Palooka from Paducah

Notes from Lynn:

In 1935, the title on the marquee of the downtown Columbia Theatre was "Palooka from Paducah," a comedy. Starring Buster Keaton, it drew unwanted attention to a place with a silly name, like Podunk, that evokes laughter from people slightly higher on the tree of sophistication. Paducah, unlike the mythical Podunk, was then a prosperous city with an abundance of brick buildings, a thriving downtown and a river-and-railroad hub that generated blue-collar jobs.

In 2009, we saw "Tale of Two Cities," a civic tragedy. It wasn't a movie.

That's my impression after an all-too-brief visit to this town of about 25,000 population in the far-west corner of Kentucky, an appendage known as the Jackson Purchase (don't ask). We liked the National Quilt Museum (see Notes from Margo, below). We took note of a brave attempt to establish an art colony in LowerTown. But we don't need a six-month study by a panel of urbanologists to see what is happening to Paducah and too many of the communities we've seen in our two months of our travel across America.

The old Paducah, a 194-year-old city at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, has a unique heritage of history, architecture, disaster, war, patriotism, business and, we are told, a sense that the inhabitants cherish their differences from the rest of western Kentucky. But the downtown district suffers from semi-terminal anemia. The Irwin S. Cobb Hotel, the city's only high-rise building, is now an apartment house. We saw boarded-up businesses, vacant parking lots and empty streets.

The new Paducah is identified by exits on Interstate Highway 24. We drove about four miles inland from the old town without seeing a single pedestrian. We found hodgepodges bunched around Exit 3 and Exit 4, a grotesque mishmash of unplanned development. It's a jungle of bright lights and traffic confusion. Auto emporiums and hardware depots. Twenty-two hotels and motels (clerks speak Hindi and Farsi.) Sixty-foot sign poles and billboards galore. Vast auto emporiums. Scores of fast-food stores and restaurants in chains.

It could be anywhere.

From Medford to Missoula, from Boone to Poughkeepsie, from just about any medium-sized city on our path, we found the same thing: A city's unique personality disappears in the franchise-o-rama of quick-buck investments by out-of-town corporations who wouldn't know the difference between Paducah and Madisonville -- and don't care. In the end, cities will be as depersonalized as the McDonald's service centers on the toll roads of the Midwest.

Margo recalls that 30 years ago, the citizens of Oroville, California, held a celebration when McDonald's opened a hamburger outlet; today the town is engulfed in chains. You would think that people would have learned, but in Astoria a woman exclaimed with pride that Wal-Mart is coming to town. Won't that hurt the local businesses? Not at all, she said. Happily.

Don't look for a rerun of "Palooka from Paducah" at the Columbia Theatre. The downtown movie house is boarded up.

In other notable municipal news:

As San Franciscans with a devout interest in earthquakes, we stopped in New Madrid in Missouri's southeast corner, or Boot-Heel, at the epicenter of the most powerful quake this side of Alaska. The three New Madrid earthquakes, in 1811 and 1812, are estimated at 8.3 on the Richter Scale. That's just a number. Try this: Church bells rang in Boston. Citizens in Charleston felt the earth move. And the little settlement on the Mississippi River was destroyed. Almost 200 years later, we arrived in New Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) and found the town's little museum was closed for the season.

On the road into Madisonville, Kentucky, a sign on the railroad bridge says, "It's the best town on earth." Our goal was dinner at The Dinky Diner, a restaurant recommended by a native son, Lucien Ruby, now a venture capitalist in San Francisco. More importantly, he and his lovely spouse, Caryl Welborn, are parents of Kenny's onetime basketball teammate, Cameron Ruby, now a senior guard at University High School.

Lucien told us about the etymology of Pennyrile, local name for this region of west Kentucky, as coming from a flower known elsewhere as Pennyroyal.

He didn't tell us that the Chevrolet dealership is kaput, that a consignment store is called Giggles and Grins, that a beauty shop is called Innovative Hair Design and that Wal-Mart has drained most of the businesses from downtown (see above). He didn't tell us that The Dinky Diner would be closed on Thanksgiving, but we got out our tape anyway and measured the restaurant's frontage at a truly dinky 10 feet.

Before leaving Madisonville, we stopped in front of the county courthouse to look at a monument extolling the men of the town who died in the fight for the Confederacy. We took a photo of the statue of a Confederate officer. He is mounted on a column above the poetry chiseled in the marble base. His hands are missing.

Lucien explained that the statue had been damaged by high school pranksters in the greatest town on earth. I took the rebel's handlessness as a meaningful symbol of something, but what?

Notes from Margo: Giving Thanks for Quilts

Moving worshipfully from one work of art to the next in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, I was feeling admiration, awe, excitement. But mostly I was feeling inadequate. Profoundly inadequate. Needlework-inadequate. I've been quilting most of my life, in my amateurish way. And I generally like the quilts I make, and the people around me act like they think the quilts are lovely. But shoot! The quilts in Paducah are made by people who actually know what they're doing.

One quilt's stitching is so fine and its pattern so intricate, it looks like an ornate Persian Rug (below). Most quilts have stitching so small and so closely sewn, it was hard to see individual stitches. I kept taking off my glasses to get really close to see the needlework, and then putting the specs back on, and backing away to see the whole designs: An elk at attention; floral arrangements; a bedroom with the curtains caught in a summer breeze; modern adaptations of traditional American block patterns in beige and white; or alternately, in brilliant primary colors. It was awe-inspiring, like finally seeing the Platonic ideals of quilts after having been around the real-world shadows of quilts my whole life. I don't know if I'll ever feel adequate to sew on a button again.

My favorites are the old-fashioned traditional-looking quilts, in gentle pastels and beige-like colors. One was patterned after stamped metal ceiling patterns from Victorian-era homes. Lynn was captivated by the more brightly colored works with imaginative, modernistic designs. One was called "Submersible," and it evoked the feel of looking up at the sun-dappled surface of water from below.

The day before, on Thanksgiving, we drove from Nashville to Paducah. It was a bit weird. We hadn't worried about Thanksgiving much, thinking that it's just one year that we won't be home cooking and welcoming family and friends to our table. But on Thanksgiving itself, it felt profoundly wrong to not be at home cooking, following the routine that we've had for more than 20 years – the bird in the oven all day while we make stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, fresh bread. And then there's cleaning the house, wrestling the extra table into the dining room, getting out the holiday plates and setting the table. It's a lot of work, and I didn't think I'd miss it.

But I did. I missed the warmth in the house from the cooking, and the rich smells. I missed Amy and Roy and their kids. I missed Kenny. I missed Wellyn and Rose, and wondering how late their surf session would make them this year. I missed wondering whether Aviv would make the drive from Los Angeles. I missed Paula and Stephanie and Jerry.

Lynn didn't complain. But I did.

When we got to the hotel in Paducah, I asked the clerk to suggest a place to eat. She said, in a pronounced Southern accent: "Go on up to the next exit on the freeway, and they have EVERYTHING you could EVER want: Burger King, McDonald's, Outback Steakhouse, Applebee's..." Her voice trailed off in admiration.

We decided to head the other direction, and try downtown. We figured in a sophisticated town with the National Quilt Museum, there should be a local restaurant open. We scoured the town, and didn't find anything open except the hospital. We headed back to the freeway, and had dinner at Applebee's. Strange.

Lesson learned. Next year, we'll be at home, and I'll be conscious of how lucky we are to be there.

We talked to Amy later. They had had a lovely Thanksgiving, but they also missed being together at our house. So next year, we'll set it right.

Mileage from Nashville, Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky: 136

From Paducah to Rogers, Arkansas: 414

Mileage so far: 8,768