The Arivett Family of Monkey’s Eyebrow And Other Settlers of the Area
(Note: This is based on conversations with Evelyn Hook Arivett and Leroy Arivett on May 21, 2010, and on some e-mails from Evelyn and her daughter, Wilma Hook Romatz, who lives in Michigan.)
Ples and Irene Wildharber Arivett and Ples’ brother Brad weren’t the first people to own a business at Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky, but their businesses and their presence in the area are inextricably linked to the history of this small community that sports one of the most unusual names in the United States.
The name is frequently featured in atlas listings of unusual names; it has been the subject of at least two features on National Public Radio, and is featured in two books by author Mark Usler, who came to Monkey’s Eyebrow on May 21 to launch his new book, Hometown Celebrations.
The Arivett name itself is also a bit unusual in that it is consistently spelled Arivett, but is pronounced three different ways within the same family. Most of the members of the family and the people who live in the area pronounce the name as Everett, but Evelyn Arivett Hook, daughter of Ples and Irene, pronounces it as it’s spelled, Ar-i-vett. Evelyn’s younger brother, Leroy, who lives near Chicago, pronounces it Ar-vett, without the “i” sound.
Evelyn Arivett was born at Monkey’s Eyebrow in 1920, the first of four children born to Ples and Irene. Horace, who ran a store at Bandana and who died in Bandana a few years ago, was next. Then came Leroy, and finally Harold, who lives near Atlanta.
The family’s roots in Monkey’s Eyebrow stretch back into the 1800s.
The Wildharbers and Goodleys, Irene Arivett’s family, came to Ballard County in 1903 from Henderson, Kentucky. Ples Arivett’s sister, Maude, told Evelyn that when their great grandfather, Jesse Beeler, came to Ballard County from Tennessee in the early 1840s it was nothing but wilderness. For many years, he and his children all lived in houses along what is now called Monkey’s Eyebrow Road, or state route 473.
“Maudie was quite a colorful character too,” Wilma Hook Romatz, Evelyn’s daughter, remembers, “chewing snuff and spitting into a Calumet baking powder can. She had coal black dyed hair, and a huge diamond ring and red-painted nails. Her language was equally colorful.”
According to Evelyn, “Aunt Maudie said she heard that her grandpa had a whole trunk full of confederate money and her grandma kept trying to get him to change it. He refused, and lost everything after the Civil War was over.”
John William Arivett, Ples Arivett’s grandfather, was born in Virginia but moved to Ballard County in the 1860s. He lived to be 98 and was married three times. He lived in Wickliffe when he died in 1940.
The business history of Monkey’s Eyebrow goes back to before the Arivetts opened their first business, which was a gristmill. A man whose last name was Ray had Ray’s Store at the bottom of the hill, down in an area which some folks call Old Monkey. Later, Guy Borden ran the store. Ples and Irene Arivett lived in a house near that store, on the south side of the road. There are no buildings there today. The area is covered with trees.
Several families lived in the area. Before the road was paved, the old road made a 90-degree turn to the north, opposite what is now Palmore Road, then it curved back toward the west, behind where Jim and Jean Meadors live now. The Arivett Store and most of the residences were northwest of the Meadors’ house. The buildings are no longer there.
Charley Waldon lived across the field (no paved road then) south of the store in the white house where Imogene Alexander lives now.
A family of Beelers lived down the road. Evelyn’s grandfather, John Wildharber, at one time owned the farm due east of the old road, a farm later owned by a Graves family and then by Herman and Pod Tilley, a part of which is now owned by Joe Culver.
According to Evelyn Hook, Wildharber came here from California, lived here two or three years, and then went back. He played in a band, When he came here he built a box that his bass fiddle would fit into. He put the box on the back of the car and brought it here with him.
The house where Charley Waldon’s family lived – where twin brothers Dot and Tot were born – was previously occupied by a family named Moss. Evelyn remembers playing with their daughter, who was about her age.
Some other families who lived in the area were Redferns, Crabtrees and Yanceys. “And there were Turners who lived down there. They used to sell watermelons. Sand Ridge grew the best watermelons,” Evelyn Hook recalls.
“There used to be some Laniers who lived down there. Judy Magee was a Hayden, and when you go by the game reserve entry there and you go on down to that curve, the Haydens lived in the house just on that curve. That’s where Judy and her sister grew up,” Evelyn said.
There was a small school “right over there in front of where that antenna is,” Evelyn said, pointing to the WPSD TV tower. “There used to be a building that was still there. I don’t know if it still is, I haven’t been down that road for a while. The building was still there even after they built that antenna out there.
“It was called Graves School. I would say 25 or 30 children went there. It had been built for a two-room school but we used only one of the rooms. If it was good weather we’d play outside, but if it was bad we could go in there, in the other room, and play games or whatever.
“The teacher that we had was real good to read to us. We used to have box suppers and she would use the money that we made from the suppers and other activities to buy books and things to entertain the kids. I love books still, and I’m sure I got it from her. Her name was Laura Lee Holt.”
The Monkey’s Eyebrow children went to high school at Bandana. There were no school buses then, but Howard Owsley, Joe Owsley’s dad, took a two-ton flatbed truck and converted it into a bus. It was closed in, with benches around the walls and a bench down the middle. It also had windows.
“He charged us 10 cents a day,” Evelyn recalls. “He would take us to Bandana and then pick us up at the end of the day. There were 15 or 20 people who rode it. He started at Needmore and drove all around the area picking up children.”
Before he built the gristmill which he and his brother Brad ran, Ples Arivett worked in California twice. He also worked on Dam 53 when it was being built, when Evelyn was about four or five years old. The Arivett family lived at the bottom of the hill then, in a house just past Ray’s Store.
Leroy Arivett recalls that his father would get up very early in the morning and walk the five miles to where they were building the dam. Because he left before daylight, Ples would carry a lantern. Evelyn said he would walk down to where the wildlife refuge is now, cross a lake and go over to where the dam was. Evelyn says she was born in 1920 and that would have been around 1925.
