Baby Pageant

Small town entertainment

The West Kentucky State Fair is in progress at the Hopkinsville fairgrounds, and one of the attractions is a series of beauty contests. It includes several pageants for babies and little children.

All week, at the store where I work, moms and their little children have been shopping for pageant clothes.

Some of the moms brought along friends, grandmothers, and aunts as consultants. In a few cases, the group was becoming very frustrated. They had visited many stores, and they still didn't have a suitable set of clothes.

One mom who came in tonight was cool and calm. She already had some shorts for her little boy. She bought them several months ago. She was just looking for a cute little shirt. Long pants and neckties never win, she told me.

This is her son's third pageant. He's three years old. He hasn't won yet, but his mom enjoys seeing him in the competition. "Sometimes you wonder, 'Why didn't my kid win?'" she explained. "But let's be honest -- they're all cute babies."

Her words suggest a good interpretation of the baby pageant. At our fair, we have this year's best tomatoes and biggest zucchinis. We have the prettiest cakes and quilts and rabbits and chickens. And we also have an exhibition of cute babies. I hope all the moms can calm down, let go of the competition, and just enjoy the show.

Hummingbird Nest

Great photos

Over the weekend, take a few minutes and visit a hummingbird nest. There are five pages in all, with photos that document the eggs in the nest, the birth of the fledglings, and finally, the empty nest.

The empty nest is the most impressive photo of all. It's so very tiny.

Special thanks to my cousin Alta who sent this link.

Spivey, Kansas: Busy with Oil

Oilfield parts keep a little town on the map.

My sister-in-law Kathy sent a link to a Wichita Eagle article about Spivey, Kansas. Kathy is the office manager for one of the oilfield-supply companies mentioned in the article.

Spivey is located in the Spivey-Grabs oilfield of Harper and Kingman counties in south central Kansas. It's also centrally located within a wide area of oil and natural gas production that stretches across southern and western Kansas and northern Oklahoma. Because of its location, Spivey has become the headquarters for several companies that supply parts for all phases of oil and gas production -- drilling the wells, pumping the petroleum, and bringing it to market it via pipelines, storage tanks, etc.

The Spivey Field, located in Kingman and Harper Counties, South Central Kansas, was discovered in 1949. Development of oil and gas reserves from the Mississippian Chert Formation, at an average drilling depth of 4,250 feet, has been continual since discovery... Great lateral extent, thick pay sections, and long-lived production characterize the reservoir.

Source: a 1998 report by the 3TEC Energy Corporation

It's hard for me to say much about Spivey without repeating what the Wichita Eagle writer said. It's just a little, dirt-street town. The school, the truck stop, and the church are all closed. You can't even buy a newspaper or a loaf of bread in Spivey. Less than 100 people live there, but the oilfield-supply companies will be in Spivey for the duration.


Related:
Oil Drilling in the Land of the Free
Old-time photo of Spivey

Wordle

Internet toy

Have you tried Wordle yet? It's an entertaining way to spend a few minutes or hours. Copy and paste a block of text, or type in some words, and Wordle will make a word cloud from them. The number of words, font, color scheme, and layout of the cloud can be manipulated.

Here's a cloud I made from Prairie Bluestem of May, 2008.



This one is made from the blog tags I use on Prairie Bluestem.

I didn't limit the number of words, so these clouds are large and crowded -- just like my blog.

Seen in Princeton, Kentucky

Caldwell County Courthouse and downtown Princeton, KY

I've been doing a little research lately on WPA buildings in this area of Kentucky. To my surprise, I learned that Princeton, a small town northwest of Hopkinsville, has one of the few Art Deco courthouses built by the WPA in Kentucky.

I had only been in the downtown area of Princeton once, so Dennis and I drove over to look at the Caldwell County courthouse last Sunday. It is a striking, concrete building that sits on the square in the center of Princeton. Each of its four sides has a dramatic doorway, but the main entrance with the widest steps (photo above) is on the south.



Here's a closer look at the south facade (above photo.) This is the area directly above the doorway. The very austere eagles are repeated around the building.

On the east and west sides, the stylized leaves between the first and second floor windows surely must represent tobacco. At the top of the building, another set of designs may represent plants -- tobacco again? I'm not sure.

One wall has a bust of George Washington (I think) under a giant, rounded-off, concrete ledge that is an architectural detail of that wall. You can see the ledge and the bust protruding from the side of the building in the photo below (upper right.)



This is the north entrance (above photo.) In case you get disoriented, the direction is inscribed above each doorway. I wonder if the pillars in front, with the inset glass blocks, might light up from the inside.





The buildings in the two photos above are just a few of the interesting old storefronts in the downtown area around the courthouse. I believe that Princeton has done a better job of preserving its old architecture and keeping some business downtown than Hopkinsville has done.



The church in the photo above is the Christ Tabernacle. The sign says it's a non-denominational church and everyone is welcome. Nearby there's also a large Baptist church. Both churches are only about a block from the courthouse.

I want to drive back over to Princeton and look inside the courthouse on a weekday. I'm curious whether the interior has any distinctive Art Deco features.

General Harlan B. Lyon of the Confederacy burned the Caldwell County courthouse, the Christian County Courthouse (in Hopkinsville), and others during the Civil War so they wouldn't fall into Union hands. He was said to be the "courthouse-burn'est" general around.

Caldwell County built another courthouse after the war was over. It must have been in poor repair or too small, because they needed another new one by the time the WPA was looking for projects during the Great Depression.