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- The Legend of Smokin’ Don Hymn of the Hills Raining Like Today Learning Lessons
- Warehoused Horror Nightmare Highway A Nice, Little Town THE LEGEND
WELCOME TO WADDY, WHERE MINUTES CRAWL AND YEARS FLY WADDY
1988 Bill Hedden squinted, Christine Martin scowled, Bob Spencer grinned and, before anyone knew it, 100 years had gone by. Time really does pass in Waddy -- and the people here have the photographs to prove it. The sleepy town with the funny name celebrates its centennial this weekend, and residents were busy Thursday afternoon decorating the Ruritan Club with old black-and-white pictures from the last 100 years.
There, in another photo, was 89-year-old Christine Neblett, whose maiden name was Martin. Now the oldest woman in town, she had dark brown hair then as she posed for a group picture with her high school classmates. And there, in still another picture, was Bob Spencer wearing a baseball cap. Spencer, who grew up to be chairman of the centennial celebration committee, stared down at the picture of himself as a boy. The boy stared back, grinning. "Oh, it's nostalgic, there's no doubt about that," Spencer said. "You get to see people who have always been old, as a child." The pictorial display, which will decorate the walls of the Ruritan Club on Ky. 395, will be open all day today. And centennial festivities -- including a parade, beauty contest, turkey shoot and balloon race -- begin today. It will be a big weekend in Waddy, a town of 300 off Interstate 64 between Lexington and Louisville in Shelby County. Most people are looking forward to the big event, said Linda Temple, who owns the grocery that serves as Waddy's gathering place. Usually the town is quiet: Children ride bicycles in the narrow streets; boys shoot baskets behind the Christian church; men play rook in the back of Linda's Grocery; and the bank is closed by 3:30 p.m. "It's a nice quiet town and everybody's sociable and congenial," said Jeanie Hedden, Bill's wife. Whereas travelers once came through town on trains -- they climbed down from the cars every now and then to stretch their legs and to shop -- now they zip past on I-64 a mile to the north. Only freight trains rattle the town these days. The pace in Waddy is so slow that the passage of 100 years is no small thing. "It's changed a lot, but in a way it's stayed the same," said Jake Potter, 61, as he walked to the general store Thursday with a carton of empty Coke bottles to claim his deposit. Waddy is "basically the same people," said Jeanie Reese, 38, who lives on Ky. 395 in Waddy. "Everybody's just grown up." But some things have come and gone. At one time, Waddy had six stores, a hotel, a bank, two law firms, a club house, a mill, a creamery, several tobacco warehouses, three churches, a college and a high school. Now the unincorporated town has a bank, two stores and four churches. Waddy grew up along the Southern Railway and was named for a local Irish family whose partriach, a major in the U.S. Army, gave the railroad land for a depot. Residents admit the name is unusual. It has been a source of amusement to outsiders, especially those from larger cities, said Bill's wife, Jeanie Hedden, 75. Mrs. Neblett is related to a prominent family that helped found Waddy. Without the railroad, the town might have been named Martinsville, she said. But she is not unhappy with Waddy. "There's always a Martinsville or a Martinsburg, but there's only one Waddy," she said. "It's very distinctive." Of course, Mrs. Neblett said, a lot of people think Waddy's full name is Waddy-Peytona because of the exit sign on I-64 that also contains the name of another small town in Shelby County. "I can't understand to save my life why they stuck Peytona on there," Mrs. Reese said. "All there is there is a garage."