“And then we went to California in 1926,” Evelyn remembers. “My dad and my uncle were working out in the oilfields. I guess the oil company owned houses and rented them to the people who worked for them. We lived out there in a mountainous area and my dad wouldn’t let me go to school because he said you’ll have to ride the bus and there’s all those winding roads. He was afraid for me to ride the bus. So I didn’t go to school until I was seven years old after we moved back.”
They lived in Paducah for about a year or so and Evelyn’s first year of school was in Paducah. After that, she finished grade school at the Graves School at Monkey’s Eyebrow. That school remained active until it was consolidated with Bandana.
She went away to college at Murray State in the fall of 1938 and I didn’t move back.
The Arivetts did some farming in addition to running their businesses. Wilma taped a conversation with her uncle Horace a few years ago when he talked about the time they raised acres of sweet potatoes during the depression, thinking that they could sell them and make a little bit of money. They found it was going to cost more to ship them than they would get, so they brought them back home and ate them all winter. Horace said he still couldn't look at a sweet potato years later.
The Arivetts’ first business enterprise at Monkey’s Eyebrow was a gristmill operated by brothers Ples and Brad. Evelyn says she was always fascinated with the machinery at the mill. They had a tractor chassis in the back part of the mill. It had a big drive shaft that went all the way across and the motor would run an assortment of pulleys and belts. It had a crusher that crushed the corn and there was another grinder that made meal.
“The mill made a lot of meal,” Evelyn says. “My dad usually did that. The Yopp Seed Company in Paducah would buy bags and let my dad fill them up with meal and they would take them back and sell them with Yopp’s name on the bags.”
About a year after they built the grist mill they started putting groceries in the front part. When Evelyn was about 12, in the early 1930s, the Arivetts built a frame building to house the store, separate from the mill.
There was a set of scales between the store and the mill. Farmers would weigh their loaded trucks before the corn was ground. They would weigh them again when the trucks were empty. The difference was the weight of the corn.
Evelyn remembers that the store had about anything that you would want to buy, except meat because there was no electricity to run a cooler to keep meat.
Later, after the Arivett brothers dissolved their partnership, Ples tore down the frame building and built a new store of blocks in the same location as the first store. Those stores were on top of the hill, a location some people call “New Monkey” to distinguish it from the Ray’s Store that stood at the bottom of the hill. With the advent of electricity, that store was able to sell meat.
The Arivetts ran that store until around 1955 when they retired and moved to Bandana, where Horace already had a store.
By the time the uranium enrichment plant was being built near Kevil in the 1950s, there were 14 people living beside or around the Arivetts’ house and store in Monkey’s Eyebrow.
When the state of Kentucky acquired several of the lakes in the area, Ples fixed up rooms to rent to hunters. “He was always looking for ways to make more business,” Evelyn says.
Evelyn moved away in 1938 to go to college at Murray State. She married Harold Hook in 1942, and they lived in McCracken County, but came back to Monkey’s Eyebrow often to visit her family.
She and Harold had a store for about three years in Camelia, where the road from the Paducah Airport intersections with Highway 62.
Ples Arivett died in 1975, and Irene lived until 1999. She was 96 years old.
Comments from readers
Here are some comments from people who have read this article:
Billy Lanier: “The Laniers mentioned in your article were my grandparents, Wallace and Alice Lanier. New Hope Baptist Church sits on land given by my granddaddy.”
Mary Helen Hicks: “The Barnhill family are the ones who lived closer to Monkey’s Eyebrow and raised watermelon, right in front of Mrs. Redfern. Their son is my brother-in-law, married to my youngest sister.”
Ava Magee Siener: “How nice. I go to read about the Arivett family and come across a mention of my mother, Judy Magee.”
Jeanne Culver Thorpe: “This is a great article. I love the genealogy.”
A short history of Monkey’s Eyebrow
(Editor’s note: Evelyn Arivett Hook is the daughter of Ples and Irene Arivett, who were businesspeople at Monkey’s Eyebrow until they retired. In this article, she writes about her family and the history of the community.)
By Evelyn Arivett Hook
I am wishing more power to Joe Culver for pushing the idea of celebrity for Monkey’s Eyebrow but I doubt if it will ever be famous for anything but its name. Unfortunately no one can really remember how it got that name for sure.
Here’s a little more information about it for anyone who might be interested.
I was born at Monkey’s Eyebrow in 1920 and lived there until I went away to school at Murray State in 1938. My parents, Ples and Irene Wildharber Arivett, lived at Monkey’s Eyebrow until they retired and moved to Bandana in the 1950s.
The Wildharbers and Goodleys, my mother’s family, all came to Ballard County in 1903 from Henderson, Kentucky. My dad’s sister, Maude, told me that when their great grandfather, Jesse Beeler, came to Ballard County from Tennessee in the early 1840s it was nothing but wilderness. For many years, he and his children all lived in houses along there on what is now called Monkey’s Eyebrow Road.
Aunt Maudie said she heard that her grandpa had a whole trunk full of confederate money and her grandma kept trying to get him to change it. He refused, and lost everything after the civil war was over.
Their other grandfather, John William Arivett, was born in Virginia but moved to Ballard County in the 1860s. He lived to be 98 and was married three times. He lived in Wickliffe when he died in 1940. We always pronounced it “Everett, and it might have been spelled that way at one time.
My dad was a good carpenter. He and his brother Brad worked at different jobs through the years, and even went with their families to California two different times to work during the depression. When they came back they had a gristmill in Monkey’s Eyebrow for many years and ground corn for everyone all around. My dad started stocking a few grocery items in a little room he built in front of the mill, and that became popular so he built a grocery store there too.
In the middle ’30s electricity had come to all rural areas as a result of Mr. Roosevelt having been elected, so every one who could afford to have their homes wired and hooked into it would have had electric lights, refrigerators, washers, dryers, etc. He built a log building and cut ice from the pond and stored it in sawdust to sell to people when summer came.
Actually, even before electricity came my dad had a large generator which furnished electricity for two houses, plus the store. So, it was rather modern for the time and even better after REA came to town, so to speak. When they got electricity, he had modernized the store and had electricity, refrigerated appliances for selling fresh meats, milk, and ice cream or frozen foods, plus fresh vegetables which were delivered in a refrigerated truck.
