Fourth of July is downtown Lexington’s best day

Lexingtonians hold this truth to be self-evident: There’s no better day to be downtown with family and friends than the Fourth of July.

From the starting gun of the Bluegrass 10,000 until the last flicker of fireworks over Rupp Arena, it’s our own special celebration of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It must be something in the community DNA. After all, Lexington was founded in June 1775, a year before American independence was formally declared. But those patriotic pioneers named their new town for Lexington, Mass., because they had just gotten word of the battle there that began the revolution against Britain.

This Independence Day began with light rain falling on the 3,632 registered entrants in the 32nd annual Bluegrass 10,000 as they lined up along Main Street waiting for the race to start. It was wet, but at least it was cool.

Some came to test their athleticism; others to socialize. Still others just seemed to enjoy an excuse to play in the rain. It was an eclectic bunch: doctors, lawyers, teachers, plumbers, politicians and salesmen. I also saw a Navy captain and a dance choreographer.

Jacob Korir, the Eastern Kentucky University track star and potential Olympian, won the race for the second-straight year.

But Korir probably didn’t have as much fun as Lin West, who crossed the finish line more than an hour later, hand-in-hand with his 5 ½ -year-old daughter, Callie.

”Last year, she rode in a stroller,“ West said. ”But this year, we finished.“

As the race and showers ended, people poured onto Vine Street. There they found all manner of food, from pulled pork to Greek spinach pie, and booths advocating causes and selling arts and crafts. On one corner, six members of the Bluegrass Dulcimer Club strummed away, while across the street the Dream Interpretation tent did a brisk business.

Cloudy skies kept temperatures in the mid-70s. A little less humidity and it would have been perfect.

The afternoon parade down Vine and Main streets was diversity in motion — and more than a little corny.

The governor and mayor rode in horse-drawn carriages; other elected officials and office-seekers rode in automobiles. Every club and activist group seemed to be represented, from the Sierra Club to Friends of Coal. Companies touted their wares and churches spread the Gospel. Ramsey’s Diner had my favorite gimmick: The workers on its float handed out ears of sweet corn.

As the parade broke up, people began moving to Rupp Arena’s Cox Street lot for Red, White and Boom, where Central Kentucky’s own John Michael Montgomery was to perform before a fireworks spectacular to put an exclamation point on the day.

A few blocks from all the hubbub, on Hampton Court, Joe Childers and Denise Smith had 100 or so friends over for their annual party.

”We moved into this house on July 3, 1996, and had our first party the next day,“ said Childers, a lawyer. ”A few friends brought bottles of Champagne, so we thought that would be a good thing to do every year.“

The highlight of the party is always a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence, which is reprinted on the Herald-Leader’s editorial page each July 4.

Noted Lexington author Ed McClanahan did the honors this year, carrying his folded newspaper to the first landing of the staircase in the old house’s expansive foyer. Everyone gathered around as Childers shushed noisy children upstairs.

”When in the course of human events …“ McClanahan began.

As he read aloud the Founding Fathers’ grievances against King George III and their determination to live and govern themselves as free men, all of the adults in the house stood quietly, Champagne glasses in hand. It was a time to reflect on that 232-year-old document that in many ways make us who we are.

”I’m really glad I was asked to read it,“ McClanahan said afterward. ”It made me really listen to the words. I didn’t know I liked it so much.“

Across Lexington, everyone said, ”Amen,“ whether they realized it or not.

Writer Ed McClanahan reads the Declaration of Independence, an annual tradition at the July 4th party given by Hampton Court residents Joe Childers and Denise Smith.   Photo/Tom Eblen

How we celebrated the 50th Independence Day

I’ll be at the patriotic concert tonight at Transylvania University and then back downtown bright and early tomorrow for other festivities celebrating America’s 232nd Independence Day. I hope to see you there.

There isn’t a better day to be in Lexington than the Fourth of July, from the starting gun of the Bluegrass 10,000 race to the last flicker of fireworks over Rupp Arena. Apparently, it has been that way for a long time.

I have a small collection of newspapers published in Lexington before the Civil War. Several years ago, when I bought a copy of the July 6, 1826, edition of the Kentucky Whig, I found this small but vivid account of Lexington’s celebration of the 50th Independence Day, two days earlier.

Those wet but happy Lexingtonians had no way of knowing it then, but elsewhere in America that day, two of the founding fathers died within hours of each other. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents, had over the years gone from being partners in liberty to bitter political enemies to frequent correspondents and grudging admirers of each other. On his death bed, Adams is supposed to have said, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

Danville strikes up the brass bands

The Excelsior Cornet Band from New York. Photos/Tom Eblen

Click here or on the photo above to see a slide show with sound.