1989
THE LEGEND OF SMOKIN’ DON SOUTH SHORE 1989
It is his image in the glass, but this is crueler than what happens when a man first sees himself as he will be. Time has reversed the prank. Don Gullett is seeing himself as he was. In a McKell High School football uniform, steaming down the sideline toward the goal line. In a Reds baseball uniform, catching a pitch from his toddler son at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. In the clubhouse, shaking hands with then-President Gerald Ford during the 1975 World Series. In the bullpen, raring back to throw a fastball under the scrutiny of Manager Sparky Anderson. Behind Gullett in the basement of his sprawling, Tudor-style home in Greenup County is a pool table. Ahead of him is the past. Always the past. Time is like a good fastball: by you before you can do much to make your mark on it. Gullett's life has come full circle. His son, Don Jr., the toddler in the photo, turned 18 on Friday. Gullett was 18 when he began playing professional baseball in Sioux City, Iowa. That was in 1969. Now Gullett's baseball career is only a memory. Life no longer is a game. It is reality. It is no longer the sound of the crowd or a day in the sun at Yankee Stadium; it is stale, green water in the backyard pool and rangy weeds in the cornfield. The memory still hurts sometimes. Gullett cannot bring himself to watch baseball games on television. In the basement of his house, on a shelf below the pictures, lies a new Rawlings baseball glove, left-handed. Never used. Never will be. It is the glove Gullett never got to break in, the last unsoiled vestige of a promising career cut short. Outside, the sun looks small and pasty like the moon as it floats in the fog over knobby Greenup County. It is morning. Another day on the farm has begun for Don Gullett.
Don Gullett, all of 9 years old, stopped playing with the raggedy ball he'd been tossing around outside with his younger brother, Bill, and caught the leather ball. The man, Paul Baker of Greenup, had an application for Don to play in Greenup County's first-ever Little League. Even early on, it was obvious to everybody from South Shore to Greenup that Don was a natural-born athlete. But there are any number of directions you can go if you run fast. And shoot and throw and hit and jump well. Football, maybe? Basketball? Baseball? The boy liked them all. And could he move. Motion easily caught the eye of Gullett's neighbors in the rural areas of Greenup County, where life is slow. But Gullett was quick, he wasn't flighty. That's important. In Greenup County many people make a living out of farming tobacco and corn, and they know you have to work hard and be prepared for each season as it comes. That, Gullett learned well. Don became such a good pitcher that he began taking the mound for Wurtland High School when he was in the eighth grade. But he lived near Lynn in a part of the county where students had a choice of high schools, and he decided to attend arch-rival McKell up on U.S. 23 because it had a better athletics program. It was there Gullett started to attract attention. He scored a record 72 points in a football game at Wurtland, a game they still remember vividly at Munn's Barber Shop in South Shore. Gullett scored 11 touchdowns and six extra points. "You never forget that," says Denver Munn. As in many Kentucky counties, Greenup residents derived much of their entertainment from high school sports. Fierce rivalries developed, and crowds flocked to games -- especially after McKell became a powerhouse and Gullett became the hero. But Gullett was making his mark in other sports, too. The game in which he struck out 20 of 21 batters and did not allow a single hit became popular fare at Munn's. The only boy who would catch Gullett's pitches was his brother, Bill. The ball coming out of Don's left hand after he snapped that arm like a whip just came too fast and moved too much. Hitting it or catching it was a big task. The pro scouts began visiting Greenup County even before Don was old enough to drive. Gullett knew then that his dream of playing baseball was close to becoming reality, but he still had options. Dozens of major colleges began recruiting him to play football and basketball. Gullett decided to play baseball if he was drafted in one of the first few rounds. But he wasn't about to spend his life in the minors. If nobody wanted him very much, he'd go to college; he was a good student. His future depended on his performance in a fishbowl, but through it all Gullett never changed. The wavy-haired boy with the blue eyes remained quiet and unassuming, hard-working and levelheaded. He was from a large enough family to know early on that not everything always goes your way. It's a quick lesson when you're the third youngest of eight children.
Don was a good shot. Squirrels and rabbits generally were not safe around him. Neither were catfish, bass or sunfish; he was pretty handy with a rod and reel, too. Gullett's life, although exciting, was never wild. He had little time or taste for anything other than baseball or the outdoors. When he was 16, the third love of his life began: He met cheerleader Cathy Holcomb, the girl he would marry two years later. Gullett had just finished a short minor league stint after being drafted in the first round out of high school, and he and Cathy were going to move to an apartment in Northern Kentucky. College was out. Gullett had bought an orange Plymouth Roadrunner, his first car, and he was on the move. He was going to spring training with the big club in Cincinnati.