In the early ’50s he built a new larger store. He also built a tall television antenna and had a television set in the store and people would come sit around and watch it.
So by the time the C-Plant was being built in the 1950s, there were 14 people living beside or around my father and mother’s house and the store at Monkey’s Eyebrow. When they put in the Game Preserve, my dad fixed up rooms to rent to hunters. He was always looking for ways to make more business.
After I got married to Harold Hook in 1942, we always lived in McCracken County, but we went back to Monkey’s Eyebrow to visit my family often. My dad, Ples Arivett, died in 1975, but my mother, Irene, lived until 1999. She was 96 years old.
A Pod by any other name
I never called her anything but Pod.
That’s what everyone else called her too.
Well, that’s not exactly true. Her mother – my maternal grandmother – called her something that sounded like Margry.
But that wasn’t unusual. My grandmother had her own way of saying lots of things. Maybe “her own way” is an exaggeration. At that time, in rural West Kentucky, lots of folks pronounced some words in ways that mighty not follow the strict guidelines of proper English.
Pod was one of the 10 children of Bob and Lannie Crice. My mother, Jessie Lee, was another. Other children were Elwood, Gene, Ann, Thelma, Nellie, Dick, Billy Bob and Anita Fay (or Nita Fay because no one pronounced the A).
And Billy Bob wasn’t really Billy Bob. He was named Ernest Wells but called Billy Bob. Stories I’ve heard say that was because of some disagreement about what to name him, so they compromised by naming him one thing but calling him the other. I don’t know if that’s true.
Eventually Pod married Herman Tilley and they bought the farm at Monkey’s Eyebrow, a small part of which I now own.
Grandmother lived with them in the later years of her life, and she continued to call Pod Margry.
I wondered if that was grandmother’s way of saying Margaret or perhaps Marguerite.
Pod gave her proper name as Margaret.
Later in Pod’s life she had occasion to need a birth certificate. Back in those days it was fairly common for folks not to have a copy of a birth certificate. Official records were not treated as the big deal they are now.
Pod sent off to get a copy of her birth certificate and lo and behold when it arrived, her name was listed as Margaree.
Pod wasn’t sure if that was what grandmother intended to name her or if the person who filled out the birth certificate just spelled it the way grandmother said it.
She had her name legally changed to Margaret.
But I like Pod better.
I don’t know where she got that name, but it seemed to fit her for some reason.
Names aren’t as important as people anyway.
Whether you called her Pod or Margaree or Margaret, the house she and Herman turned into a home for themselves and their two children, Barbara and Frankie, was the magnet that drew family members together.
It was a place where you felt welcome and a part of a large family of grandmother and aunts and uncles and lots of cousins.
I have very warm feelings of the home where I was raised by my parents, but for some reason that’s not where I wanted to return when I retire. I wanted to move to Monkey’s Eyebrow where Pod and Herman had lived. I thought maybe I could get an acre or two of land and put a house there to live.
When I asked Barbie about possibly buying the Tilley home, which she and her husband Joe own after the death of Pod and Herman, they agreed to sell it to me and that’s Joe’s Place now.
Except it really isn’t. It’s still Pod and Herman’s. I just get the chance to live in it and hope the memories and the love and the warmth are still embedded in the structure, and that, unlike the saying, I can go home again.
A Grocery Store on Wheels
One of the highlights when I spent part of the summers at Herman and Pod’s farm in Monkey’s Eyebrow was when the huckster came.
The “huckster” was a merchant who drove the dusty gravel roads back in the “old days,” maybe as early as the 1940s and certainly in the 1950s.
Inside the box truck he drove was an assortment of staples that a farm family might need to purchase. Such things as bread, flour, sugar, canned goods, candy bars.
The huckster might have had a huge assortment of things. Frankly, I can’t remember. Details have either slipped out of my head or hidden themselves behind more recent memories as I’ve aged.
My sister, Jeanne … now she’s the one who can remember every embarrassing detail of every stupid thing I did as a youngster and as a teenager. At least she claims them as memories. When she tells of something particularly dumb that I did, and when I can’t remember it – which is just about all the time – I can claim that she’s making it up.
Anyway, I can’t recall many details of the huckster or much else from those years. I think he came through only once a week, but it could have been more often. He stopped in the road in front of the various houses and merchants – usually the farmer’s wife because the farmer was out working in the fields – would walk to his truck and buy what the farm didn’t produce.
The one detail I can remember is that he sold candy bars. In the hot summers at Ballard County, a Hershey bar bought from the huckster was always melted. There were no air-conditioned trucks in those days.
I’ve enlisted a couple of other folks to give me some additional information about the huckster.
My cousin Barbie, daughter of Herman and Pod, says one of the hucksters was Leonard Grief. “He had all kinds of things. I mainly remember the candy bars, but mother bought lot of things from him. His truck was kind of like a motor home and he had shelves in the back with the stuff on them. That is about all I can remember.”
David Reid, who was a classmate and a basketball teammate at Ballard Memorial High School, grew up in the area. He remembered more things.
“One of the hucksters was Bobby Thompson from Ragland. Leonard Grief was from Ingleside. Thompson and his wife ran a grocery store in Ragland and he had the ‘rolling store’ that came by once a week,” David recalls.
“When I was a small, my mom would swap eggs and sometimes chickens for different staples. For me that meant an RC Cola and some kind of candy bar that was still firm like a Payday.
“The big box truck he drove had cages on the back for the chickens he bought and sold on his weekly runs. It was a big deal for the kids because it was the only time they enjoyed such unhealthy luxuries. (Have we come a long way baby...Virginia Slims...or what?)
“You may remember (name omitted to protect the injured). She boarded the huckster with high heels (the steps were grated to help keep mud out); anyway she got her heels caught in the grates, lost her balance, fell backwards and broke both of her legs.
“It's refreshing to remember in those days we were all friends and neighbors and you wouldn’t ‘sue’ ’cause Sue was usually a girl down the road.
