Lincoln Bicentennial      

Posted on Mon, Feb. 11, 2008

Hodgenville dolled up, but Lincoln's not talk of town

By Andy Mead

AMEAD@HERALD-LEADER.COM

HODGENVILLE --

At Ruthie's Lincoln Freeze on South Lincoln Boulevard, where a "Lincoln Special" is a cheeseburger with everything, a group of men are sitting around the largest table, under a cardboard likeness of Abraham Lincoln that dangles from the ceiling.

A lot of attention is about to be focused on their town because of events leading up to the bicentennial of the 16th president's birth.

There has been a $3.5 million reconstruction of the town square, to better set off the bronze statue of Lincoln that has sat there since the centennial in 1909. (It will be joined this year by a statue of Abe as a boy, with a fishing pole and his dog, Honey.)

Trash has been picked up. Sidewalks have been repaired, and drab buildings have gotten brick facades.

On Tuesday, Lincoln's 199th birthday, 5,000 to 10,000 are expected at the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site for a program that includes first lady Laura Bush and what apparently will be LaRue County's first Jumbotron.

The number of people who visit the birthplace -- usually a quarter-million a year -- is expected to swell, with a million expected over the two-year bicentennial observance that's starting now. The annual Lincoln Days celebration this September is expected to be a big draw.

The discussions around the table at Ruthie's are not, however, Lincoln-centric: High gas prices. High fertilizer prices. High feed costs. University of Kentucky basketball.

A visitor asks, is there much discussion of Lincoln?

"I don't think so, really," says Frank Buchanon, who recently moved back to LaRue County after several decades away.

But turn around and there's Carolyn Martinette, who has come into the restaurant to talk about the unlikeliest of Lincoln souvenirs -- the rail splitter's driver's license. Like any other license, it has his photo, his signature, and his vital statistics (height: 6'4"; eyes: hazel; weight: 180).

Yes, she knows that Abe never had a license, and never drove anything with more horsepower than a horse-drawn buggy.

But she got the idea from her job at the driver's license office, and from a trip to Graceland, where an Elvis Presley driver's license is a steady seller.

She describes the license as whimsical, as well as educational (each has one of eight "Did you know?" Lincoln facts on the back).

Her primary goal, she says, is to provide an interesting souvenir to mark the Lincoln bicentennial. But, she adds, "I would like to make some money off of it."

For the photo and stats, she consulted Carl Howell Jr., who knows as much about Lincoln as anyone in Hodgenville.

It fact, it is difficult to imagine how different Howell's life would have been if he had not been born in the same town as Abraham Lincoln.

The forces that drew him to the 16th president were set in 1928, when his grandfather built the Nancy Lincoln Inn just a few dozen yards from the memorial that marks Lincoln's birthplace.

Howell grew up around the inn. Now 65 and a lawyer, he owns an extensive collection of Lincoln memorabilia, including what he says might be the largest collection of Lincoln-related postcards anywhere. He frequently gives talks on Lincoln.

Now he is watching happily as others rise to his level of enthusiasm.

There are businesses and streets named for Lincoln, but Hodgenville (population 3,000, mostly Democrats) has never reached its full Lincoln potential, he said.

Tommy Turner, the long-time LaRue County judge-executive, hopes the bicentennial is good for Hodgenville and other places that have Lincoln connections.

"We want it to be something that will renew the Lincoln heritage in people's hearts," he said.

No one will say it officially, but there has to be some disappointment that the scheduled speaker at Tuesday's big event will be Laura Bush, and not her husband. The president had been invited, and it had seemed like the kind of adoring-applause, identify-with-a-great-Republican event he wouldn't be able to pass up.

Besides, Hodgenville was due for a presidential visit. There have been five, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt at the centennial celebration in 1909. But the last one was Dwight Eisenhower, and that was a half century ago.

(Spiro Agnew, who was Richard Nixon's disgraced first vice president, lived here during World War II, Turner said. But that was before he was in office, and no one brags about him anyway.)

But there's still hope for a visit by a sixth president Feb. 12, 2009, when the big bicentennial celebration will be held.

Without a crystal ball, Turner said, he can't know whether that will be President Clinton, President McCain, President Obama or President Someone Else.

"Right now, any of the groups I have any contact with, I'm inviting them all," he said.

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