Great Barbecue for a Purpose

 Pioneers Inc. of Hopkinsville, KY

Summer wouldn't be complete without barbecue, and I love the barbecue made by Pioneers, Inc. in Hopkinsville. Keely drives by their billboard on North Main Street as she goes to work, so she keeps me updated on their barbecue schedule -- always on Friday, but not every Friday.

Pioneers Inc. is a busy volunteer group, and barbecue is one of their fund-raising activities. The Pioneers are locally famous for delicious, homestyle food. If you ever have the good fortune to be invited to an event that they cater, you would be a fool to refuse the invitation.

The line for barbecue at the Pioneers' Smith Pavilion is always an interesting cross-section of the local population. A volunteer behind the window at left takes orders and payments. Then the customers wait a few minutes for their orders to be handed to them through the window at right.  It's not a fast process, but the line does move, and the wait is absolutely worthwhile.

The menu has a variety of sandwiches, sides, and meats for carry-out or eat-in (at the picnic tables.) I usually get a pound or two of the barbecued pork to take home. Keely and Taurus like to keep some Pioneers barbecue sauce on hand.

At work, earlier in the day that I took these pictures, an elderly lady told me that she was expecting overnight guests. She described all the work she had done to get her house ready, and I asked her if she was doing a lot of cooking, too. "No," she said. "I've already made potato salad, and I'm going to buy a pound of barbecue."

"Are you going to get some Pioneers?" I asked her. "Oh, I wish I could!  That would be so nice!" she said. "Are they cooking this weekend?" I assured her that they were, and she thanked me profusely. She even came by a few days later to thank me again.  "Thank the Pioneers, not me," I told her. That's the sort of respect that Pioneers' barbecue gets around here.

Pioneers Inc., a civic group of Christian black men, was organized in 1952. The income from their projects goes to college scholarships, Christmas gifts and food baskets for needy families, and other community projects and needs. I think of their barbecue as one more nice thing that they do for the community.

400 Mile Yard Sale 2013

Some of the sights around Hopkinsville, KY

Old iron tools

It's good that the 400 Mile Yard Sale is held for 4 days. This year, it rained all day Thursday and half of Friday. But Saturday was a beautiful day of sunshine. Keely and I left her house at 8:00 AM (which is early for us on a Saturday.)

First we went to some sales around Hopkinsville. Many of them were unimpressive, but we loved the sale at the Senior Center. The parking lot and auditorium was full of tables of merchandise, and many of the vendors were ready to deal. I found a 1902 health book for just $2. (I love old textbooks.) Keely bought a rock-band poster and a hat.

At the Senior Center in Hopkinsville

Bargain bling

A nice lady in a zany hat had a lot of jewelry on her table. I 'm collecting shiny things for a craft project, so I bought a bag of jewelry odds and ends and mismatches and another little set of matching earrings and brooch.

A bit of Hopkinsville history

Fun-to-see art at the Senior Center

From the Senior Center, we drove east of Hopkinsville on 68/80. There was at least one yard sale per mile between Hopkinsville and Fairview, and in some of the miles, there were several sales.  Keely was looking for baby things for her friend who is pregnant. She found a nice baby swing for just $15 -- it's the sort that can swing either sideways or back and forth.

Lots of baby items at this sale

Butler Antiques from Hopkinsville and several other antique and flea market dealers always set up their sales on a hill a few miles east of Hopkinsville. Two years ago, I bought a chest of drawers for my son there, and last year I bought a nice wooden cabinet for my utility room. This year I only bought little things, so I didn't have to go home and get the truck to haul furniture -- thank goodness!

I liked the red chest, but I didn't need it!

Loved the colorful glass in the sunshine!

The Eastview Baptist Church is usually our next stop after the sale on the hill. In past years, they've had a huge yard sale event with dozens of people selling. But this year they didn't have enough volunteers to staff it. The Kentucky New Era reported that they hope to participate again next year. We have always enjoyed their sale immensely,  and we felt a bit sad when we drove by their empty church yard.