“Our dog loved to chase the hucksters; seems he thought they were chicken thieves.”
I vaguely remember that most of the merchandise in the huckster’s truck had a good coating of dust from driving up and down the backroads. But back in those days, a little dust, a few flies, even some mouse droppings in the corner weren’t nearly the catastrophes they seem to be today.
Life was quite a bit simpler then, and folks accepted what came.
Other memories of the hucksters
From Robert Crice (one of my cousins):
Regarding huckster – we called them "huckster wagon" and I suspect the term goes back to the days they were literally a wagon drawn by horses. In any case we "shopped" out of one in the early 40s. I started taking photos before the age of 12 while still on the farm where I was born. One of the photos was of Ralph Stevens' wagon that came to our area. Since his son, Clyde Ralph (Stevens Chevrolet), sometimes came with his dad and slept on the feed sacks, when I moved back here I gave the original photo to him. The cloth feed sacks, with all their color, was one of my strong memories of the time.
From Henrietta Smith Ross (a classmate at Ballard Memorial High School):
Joe, I really enjoyed the article about the huckster as well as the website. What fun to remember all those things. I remember the huckster as well, as I visited my grandparents often and lived with them during the 1st, 2nd & 3rd grade before I moved with my Dad to Florida but then came back to finish up my senior year at Ballard and stayed with them. My heart was always in Kentucky. I will never forget the pleasant odor of Lenard Grief's huckster and the dust. But I thought it was the most wonderful store there was outside of Bandana, that we didn't get to very often. I always bought the peanut butter logs, with the fuzz on the outside, because it didn't melt; I would hide them in my room and ration myself until he came again so I wouldn't run out. My grandmother, Grace Smith, married to Urb Smith, would sell eggs and cream and make purchases with that money. Guess there was some kind of refrigerator on board to preserve it or maybe not. Anyway, I'm sure the "rolling store" couldn't have held that much stuff but my eyes were large at all the groceries and things to buy. I was always excited to see Lenard drive up to our back door and honk the horn. I was always the first one outside to investigate the goodies. I will never forget the smell and remember it to this day.
From Carol Wolfe Coryell (also a classmate at Ballard):
My sister Jane and I often reminisce about the joys of
meeting the huckster. All good experiences. No bugs. And I remember at the time my grandmother commenting on the amazing variety of inventory.
From Liz Wolfe Miller (sister of Carol Wolfe Coryell):
Boy, does this bring back memories! Remember the candy cigarettes you could buy? We were so cool puffing on those sugar sticks with the dyed red ends. Thanks for the day brightener.
From Bill Wolfe (brother of Carol Wolfe Coryell):
I'll always remember the Huckster Truck. It was hard to me to understand in later years why the word "huckster" had a bad connotation, and was used to refer to someone selling overpriced, shoddy or fraudulent merchandise. To me, the Huckster must be a wonderful person to bring all those sweet treats. In my childhood, a nickel was plenty to buy a large chocolate candy bar or other snack, and Mother or Daddy would always give Liz and me a nickel apiece for the truck. One morning, Mother didn't have a nickel and she gave me a dime. A dime was considerably smaller than a nickel, so I felt terribly cheated. I wanted a big nickel and she gave me that miserly little dime. I cried and cried. But my tears dried up when they showed me how a dime could actually buy twice as much. It was a valuable lesson in the world of high finance.
How Many Cars Does It Take To Be a Traffic Jam?
I was sitting with Pod and Herman in the front yard of the house at Monkey’s Eyebrow several years ago, comfortable in a lawn chair, content with the quiet evening and an occasional comment.
It must have been in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
The road in front of their house had always been dirt or gravel. But after the state purchased much of the land in the river bottoms a couple of miles down the road, near Oscar, to create the Ballard County Wildlife Management Area a couple of years earlier, the road had been paved.
That was because people were driving there to see the beautiful scenery, the wildlife, and to hunt deer, ducks and geese during hunting seasons.
Anyway, we were enjoying the evening’s peace and quiet when a car went down the road.
“This traffic has really gotten bad ever since they paved the road,” Herman complained.
It was the second car in the last 30 or 45 minutes.
The Physics of Manure Distribution
(Note: This article was submitted by Keith moss. Keith is the son of Joe and Barbara Tilley Moss and the grandson of Herman and Pod Tilley. Barbie is my first cousin, so that makes Keith my ... hmm, I never was able to calculate anything below first cousin ... let's see, that makes him my second cousin or my brother-in-law or my uncle.)
By Keith Moss
I remember an important lesson learned about mechanics and physics that I probably would have never truly realized in a classroom setting, but fully grasped while spending time at Granddad’s farm at Monkey’s Eyebrow one summer.
My Granddad and Grandmother were dairymen (probably should be referred to as dairypersons to keep with the PC crowd), and I don’t exactly remember what time they got up in the morning to start the milking, but I know at some point I was awakened by Grandmother and sent to help with what I could at the milk barn.
I would normally shovel feed into the troughs for the cows coming in, and then help clean the milk barn and the parlor after the milking was finished. Once the cleaning was finished we would head up to the house to have breakfast and plan what else needed to be done that day.
With cows comes manure, and just outside between the parlor and milk barn was the pile. When we cleaned up after the cows, we piled the manure until such time that it needed to be removed. I guess it would be more accurate to describe it as being relocated to various locations around the farm to fertilize whatever needed to be fertilized.
We pulled the old Oliver 66 Row Crop tractor around to start the relocating process. We hooked up the manure spreader and parked tractor with spreader next to the large pile of manure and starting loading the spreader.
After we filled the spreader, which looked like a three-sided wagon with a bunch of paddles and spikes across the back of the wagon, we would drive it out to one of the fields, move the long levers on the front of the spreader and then drive around until it was emptied.
The various paddles and spikes on the rear of the spreader would turn ferociously as we drove around, attacking the mounds of manure as they inched toward the back of the spreader, tossing it across the field leaving an easy-to-follow trail.
Well, as I was a fairly energetic young man, but old enough to drive the tractor by myself (probably 12 years old or so), Granddad gave me some instructions to start removing the manure while he took care of some other jobs that needed to be done.