The Reds had a lot of fans in Greenup County before Gullett ever signed with them. Having a hometown boy take the mound for Cincinnati was almost more than some townspeople could bear. There was a Don Gullett Day in Greenup and a Don Gullett Day in South Shore. A building contractor donated a stone monument to the town of Greenup, population 1,400, that said "This Is Don Gullett Country." It looked something like a tombstone, but that didn't matter. Officials promptly placed it on the front lawn of the courthouse. On the other side of the lawn was a monument to the county's other favorite son, the late writer Jesse Stuart. Stuart made a name for himself writing stories that illuminated the nooks and crannies of rural Greenup County. Gullett made his with a white-hot fastball. Light and heat. Summers filled the county with electricity. Few people in town missed Reds games anymore. Some drove the 120 miles up route 52 to Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Most caught them on television or on the radio station out of nearby Portsmouth, Ohio. The middle Gullett boy was making quite a splash. Pittsburgh Pirate slugger Willie Stargell faced Gullett for the first time and struck out on three pitches. Just like that. "Wall-to-wall heat," Stargell said. Gullett earned the nickname "Smokin' Don" for his throwing style and his worst bad habit: cigarettes. Reds Manager Anderson was impressed with Gullett's modest, down-to-earth demeanor and his blazing fastball. "He's going to the Hall of Fame," Anderson said. The wins came fast. "Super Kid Gullett Does It Again . . . " one headline said. And through it all, Gullett remained Gullett. The only change his friends noticed after he hit the big time was that the Roadrunner became a Continental. But he still came to visit almost every off day. Don Jr. was born early in the morning on Aug. 11, 1971. Gullett, back from a road trip the day before, pitched that night at Riverfront. As he warmed up in the bullpen, a boy made his way to the railing at the bottom row of seats. "Hey, Don," the boy called. "Throw a no-hitter." There were two outs in the eighth inning before the first Chicago batter managed a hit. It was the only one they got off Smokin' Don, the family man. "This is wild," Gullett thought. Life couldn't get much better.
In 1973, Don and Cathy bought a 75-acre farm on Ky. 7. They built a big house like one that Cathy had seen in a magazine. Gullett raised corn and tobacco. He bought 60 more acres down the road and raised hay. Relatives looked after the farms while Gullett was away playing baseball. His career in Cincinnati soared. In 1975, he already had nine wins with a month still to go until the All-Star game. It was going to be his best year ever. Then Larvell Blanks stepped to the plate. Late in the game Gullett tired, and he served up a ball to Blanks that must have looked the size of a melon. Blanks lined the ball back up the middle of the field toward the pitcher's mound, and Gullett stuck his left hand up to knock it down. All he saw was a white blur, then the ball slammed into the base of his thumb and branded his skin with stitches. Gullett went down. It all happened so fast, nobody knew exactly where the ball had hit him. Cathy jumped to her feet in the stands. Had it struck him in the head? The broken thumb kept Gullett sidelined for two months, but when he came back the only sign he had been injured was a lump on his left hand where the healing had caused a calcium deposit. The first time Gullett threw again, Anderson sat in a chair behind him, his chin resting on his hand, his eyes squinted, his brow furrowed. Would Don be Don again? Gullett's arm snapped like a whip, and the ball popped out going 96 mph. He was back. In October, Gullett pitched the first game of the World Series against the Boston Red Sox. The Reds won the series four games to three. They also won it the next year, sweeping the New York Yankees in four games. But 1976 was the end of life with the Reds. After a season-long contract dispute, Gullett played out his option and signed with the Yankees as a free agent. The country boy went to the big city. Greenup County was crushed. Some people saw Gullett as something of a traitor. How could he leave the Reds? It took a while -- maybe even a week or two -- but county residents gradually began to adjust: Many of them became Yankees fans. Greenup County children started wearing Yankees caps and shirts. "He made New Yorkers out of all of us a little bit," says Dave Stultz, an opposing pitcher in high school. It didn't last long, though. As Gullett warmed up to pitch the day before the All-Star break in 1978, he felt his arm catch. He couldn't tell if it was injured, though. Once a pitcher starts warming up, his arm becomes a tool. It's hard to feel whether something's gone wrong. When Gullett took the mound to start the game, he had no idea he was about to pitch the final two innings of his career. But he soon discovered he had no stuff. He was taken out of the game in the second inning. In the clubhouse, he tried to shave but couldn't lift the razor to his face. "I must've done something to my shoulder," Gullett told the trainer. Smokin' Don spent the next four months on a cross-country odyssey that took him to specialists in New York, Michigan, Oklahoma City and Los Angeles. What was wrong? Did he need surgery? He went to all the best doctors and got different answers. He was in pain, and the shoulder often prevented him from sleeping or lifting a gallon jug of milk. He decided to have the surgery. Gullett lay in a Los Angeles hospital room as the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the 1978 World Series. But despite the surgery, he did not think of his career in the past tense. Two years later he would. The arm could not be rehabilitated enough to pitch effectively. The whip was gone, the fastball was 10 mph slower. The Yankees released Gullett in 1980. The next spring, Pittsburgh invited him to try out for the team, but Gullett declined. He knew it was over. Besides. He had had his day in the sun. He didn't want to take a spot on the roster away from some young kid with a whip for an arm who might have dreamed big-league dreams in a field of corn.
