^^The noise pollution thing became a really big topic when the airport expanded, thus making room for UPS. Entire neighborhoods were leveled. I live directly across from St. Xavier H.S. and they fly very close to my house. I can see the whites of the pilots eyes. And they can see me flipping them the finger.
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I was involved with the airport expansion and the construction of the relocated Grade Lane. We designed the relocated roadway for the (then) Jefferson County Department of Public Works. Much of the road was built through a wooded swamp. In one stretch near the Cardinal Carryor building, the total pavement section (concrete surface, stone subgrade and shale fill due to poor substrate) is 6 feet or so.
The Highland Park neighborhood was one of the oldest neighborhoods in the south end - dating back to the late 1800's. We were able to locate original iron rod monuments that were set in the early 1900's.
Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
Clint EastwoodComment
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I grew up in Minors Lane Heights. I remember the talk of the airport taking the neighborhood in the mid 80s. It finally came to be around 2001 or so. It was a sad situation for me. I had already been out on my own for quite a few years but it really tore my Mom up. That's where her and Dad had bedded down to start a family. It's kind of a double edged sword for me because I work for UPS. It was good for my job but devastating for a lot of people I knew back there, particularly the elderly folks. Most got a sweet deal for leaving- fair market value for their home and $5000 moving expense. My parents house was well paid off so they put all of it down on a new home. Dad said to he'll with paying someone to move him so they pocketed the 5k and we moved them. I think they deserved at least that. Some folks stayed as long as they could and refused to go. Then imminent domain showed them the street and they got no where near the money for their homes as the ones who saw the writing on the wall and went at the first opportunity. I ride back there from time to time and it's a wonder they fit all those houses in there. At one time it looked like a wasteland. I have a lot of memories from that area and it will always be home to me. It was such simpler times back then. Nobody was in the big damn hurry like it is today. No internet. No social media. Good conversation and good friends and neighbors. My God I miss those days.Isaiah 5:20Comment
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I drove over the new Lincoln Bridge on Friday.....It is really niceComment
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Now, they're going to resurface the Kennedy LOL!!!!. Today, two southbound lanes were moved to the Lincoln. The lane over the Kennedy for 64 and 71 is still open. I'm using the southbound lanes going home. Seemed really quick and I also noticed the northbound traffic was moving at a better clip.Comment
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They're actually replacing the deck on the Kennedy. The last major construction on the Kennedy was a concrete overlay of sorts. My understanding is they will remove the old decking and replace it completely. This will last significantly longer than the previous overlays.
Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
Clint EastwoodComment
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Will, I don't know if you've seen this, but KET or WKPC did a documentary once, in the 1970s I think, when a former mayor (Charlie Farnsley, I think) rode around in a car and talked about how Louisville had changed, while the camera showed various parts of the city as he discussed them. It's pretty interesting if you're into things like that. The footage itself is now a period piece, showing a lot of things that are long gone or have changed greatly. There are also some really cool things to see in various old coffee-table type photography books about Louisville. You can probably find some of those at the public library or at Half Price Books.
I always get a chuckle out of seeing photos of the Watterson Expressway when it first opened, with one lane each way, and sidewalks.
Photos of Fourth Street are always interesting, and it's interesting to walk down Fourth Street and see what's left of what was once the main commercial and social strip of the entire city. Most of the great old theaters are long gone, but the Brown, Seelbach and Palace are still there. Most of what was there faded away after the suburban malls and movie theaters, and neighborhoods, were built. Back in the 1980s they built a glass structure, the Galleria, over part of Fourth Street and made it into a shopping center. It lingered on until the early 2000s, I think. Before that, Fourth Street had been made into the River City Mall, which also petered out.
Photos of Louisville during the 1937 flood, including up and down Fourth Street, are pretty amazing. There was some bad flooding in Frankfort in the late 1970s. The doctor's office where my grandmother worked was left filled with mud, ruining the furniture and equipment. I recall a photo of someone boating on Capitol Avenue just down from the capitol building. Getting that floodwall build in downtown Frankfort was a project that took a surprisingly long time. Some of the aftermath of the 1974 tornado in Louisville, Breckinridge County, etc. is wild, too.
One morning in the early 1980s, sewers throughout Old Louisville exploded, because that dog food plant that later made U of L's football stadium smell bad had dumped dangerous chemicals into the system. Anytime I see photos of the aftermath of that, I'm amazed that no one was killed. If it had happened much later in the day, there probably would've been a lot of casualties.