One of those instructions was what speed to run the tractor while unloading the manure. I believe the instructions were to keep it in low speed, in third gear and since the Oliver tractor didn’t have a tachometer – about two/thirds throttle.
This speed worked okay during the first trip out to empty the spreader, but once I got going just wasn’t fast enough. I kept inching the throttle up feeling pretty confident in my abilities and knowledge of this particular task, but as stated – it wasn’t moving quite as fast as I thought it should.
On the third load I decided if I sped up the process I could get finished quicker and move on to more exciting activities.
Once I got to the field, I moved the shifter into the Hi-speed position, and moved it into what would be fifth gear and kept it at the two/thirds throttle position and started across the field.
Since the manure is moved toward the back by a chain drive, the first couple of minutes were uneventful during the trip. I did notice that since I was moving across the field at a significantly quicker pace, that the paddles and spikes on the rear of the spreader were spinning at an incredible pace (mechanics lesson #1 – since the spreader was “wheel” driven, faster speed means faster spin).
When the manure finally reached the spinning apparatus at the rear of the spreader, it was like an explosion occurred (physics lesson #1 – the distance manure will fly is directly proportional to the speed at which the tractor is going and the paddles are spinning).
It was actually landing almost 10 feet in front of the tractor. Needless to say the tractor and I were pretty well covered by the material we were trying to get rid of.
The trip back to the barn ended with a quick wash with the hose for the tractor and me, and a little grin from my Granddad after he reminded me about the speed the spreader needed to be pulled at. I had to wonder as I emptied the last load if he had learned about physics the same way I did.
Come in Bossie, it’s time to milk
One of my favorite things to do when I visited Pod and Herman at their Monkey’s Eyebrow farm was to go with Herman to his dairy barn and watch him milk.
Later, I came to look upon dairy farming as being more like a sentence than a job because it was so confining.
Pod and Herman rarely went anywhere except during the middle of a day. That’s because cows have to be milked each morning and each evening, seven days a week, 365 days a year and 366 days on Leap Year.
But to a kid it was something fun to watch.
I think when Herman first went into farming after the war, he milked Jersey cows by hand. You had to have a lot of pull to be a dairy farmer at that time. During that period he also kept mules, a sort of grain-fed, pre-tractor plow puller.
I’m not all that familiar with farm economics, but I think Herman earned most of his cash money from the milk and from the annual tobacco sale.
I recall that he also grew corn, but I think he used most of that to feed his cows. I remember going with him a time or two to the Randolph mill in Bandana where he had corn stalks and kernels ground into feed. Later, folks started growing soybeans instead of corn. I suppose the soybeans brought in more money.
Herman eventually graduated from Jersey cows to Holsteins, which gave much more milk per cow, and automatic milkers.
His relatively small dairy operation allowed him to bring in four cows at a time. He could milk two of them while the other two munched on the feed he shoveled into the trough in front of each cow.
The cats always showed up at milking time and Herman poured them some milk out of the shiny bucket that the milking machine filled. Then he poured the rest of the milk into the cooler where it was kept cool until the milk truck came around and picked it up.
A shovel always leaned against the wall within convenient reach because cows aren’t especially particular about where and when they deposit manure. Shoveling up behind them was part of the operation.
The smells – cows, cow manure, feed – and the sounds – cows chewing, horseflies buzzing, shovel scooping, milk machine milking – are a big part of my memories. And Herman in constant motion is another memory, scooping grain into the trough (something I got to help with from time to time), wiping down the cows’ udders, attaching the milkers, emptying the bucket when it was full, closing the neck clamp when the next set of cows came in, opening it when a cow had been milked, scooping when necessary, swatting horseflies, and finally cleaning up the little barn after it was all done for that morning or evening.
But the really fascinating part of it to me was how the cows knew when it was their turn and which stall was theirs.
They would be standing in front of the dairy barn most of the time when it was time for milking. Sometimes we had to go into the fields and call them.
When Herman opened up the barn doors, four cows would come in. Always the same four cows. Each cow would plod to a milk station, always the same station for each cow.
When two had been milked and released, two more would walk in, always in the same order and always to the same stall.
I suppose it’s not odd that a cow would have enough sense to fall into a pattern. But to me, that was an amazing thing and one of the wonders of visiting Herman and Pod at Monkey’s Eyebrow.
The Grocery Store at Needmore
By David Reid
(NOTE: David Reid grew up near Monkey’s Eyebrow. He attended the elementary school at Bandana, a few miles down the road, and he and I were classmates for four years at Ballard Memorial High School. He writes about the store at Needmore, a community a little east of Monkey’s Eyebrow and the site of the Providence Baptist Church where Pod and Herman attended regularly. I went there too when I visited in the summers. Herman was the song leader.)
Louis Berger was the proprietor of the one and only grocery store in Needmore. The other “business” was the Providence Baptist Church 300 yards due east.
Mr. Berger was a recluse of sorts and not much was known or told about the old gentleman. He was small and frail and somewhere in his 80s.
He did not stock much due to a severe lack of customers. It was weird the way he sold his stock. He had his own method of rationing.
If he had two loaves of bread, he would sell a customer only one with the reasoning that someone else might come in to buy a loaf and he would be out.
If you bought a candy bar (just one at a time) it was always wise to check it for extra protein before eating it as you might ingest more than you desired.
Oats, meal and flour was usually premixed as it had a mixing party of critters that came with the product. Strange how those little critters could get into things. They never seemed to eat that much.
Mr. Berger used an old mule and a wooden sled for transportation. When I was 12 years old I made the mistake of trying to pass Mr. Berger and his mule on my new 26" Schwinn. Mr. Berger was standing up on the sled as there was no seat.
When I attempted to pass the old mule it scared him so bad (guess it was daydreaming) that he lurched into high gear.
He headed straight for Providence Baptist Cemetery at breakneck speed with Mr. Berger hanging on for dear life. They rounded the front of the church in a big cloud of dust with gravel flying everywhere and then all H--- broke loose. The sled caught on a big tombstone, the mule went head over heels and Mr. Berger disappeared over the top of a tombstone. I thought he had surely met his maker.