To our surprise, an Amish lady was one of several sellers at this site. From the place where the two men are standing, the sales continued around a corner, up a little hill, and around another corner.

We weren't sure if the next sale was really a yard sale or not. The sign on the highway said, "Pool Table." But we turned off and drove up the hill, and sure enough, they were having a yard sale that included various pieces of art. I think the $2800 price tag on a sculpture was the most expensive thing we saw all day. But it was an interesting work of someone's hands, and I enjoyed seeing it. Coming back down the hill to the highway, we enjoyed the view.

Finally we arrived in Fairview. The little town was having a big day, and as always, the Jefferson Davis memorial was towering above it all. Lots of Mennonites were visiting the sales and riding through town on their bicycles and in horse-drawn vehicles. The buckboard in the photo below is essentially a one-horsepower pickup truck.

The Fairview Fire Department was selling barbecue sandwiches and cold drinks, as well as yard-sale items. The clothes on one of their trailers were 4/$1.00, so I bought some t-shirts to cut up. (I look for shirts that have no side seams so I can cut the bodies of the shirts into long continuous strips for crocheted rugs.)

Support your local volunteer fire department!

We were losing our momentum after seven straight hours of yard sales, so we decided to end this year's 400 Mile Yard adventure. We stopped at the Mennonite grocery store on our way out of Fairview, and then I took Keely back to Hopkinsville. As I drove back out to my country home, I thought about all the sellers who had started at dawn and wouldn't close until dusk. I was glad to be just a shopper, able to quit and go home anytime I wanted.

EFG's One More Again Thrift Store

New thrift shop in Hopkinsville, KY

Keely and I enjoy second-hand stores, so we were excited when we saw a sign on a Virginia Street corner  for a new thrift in downtown Hopkinsville. We checked it out as soon as we had a chance.

The EFG One More Again store is located on the corner of 6th Street and Virginia, with an entrance on 6th Street (next to Young's Hardware.) This business place (actually two side-by-side buildings) was formerly a furniture store. I don't know the rest of the history of the structures, but to me, they appear to be at least a century old.

"EFG" stands for Evangelical Free Gospel, the church group that runs this thrift shop. They meet at the store for worship. I think the lady tending the store told me that they meet on Saturday nights. She said that the group had previously met in a different location, but they lost their pastor and had to take a new direction. So, they rented this business place and opened the thrift shop.

The inside of the store is spacious so I didn't get that "too-close" feeling that some over-crowded, high-piled junk stores give me. These photos were both taken downstairs. A wide doorway connects the two buildings. As you can see, EFG offers the typical thrift shop selection of merchandise -- totally random!

We climbed an extremely worn stairway in the corner building to the second floor of the shop. (The other building of the shop has stairs to the second floor that are wider and in much better repair.)

The upstairs is divided into a number of rooms. Keely and I spent most of our time in the book room, where we found some good, ex-library children's books. We both left with our arms loaded. I was relieved to discover that we wouldn't have to go back down the same stairs we came up, as my bifocals sometimes bother me on stairways. Keely speculated that there might be a freight elevator somewhere in the building that they used to bring the books and other merchandise upstairs.

The second-floor windows of the corner building have interesting embellishments. The photo above was taken from the sidewalk. I used a graphics procedure on that photo to make the image below. It shows the details at the top of the building better, although I think the windows are longer than the altered perspective suggests.

I picked up a business card at the check-out counter, and here is some of the information from it:

One More Again Thrift Store
118 E. 6th St.
Hopkinsville, KY
Operated by members of EFG Church to give back to the local community.

The card also notes that they will pick up garage sale leftovers.

Churches in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, 1874

Services and schedules

First Presbyterian Church, Hopkinsville, KY
Built in 1848. Wikimedia image.

According to a directory published in the August 7, 1874, Kentucky New Era, these churches were meeting in post-Civil-War Hopkinsville.