Six years passed. One cold January morning in 1986, Gullett's chest burned, and he doubled over on his blue Ford tractor. A dull ache began to well in his left arm. Gullett climbed down from the tractor, which he had been using to spread manure, and walked into the barn clutching his chest. He was alone. Cathy was shopping, and Milford Hunt, an old friend and farmhand, was working several hundred feet away. Hunt noticed the tractor sitting idle and walked to the barn. He found Gullett bent in pain. "You better go to the doctor," Hunt said. Gullett hesitated. When you're 35, you never dream of having a heart attack. He waited for the pain to subside, but it would not. Gullett changed his shoes and climbed into Hunt's pickup. The men headed north up Ky. 7 toward the family doctor's office in South Shore, and Gullett slumped against the door of the pickup. The doctor told Gullett he'd had a heart attack, and an ambulance took Smokin' Don to the hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio. Gullett spent more than a week at the hospital, but there was no surgery. Just advice: Stop smoking and stop drinking so much coffee. A funny thing happened to Gullett that winter: He began to consider himself a lucky man. Sure he couldn't play baseball anymore, but that was easier to accept now. He was alive. And what a beautiful family he had standing at his bedside . . . Things have changed in Greenup County. The old McKell baseball field is surrounded by apartments, and the bases are lumps of yellow foam rubber. Softball is the only game played here anymore. Home plate is a dirty thermal undershirt. The high school has been torn down and replaced by a vocational center, and the practice football field at the foot of the hill is abandoned. An old tackling dummy stands in the weeds off the edge of the field. Gullett, his face rounder and his waist thicker, is cutting back on the farm, phasing it out. He and Cathy have decided to sell the house and look for a smaller one. The kids are growing up, and in a few years the family will not need such a big house. Cathy thinks they don't need such a big house now. Gullett's trying to take it easier. He still drinks lots of coffee, but the smoking has stopped. That's how he put on the extra weight. Gullett sold 60 head of cattle in 1988 and didn't grow any corn this year. His fields are full of tall weeds. He owns two tractor-trailers in Ashland that haul everything from boat- launching ramps to anti-aircraft shells. He will be able to retire and live off his baseball pension in seven years, when he is 45. He and his brother-in-law started a restaurant in Greenup last year, but it didn't last. Folks were excited at first about the opening of Don Gullett's Home Plate. But Gullett didn't have much time for it, and many townspeople stopped going there when they discovered Smokin' Don rarely made an appearance. Between the farm and his trucks, Gullett stays busy. Which is good. He'll never play baseball again. The doctor tells him he shouldn't even play softball. If he messes up the shoulder again, it means more surgery. He worked as an assistant baseball coach at Greenup County High School this year. Younger kids don't remember him. Eleven years have passed since he couldn't lift a razor. To many people, he's still something of a hometown hero. Probably always will be. His monument's on the courthouse lawn, isn't it? An old man named Willie Skaggs sits on a bench in the shade of the monument, and he remembers: "Didn't want to miss any when he was pitching." In Greenup County they compare promising young pitchers: "Why, he throws as hard as Don Gullett." "He'll always be a legend around here," says Dave Stultz. Jesse Stuart wrote: "Time will go on as time will. New people will be born into the world. The old people go from the world and give place to the new. Children grow up and babies are born. And the world goes on. There is not any turning back the hand on the clock." It is 1989. Gullett is through remembering, and the basement is dark again. The morning has been over for what seems like less than an hour, but who keeps time out here? The day will get hotter before it's over, and that's saying something. The sun is blazing, and the humidity is as high as it is in Cincinnati and Chicago and St. Louis this time of year. A pitcher could sweat away more than 5 pounds. That is what Gullett remembers as he wraps his tanned and lumpy left hand around a baseball in his front yard: The heat of a ballpark hundreds of miles away. The heat can drain you, but he is loose now, and smiling. It is July again for just a while, and it feels like taking the mound at Busch, although there is no crowd to see. All is quiet except for the birds and the insects. Gullett draws his arm back to throw and tosses the ball easily. Set free, the baseball seems to spin forever in the bright midday sun, hanging, hanging, hanging . . .