I'm not sure how many photos exist of these things, but there are a lot of places in town that are unrecognizable compared to when I knew them long ago. The Mall St. Matthews used to have bare concrete floors, and an anchor tenant that was a Walgreen's or something like that, with small shopping cards and turnstiles. There were two small rest rooms for the entire mall, and you got to them by climbing a staircase over the fountain, up to where the tiny office for mall management was. The mall also had an office building behind it (since demolished). There was an old hotel downtown, about ten stories tall, pretty derelict but with somewhat ornate architecture, that was demolished in the 1990s or thereabouts. U.S. 60 through Middletown was just about empty from the Kroger (in Middletown Square, where Ben Franklin is now) to the Snyder Freeway, with the exception of a nice furniture store (now a Peddler's Mall) and a motel (since demolished) at the I-265 interchange. A guy named Big Bubba sold barbeque off of a grill wagon at that motel. I can't remember the name of the motel or the furniture store now. I remember when the Snyder was being built; it was initially called the Jefferson Freeway, and should've retained that name, but when Gene Snyder decided to retire after young Pat Mulloy almost managed to beat in him in 1984 (despite Reagan's landslide) he convinced the right people in Congress to name that and the federal courthouse after him, even though he really never did anything at all to distinguish himself or deserve any honors like that. There were places on I-265 where it just ended with white and orange sawhorses, and for a long time, the signs on it gave distances in miles and kilometers. (A few of the metric signs still survive on the northeastern part of it.) U of L's campus, into the early 1990s, was incredibly dated, with a lot of small and old buildings. The airport consisted of the tiny, brick Lee Terminal, the inside of which was one of the most thoroughly typical 1950s/60s styled buildings I've ever seen. A lot of the airlines that I remember flying in and out of there through the 1980s, like Eastern, Ozark, Piedmont, and TWA, are long defunct. I might even have old Ozark and Piedmont pins or decks of cards stashed away someplace. (People used to smoke on flights back then...) Much of the area east of downtown, including a lot of what is now Waterfront Park, was a huge scrapyard. It was a terrible eyesore. There used to be a big floating nightclub on the Ohio River near the Belvedere. I've forgotten the name of it; it was lit up with garish, pastel neon lights. I think it was built on a couple of barges, and they were eventually swept away in high water or something. At Muhammad Ali Boulevard (then Walnut Street) and Armory, there was a strange looking building in founders Square, with glass walls, held up by cables or some other type of suspension system, and a moat around it. The building was demolished, maybe in the early 1990s, and Founders Square is now mostly a hangout for bums and winos. I think that strange building was a visitor's center, but it was in what is now a really impractical location. Maybe it made sense back then, as the now-shuttered Louisville Gardens still hosted conventions and sporting events at the time. I remember going to see Louisville's old CBA team play there. UK's Dirk Minniefield was with them for a while, and so was Tom Payne, the first black player at UK, in between long prison sentences for rape. They had some U of L players, too. I remember going to one game there when they played a team called the Ohio Mixers that featured Dwight Anderson, who was sort of the Jason Parker or Rashaad Carruth of his day: a really gifted player who blew a lot of potential because he couldn't stay out of trouble or away from drugs and didn't listen to his coach much or last long at UK. There are some old videos out there of Dwight Anderson in his playing days at UK and Southern Cal and some of the things he did even today are incredible to watch.
For years, there was a great comic in the Louisville Times on weekends called Captain Kentucky. The hero was a reporter who had gone into the sewers to investigate the explosions and happened upon a chemical that gave him super powers. He then made a superhero outfit with a fleur de lis on his chest and a Kentucky state flag as his cape. He had a secret hideout on top of the First National Bank tower (then the tallest building in the city) and flew around fighting crime, with plenty of subtle commentary on contemporary events in and out of the city. In the comic, Captain Kentucky interacted with all kinds of real life local people: Muhammad Ali, John Y. Brown Jr., Harvey Sloane, Barry Bingham, etc. In one set of episodes of those comics he went on a mission to rescue the hostages in Iran. In another, he fought Muhammad Ali in Freedom Hall. Man, were those fun and entertaining, and well drawn.
There's a story about Muhammad Ali throwing his gold medal into the Ohio River, after coming home from the Olympics to a still-segregated city. I don't know if it's true, or legend.
The bluff on the Indiana side of the river where legneds say a Welsh prince who came to America before Columbus supposedly lived with his followers.
That last one is well before my time...but, yeah, there are a lot of fun stories about this city, and memories, too.Comment
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Folks, this entire project is just about completed!! I've been driving south on the repaired Kennedy Bridge for several days. Nice. Seen lots of trucks hauling stuff off and crews sweeping things down. I've got my transponder ordered, and now I get to look forward to spending $500.00 on tolls every year.Comment
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Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
Clint EastwoodComment
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I drove across the new Lewis and Clark Bridge that connects Interstate 265 in Kentucky and Indiana. Pretty cool. It may not be well known, but there is a wide bicycle/pedestrian lane on the west side of it. Tolling does not begin until December 28, I think, so you have a week or so to check it (and the tunnels) out for free.Comment
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Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.
Clint EastwoodComment
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