Christian Church
Nashville Street
Eld. T. A. Crenshaw, Pastor.
Regular service every Sabbath morning, at which the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is uniformly administered, and at night, 7-1/2 o'clock.
Sunday School every Sabbath morning.
Prayer-meeting Wednesday evening.

M. E. Church [Methodist Episcopal], South
Nashville Street
Rev. Thos. Bottomly, Pastor.
Service every Sabbath morning and evening.
Sunday School every Sabbath morning.
Prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening.

Old School Presbyterian Church Southern Assembly
Nashville Street
Rev. J. Tate, Pastor.
Services 3d and 4th Sabbaths in each month.
Sunday school every Sabbath morning.
Prayer meeting every Thursday evening.

Old School Presbyterian Church
Nashville Street
Rev. A. W. Colver
Services 1st and 2nd Sabbaths in every month.
Sunday School every Sabbath morning.
Prayer meeting every Thursday evening.

Grace Church
Virginia Street
Rev. R. M. Baker, Pastor
Service every Sunday morning at the usual hour, and in the evening at 3 o'clock. Sunday School every Sabbath morning

Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Russellville Street
Rev. R. J. Beard, Pastor.
Service every Sabbath morning and evening.
Sunday School every Sabbath afternoon.
Prayer meeting every Tuesday evening.

Colored Baptist Church
Virginia Street
Rev. S. Watt, Pastor.
Service every Sabbath afternoon at 2-1/2 o'clock and evening at 8 o'clock.
Sunday School every Sabbath morning.
Prayer meeting every Thursday evening.

Source: Kentucky New Era, August 7, 1874

Stars and Stripes Forever

A big flag in Hopkinsville, Kentucky

The largest American flag in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is on display 24 hours a day at the Sisk car dealership. I compliment them for having a tall flagpole that is in proper proportion to the flag, and for never flying a tattered flag. This photograph was taken from the Lowes parking lot against the last glow of sunset. I wish I could make the photo larger, but it's a bit too fuzzy and grainy.

The Whistlestop Flasher

Efficient advertising

On the east side of the train tracks in Hopkinsville, when you're waiting for a train to go by at night, you can see the Whistlestop Donuts sign between the cars as they pass. As the train picks up speed, the bright yellow sign flashes at an increasingly urgent rate: "Whistlestop Donuts! Donuts! Donuts!" This phenomenon is not quite a subliminal message (it's not below the threshold of conscious thought), but it does very effectively lure the mind into sugary, deep-fried fantasies.

The Whistle Stop

And the old freight depot

Whistle Stop Donuts in Hopkinsville (KY) now has two buildings, near each other and (of course) near the train tracks. (In this photo, you can't see the original little Whistle Stop that's right next to the tracks, but it's marked by the yellow sign.). I don't know if they're going to move everything to the building on the left which has a larger parking lot, or if they're going to keep both locations.

On the other side of the train that's whizzing through town, you can see some scaffolding on the old freight depot. The exterior of the building is being restored to its original appearance. Jim Coursey, a local architect and historian, recently wrote in  the Kentucky New Era that the depot is still structurally sound -- in fact, as solid as when it was first built. The metal roof on the building dates back to its construction in 1905, and it still doesn't leak. The Hopkinsville water department owns the property.

Missing Confederate Graves at Hopkinsville's Riverside Cemetery

A chance to set the record straight

I've written several times in the past about Camp Alcorn in Hopkinsville, KY, where about 300 Confederate soldiers died of disease and exposure during the Civil War. If this topic interests you, you'll enjoy the well-researched article at the link below:

  Confederate Tragedy at Hopkinsville and the Missing Graves

This link leads to a Rootsweb military page about the Camp Alcorn burials in a potters field in Riverside Cemetery, and the later re-burial of  "unknown" Confederate soldiers.

The author of this paper is William Meacham, Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He lives in Hong Kong, as you might imagine, but he has family ties to Christian County, KY.  Mr. Meacham's research indicates that 72 or more Confederate soldiers are still lying in unmarked graves in Riverside Cemetery.

