The Glory of Fairview, KY

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... Life in The Upper South... History and Old Stuff...

Jefferson Davis Monument in the sunshine of a winter morning

I suppose every town in the world seeks a claim to fame -- a famous person or event that has some connection to that place. In Bassett, Nebraska, the nearest town to the place where I grew up, the best they could do was a horse thief, Kid Wade, who was hung by vigilantes on a big hill at the edge of town.

The village of Fairview, Kentucky, can claim a truly famous American in its history. The President of the Confederate States of America (CSA), Jefferson Davis, was born there.

Note: For my readers outside the USA, let me briefly explain that the United States had a civil war from 1860 to 1865, in which the South formed the CSA and attempted to leave the Union, but the North refused to let them go. The great underlying issue and primary cause of the Civil War was slavery and it was abolished after the war, but many people in the South felt they were fighting for states' rights (that is, their state's right to secede from the Union.)

Kentucky was a border state during the Civil War. Though the CSA claimed Kentucky and gave it a star on their flag, Kentucky did not secede from the Union. Some Kentuckians fought for the CSA, but others fought for the USA. That being said, it is certainly true that Christian County had many slaveowners who raised tobacco and other crops with slave labor, and many soldiers from here probably fought for the CSA.

After the war ended and slavery was abolished, a new era began in the South. The thorough defeat left a spirit of defiant resentment that was nurtured and cherished in some hearts. Reconstruction abuses created more ill feelings. Out of the worst, soul-consuming, twisted hatred, the Ku Klux Klan was born.

The Daughters of the Confederacy expressed themselves in non-violent, public ways. They honored the service and sacrifice of their fathers by building many monuments to Confederate soldiers across the South. The monument they built to Jefferson Davis at Fairview, Kentucky, was the largest of these. There's plenty of defiance expressed in it, I think, but in a less malignant way.

I don't really know what other people in Christian County think about Jefferson Davis, but his monument is certainly an element in the landscape here. It can be seen for miles around, towering above the fields, houses and trees.

As for me, I am thankful that I was born in the (Mid)West, not in a state from the Civil War's North or South. My birth state, Nebraska, joined the Union in 1865, the year that the Civil War ended. Some of my ancestors on both sides of the family hadn't even come over from Europe yet, and others were living west of most of the action. If there are any family stories about the Civil War, I don't know them.

Since we live just five miles from the Jefferson Davis park in Fairview, we took the kids there frequently to play on the swings and slides when they were little. The monument and the visitor's center are conveniently-located historic curiosities to show any non-local visitors we have. This is the meaning of the monument to me.



Related posts:
Jefferson Davis Monument, Fairview, KY
Seen at Fairview, Kentucky .

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Spring Is Just Around the Corner

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... More about Trees and Plants...

Spring is near!

Daffodils were beginning to bloom in Christian County before the recent cold spell began. Several even bloomed in the flower bed near our house. Many of the early daffodils have sent up their foliage and started their flower buds but are holding the blooms until the weather warms up again.

Fortunately for daffodils, they have some natural anti-freeze. Temperatures in the 20's usually don't hurt them, but I'm not sure how they will react to the temperatures we've had recently. For example, our temperature this morning was +5°F.

The green sprigs in this photo are mostly the little Star of Bethlehem flower which grows like a weed all over our small acreage. The foliage will have yellow tips now that it has been frozen hard. It happens every year.

How to Spend a Winter Evening

All In The Family...

Casper relaxes in front of the woodstove after a hard day.

Rat Stories

Life in Christian County, Kentucky... Life In Bolivia... Life In Missouri... More About Birds and Animals... Some Interesting News...

I read an interesting article about rats in Anchorage, Alaska. No rats are allowed in Anchorage. If a rat is sighted, it's tracked down and killed. Even pet rats are illegal.

"Anchorage is the only certified rat-free port in the world that we know of," said Ramone Wallace, an environmental specialist with the city health department. "We don't want rats in Anchorage."

