MOTHMAN - Point Pleasant, WV 09-03-12

My best friend Robb and I went to Point Pleasant, WV on Labor Day 2012, 09-03-12.  Robb lives in Ashland, KY, just over an hour away from Point Pleasant.  Point Pleasant is the site of the 1966-'67 Mothman sightings, and other mysterious phenomenon.  A year of weird happenings, ranging from many reputable people sighting the tall, red-eyed human/moth combination creature and numerous UFO sightings, to Woodrow Derenger's meetings 40 miles away in Parkersburg, WV with the mysterious Indrid Cold, and many "Men in Black" harrassing residents of Point Pleasant all culminated with the horrible tragedy of the Silver Bridge.  

During rush hour on December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge plunged into the frigid Ohio River, killing 46 people and leaving the water strewn horrifically with wrapped Christmas gifts, a scene local reporter Mary Hyre had envisioned in a nightmare prior to its actually happening.  Today, Point Pleasant is a quaint river town, with the restored Lowe Hotel, a riverwalk, and the Silver Memorial Bridge, which was built back only two years after the tragedy.  

Robb and I would love to go back sometime and stay in the hotel, and visit the infamous TNT Area, purportedly home of the Mothman, which is now a wildlife and nature preserve, and the West Virginia State Farm Museum.  On this brief daytrip, we did visit the Mothman Museum, which features actual newspaper articles and other memorabilia from 1966-'67, as well as a collection of items from THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, the movie filmed in 2001 which was loosely based on the Point Pleasant events, although heavily fictionalized and updated to the then-present day.

 

Me in front of the Mothman statue in dowtown Point Pleasant, WV

Robb hanging onto the Mothman, LOL.

Closeup of the Mothman statue's face.  (Someone had given him a flower for a snack, lol.)

 The tugboat Allegheny on the Ohio River at Point Pleasant.

Me on the Point Pleasant riverwalk with the Silver Memorial Bridge in the background.  (I was actually NOT trying show leg here, in spite of how the pic came out looking, LMAO!)

Memorial to the 46 people who lost their lives when the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River on December 15, 1967.  This is located in Point Pleasant at the place where 6th Street (then US 35) once started up onto the ramp leading onto the Silver Bridge.

Downtown Point Pleasant, WV

Robb with a Mothman costume in the Mothman Museum.

The Silver Memorial Bridge, as scene from the Point Pleasant riverwalk, was built downstream from the original bridge in only about two years' time after the December 15, 1967 tragedy.

"Rollin' on the river..." Riding the Dixie Belle

My friend Carroll Miller has been visiting back home in Kentucky. Today I met him in Lexington and we went out to Shakertown and took a very relaxing and enjoyable one hour Kentucky River excursion on their paddle wheeler riverboat, the Dixie Belle.  Here are pics of the boat, the river, and the famous and historic 300-plus feet tall High Bridge railroad trestle (built in 1911 by the Southern Railway and once the world's tallest railroad bridge) under which the boat passes.

Jesse Stuart trip with Mom

My mother had wanted to see W-Hollow, the Greenup County - Northeastern Kentucky home of late and legendary Kentucky author Jesse Stuart ever since she first read his "The Thread That Runs So True" and "Man With a Bull-Tongued Plow" all the way back in grade school in the 1950s.  So, when we were talking about going somewhere for a much-needed break from everything for her, that is where she said she wanted to go.  I'd been to that general region before several times, since my best friend Robb lives in Ashland.  But, I'd never actually been up to Greenup County to any of the Jesse-related places before, though.  I, too, am a huge fan of so many of Stuart's works - dealing with everything from, of course, his experiences as a rural educator in the early-to-mid 20th Century to the kind of small town hypocrisy that is still all-too-present in rural Kentucky even today.

So, yesterday afternoon after I got off work we drove up to Greenbo Lake State Resort Park, located between Grayson and Greenup, Kentucky, about a half-hour off I-64.  The park is in a beautiful wooded setting out in the country, and is obviously on the shore of its namesake man-made lake.  The park's lodge where we stayed is named in honor of Jesse Stuart.  The lodge/motel is '60s-'70s dated, but who cares - it was inexpensive and very clean, and anyone who knows me knows the "unintentionally retro" aspect of the place was actually appealing.

 

This morning (April 30, 2012) we headed out to the grounds of the state park and visited Buffalo Clay Lick School.  This was the one-room schoolhouse where Jesse Stuart first taught when he was just 17 years old.  It was moved when Greenbo Lake was constructed, but is near and in a similar setting to where it was originally.  It was his experience teaching here in the 1920s that was the real-life basis for the "Lonesome Valley" school in the beginning of Stuart's landmark novel "The Thread That Runs So True."  After getting a pic of the building, and Mom and I in front of it, I also took one pic looking through the glass of the locked front door of the school.  Logic says glare, those who want to might say "orbs"....who knows...

After our visit to Jesse's first school, we made a little side-trip to the nearby community of Oldtown and took a few pics at the Oldtown Covered Bridge, built in 1880.

 

 After visiting the old bridge, we drove back past the state park and up nearly to Jesse Stuart's beloved W-Hollow.  Within a short distance of there is the quaint Plum Grove Baptist Church and its cemetery where Jesse and his wife Naomi are now both at rest.

Finally, we visited the famous W-Hollow.  While a paved state road runs through the hollow now, it is otherwise still very rural and includes the 700-odd acres of forest which Jesse donated to the state for a nature preserve before his passing.  This was a very interesting and enjoyable little getaway for us, and I think it gave a much-needed lift to Mom's spirits.

In this last pic, taken from the road through W-Hollow, in the very distance you can just make out a tiny bit of the Stuart home.  Jesse and his wife lived here, and he wrote many of his books in a small building adjacent to their home that he called "the bunkhouse." I think some of his family still lives there.

Spring Comes Early to Kentucky - OR, My Mental Health Day with Rachel and the Kids

As most of you know, as I'm writing this on Wednesday evening, March 14, 2012, my stepfather, Raymond Carl, is in the last stages of his fight with lung cancer.  Family, friends, and hospice have all been here at the house yesterday and today.  Terminal illness has just visited its evil self on our family way too many times, all the way back to some of my earliest memories when my Mom's father Cecil was battling lung cancer when I was a small child.  I guess everyone deals with things differently, but I HAD to get away from the whole situation for awhile today.  It was a beautiful and unseasonably summer like day.  I drove the backroads through Lincoln County, and took pictures of an old antebellum home which someone restored after its roof was blown off in a storm last year.  I also got a few good shots of Cedar Creek Lake.  I then went to Berea and met my longtime friend from back in high school, Rachel Brooks, and her two adorable daughters and we hiked up to West Pinnacle at Indian Fort Theatre just east of Berea.  Took several pictures of the gorgeous view from up there.  I really needed to get away from the situation at home, and it helped.  I think at least some of you will understand where I'm coming from.  Thank you to Rachel and the girls for a nice afternoon away from the harsh realities of life.