Hey everybody, and welcome to the season 31 premiere of Kentucky Life.

Now, over the course of this season, we're going to be celebrating a remarkable landmark, our nation's 250th birthday.

Our great state has played a key role in the history of our country, and we'll be visiting locations and telling stories about how the Commonwealth has helped to shape America.

It's a remarkable tale to tell, and we'll share it with you only as we can all this season, our 31st, right here on Kentucky Life.

[music playing] Hey folks, I'm your host Chip Polston.

It's good to see you again.

Our show this week has brought us to Locust Grove, a 55-acre National Historic Landmark nestled within the heart of Metro Louisville.

Now, the story of Locust Grove is the story of Louisville's beginning.

From the establishment of the city by General George Rogers Clark in the earliest days of the Revolutionary War, Locust Grove has been connected to it all.

Even to future US President Zachary Taylor, who lived next door, settled in 1792.

Locust Grove is now a museum dedicated to the stories of its beautiful landscape and all who have inhabited it.

It's a fascinating place we'll be exploring during our show.

But first, back before refrigerators ever existed, if you wanted to preserve meats, you had to salt and cure them.

That's where the tradition of Kentucky country ham started.

Now, commercial operations got involved around the 1900s, and at that point, the tradition of hand rubbing a spice blend on a ham and hanging it in a barn started to decline.

But two men in Lexington are aiming to keep the tradition alive, teaching a hundred or so folks every year how to do it.

It truly is an operation that requires, as the name says, All Hams on Deck.

Even before Kentucky was a state, settlers who came here from Virginia brought along the tradition of salt-curing hams.

It was the only way they had to preserve meat, especially pork.

But as with many traditions, industrialization took over, and the practice slowly began to disappear.

That's where Steven Clem and John McDonald IV come in.

Hand-cured ham was a tradition in their families, and they wanted to keep that alive.

That's why they started the All Hams on Deck program.

It's a chance for people to create their own ham that they can then age for a year or two.

It all kicks off in January.

Stephen says that's the one month out of the year when ham prices are usually at their lowest.

A hundred or so people gather at Clem's refrigerated meats in Lexington to start the process.

It begins with a simple mix of kosher salt, brown sugar, and potassium nitrate.

Everybody gets a ham and some gloves, and then the work begins.

We have a cure mixture from it.

And when he says you work the hams, you're basically taking that cure and rubbing it into the ham.

So, it's a manual labor job.

From there, we put them into our ham tubs and take them back to our cooler.

And then, we come back 10 days later and do the exact same process again.

Again, that's what we call our insurance step to make sure that it is fully cured and that cure gets down to the bone because it's pulling out moisture from the cure.

And then, we come back a month later, and that's when the pillowcase happens.

We put some brown paper sacks over and put them in a pillowcase, and then it finds a home in a barn or a garage or an attic or something like that.

It's gonna hang for at least a year or two.

So, I want that to be as safe as it can be from all any pests.

So, two years from now, when I unwrap this, how different is this gonna look?

Well, we are at probably 20 pounds right now.

And next year, it'll probably go down to about 16 pounds.

In two years, it'll probably be down about 13 or 14.

Oh, wow.

So, it'll continue to purge moisture through that whole time.

If everybody does what they do and we do it right, that ham that you're working on could very well be at your Christmas dinner.

So, put the extra effort into it, and we do it right, and you'll get to enjoy and brag about the finished product when you get done.

The way you finish the product depends on how long you age it.

After two years, like the ham Steven brought for us to try, you can cut away the skin and the fat cap and eat it right away.

So, this is two-year Kentucky ham.

That looks like a prosciutto.

It really does.

Gentlemen, see what we got.

That's really good.

It's very good.

It does really taste like a prosciutto.

Now, full disclosure, I am not a big ham fan, but I loved this.

It really did taste like prosciutto I'd had in Spain.

You can also eat the ham after just one year, but that requires more work, like what Kerri Richardson did after she participated in the All Hams on Deck program in 2023.

After a year, Carrie washed and soaked her ham in water for several hours to dry out some of the salt and then cooked it at a low temperature for several hours.

She and her family were very pleased with the results.

Tell me how you got into this.

How did you first become a ham fan?

[Laughs] I grew up in Kentucky.

That's how I became a ham fan.

I just have strong memories of eating it a lot when I was growing up.

My grandma would make big ham steaks for Christmas morning breakfast, you know, in the skillet on the stove, and my mom would fix it and leave some out for my dad, who worked late.

And more often than not, I would eat all of the ham before he got home.

