Category: Writing

Wade’s articles and essays

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He Found a Hand and Part of a Leg

Shady spot is gone

On the evening of December 10, 2021, an EF4 tornado blasted through parts of western Kentucky. Not since the Great Ice Storm of 2009 has our area taken such a devastating hit. Those of us untouched by the tornado watched helplessly as weather authorities pleaded for residents in one town after another to take shelter. “This is a tornado emergency,” they implored people. “Get to your safe place NOW.” Unfortunately for many, their shelters couldn’t withstand the nearly 200 miles per hour winds. One week later and the death toll stands at 77. It is now the deadliest tornado in Kentucky history.

Shady spot is gone

I stayed away from the affected sites for the first several days. Viewing or taking photos of someone else’s misfortune doesn’t sit well with me. I understand the media has to document the tragedy. Their photos are all I really need to see to understand the heartache people are going through. And people need to know what can happen so they can be better prepared for the future.

So, when I did venture out to see for myself, I headed to a secluded rural area that has long been a favorite–Land Between the Lakes. There’s a place there, a backroad really, that is seldom traveled. In summer the trees meet overhead so that it’s always shady and cool. There’s a stream that rarely dries up, and the spot is filled with ferns and birdsong. For me, there is no more peaceful place on earth. I have passed many afternoons in that tranquil spot. And though I have taken photos of it in spring and posted them to social media, I’m always careful not to reveal the location of “my” spot.

Insulation in tree miles from tornado's path

Imagine my shock when my worst fears were realized. Suddenly, around a bend, the road disappeared under an avalanche of tree trunks. The entire area is oddly light now–there are no trees left standing to block the sun. It is entirely open, laid waste. You can make out the rolling hills now, where before you could only see a few dozen yards into the thick undergrowth. I sat for a few minutes, then snapped some photos. It was eerily quiet. No birds, no sounds of anything moving under all those trees. How many wild animals died in this storm?

Giant trees uprooted by tornado

A favorite spot after the tornado went through

LBL before the storm

The same spot just a few weeks ago

With nothing to see but downed trees, and further access completely blocked, I decided to go down into the “Trace” to see where the tornado crossed LBL. I didn’t have to go far. Just south of the north station you begin to see debris and hear chain saws. There were many utility workers out clearing trees and working on power lines. For miles on either side of the tornado’s path, there is debris high up in the trees. Sometimes just a plastic bag, more often a twisted piece of corrugated metal or insulation.

Road disappears under debri

I also saw something unexpected. The shoreline of Kentucky Lake is piled high with all manner of floating trash. Parts of a dock, wood from homes and businesses, styrofoam, and many other things that were unidentifiable bob up and down in the water. God only knows how much debris that couldn’t float is now at the bottom of the lake.

Debris along Kentucky Lake

I pulled over to take a couple of photos. A man stood by his truck watching the repairs. He told me his daughter lives in Dawson Springs–another town, like Mayfield, that took a direct hit. She’s okay, though her house is gone. The man (I didn’t get his name) said she told him her neighbor found a hand and part of a leg on his property. She said the leg and hand were obviously not from the same person.

“How awful,” was all I could manage to say. He said property owners were being told to get on their four-wheelers and look all over their property for missing persons. To search the woods, in the tops of trees, and even in the ponds. I just shook my head. The things ordinary people were being asked to do, the things they were seeing, would likely scar them for life. And just how, I wondered, are they going to find people, animals, or lost belongings under all those trees? There are probably things under those piles that will remain lost for a long, long time.

Trees lie broken and twisted

I started to leave but the man had one last horrible story. He said he knew a farmer that had a herd of Black Angus cattle. He had divided the herd before Friday, putting some in one pasture and some in another. The tornado blew all the cattle from both pastures into a spot nearly a mile away. They were found together in that one place–all dead of course. We forget sometimes that it wasn’t only humans affected by the storm.

I thought about everything I had seen and heard during my very brief time at the spot where the tornado crossed LBL. Then I tried to imagine the 225 continuous miles of that destruction. I couldn’t do it. There’s just too much. But I do know this: Just as we recovered from that awful ice storm we will recover from this. There will be scars on the land and scars on the people–both physically and mentally.

To this day I still get nervous if there’s any mention of ice in our forecast. And there are places I hike in LBL where downed trees from the ice storm remain. And now it will be so with tornado watches and warnings. They were always scary. Now they will be downright terrifying.

In time the trauma will pass. We will mourn our dead, rebuild as best we can, and prepare for the next storm.

May it be a long time coming.

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1, 2, 3, Caboose!

