My Town Monday

Kentucky is becoming something of a haven for filmmakers and celebrities escaping Hollywood. It is rumored that country singer Kenny Rogers has a recording studio in our town. His large coach bus blocked our main street one day during some street event, and police asked the driver to move on. It had stopped to pick up crew members that were dining at our local Irish pub. Though I've seen the bus, I don't know where he has hidden the recording studio.

The above picture is from the back driveway of a celebrity of the 80s. (The front has a berm that obstructs the view.) I'll preserve her privacy, only saying that she was a cast member of both a sitcom and TV mini-series when I was a teen. I met her about a year ago when she stopped to meet "Roxie", our miniature horse who'd just been born.

She described horse life in Hollywood, even saying that she'd thought about selling her California home and relocating permanently to Kentucky. In the end, she kept her California home because she'd never be able to buy into the type of property she had there again, given rising housing prices. There, she said, horse owners had to carefully manage small properties, keeping several horses on as little as an acre. Here, you can see, pasture management will be less of an issue. She stated that she was going to refinish the farm house (to the right) but the most visible change is the barn which has been improved dramatically. She plans to breed Thoroughbreds.

Interestingly, the farm is one of the oldest properties in the area and I was told by our farrier who has many stories of our town, that the farm was once the country retreat of the Reynolds family of Reynolds Aluminum, who once owned much of our street.