For more than 100 years, there's been a meat sciences program at the University of Kentucky.

That's where we found Dr.

Gregg Rentfrow.

He says he sees young people in particular becoming more interested in foods enjoyed by past generations.

You need to learn your heritage.

You need to learn your food heritage as well.

You know, and I think, again, Kentucky country ham, they go hand in hand.

And I think we're getting into a generation that's wanting to learn more about where they come from, learn more about what their culture is here in the southeast, and learn more about what their culture is here in Kentucky.

And so, it is, on a few winter Saturday mornings, people come together to practice an art their ancestors had to do out of necessity.

It's a throwback to a time before modern conveniences, when feeding your family didn't mean jumping in your car to go to a local restaurant or store.

That's not another trip to the grocery store.

This is something that you work on year-round.

And back in the day, that's how you fed your family.

You had to find a way to cure your meat for the summertime to preserve it so you had something to eat, and I kind of look at it that way.

It's kind of like growing a vegetable garden.

A lot of people don't do that anymore.

They go to the farmers' market, or they go to the grocery store.

And this is something that I hope the generations pick up on.

If we don't make a concerted effort to remember and preserve those, they disappear.

I don't know what else we've already disappeared from our Kentucky history of foodways, but I know there are some things that are probably gone already.

So, even though I didn't grow up producing this, if I can be part of, you know, retelling the story, I wanna be able to do that.

There's a special place in Owen County nestled along Sawridge Creek that is sacred ground for Kentucky writers.

The publishing company Larkspur Press is a who's who of Kentucky poets and novelists, and the community of artists who produce these handmade books is bound by their love of art and traditional craftsmanship.

[music playing] When we visited Larkspur Press back in 1999, Gray Zeitz was doing exactly what he's still doing today, publishing the work of Kentucky writers with unparalleled care and craftsmanship.

Since 1974, Larkspur Press has built a legacy, one handmade book at a time.

[music playing] I do the design work, and I work directly with the author and, if there is going to be illustrations, directly with the artist.

The author sees everything I'm doing and can give me feedback on it, and things change sometimes, and that's good.

Two heads are better than one.

If two heads are better than one, then how about four heads?

Like so many other Larkspur publications, Bound to the Moon is a collective effort of the Larkspur community, a poet from Franklin County, an engraver from Baghdad, a marbled paper artist from Louisville, and a longtime printer from Monterey.

It's really a collaboration.

I mean, it's kind of neat that each of us had a part, and that part was important in and of itself.

But the combination of all of us working together, it made this cohesive whole beautiful thing.

The collaborative nature of the project starts with Gray.

Obviously, it's his press, and he invites people to be part of it.

And I think if any one person changes, the book changes.

So, if Joanne didn't do the engravings and somebody else did them, then that would be a slightly different story even though it's the same words.

So, this is a piece of end-grain This is what I do engraving on.

This particular species is boxwood, and the block itself is also toned in a dark color.

And I think one of the magical things that happens under the glass is that you're really engraving light.

And as you're engraving, you're, like, kind of letting in the light.

[music playing] And I walk in this light, passing under several-story oak and maple and beech and in and out of pawpaw groves where low leaves leach a pale green into the mix, and I become less bright and less dark.

That loss or sadness, I can look at it straight on.

[music playing] Mark Schimmoeller's parents inspired a passion for the natural world and a sense of adventure as he and his sisters grew up.

For more than 25 years, Mark and his wife, Jennifer, have lived off the grid in the hills of Franklin County.

They live in concert with their environment, using cedar wood from the land to build their home and collecting energy from the sun and water from the rain.

It's important for us to live this way because I think we get a lot of pleasure from being close to what supports us.

And supporting artists is something Larkspur Press has been doing for decades.

In fact, that's where Debbie Shannon got her start with marbling paper.

The first time I marbled paper was at Larkspur Press, and I was there for a book workshop.

I still have the book that I made there, and I was so proud of it.

And if you would see this, it is the ugliest sheet of marbled paper I've probably ever kept, but it's the most important one because that's where I got my passion for it.

What I love about marbled paper is that it's not entirely in your control.

You're printing on water, so that's not in your control how the water works.

A lot of things affect it, the weather, the humidity, and all that stuff.

And there's just something magical about it, because when you put the paper down, you really don't know until you pull the paper off what it's gonna look like.

[music playing] Inspired by the Luna moth and Mark's poem “The Problem with Big Wings,” Debbie's marbled paper design creates the perfect cover for the special edition of Bound to the Moon.