UNIONTOWN 1989
Just last Sunday Hedges had requested the hymn, had led the congregation in singing it at the regular morning service. But nobody sang along with the organ music yesterday. Hedges was not there to lead them. And nobody felt much like a song, besides. Hedges, one of 10 coal miners killed Wednesday morning in an explosion at the Pyro Mining Co. mine in Webster County, was the first to be buried. His funeral yesterday morning at the simple brick church he loved was attended by dozens of miners. Altogether, more than 140 people packed the little church in Uniontown, a mining community of 1,250 people on the Ohio River at the edge of Kentucky's western coalfields. Some members of the overflow congregation sat in folding metal chairs alongside the pews or stood in the back of the church. The front doors were left open so even more mourners could stand outside on the steps looking in. Most Uniontown residents' lives are rooted inextricably in mining, and an accident such as the one Wednesday reinforces the kinship they feel, said the Rev. Jean Watkins of the Methodist church. "It's had a heavy impact on this community," said the Rev. Henry Frantz of St. Agnes Catholic Church in Uniontown. A memorial service for all the dead miners was planned for 7 p.m. yesterday at Union County High School. Their funerals this weekend, however, will be scattered throughout a handful of counties in Western Kentucky. Yesterday morning's service for Hedges, 31, attended by a representative of Gov. Wallace Wilkinson's office, officially started the long mourning process. Many Uniontown residents walked to the church under a steely sky. At 10:15 a.m., the coffin was rolled down the aisle. Hedges's two young daughters, Jona and Chasity, and his wife, Ruthie, wept softly in a pew near the altar. The Rev. Beau Watkins began the service, saying, "I feel like many of you. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be doing this." The congregation recited, "The Lord is my shepherd." Then Watkins' wife, the Rev. Jean Watkins, spoke softly of Hedges as "a brother, an uncle and a son beyond comparison." Those sitting quietly in attendance remembered Hedges in many other ways: To Rick Hetric, a fellow miner, Hedges was "a godly man, a churchgoing man." To others, he was the church's Sunday school teacher. Still others had sat in the church on Father's Day, when Hedges filled in at the pulpit for Mrs. Watkins, who was out of town. Hedges spent much of his spare time helping out at the church. He mowed the lawn whenever his turn came up and attended the Sunday morning service as often as he could. Although his shift at the mine had kept him up some Sunday mornings until 4, Mrs. Watkins said she had seen him at the 9 a.m. service almost every time. But several months ago Hedges had switched from second shift to a day shift, which he did not like. And it had kept him away from church four out of every five Sundays. When he wasn't working, Hedges liked to fish and hunt geese with friends. He also did carpentry work. Like every miner, he knew how dangerous his work underground was, Hetric said, "but he wasn't fatalistic about it." His friends and family remembered Hedges yesterday as a happy, optimistic man. At 10:35 a.m., the organist began playing the hymn of which Hedges was so fond. It begins: "This world is not my home, I'm just passing through." But no one sang the words as the congregation had done Sunday. Watkins read from the eighth chapter of Romans, verse 36: "For your sake we face death all day long." "I've cried tears over this death," he said. "I think this is the hardest funeral I've ever had to preach." Then they rolled the coffin out of the church past the "mowing order" list, tacked up in the doorway, with Hedges' name still scrawled on. The miner's body was taken to the Uniontown cemetery off Ky. 360 and placed in the ground near a field of corn.
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