DANVILLE - In high school, I was a band geek.

Since then, I’ve mostly been a newspaper and bicycle geek.

But once you’re in a high school band, especially a marching band, you never seem to get it out of your system.

Just ask the dozens of musicians in the 18 bands performing at the Great American Brass Band Festival this weekend. Not to mention the several thousand people here to listen to them.

“For me, the great thing about this festival is seeing all the younger players coming out, having a great time and producing a great sound,” said Jim Drake of Frankfort, who started playing trombone in fifth grade, switched to tuba in ninth grade and is still playing in two brass bands.

Danville always seems to look like a Norman Rockwell painting, but never more so than each June when the brass bands come to town. People from all over the country set up lawn chairs around one of three stages and listen to bands like the ones most American small towns had a century ago.

“I’ve heard this is our 10th year, but I’ve lost count,” said Dan Shields, who plays tenor sax in the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis.

“All of the people are here for the music,” he said. “It’s a language that people should learn and not forget, even if they don’t keep playing. It makes them a more educated listener.”

In addition to free public performances, the festival included a Chautauqua Tea on Thursday, a Brass History Conference on Friday and a big parade down Main Street on Saturday.

You can still catch some of the action Sunday, when the main stage at Centre College will have performances from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. The annual balloon race, postponed Friday because of bad weather, has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Stuart Powell Field outside Junction City.

The bands range from Ameriikan Poijat, a Midwestern band that plays Finnish-style, to the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers, a four-man combo from Lexington led by Dick Domek, a University of Kentucky music theory professor who plays a mean piano.

There are several military bands - the Hellcats from West Point, the U.S. Army Brass Quintet and the U.S. Air Force Reserve Band. Plus crowd favorites from an earlier era of military bands: the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., and Saxton’s Cornet Band from Kentucky, which use antique instruments to recreate Civil War-era music.

In honor of the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial, the history conference this year focused on music from his time. It included a re-enactment by the Olde Towne Brass of Huntsville, Ala., of a concert Lincoln and his Lexington-born wife, Mary Todd, attended. Saxton and Excelsior both played a popular tune that they noted, ironically, was one of Lincoln’s favorites: Dixie.

As a bicycle geek, I was fascinated by the 18 riders from the Ohio Wheelmen, who led the parade on big-wheel “bone shakers” and other two-wheeled relics.

“This is a unique parade,” said Del Nichols of Findlay, Ohio, the group’s leader. “There’s a higher class of people who come here because of the music.”

Back when I was a band geek at Lexington’s Lafayette High School in the mid-1970s, there were two musicians we all looked up to: Trumpeter Vincent DiMartino, who was then at UK and now teaches at Centre, and euphonium virtuoso Earle Louder, then a professor at Morehead State. They each performed solos in concert with us, and we were awed by how they could make their instruments come alive.

Now, DiMartino and Louder moonlight as the directors of the festival’s host band, the Advocate Brass Band of Danville, which is sponsored by the local newspaper. The band played Saturday evening at the festival’s Great American Picnic, and will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday.

If that wasn’t enough to make me love the Advocate Brass Band, there was this: Former director George Foreman spent years having the band explore the great heritage of newspaper music. Yes, newspaper music.

The most famous example is John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March, which was commissioned in 1889 for the U.S. Marine Band to play at an awards ceremony for the newspaper’s student essay contest. The march became one of Sousa’s most popular, and started a trend.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, newspapers across America commissioned marches. It was like the 19th century version of a TV marketing jingle. Foreman documented more than 300 newspaper marches, and under his direction the band recorded four CDs of them.

There’s even a Lexington Herald March, written in 1936 by Robert B. Griffith, a UK student who went on to direct the University of Louisville marching band. Click the arrow below to hear a short clip of the Lexington Herald March. Click here to find out how to buy the Advocate Brass Band’s CDs.

If you have time Sunday, drive over to Danville. It just might make a band geek out of you, even if you weren’t one in high school.

Photos, top to bottom: Mick Gould of the Ohio Wheelmen leads out the parade Saturday. Members of the Excelsior Cornet Band from Syracuse, N.Y., play on a wagon in the parade. Dick Domek of Lexington plays with the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers. Natalie Fieberg, 3, of Danville, watches Dan Shields of the Circle City Sidewalk Stompers Clown Band of Indianapolis run by during the parade. Photos/Tom Eblen

Tiny road kill

Dead cicadas have replaced live tent caterpillars below the tires of my bicycle. That’s good for baby horses — and my ringing ears.