I sat with Grandpa on the concrete porch steps, looking across the street toward the train tracks. A single track snaked through our little town bordering the Cumberland River; close enough that we could hear the rumble of an approaching train from a mile off. When it was but a few blocks away we saw dark smoke belching up above the tree line. In another minute the first of three engines thundered into view from behind the old barbecue joint. The very ground vibrated from it. We sat in silence, awed by its roaring power, and watched it pass.

After it was gone I turned to Grandpa and said, “Grandpa, how big was that train?”

Grandpa said, “You mean how many cars? I don’t know but you should just count them next time.”

 “Grandpa, I can’t count that high.” Even though I was eight years old math had proved a struggle for me.

Grandpa just looked at me and smiled. There was no condemnation or surprise at my ignorance on his face. “Of course you can,” he said. “When the next train comes we’ll count them together.”

As it turned out another train didn’t come through for a couple of hours. By that time Grandpa had left, off to work on a bridge somewhere, or a tobacco field, or anywhere else he could find work. I had waited patiently for a while, but two hours is a long time for a young boy.

My attention turned to the wild ducklings we had rescued from the spring floods. They floated around in a foot tub and cheeped incessantly. I loved to pick them up and cuddle them against my face. We kept hoping the mother mallard would show up to claim them, so we left them near the water that spring. But she never came. The ducklings wouldn’t eat, so they died one by one.  One day the tub was empty.

Grandpa came back a few days later, with Grandma in tow. She was there to help Mom with her laundry. Mom had her hands full with three young children, the youngest a toddler. She appreciated Grandma’s strong hands.

Grandma pulled the old Maytag wringer washer out onto the back porch and ran an extension cord to it. Then she added the clothes and hot water.  When the clothes were clean she pulled the hose from the side of the machine and let the water run down our gravel driveway. This was the fun part for me. I would race ahead of the water and dam it up with rocks to watch it find its way around them and begin a new stream.

After the water was drained it was time to wring out the clothes. We were told to stand clear but my little brother was particularly hard-headed. He watched as shirts and underwear disappeared into one side of the wringer and emerged on the other. Apparently the temptation was just too great for him. As soon as Grandma’s back was turned he put his finger into the wringer.

What happened next was a lot of screaming and yelling and general mayhem. Grandma popped the release of the wringer and freed my brother’s arm, which to me looked as flat as cardboard. I thought for sure they would have to cut it off.  But six-year-olds are resilient. Within a day or two his arm was almost as good as new, just a little sore and bruised.

After the arm-wringing incident, my brother was shuffled off to lie down and I was told to go somewhere and play. I joined Grandpa on the porch where he sat rolling a cigarette from a tin of Prince Albert tobacco. After a few minutes, we heard the stout horn of an approaching train.

“Can we count?” I looked up at Grandpa hopefully. He was licking the length of the cigarette and twisting its ends.

“You start,” he said. “Go as high as you can.”

When the train roared into view I began with the diesel engines. One, two, three. Easy enough. I could count to 20 with no problem. But after that I always got confused.

“Twenty…twenty…, what comes next Grandpa?”

“You start over,” said Grandpa, “until you get to thirty. Twenty and one, twenty and two, twenty and three. You know?”

Fortunately the train was moving slowly through town. I picked up right after twenty with the “twenty and one” just like Grandpa said.

“Now just don’t say the ‘and’ part. Just twenty-one. Not twenty AND one.”

“So, I dropped the and, which meant I was counting! 21, 22, 23. After that I only had to remember that 30 came next, then 40. Near the end of the train I reached 100.

“What comes after 100, Grandpa?”

“You start over. It’s one hundred and one. Then one hundred and two, just like that.”

And I did! What a revelation. Counting wasn’t so hard after all.

And that’s how I learned to count to 100 and above. It’s also how I came to know that the average train length going through the tiny town of Kuttawa, Kentucky in 1962 was 115 cars, including the engines and caboose.

© Wade Kingston

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Kentucky’s Historic Ice Storm

For most of us the painful memories of January, 2009 are indelible. It was the worst weather catastrophe to hit our area (so far) in the 21st century. I won’t go into a long story here about what it was like. I’ll let my photos tell the story. Besides, most people in Western Kentucky have their own horror stories.

But I will just say this. It wasn’t just the inconvenience of not having power. Or not being able to charge a cell phone. Of having to boil water–or worse, not having any water at all.

It wasn’t just the fact that you had to drive to another county to get food, gasoline, or kerosene for heaters and lamps. It wasn’t the run on batteries, or putting up with relatives huddled on your couches. It wasn’t the fact that we had no power for 19 days (at least at our house), or had no hot showers.

