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60 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 killed two deer with one shot!' I thought she'd jump right up there with shock. She didn't even look up. She just said, 'Well, that'll happen from time to time.' Tey've seen so much hunting up there, I mean, you gotta haul in a damn rhino to get them impressed." He looked at Sharon. "You know that?" A few days later, in a new cofee shop back on Main Street, I was talking to Morris Searcy, a family friend in his 60s and a longtime Shelbyville resident. "I can remember as a child something that we had here in Shelby County called the Tobacco Festival," he said. "At that time, this was a farm community, so the Tobacco Festival was the kickof of the whole season. It was Shelbyville's celebration." Twenty years ago, a Walmart Supercenter opened on the outskirts of Shelbyville. Matt used to tell me, "Walmart killed Mom and Pop." But I saw plenty of activity in town — the Victory Baptist Church, a forist shop called Flowers by Sharon, McKinley's restaurant ("Eating Establishment"), and the jail by the courthouse that looks like a vine-choked medieval tower. (Whenever we drive by, Matt will gesture and say, "I was thinking about running for town jailer. You know what my slogan's gonna be? 'Vote for Matthew Walters! He knows the jail inside and out!'") Young people are moving into renovated apartments downtown, Paw- Paw has told me, and now Main Street even has a few chic cafes, like the one where I met Morry. When I entered, I held the door open for an elderly man who was coming outside, while a second elderly man was walking down the sidewalk. Tey recognized each other, and the second man said to the frst, "Hey, there, young fellow, how you doing?" "It takes an act of Congress to get me on my feet anymore," the frst man said. Te second man pointed to one of the tables set up outside. "Ten sit down. Let's visit awhile." Te cofee shop was tucked into the front of the store's huge interior. Te rest of it was an antique gallery, and the soaring ceilings and endless aisles recalled the pictures I'd seen at Carriss's of tobacco warehouses. When I mentioned that to Morry, his likable gesturing became more voluble. "I can remember Shelby County being called the largest burley-producing county in the world," he said. "Burley is the primo stuf that's used in cigarettes, and it was a highly desirable product." Over the years, Morry told me, "Agro- business got into it and drove the price down to the point where the farmer couldn't make any money." Te folks I talked to at Carriss's who had once raised tobacco all told parts of the same story: "Every farm through here had a base — an allotment of how much you could raise. In 2001, they did away with the tobacco base. More and more people took this buy-out. Te government more or less bought them out." "I've got great neighbors now, but it's not like you're raising crops together. During the harvest, you worked from dawn till midnight." "A stick of green tobacco weighs 75, 80 pounds. And it's 95 degrees out — it's all demanding work. A lot of people quit and got factory jobs." "As a teenager, you always knew you'd have somewhere to go work," Matt told me recently. "I can remember working in the summer when I was in college and thinking, Man, when the frst of August comes, I'm outta here — see y'all later! I'm going to cut tobacco! It was just a job you always knew you had." In the June answers to family matriarch Bessie Carriss (left).