It's just one of the things that makes Larkspur's special editions so special.

If a regular edition is 400 copies, a special edition may be 32 or 42 copies.

For the special edition, I'll pick a paper from Japan, France, Germany, England, and usually, the paper for those 32 or 42 copies costs as much as the paper for those 400 copies.

[Laughs] So, the special edition is a little more expensive.

Aside from the paper in those beautiful covers, both editions are crafted with the same care, and they both include Joanne's incredible illustrations.

Looking for visual references within the poetry is always, like, one of the first things I do.

They say moss can grow on the back of a beetle.

They say that each tiny moss leaf is shaped to make a home for water.

And so, I had taken a beetle and put it in one of the illustrations.

And then, also, the idea of a firefly, I thought, was really cool.

And just these quiet living places [music playing] inside their environment, I think, were really important to his poetry and to his work.

[music playing] After the text and illustrations are printed, Larkspur books are hand-sewn.

Using a wooden frame, Gray's longtime assistant, Leslie Shane, continues this traditional practice.

And the handwork continues throughout the entire process of assembling, gluing, and binding the books.

It's fun to hand-sew books.

It's fun to set tight by hand.

There's no telling how many times these sheets of paper are touched in the whole process.

People talk about tobacco and how many times you touch it.

Well, we're right in there, I mean.

[Laughs] At Larkspur Press, it is as it's always been.

The passion is in the process, and the work is always about the words.

Gray Zeitz has created something that celebrates Kentucky writers, artists, and craftspeople.

It's bound by art, and it promises that these voices will touch generations to come.

[music playing] [music playing] [music playing] We're having a great time here today at Locust Grove.

This is Kaitlyn Tisdale.

She's the director of Mission here.

Kaitlyn, thanks so much for letting us be here today.

Of course, we're happy to have you.

So, the history of the house, tell us about when it was constructed and all of that.

Sure.

So, this building here, the main house here on the property, was constructed from 1792 to about 1795, taking three full years to build.

The builders of the home were likely enslaved craftspeople that were saved by William Cronn, but also were skilled craftsmen from downtown Louisville as well.

Oh, wow.

And from reading some of the displays that you have around here, a lot of these items, they didn't originate in Louisville.

A lot of this was brought in, correct?

Of course, yeah.

So, Louisville was still very small at this point in time, very much a growing frontier town.

So, much of the glass and hardware that you see here throughout the house was actually shipped from places like Pittsburgh and up in Philadelphia, so we're having a lot of river traffic coming into the River City.

And a lot of stories with the wallpaper.

Of course.

In here as well, right?

Tell me about that.

Yeah.

So, all the wallpaper that visitors can see here at Locust Grove are original patterns from the time period.

A great bonus feature of this house is upstairs.

In our great parlor, we have the original print that was here in the home.

It was discovered in the 1960s during Locust Grove's first restoration, and we were able to have it sent off and analyzed and recreated, so visitors can truly see what the Cronn's would have seen in their home.

And with General Clark living here, the house really does track the origins of Louisville in a lot of respects.

Is that right?

Oh, very much.

So, Locust Grove story is really the story of Louisville's beginnings.

So, we were built, you know, right after the birth of the city of Louisville.

And with the founder living here the last nine years of his life, Louisville story is really connected to us here at Locust Grove.

Some of the famous Americans that have been here, there have been a lot of presidents in this home.

Oh, yes, at least three that we know of.

So, the earliest presidential visit we had here at Locust Grove was by President Monroe in 1819 when he and General Andrew Jackson, another future president, were on their southern tour, and they visited us at Locust Grove.

They stay here for dinner, and they depart two days later.

Wow.

And then, for all the Hamilton fans out there, Aaron Burr, what was he doing here?

Aaron Burr was indeed a visitor.

Yeah.

So, he was here visiting.

He was a very big fan of General George Rogers Clark, and he knew of Clark's relationship to our property.

He was here on his missions to gain political favor across the country.

Wow.

Well, it really is a fantastic facility.

Thanks so much for letting us be here today, Kaitlyn.

We've enjoyed it.

We look forward to continuing to explore today.

Of course.

Happy to have you all.

Thanks.

[music playing] Vernon Lanes, located in the Butchertown neighborhood of Louisville, is the oldest bowling alley in Kentucky.

It's also the fourth-oldest bowling alley in the entire nation.

So, there's no surprise that the eight lanes within the walls of what was originally a Victorian-era house have such a great history behind them.

Constructed in the latter half of the 19th century, the building was once the home of a meatpacker, which makes sense as the area is known as Butchertown.