But Mr. Berger was sure agile for his age. He and the mule were both on their feet at the same time but the mule took off again before the old gentleman could reboard.
That was about the time I realized Mr. Berger must surely be dabbling in witchcraft or voodoo cause he was sure muttering some kind of spell on me. The old mule was headed the same direction I was but he had a headstart and I was determined to leave the scene faster than he did before I inherited a curse Ajax couldn't handle.
I don't think I ever saw either of them after that. Mr. Berger may still be trying to catch the mule. If he is I imagine the sled is probably worn out by now.
The mule may have been eating the oats with the extra protein ’cause he was shore feeling his oats that day.
Anyway after looking around Needmore, it was evident how it got its name: It sure needed more … and that was before the store fell in.
Remembering Ragland, Church, Stanley parties
By Mary Helen Hicks
(Note: Mary Helen Hicks is the widow of Lewis Gale Hicks, who was one of my classmates at Ballard Memorial High School, class of 1961, and a teammate on the basketball team for at least part of our high school years. Gale, as we called him then, became a respected union official and the mayor of LaCenter, Ky., before he died in November 2006. He and Mary Helen were married for 45 years.)
I am also from a small town that sits close to the Ohio River and is on some maps, on the outskirts of Monkey’s Eyebrow. That town is Ragland and where it got its name I have no idea.
Some of the families who live in Ragland live in McCracken County and some live in Ballard County. Where you go to school – either Ballard Memorial or Heath – depends on what road you live on.
I went to Heath, but I ran around in Ballard a lot and married Lewis Gale Hicks from Bandana, so a lot of the stories you write about are real familiar to me.
You talk of Monkey’s Eyebrow and Needmore, and when I hear those two places mentioned the first thoughts that come to my mind are of Providence Baptist Church, Pod and Herman Tilley, Lewis and Annie Pippin, and Elmer and Lucy Baxter, who were active in leading the singing and teaching.
I belonged then and still do to Newton Creek Baptist Church in Ragland.
Going to Bible School there was always so much fun. Bible School lasted a week back then. You would go to every church around, and I always got to go to Providence Baptist.
My aunt and uncle were Dorothy and Buster Baxter and I had a cousin my age there. Dorothy was my dad’s sister. I would spend a week at my cousin’s house and go to Bible School and then she would spend a week with me and go to Newton Creek.
That was about all the entertainment we had during the summer except what we could think of to do ourselves, such things as hop scotch, paper dolls cut from the OLD catalogs, and other childhood games. I read comic books a lot.
We seldom went to Paducah, maybe twice a year. Mother made all my dresses, and ordered other things from a Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog. My parents were farmers and milked cows so we didn’t have a lot of time to “go shopping.”
We bought what groceries we needed at Parker and Thompson grocery. The store was owned by Bob Thompson’s mother-in-law. Thompson was a huckster driver. We always had a big garden and killed hogs and cows for meat.
I remember going to the store and sliding back the lid on that big cooler and getting a Nehi Grapette. It was always so cold and such a treat.
As we kids tried to entertain ourselves when we were very young, or later in school, our dads were in the fields farming.
Often, our mothers were having Stanley parties with Bessie Pippin. She was married to Joe (Lewis Pippin’s brother) and they lived past the TV tower. She would bring the merchandise into the hostess’ home and take orders. Merchandise was household items, cleaning supplies and such. The types of gifts the hostess could choose from depended on the amount of sales, how many were in attendance and how many bookings you got.
Another woman would book a party and they would all load up and go to it. A lot of women couldn’t drive so the ones who did, stopped by and got the others.
You always knew when mom was having a Stanley party: There was always something special prepared to eat and the house was extra clean.
J.K. Beeler and his wife Bessie (my dad’s aunt) ran a grocery store down the road and over the hill from the Tilley house going toward the game reserve. They had a daughter Judy who married Bill Jackson. She lives in St. Louis and I am sure she could add some stories of her own.
Arivett’s Store at Monkey’s Eyebrow
By L. Haley Randolph
The community of Monkey’s Eyebrow in Ballard County, Kentucky, has a long and distinguished history of having a name often referred to in atlases and other lists of towns with unusual names.
It is the title of a book on Kentucky history – From Red Hot to Monkey's Eyebrow: Unusual Kentucky Place Names. (See link to the book on this site under “Links.”)
Its most distinguished native son was Henry Whitlow, Esq., a notable lawyer in Paducah.
Around the turn of the 20th century Monkey’s Eyebrow had more than one general store and/or grocery. Stores in this part of the country were serviced by local farmers with meat, egg, and poultry.
Owners of such businesses took their time from the stores to make regular trips to larger places such as Paducah and Cairo, Illinois, to buy supplies such as bakery items and crackers and cheese for re-sale and for making sandwiches for the many daily customers.
Arivett’s Grocery was a typical type of these “mom and pop” businesses and both Mr. and Mrs. Arivett devoted many hours every day to being loyal merchants in their rather large country store at Monkey’s Eyebrow.
Canned goods filled the store’s shelves. Another staple was the makings of roll your own tobacco cigarettes, along with snuff and pipe tobacco (Bull Durham and Prince Albert).
Packaged cigarettes, such as Camels and Kools, were a luxury sold for about 25 cents per pack.
Another favorite at the store were the cold drinks that were cooled in a large vat with crushed ice. They cost a nickel. Later, electric refrigeration helped in the daily routine of getting ready to open the store for the thirsty and hungry folks who dropped in for a little taste of home and relaxation.
There was a large pot bellied stove for cold days and in the summer the screen door kept out the flies and brought in fresh air.
The outside was graced with advertisements for Nehi drinks, Coke and Pepsi, and the screen door even had an ad for bread (Bunny Bread).
Some customers could find a metal yard chair with a pillow that was most comfortable but others simply sat on a wooden boxes or kegs.
For a few years Monkey’s Eyebrow even had a post office also housed in the grocery.
Yes, there was more than one grocery in the community and not far away in Providence (Needmore community) was Mr. Burger’s store.
