Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/70972
handed over to Calvin Trillin's late wife Al- ice, among others. And here it is. Do not soak the ham, no matter what you've heard: One 13- to 17-pound ham, hock and skin removed, with as much fat beneath the skin as possible 4 cups flour 1 cup dark brown sugar 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon 2 tablespoons ground cloves 2 tablespoons ground mustard 1 tablespoon black pepper Water to make soft dough, about 2 cups. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together dry ingredients. Add water until you have a soft, spreadable dough. Place the ham on a roaster rack, skin side up. Spread the dough over the skin side of the ham. Bake about three hours uncovered. Remove and discard the crust. When the ham is cool enough to handle, debone. Given this backdrop, I have high hopes for some piquant comment on Louisville. What does Chaney think of the city? "I've always loved Louisville," he says. A cross the street, Ben Probus bows a few rich classical notes on a violin. Ten, with an elegant cat-scratch of a tone, he switches to a country run, sending notes dancing across the high ceilings of the little building he and his father renovated. It has been a cafe, a gas station, a doctor's office and an insurance office. Now it is the Vir- tuoso Violin Shop. Te first time Probus saw this violin, it was in pieces. Still, he knew it was good. So he put it back together. Ten he played it. "I've owned about 2,000 in- struments through the years, and I thought, that's the best of all of them." When Probus talks, he addresses the floor about four feet ahead and a bit to his left. Yet he's been a performer since age 15, when he took a job at Guntown Mountain, the tour- ist attraction down the road in Cave City. (It is still in business, although, sadly, Gol- gotha Bible Mini Golf, where Jesus statues preside over several holes, is not.) "I was an actor, a gunfighter and a fiddle player," Pro- bus says. Since then, he's played with Mark Chesnutt and Jarrod Niemann, and last year performed regularly with the group Glori- ana before taking off to start a new band. So why does he think the rest of the state is sour on Louisville? "Louisville is all indus- try, and everywhere else in Kentucky is more farm-oriented, so that may make for some conflict," he says. "But the biggest thing is probably just basketball." Brian Burgess, a luthier with Probus, sug- gests it's a matter of style. "It seems like a lot of the younger guys (in Louisville) take more of the black tradition maybe. But that's the only clue I have. You don't have many boys driving old trucks and chewing tobacco. Tey wear big pants and listen to rap music." We head away from Horse Cave, with a stop in Cave City — where Jessica Lon- don, manning the desk at Wigwam Village 2, admits to being a Cardinals fan, even though "I wouldn't want to live (in Louis- ville). It's too busy for me." We spend some time in Glasgow, which has two semi-underground barbershops miles from Glasgow. "To me, they're like peo- ple from another state." But mostly, we find, people don't dislike Louisville. More often, they're positive and sometimes indifferent. "I think it's a pretty good place to live," says Brenda Adams, who runs the consignment store Our Little Secret in Mayfield, a town between Paducah and the Tennessee border. "My son lives there. He says it's a great place. Tere's something to do constantly and the sites are beautiful," she says. "I feel like I live in a place where being a neighbor means something different than it does in Louisville or Lexington, something more than the house next to yours." — James Gifford of Ashland tucked into opposite corners of the town square. Donald Kidd of nearby Metcalfe County is getting a haircut in Lloyd Isen- berg's shop. From Kidd's perspective, the Louisville problem is insidious. "Tey're trying to make Louisville sports like a part of Kentucky, and they don't take to Ken- tucky. Kentucky likes Kentucky. Louisville, I don't know, they're different, aren't they, Lloyd?" he asks the barber. Isenberg deflates any rancor. "Well, they're from the University of Louisville and we're from the University of Ken- tucky," he says mildly. Kidd continues: "Louisville got the idea that they're better than Kentucky, and that's baloney, tradition-wise or any-other- wise. Tey think they know better." Ten he backpedals. "Don't get me wrong. My grandmother and mother was raised there." M ost of the harshest critics are clos- er to home. On a day of incredible clouds, we are again at the Shepherdsville Flea Market, asking why people don't like Lou- isville. "Probably the violence," says Erik Baker of Leitchfield. "It's on the news all the time, the shootings." Dillon Terhune and Benny Anderson, both of Boston, Ky. — about 15 miles from the market — say they wouldn't want to live here. "Te crime," Terhune ex- plains. "It's so crowded," says Anderson. And then there's the sense in the state's farther reaches that we in Louisville look down our noses at everyone else. "I feel like, personally, they think we're hillbil- lies," says Darrell Holmes, who sits on his front porch in Fountain Run, 20-some "People say it's a great place," says Angela Neukomm, who owns George J's Restaurant in Glasgow with her husband Daniel. "All I've heard is good things. Te only thing people say is, there's no Six Flags anymore. Tat's the only thing. But they go to the zoo, and when it comes to food, it's Louisville." We talk to the real Mr. Whipple at his gro- cery store, Whipple's Food Market in La Cen- ter in Ballard County, about 12 miles from where the Ohio River empties into the Mis- sissippi. "What do I think of Louisville? Suits me! It's a nice place," he says. What about the city's political clout, or the amount of govern- ment funding it gets? "I think we do all right down here," Whipple says. "We're not an in- dustrial county. We don't have the big popu- lation, so why should we get the stuff that maybe we don't need? Yes, we want whatever everybody else gets, but you gotta get what's fair for you." A side note: Joe Whipple once got a call from Dick Wilson, the actor who played Mr. Whipple for Charmin bathroom tissue. "He made more money being Mr. Whipple than I did," Whipple says. But he does have one geographical com- plaint: Te rest of the state just does not know western Kentucky. "We're really western Kentucky. Beshear, when he ran the first time for governor, he said he wanted to go to western Kentucky to announce his candidacy, and he went to Ow- ensboro!" Which may be the moral of our story: For every region there is a chip balanced on some shoulders. Most people are pretty open-mind- ed. Not too many people hate Louisville. But Owensboro! Man, they're trouble! Kidding. Kidding. 7.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [69]