Horsey Hundred attracts 1,700 cyclists

About 1,700 cyclists from across the eastern United States are attending the 31st annual Horsey Hundred bicycle ride Saturday and Sunday. The ride, sponsored by the Bluegrass Cycling Club and based at Georgetown College, offers rides of between 34 miles and 104 miles through Scott, Woodford, Fayette and Bourbon counties. Bethel Presbyterian Church, above, was a rest stop for some of the routes. Below, cyclists coast down a small hill on Falcon Wood Way. Photos/Tom Eblen

A reliable ride for 84 years

Cy Hanks made a stop Friday afternoon at The Country Store at Spears in southeast Fayette County. He parked his 1924 Ford Model T truck across the road.

Hanks said the truck was bought new in Nicholasville by two sisters who lived along Brannon Road. They owned it until 1947, using it to haul eggs and produce to market. Hanks bought the truck about 15 years ago to play with.

It looks great and runs well, despite little restoration work. Hanks found an old moonshine still and some stone jugs for the truck bed because he thought it added a nice touch. The truck gets about 24 miles to the gallon.

Lessons from Bourbon Boot Camp

I reported for duty at Bourbon Boot Camp earlier this week. As a native Kentuckian, it seemed like the patriotic thing to do.

More than 40 other volunteers and I met at a downtown Lexington bar with Harlen Wheatley, the master distiller at Buffalo Trace distillery in Frankfort.

Over the next hour and a half, the 39-year-old chemist lectured us on the finer points of Kentucky’s signature beverage. We took sips of various products and learned about his craft.

Clear whiskey acquires bourbon’s distinctive color and flavor after years of seeping in and out of a white oak barrel’s charred walls. Wheatley discussed how bourbon’s taste is affected by age, grain mixtures, distillation processes and even variations in barrel wood.

But did you know that about 3 percent of bourbon evaporates through the barrel each year during aging? Or that 98 percent of all bourbon is made in Kentucky, but none of it in Bourbon County?

At $12 a head, Bourbon Boot Camp sold out weeks in advance. It was fun, interesting and one of the smarter marketing stunts I’ve seen.

It also made me think: What could the rest of Kentucky learn from its bourbon industry?

In the 1960s, bourbon fell out of favor as public tastes changed. It was considered your father’s drink — or your grandfather’s. Sales and production plummeted, and some distillers let quality slide.

Things began changing in the mid-1980s. Kentucky distillers began making small premium batches and selling “single barrel” brands. Bill Samuels of Maker’s Mark knew he had a good product, and he set the industry standard for creatively marketing it. In the process, he attracted fans around the world.

The high-end bourbon business is now booming.

Buffalo Trace celebrates a milestone Wednesday when it will roll out the 6 millionth barrel it has produced since Prohibition’s repeal in 1933. Helping roll out that barrel will be retired warehouse supervisor Jimmy Johnson, 92, who helped roll out the previous five milestone barrels.

Harlen Wheatley of Buffalo Trace distillery leads bourbon camp Monday night at the Horse and Barrel Pub in Lexington. Photo/Tom Eblen

Buffalo Trace, which sits on a site where whiskey has been distilled since 1787, will make about 75,000 barrels of bourbon this year. Wheatley wishes he could make more.

“We’ve had to curtail some of the interest because there’s only so much product available,” he said, noting that it takes at least eight years for a batch of his bourbon to be ready for sale. “We can’t go into China, for instance, because we don’t have the juice.”

Kentucky’s bourbon production more than doubled from 1999 to 2006, and about 1 million barrels will be produced this year. But the industry isn’t just selling liquor, it’s selling an experience — a uniquely Kentucky experience.

In 1999, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association created the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, a marketing effort to encourage visitors to tour seven of the state’s nine distilleries. An eighth distillery will join the tour next year, said Eric Gregory, association president.

Distilleries expect to get a lot more tourist traffic when the Ryder Cup comes to Louisville in September, and even more when the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games come to Lexington in 2010.

When people think of Kentucky, they think of bourbon — along with horses, fried chicken and basketball.

Economic success is often about figuring out your unique assets or abilities, building a brand and marketing it well. It’s about creating something special that others want to have or experience.

What other things could Kentucky use to build a successful brand in the global marketplace? It’s worth thinking about — perhaps over a glass of you-know-what.

