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.