I recently got a chance to visit Vernon Lanes, and tried my luck.

But the real question, could I land an elusive strike?

Bowling goes way back, perhaps to the ancient Egyptians, if not even earlier in time.

But it was really popular in Europe and came over to the United States.

Probably 1820s, 1830s, it began some of the first references to it, but things became more popular with respect to formal organizations, leagues competitions.

Really, in the early 1900s that began to pick up speed.

It became much more popular, and then we had it being televised in the 1950s and 1960s.

This really opened up Americans' eyes to what the sport could offer.

Vernon Lanes is the oldest bowling alley in Kentucky.

The building was originally built as a very large house, a Victorian-era house, in 1876.

There was a men's social club that organized here in East Downtown, East Louisville, and that was the club that was called the Delmont Club.

They had men's social activities here, and I know for a fact that they had occasional women's groups and family occasions and picnics.

Three years after they moved in in 1902, they built a bowling alley, and the bowling alley was on the lower level, and upstairs was a gymnasium ballroom in 1918.

They sold it to the men's social club, the men's club of the St.

Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, which is the twin spires here in the Butchertown neighborhood that are literally visible about two and a half blocks away, just on the other side of what's now the expressway.

And so, the men's social club of the St.

Joseph's Roman Catholic Church bought the house in 1918.

What are they gonna name the men's social club?

Ah, St.

Joseph's Church that they were a part of is on George Washington Street.

And so, they named their club the Vernon Club for George Washington's plantation, Mount Vernon.

And that's how you get the Vernon Club here in 1918.

And they were here literally until 1915 just at the end of World War II.

In 1944, the men's club at St.

Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, the Vernon Club, they rebuilt the bowling alley.

And so, this is the present bowling alley that you see here.

I think at that time, bowling was relatively young, and so it was kind of starting to catch on, and I'm sure it was a nice perk to have for the, you know, people of the parish or, you know, for the local community to put that in and have it as an option for people for activities.

Another person bought the building and renovated it in 2006, and he ran the business up until when it closed in late 2015 or early 2016, in that range, and it basically sat vacant until we purchased the property in 2021, and then, you know, we renovated it for over a year and then opened in March of 2022.

With respect to bowling, Robert Putnam made the argument that there was really two dynamics going on.

One was bonding social capital, and that's where people often do things in leisure with others who are a lot like them, and so they can have a pretty deep relationship with them.

But there's also bridging social capital, which is where we hang out with people who aren't so much like us.

But we sort of reach across, and we find common ground, and we learn things, and we build trust.

Once we see that we can trust others in these shared activities we're doing together, we don't want to lose their trust.

So, we're reaching out of ourselves, seeing their perspective, trying not to lose their trust.

This leads to a back-and-forth of trustworthiness being developed.

And once you have this, this can be very powerful.

You can get generalized reciprocity processes where we're willing to do things for other people without an immediate payoff to ourselves.

It can be a great experience to be with other people and getting along with them, and it can be good for local communities.

And after seeing all of that, it was my turn to get in on the action.

Now, through the course of this show, I've played pickleball, Frisbee golf, and even a German street game called the Dainty.

But now, it was time for my biggest challenge, bowling.

Okay.

So, I admit it's been a few years since I've donned the old bowling uniform, but what better place to bust it all out than Kentucky's oldest bowling alley?

I was ready to lace up my shoes, find the right ball, and hit the lanes for what I was certain would be a near-perfect game.

[music playing] [Bowling Sound] So, okay, maybe I was a little out of practice.

But when the going gets tough, I am not one to give up.

[music playing] So, I tried again.

[Bowling Sound] And again, and again.

Determined to get at least one strike.

Until finally, [Bowling Sound] I did it.

I landed a strike on a lane in the oldest bowling alley in Kentucky.

I felt an amazing sense of pride watching those pins fall and couldn't help but think of all the bowlers that came before me who bowled on these very lanes.

Mine was just one strike, and what I'm sure has to be a sea of millions.

But with games that date back decades, it won't be my last.

[music playing] [music playing] We've had a great time here this week at Locust Grove in Louisville.

Now, we've just scratched the surface of the history of this remarkable site.

So much so that we'll be back later in our season with another episode from here.

Now, if you've enjoyed our show, be sure to like the Kentucky Life Facebook page or subscribe to the KET YouTube channel.

For more, we like to call Kentucky Life extras, where you'll have access to lots of other great videos.

Until next time.

I'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this, Kentucky Life.

[music playing] [music playing]