American Backstory II
The Legend of Lewis Hallow
I was traveling the meandering highway Route 60, the same highway system that spawned Route 66, through Kentucky, winding past towns like Salt Lick, Olive Hill and Morehead. Until I hit a wide spot in the road I would later come to know as “Lewis Hollow.”
Souless Interstate 64 rumbles by within easy earshot of route 60 and Lewis Hollow. But I heard none of it that day I pulled off on the shoulder of this two lane road to shoot what looked by all accounts to be an abandoned farm.
I waded through weeds up to my waist to get to the first barn and gingerly stepped inside and began shooting. Sunlight streamed through the dilapidated boards, catching the dust and making it sparkle, before landing on old livestock pens. A ladder provided a way to the hayloft but I passed on climbing it.
By the time I stuck my nose out of the barn I’d worked up a pretty good sweat; I realized my breath was pretty rapid as well. I kept expecting to be “caught” trespassing on someone’s land and it made my heart race. And out here in rural Kentucky, I had no idea what kind of ramifications that might entail.
Blinking at the bright sunlight as I stepped outside the barn I heard a voice.
“Kin I a hep ya?” said someone from somewhere, my eyes wouldn’t focus. I would have run, but I had no idea which direction my car might be in. I did the only thing I could think of: I stalled.
“Excuse me?” I called back.
The voice, much closer now, said again, “Howa kin I a hep ya?!”
“Ah… I was just taking pictures of this abandoned farm is all…”
“Well, that’d be my farm.”
Damnit, I whispered to myself. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see anyone around, so, you know, I just thought.”
“I live in the house over ta there,” he motioned across the street. I squinted and still couldn’t see anything.
Well, I’m very sorry, I was just leaving.
“You don’t have to leave and all,” the voice said, “I jes a bit worried about ya, I don’t a want ya to get bit by any of them snakes in thar… purdy big ones, too,” he added for emphasis.
F’ me. Just my luck to I’d get bit by a snake my second day out and have to call this whole cross-country thing off. I hustled out of the weeds and we introduced ourselves.
His name was Chuck Lewis, an electrical engineer by trade, but also a farmer and a one-time politician. Turns out the “abandoned” farm I’d been tromping around on was part of a 200 year old family farm that traced its origins back to the first governor of Kentucky who’d given the Lewis family a 500 acre land grant.
He motions across the street (which is Route 60) to what looks like a boxy two-story house that has definitely seen better days. Says he’s in the process of restoring it. First house was built in 1795; the “new” house, which he was working on, was built in 1812, the foundation is from the original house, the outside boards on the house are from the 1812 version. It’s all slat and mortar; it’s held together with square peg nails. He said he’s seen no need to replace the original staircase, “still solid.”
At one point the family had a herd of dairy cows, 100 acres of tobacco and corn and 100 plus acres of pasture. But his dad, the real farmer, died in a car accident in 1995 and Chuck couldn’t keep the farm going long distance (what with his real job as an electrical engineer and all), so he shut down the diary farm. About 200 acres of the farm have been sold off, mostly to the state fairgrounds. His dad encouraged him to go into engineering.
“There’s no money in farming,” Chuck said his dad told him. “You’re smart and can make something of yourself in the world.” Which I suppose says a lot about the self-esteem of the father farmer, but I never heard any self-doubt from the other farmers I would meet on my cross-country trip.
His great grand dad used a mule team to pull stranded covered wagon travelers out of the mud along the Midland Trail (an ancient forerunner of Route 60) and “because of his generosity, the state allowed him to put in a toll road to pay him back for his troubles.” Later, Chuck’s great grandfather became a state senator but died of cholera. “They were so afraid of that stuff that they didn’t even bring him home to be buried,” he said almost wistfully. “He’s the only one not buried in the Lewis family cemetery up on the hill there.”
Chuck himself tried politics — once — he was elected Mayor of near-by Greyson, Kentucky (pop. 4,500) but he got out of it quickly because he had no stomach for it. “I was too honest,” he says. But he believes everyone should try politics at some point “just to see how it really works,” he says. The job was unpaid, except for $200 in expenses per month. He did it while still being an engineer.
He runs the farm now with his brother, also an engineer, “who lives just two hollers up the road.” Of he and his brother Chuck says, “There’s still enough farmer in us to keep a tractor around.”
That was in 2006; the place hasn’t changed much since then. Look’s like Chuck put an outside porch on the place and there’s a church that sprung up right beside his place… he probably sold them the land on which it’s built.
