central City, an old coal mining town that had several motels, so I could have my first rest day of these travels and first motel in nearly two weeks.  The sky was sunny when I broke camp at 7:30 with no hint of a storm coming in from any direction.  The forecast had been revised with the rain not arriving until three.  The next town with a motel was fifty miles away.  Rather than pushing to make it, I let my legs have the day off.

I checked that the bargain motel would have a room for the night and it let me have the room then and there.  Good news, as that allowed me to immediately wash some clothes, giving them a better chance to dry by morning.  The bad news though was the motel didn’t have Wi-Fi, though I discovered my room along the road was near enough the MacDonalds across the street to pick up its Wi-Fi.  

The wind will be from the west the next two days after the rain passes, giving way to the easterly of the past two days, so with rested legs I could have some good days, maybe even making it to the next Carnegie in Winchester, west of Lexington, two hundred miles away in two days.