Belle loses race, but hopes to save rival Delta Queen

Belle of Louisville pilot Mike Fitzgerald, a retired captain of the boat, lines it up for the race’s start. At left in the background is the Belle of Cincinnati. At right, the Delta Queen. Photos/Tom Eblen

LOUISVILLE - When Mike Fitzgerald climbed up to the Belle of Louisville’s pilothouse for his 32nd Great Steamboat Race, he wanted two things - to beat the Delta Queen, and to see her survive to race again.

Fitzgerald knew he had a better chance of getting his first wish than his second.

The Belle had a 22-19 advantage over the Delta Queen in the annual race along the Ohio River, a highlight of Louisville’s Kentucky Derby Festival since 1963.

But after 40 years of exemptions from a federal safety law that prohibits boats with wooden superstructures from carrying passengers overnight, the Delta Queen seemed to have run out of luck.

Congress last week refused to grant another exemption. If Congress doesn’t change its mind by November, when the current exemption expires, the 82-year-old Delta Queen’s days of cruising up and down the Mississippi and Ohio rivers could be over.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere else you can see two national landmarks race and put on a show like this,” said Fitzgerald. “This is a great tradition.”

As it passes the downtown Louisville bridges, the Delta Queen starts gaining on the Belle of Louisville.

With a picture-perfect afternoon and full loads of passengers, the 94-year-old Belle and the Delta Queen lined up Wednesday to race along with the newer Belle of Cincinnati, which isn’t a true steamboat.

Louisville’s wharf has had steamboats since 1811, and six lines once plied the Ohio River from the city. Replaced by newer technology a century ago, they hang on in nostalgia, carrying passengers on pleasure cruises.

The steam calliopes on the Belle of Louisville and Delta Queen were playing while passengers boarded, but were almost drowned out by traffic from the interstate highway beside the wharf. Tractor-trailers, which long ago replaced the trains that had replaced the steamboats, sped by. Some even honked in honor of the floating anachronisms.

The Belle was the last one at the starting line below one of Louisville’s downtown bridges, but the fireman and engineer soon had its high-pressure steam turbines at full power. It rushed ahead of the other two boats. The swoosh, swoosh of the smokestack beat a steady rhythm on the roof, drowning out the partying passengers on the decks below.

Fitzgerald knew the best advantage he had was early speed. The Belle isn’t as powerful as the Delta Queen, but it’s smaller and quicker.

“We want to get a good start,” Fitzgerald said. “We take advantage of whatever we can.”

The Delta Queen, left, and Belle of Cincinnati, speed past the Belle of Louisville in the first leg of the race.

Originally named the Idlewilde, the Belle was built in 1914 to ferry passengers and freight from Memphis. It was renamed the Avalon and ran excursions from Louisville in the mid-1900s. It was headed for the scrap heap in 1962 when Jefferson County bought and restored it.

Fitzgerald grew up not far from the river and began working as a deckhand on the Belle the summer after he graduated from high school. He never left. By his 22nd birthday, Fitzgerald had put in enough time behind the wheel to earn his master’s license. He became captain at age 25 in 1983, becoming the youngest captain on the river, and held the job for 18 years before retiring.

So what does he do in retirement? He works as the boat’s carpenter, and he pilots whenever he can.

As the boats sped past downtown Louisville, Fitzgerald, Captain Mark Doty and the boat’s three other officers in the pilothouse started looking worried. The Delta Queen was steadily gaining on them. Then passing them. Then way out ahead of them.

“She’s doing as well as she can do,” Fitzgerald said out the pilothouse window as the Belle bucked a strong headwind to cruise at perhaps 10 mph. “Unfortunately, that boat’s doing a lot better.”

The Delta Queen was far ahead at the halfway point of the 14-mile race, an island where the boats were to turn around. But when Fitzgerald and Doty looked ahead, they saw a barge taking up their half of the river.

Faced with a perceived safety threat, the Belle’s officers followed an old steamboat racing tradition: They cheated.

“Everything’s fair in steamboat racing,” said retired pilot Charlie Decker, who came along for the ride.

So the Belle turned around, followed by the Belle of Cincinnati. The Delta Queen, far up the river, saw what was happening and made its turn. Suddenly, the tables were turned. But was it legal?

“It’s all up to the judges,” Fitzgerald said with a smile.

“It wasn’t the kind of race I wanted to run,” said Doty, the captain, “but we chose to do the safe thing and turn early.”

The safe thing is at the heart of the Delta Queen’s dilemma. Fans are urging Congress to grant another safety exemption. They’ve set up a Web site - www.savethedeltaqueen.com. And Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, a big steamboat fan, urged everyone to write their congressional representatives on the Delta Queen’s behalf.

The fear of those who oppose an exemption, though, is a tragic fire in the middle of the night in the middle of a river.