Unlike Arivett’s Mr. Burger refused to sell the last item if he had only one of any item. I have been told if a school child needed a pencil and Mr. Burger had only one left, the child had to go to school without having the pencil.
Both communities provided a much needed and valuable service to the citizens, including many who walked or rode a wagon to the store maybe only once a week.
At Arivett’s, customers came to exchange local information and even borrow the telephone that hung on the wall. Never was anyone charged for using the telephone at Arivett’s.
If someone was lucky, he might even catch a ride to Bandana either with Mr. Ples Arivett or a customer who had stopped before going on.
In Bandana the mail hack came on a regular schedule and at that point a ride could be had to other areas in the county.
Time simply had a different meaning to everyone and a willingness to share was the real backbone to Kentucky life.
Arivett’s was the first television privately owned in this part of Ballard County. But as Carol, their granddaughter, laughed and said, “Boy was it snowy!”
Probably the community thought local merchants had more of everything and maybe in some ways that was true—better credit, an extra Coke which cost them only 3 cents, better communication skills, some knowledge gained from all the customers’ input as visiting was done at this one central place—Arivett’s Grocery.
In summary I do know the Aviretts – Ples and Miss Irene – had one son Horace (wife La Nelle), who also operated a grocery with the same philosophy for years in Bandana. It too was a town gathering place with big porch out front and no one ever needed anything that they could not ask for help and it was provided including carrying credit (putting down the charge in the book) for those who could not pay until a better streak of luck came their way.
In my opinion it would be difficult for people today to imagine how hard survival was for our area.
I heard this year President Jimmy Carter talking about even during his period the workers in his campaign did not have money for hotels as they traveled over the country and depended on the goodness of local people to provide lodging. When he became President he held a party for everyone who gave of themselves and more than 700 people attended the party.
I know this is a little off the subject of Arivett’s Grocery in Monkey’s Eyebrow but I am sure that too is where voting took place for all political elections on Sandridge.
Very little interest was shown back then in the Republican Party because Democrats showed compassion to the common man and mostly only one person in the family voted, the male head of the household.
No Running Water, Not Even A TV
By Marilyn Waldrop Rose
(Note: Marilyn Waldrop attended grade school in Kevil and went to Ballard Memorial High School for her freshman year, before moving to Florida. She still returns to Ballard County to visit friends and relatives. The story about hard times in the Ballard County jail moved her to write these memories of growing up in Ballard County in the ’40s and ’50s.)
I remember those times well. No running water, hot or cold, cistern in the back yard for drawing water, outdoor bathroom. THANK GOD, we do not have to do that now.
We had a brand new house and new furniture but I guess my parents ran out of money to have running water put in. We had a bathroom. It consisted of a table with a pan to wash up in.
We also had a metal pot to use at night, if the occasion came about, which had to be emptied in the morning. Oh what a job that was. (Note: My grandmother Culver also had such a pot. She called it a slop jar. I think the more polite term is chamber pot.)
When it was time to take a bath, we brought in a galvanized tub, put it in the kitchen floor, heated water on the stove and poured it into the tub.
I am so thankful that those days are gone. We take so much for granted these days. When I think back on those days I can see how fortunate we are today. We did not think anything about that back then because that was all we knew.
I always loved going up to my Aunt Mary's and Uncle Elliott's house in the corner in Kevil. They had a television, running water, and bathroom. I would take all the kids I ran around with up there on Saturday morning to watch TV.
Aunt Mary and Uncle Elliott were always at the store in Kevil and we always had the house to ourselves. The doors were never locked so we just went in and sat down and watched television. I would call them on the phone and tell them we were there.
Our days were spent playing with friends, going from house to house, walking all around town, what there was of it, climbing trees, eating green apples, swimming in the creek or in the pond with the cows behind Billy Gene Hook's house, until his daddy would come and run us out of the pond.
We watched the Hooks butcher the pigs or cows. Now that I think about that, I don't think I could do that today. I can't remember how old I was at that time, but I think I was about 12 or 13 years old. Shirley, Billy Gene, and I were always together.
Then there came the time that we would either walk or ride our bicycles. Sometimes we would ride to Brenda Thurman's house. That had to have been about seven or eight miles. We would walk to school everyday. It didn't make any difference if it was raining or snowing. We had to walk to and from school. We thought nothing of it because, first of all, my parents worked in Paducah, so they were not at home, Shirley's mother did not drive and neither did Billy Gene's mother. I cannot ever remember complaining about it. It was just something that had to be done.
Remember the Play Parties at the VFW in LaCenter? We got to go every Saturday night. We went with the Hooks. Boy what a good time that was.
But then it all came to a screeching halt. We – my parents and I – moved to Goulds, Florida. I cried all the way to Florida. I did not want to leave Kevil or my friends I had grown up with.
My life changed drastically. I did not like it there. I missed my friends and family members. I wanted to go back to Kevil. But that was not going to happen. So I made new friends and started school in the 10th grade, but it was still different.
Thanks for listening. It is strange when we get older, what we remember and reminisce about.
Joe's Place: Myth or Monkey?
By Damon Benedict
(Note: Damon Benedict is a friend and a colleague at the National Energy Technology Laboratory. He wrote this article for the employee newsletter where we work. It appeared in the May 2008 edition)
If you know Joe Culver, the man or the myth, then you have undoubtedly heard of Monkey's Eyebrow, Kentucky.
Now Joe and I have been friends since he came to NETL-Morgantown from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and I don't believe we have ever had a meaningful conversation in the last year or so that didn't reference Monkey's Eyebrow.
Joe claims to own property—a farm nonetheless—there. I've even seen the photos that he says prove it, though it may just be a PhotoShop illusion. I'm not sure. I'm not convinced it exists in reality. It may just be Joe's mental Shangri-la, though the name certainly does not conjure up the same romantic images . . . at least not for me.
All that said, an article recently appeared in the Quad-City Times (your guess is as good as mine) in which the reporter, Bill Wundram, had set out on a quest to find—you guessed it—Monkey's Eyebrow.