I am a "damyankee" transplanted in Christian County about 20 years ago, and most (though not all!) of my ancestors fought on the Union side of the Civil War. But, despite my own leanings, I think that we in Christian County should locate and mark the graves of these Confederate soldiers if we can. It is the decent thing to do, especially considering the mishandling of important records and the mistakes made with the Camp Alcorn graves in the past.

Early Fall in Christian County, KY

Seen around the county during the last month

A nearly-dry stream bed in late September.

Now, the water is probably full of fallen leaves.

A full barn of tobacco, curing
in the fresh country air.

Dad and kids, headed home
from the produce auction

The northern part of Christian County has dozens

(or hundreds?) of small fields like this one, where the

ground is flat enough to farm between hills and streams.
This is corn, drying in the field before harvest.

The shorter flowers are members of the aster family,

and the taller ones are ironweed, as I recall.

Last spring, these were wheatfields.

Now, they're beanfields (soybeans). 

This complex west of Hopkinsville

has about a dozen tobacco barns in it.

The smoke can get heavy when
the barns are being fired.

A horseless carriage, so to speak

Late afternoon sunshine on a 

field of ripening soybeans

The sun is setting much earlier now. 

I saw this gorgeous sunset on my

way home from work one night.

Keely and I went to an interesting moving 

sale at this house in Hopkinsville. 

The seller had lots of cool, collectible stuff.

At the Farmers Market in 

downtown Hopkinsville

L&N Passenger Depot at Hopkinsville, KY

The depot's floor plan

I found the following description of the L&N passenger depot in Hopkinsville, KY, in Buildings and Structures of American Railroads by Warren Gilman Berg. It was published in 1893, just one year after the Hopkinsville depot was built. Many details mentioned by Berg can still be observed today, but the stucco on the building's exterior seems to have been added since then.

I believe the floor plan of the depot was accidentally reversed in the book, so I changed it (image appears below) to what I think the building is in real life. Readers from Hopkinsville, please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I altered some of the original punctuation of this passage, and I divided some of the paragraphs to make them easier to read on a screen.  

Tower at the corner of
the ladies waiting room

The passenger depot of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad at Hopkinsville, Ky. is a single-story frame building, roofed with slate.

The main feature of the exterior is the tower at the corner of the ladies' waiting-room and the large circular bay-window projection of the agent's office at the centre of the building, which, combined with the cupola on the corner tower, the ridge-cresting and ornamental gable fronts, together with the general finish of the building, causes it to present a very handsome appearance.

The "circular bay-window projection"
of the agent's office next to tracks

The ground-floor is divided into:

• a ladies' waiting-room, 17 ft. X 20 ft., with an octagonal alcove inside the tower at the corner of the room;
• a ladies' toilet-room, 5 ft. X 8 ft. 6 in.;
• an agent's office, 14 ft. X 17 ft., with ticket-windows leading into the ladies' waiting-room, the general waiting-room, and the colored waiting-room;
• a colored waiting-room, 14 ft. X 14 ft.; 
• a general waiting-room, 20 ft. X 24 ft.; and 
• a baggage-room, 16 ft. X 18 ft. 

Note: The platform and train tracks were on the east side of the building.
"Colored" people had to walk around the bulding to reach the boarding area.

The exterior of the building is sheathed with horizontal and upright ornamental boarding, in panels, ornamental shingles and square panelling frieze-work and gable fronts. The doors leading into the ladies' waiting-room and the general waiting-room are double doors, 5 ft. X 7 ft. 6 in., with transom overhead. The lower sash of the windows have one large pane of glass, while the upper sash are surrounded with a border of small stained-glass lights.

Double doors with transom in the baggage room

Ticket office window seen from ladies' waiting room

These photographs have appeared on Prairie Bluestem previously. See related posts:
Seen at Hopkinsville's L&N Depot
Hopkinsville's Railroad