It wasn’t even the canned food heated on a kerosene stove or an outdoor grill.  Or the expense of buying a generator only to watch it blow up after an hour.

No, it wasn’t any of that when you get right down to it.  It was this: People died. Animals died. And we lost–at one estimate–300,000 mature trees in Kentucky alone.

300,000 trees. It’s almost unbelievable. And yet, for those of us who will never, EVER  forget the eery sound of trees breaking and crashing in the night, it’s entirely believable.

I recall my first hike in Land Between the Lakes after the ice storm. It was March. All the hiking and biking trails were covered with fallen trees and limbs. You couldn’t go more than a few feet without encountering a large tree knocked over in its prime. Most of them never recovered, of course. To this day you can see evidence all around of the devastation that was the Ice Storm of 2009. May we never have another.

Kentucky's Historic Ice Storm Five Year Anniversary - We lost so many trees
Kentucky’s Historic Ice Storm Ten Year Anniversary – We lost so many trees

Continue reading “Kentucky’s Historic Ice Storm”

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Russell Kingston–From Farm Boy To Prisoner of War

Russell Kingston Day

The following was taken from a tape my father, Russell Kingston, made for me several years ago. He shares some of his experiences growing up, as well as his time as a prisoner of war in North Korea. I would like to point out a couple of things up front: One, these are not all of his P.O.W. stories.  Some are just too disturbing to include here. There are times I wish I hadn’t heard them myself. Two, Dad jumps around a lot in his telling. I could tell when listening to the tapes that he became emotional and had to switch back to the farm years, or something else more comforting. The words are his, just as he spoke them, with no changes.

I’m happy to add that, as of this writing, Dad is very much alive and doing well. –Wade Kingston

Young Russell Kingston with catfish

This is Russell Kingston.  I’m gonna tell a few things of my life history.  I was born 12/21/31 to John and Gola McKinney Kingston.  I have lived on a farm all of my life, my childhood, and when I became a teenager I decided I would go in the army, which I did.  I joined the army May 11, 1950, went to Ft. Knox, taken seven or eight or ten weeks training and I was sent home for 18 days delay in route.  I went to Chicago, transferred from that train to another and went to Seattle, Washington and stayed there for a day or a day and a half, caught a plane and went to Tokyo, Japan. I spent one afternoon, one night and part of one morning in Tokyo.  Caught a train and went to Sasebo (Nagasaki), Japan.  From Sasebo I caught a ship which they said was Japan’s second-best ship and when I woke up the next morning I was in Pusan, South Korea and when we got off the ship, they told us to take a look at our enemy, which there were prisoners lined up on the railroad as far as you could see—North Koreans, so they issued us more ammunition and told us to go to our outfits.  I asked them where was I going and they said “You are going to the First Cavalry, Eight Regiment, K Company,” and I said, “Where is it?” and they said “Somewhere between here and the 38th Parallel.” I said, “How will I get there?”  And this officer said, “Well, soldier you have two feet don’t you?”  I said, “Yes, sir.”  And he said, “Well, use them.” Continue reading “Russell Kingston–From Farm Boy To Prisoner of War”

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A Valentine for Poodle

A Valentine for Poodle, my sister.

I was almost six when Wilma Jean was born. She was the first baby I can remember. She didn’t cry much at first–just lay quietly between two pillows in the middle of the bed. Despite warnings from relatives not to bother her, I couldn’t stop sneaking into the bedroom. She was pink and pudgy, with a full head of red hair.  She stared upwards out of blue eyes and gurgled.  It was still very warm that September, so her legs and arms were bare. She waved her limbs about as a warm breeze rustled plastic patterned curtains. I was mesmerized. Continue reading “A Valentine for Poodle”

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Western Kentucky 1937 Flood

Western Kentucky 1937 Flood. More photos from towns in Western Kentucky. The devastating floods of the 1930’s.  Town photos include: Kuttawa and Eddyville. Paducah and Calvert City. Gilbertsville and Smithland, Kentucky. The floods prompted radical changes by TVA in the years that followed. New dams were constructed. Some towns were moved. Continue reading “Western Kentucky 1937 Flood”

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Two Towns Long Gone-Old Eddyville & Old Kuttawa

Two towns long gone – Old Eddyville and Old Kuttawa. They live on in these old black and white photos. These photos cause my parents to start their “I remember when” stories.  TVA and the Corps of Engineers created Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley by damming the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. But they did more than create–they also destroyed.

Old Kuttawa showing Red Front
Old Kuttawa showing Red Front store

Continue reading “Two Towns Long Gone-Old Eddyville & Old Kuttawa”