Source: "Anchorage airport rat pack down by two" by Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News, February 1, 2007.

My husband will be interested in this article because he despises rats. When he saw them in the barn when he was a kid, they scared him. His family lived just a few miles from the Missouri River and the river-bottoms industrial area in Independence, Missouri (greater Kansas City, MO). Dennis says the rats were extra big, and I don't doubt that they were.

When we lived in Bolivia, he went in the bathroom one morning and found a rat swimming in the commode. He slammed down the lid and yelled, "There's a rat in the toilet. What shall I do?" "Flush the toilet," I yelled back, and so he did, about 20 times. I refused to go near the bathroom, but after a time, Dennis did lift the lid cautiously and peek inside. The rat was gone, presumably down the drain from whence it came. Its memory inspired a degree of caution in us, as you can imagine.
Dennis says that the rats were everywhere at Camp Doha in Kuwait. The story he heard was that the base had a huge population of stray cats and the commander didn't like it. He had the cats exterminated or otherwise removed, and soon there was a huge population of rats that the cats had previously kept under control.

I have seen twice seen a rat in Kentucky. One time when I went on a school picnic with Isaac's class, there was a white rat running around under the picnic tables at the far end of the shelter. He was picking up food scraps in his little paws and eating it, and the kids thought he was really cute. I thought he was too close for comfort. I wondered if he was a pet rat that had been released. He wasn't scared of people at all.

The other time I saw a wild rat, I didn't see all of him. I just saw his white head and his pink tail which Skittles left lying by the front step. Presumably she ate the rest of him. I couldn't believe how big his head and tail were -- Skittles surely had quite a battle with him. I have convinced myself that she caught him around our neighbor's barns, where there is corn, cattle feed, etc. that a rat would like.

I have just one wildlife guide -- Reader's Digest North American Wildlife, edited by Susan J. Wernert published in Pleasantville, NY and copyrighted in 1982. It says that there are several species of rats in this part of Kentucky. They include the Hispid cotton rat, the Norway rat ("the world's most destructive mammal," according to the guide), the eastern woodrat and the marsh rice rat. None of these rats are nearly as white as the rat head that Skittles left on the doorstep, but maybe it was a some other woodrat subspecies.

The big rats Dennis saw as a child were probably Norway rats, but he says that the rats he saw in Kuwait were the biggest rats he's ever seen. They had long brown hair, and he called them "Fred" because he got to know them so well. (Dennis-type humor, here.)

When I told my brother about the rat that Skittles caught, he talked about working in grain fields late at night in Missouri. He was amazed at the hundreds of rats that he saw in the headlights. Maybe those rats were Hispid cotton rats which my book says are common in farmlands and a serious agricultural pest. There is documentation of up to 500 rats per acre in heavily infested fields.

The behavior of the eastern woodrat seems to be more benign. "Adult woodrats feed on fruit, seeds, and nuts, and do man no economic harm, although some people dislike them merely because of their name and appearance." (Quoted from the above-cited Readers Digest book.)

The marsh rice rats swim as easily as they run around on land. Something like a marsh rice rat was swimming around in the toilet that morning in Bolivia when Dennis had such a shock. I suppose it was a Bolivian species, though.



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What do you think about rats? Do you have any rat stories?

Last Sunset of January

Life in Christian County, Kentucky...

January's last sunset

It looks like the first sunset of February, 2007, will be over a snowy landscape. It's snowing a little as I post this, and we're supposed to get up to 3 inches total by tomorrow night. There may also be some freezing rain tomorrow, depending on what the temperatures do. This is our first snow of the winter.

I doubt if there will be school tomorrow, because they usually cancel if the roads are slick at all. But we won't know for sure until tomorrow morning.

UPDATE: Yes, school was cancelled and Isaac is enjoying his day off. They could have run the buses today, but many of our residents are not accustomed to driving in winter conditions, so even an inch of snow makes the roads a lot more dangerous. It has been snowing lightly much of the morning, but the flakes are so fine that it's not accumulating very fast.