He recounts, “I was determined to find this town called Monkey’s Eyebrow. It’s said to show up on a few maps as somewhere along the Ohio River, not far from Metropolis, Ill. Sunday afternoon, I set out to find Monkey’s Eyebrow.”
It’s over there, somewhere across the Ohio River, motioned a deputy sheriff.
“Over there” was not very helpful, so I asked a man just getting out of his car if he had ever heard of Monkey’s Eyebrow.
“Oh, yeah,” John Croch said. “It’s over by Possum Trot, but you’re in Illinois, and Monkey’s Eyebrow is in Kentucky.”
Seems I am not the only one questioning its existence. Wundram says,”There are legends about Monkey’s Eyebrow, and there is a website for it under Joe's Place, a cryptic title. I was going to find it, but tarnation, I had an idea that Joe's Place was a place in someone's moonshine dreamland.”
Later in his story, Wundram muses, “The rain was a torrent. The windshield wipers had trouble handling it. I headed for the Interstate, giving up on finding Monkey’s Eyebrow. I’m not sure it even exists. I think it’s a myth, like a state of mind.”
So maybe Monkey's Eyebrow doesn't really exist. But maybe it does. You be the judge. But either way, it's okay with me. We all deserve the thought of our own little slice of heaven, a little Shangri-la, a little moonshine dreamland, a little Monkey's Eyebrow, to get us through the day.
Read Bill Wundram's colorful story at: http://qctimes.com/articles/2008/04/01/opinion/columnists/bill_wundram/doc47f1b72af3b5b850681193.txt
Bandana Day, getting older, wet dream
My friend Eddie – Edward Faye, prominent attorney in Bowling Green, Ky., for those among you who prefer more formal references – and I were talking about how much we were looking forward to one of the Ballard County festivals, Bandana Day.
Eddie started chuckling.
“You can tell you’re getting old when you get this excited about Bandana Day,” he said.
And that may be true. After all, the big doin’s at Bandana Day take place in what is probably about half a block in length. The festivities aren’t designed to enflame passions so much as to make people feel comfortable, feel at home.
Partly the excitement for us was that we planned to be among the vendors. I would be offering for sale a Bandana/Monkey’s Eyebrow T-shirt featuring a graphic design that I commissioned an artist to produce. Eddie was offering some genuine, hand-crafted jewelry from Bali.
Knowing how things tend to work out for us, we both figured we probably would wind up losing money, but that didn’t diminish how much we were looking forward to being part of the day.
So we chuckled about how two aging men (I’ll admit it, I’m a little older than he is) have so little going on that we’re looking forward to a small-town festival a month in advance.
“Yes, we can sit there at our vendor’s table, drink Metamucil and watch the folks walk by,” I said to Eddie, and we both laughed.
“But,” I went on, “that’s not the real indicator of getting older. I’m at an age when if I have a wet dream, that means I’m having a spell of incontinence and I’ve pissed in the bed.”
We both laughed at that one, and commiserated with each other over the inherent truth. Somewhere back in school someone should have taught a class in what to expect during the aging process, what aches and pains are likely, what body parts are likely to fall off or stop working, and how Bandana Day will become a highlight of the year.
Learning the Comfort of Family
Our family gatherings at Pod and Herman’s farm in Monkey’s Eyebrow were the marks on the door frame that measured evolving family hierarchy.
Family in those days meant my mother’s family. My maternal grandparents, Bob and Lannie Crice, had 10 children and they each had children. My paternal grandfather, John Culver, died before I knew him. He and my grandmother, Edna Jones Culver, had only two children, uncle Johnny and my dad. There was also a half-brother, Charles Culver, in Lovelaceville, but we didn’t visit frequently with the Culver kin.
That’s partly because there were so few of them. Uncle Johnny owned a business in Jonesboro, Ark., where he and his wife had only one child. Charles Culver had two children and we visited occasionally, but not frequently.
The much larger Crice family was the extended family. There were aunts and uncles and lots of cousins. After all, this was after the fertile years during and following World War II.
We visited individual aunts and uncles and their families, of course, but when there was a larger family gathering it was usually at Pod and Herman’s. Pod was one of mother’s sisters. She married Herman Tilley and they raised their two children on the farm where I now own the house, the barn and five acres.
It was – and is – a small house, but the walls seemed to expand when the family got together. There was always room enough and food enough for all of us.
It was at those get-togethers where we truly got to know our aunts and our uncles, our many cousins. We learned that we were part of something bigger than our parents and our brothers and sisters; we were part of a family. And if it wasn’t something we were aware we were learning, we took comfort in it, even if we didn’t realize we were taking comfort.
We were part of a family. We cared about each other. We enjoyed being surrounded by so many people with whom we had a genetic connection that stretched back who knows how far.
In retrospect, I believe it was at those gatherings where we measured our maturation, our growth within the family.
Just as my parents and yours, too, I’m sure, marked our vertical growth in pencil on a door frame, each mark a little higher than the one from several months ago, we marked our growth within the family on the door frames of that home in Monkey’s Eyebrow.
We started out probably sitting at a card table with the youngest cousins. As we got older, we moved up to more grown-up tables, and we moved up in which pieces of chicken were available to us. We grew to where we were allowed to fill our own plates instead of having a parent or an aunt or an uncle fill them for us.
We moved up in intellect where the older members of the family might even let us join in the grown-up conversations.
But as we grew, the concept of family remained essentially the same because it had been powerful and flexible and expandable from the very start.
Not all the aunts and uncles and cousins were there every time. One aunt lived in Louisville, Ky. Another lived in Oak Ridge, Tenn. It was a rare occasion when they came but it was an oh so special time, too, because the family seemed to grow just a bit when they came.
Later, when jobs took some of us away from Ballard County, we didn’t get together very often. But every time I made it back home, I went to visit Pod and Herman and their house of warmth and memories. I was an adult, then, and we talked as equals. Pod always had a meal when I visited. I got to sit at the big table.
Someone wrote that you can’t go home again, but you can insert yourself into the cocoon of memories that saturate the walls of home. That’s where I plan to live my final years.