When he paid a visit to the pilothouse near the end of the race, Abramson wasn’t too optimistic. “Everybody I talk to says no,” he said. “But I’m still hopeful.”

Abramson said Derby week wouldn’t be the same without the steamboat race. And without the Delta Queen, there isn’t another true steamboat left that’s a fair match for the Belle.

“In 1985, when I ran for mayor, they asked why I was running, and I said so I could get two tickets to the steamboat race,” Abramson said. “It’s a nice piece of tradition.”

With the wind at its back, the Belle of Louisville maintained its lead, steaming back to downtown Louisville perhaps half a mile ahead of the Delta Queen. But would the judges accept that?

“That’s something we’ll have to take a look at,” said Col. Ray Midkiff of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the judge aboard the Belle.

But when all of the judges conferred later, they decided to give the victor’s trophy - a huge set of gold-painted elk antlers - to the Delta Queen.

Everyone seemed satisfied with the verdict. They thought the Delta Queen deserved a break. They just hope Congress will give it a break, too.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson, left, and visits the Belle’s roof and pilot house toward the end of the race. At right is pilot Mike Fitzgerald.

Above photo: After an early turn, the Belle steams home ahead, followed by the Belle of Cincinnati and the Delta Queen in back.

Precious bottles of bourbon they’ll never drink

It has to be one of Kentucky’s stranger traditions: Buy a couple of expensive bottles of bourbon you would never think of opening and stand in line all night so famous people can sign the labels.

That was the attraction that drew 1,000 people to Keeneland for this year’s limited edition Maker’s Mark bottle. More than an hour before dawn on Friday, the line to the autograph table finally started moving.

Most of those in line under the Keeneland grandstand had been there all night, through wind and rain. Some had come as early as Thursday morning for a choice spot. They carefully carried a precious bottle or two, juggling them amid folding chairs, blankets and coolers.

The destination was a long table where former University of Kentucky basketball Coach Joe B. Hall, Keeneland President Nick Nicholson and Maker’s Mark President Bill Samuels were chatting with fans and signing bottles as fast as they could.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Jerry Cummins of Cynthiana, who was there to have bottles signed for his brother and a friend.

“They’re not going to be around here next week,” Cummins said of Hall, Nicholson and Samuels. “And they’re getting old like me, so they won’t be around forever.”

Cummins, 58, was especially excited about seeing Hall, a fellow Harrison County native. He said his grandfather and Hall’s father once had adjoining farms, and he had done work for the Hall family.

This year’s blue bottle honored Hall on the 30th anniversary of his team’s 1978 NCAA championship. The limited edition of 18,000 bottles went on sale April 4.

“They were gone in Lexington in about 40 minutes,” said Maker’s Mark spokesman Alan Kirschenbaum. “Statewide, they were gone by the end of the day.”

The blue bottles sold for $45 to $47. All profits, when combined with matching funds, will raise $3 million for the Markey Cancer Foundation.

Fans could have only two bottles signed. Some who waited in line all night were serious collectors. Some planned to sell their bottles or give them to friends. Others were there because they — or someone they love — thought it would be fun. After all, this event combines everything Kentuckians love: basketball, bourbon and talking all night. Plus, it happens at Keeneland.

“I’m a big basketball fan,” said Trinity Schafstall, a Richwood native and UK graduate who drove up from her home in Nashville to wait in line with friends. “We listened to music and talked all night.”

Neil Tewes of Big Bone didn’t know what he would do with his bottles. “Probably put them in a display case and save them for the grandkids, if I ever have any,” he said.

Steve Head came with four relatives from Louisville and spent the night sitting in a folding chair watching DVDs and visiting. This was the fourth year in a row his family has made the trip. But Head didn’t have a bottle of his own to be signed. “I’m just here for the ride,” he said.

Cindi Lindsay of Lexington was on a more serious mission: Add two new bottles to her collection, which is so big she can’t remember how many she has. Lindsay has been coming to this event for 10 years, and she had been waiting in line since 4:30 p.m. Thursday.

Asked if she would ever consider opening one of her bottles, she shook her head and laughed. “They’re off limits.

Steve Head of Louisville watched DVDs to pass the time during his all-night wait.

Above photos: Former U.K. Coach Joe B. Hall signed a bottle for fellow Harrison County native Jerry Cummins. Keeneland President Nick Nicholson signed bottles beside Hall and Maker’s Mark President Bill Samuels. Cindi Lindsay of Lexington has been coming to the event for 10 years to add bottles to her collection. Photos/Tom Eblen