Winchester School Among Worst Conditions

From WLKY:

WINCHESTER, Ky. -- When “People” magazine called Fannie Bush Elementary School Principal Angie Taylor about making a visit, Taylor wasn’t so sure.

After all, it meant the popular national magazine was going to say her school was housed in one of the six worst buildings in the United States.

Taylor told The Winchester Sun that she feels better about the interview now, though. She says the magazine is working on a story highlighting the difficulties of educating students in less-than-desirable conditions.

Fannie Bush Elementary was one of three schools in Clark County rated as what is known as a “category five,” or in the worst physical shape.

Statewide, 14 public schools were named to that list.

Fat Tuesday in Kentucky

Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras - and all the magickally attached psychic tentacles that come along with them - are mere mortal concepts, of course. You don't actually need to eat jambalaya and drink hurricanes and wear plastic beads and throw colorful coins and flash your breasts to strangers and listen to Luis Russell records to feel the New Orleans spirit (and it is, literally, a spirit).

But hey, it couldn't hurt, right?


Meanwhile, I'm having my very own New Orleans of the mind right here at Chez Jeffy's, and will mixing up some sort of heady concoction in my Pat O' Brien's hurricane glass. I'll probably fry up some cajun-style blackened grouper too. But really, that's just another day around here. My real homage to the Loa of Orleans Parish will come later, when I go downstairs to that locked room beside my wine cellar and I open the wooden doors of the you-know-what and light the something-something in honor of you-know-who.


If you're looking for something a little more conventional this day, however, there are plenty of good Mardi Gras festivities going on around our fair state, I hear tell.

The Dish in Lexington is having some sort of event called Dish'n Out Mardi Gras.

Tonight there's the annual Mardi Gras For Homeless Children, at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington. $55 per person, for a darn good cause, and Grand Marshaled by none other than Doug Pelfrey.

This page says that Infernal Dreams, a lively bunch of horror enthusiasts in Winchester, are having a Mardi Gras celebration, but I didn't see a mention of such on their website. Inquire.


Cafe Lou Lou sounds like a snappy place to be snackin'. According to their press release:

Every day of the year, Café Lou Lou intertwines the city of Louisville and the state of Louisiana. In case you’ve ever wondered, that’s also where the name “Lou Lou” derives. Their specialty is always bringing Cajun-style and Cajun-flavored cuisines here to the river city. And, when Louisiana’s, and arguably the entire nation’s, biggest party happens 3 states away… thanks to Café Lou Lou, you won’t even realize you’re not right on Bourbon Street!

Believe me, I'll realize the difference. Heh. But still, sounds like a swingin' time down at Lou Lou's. Furlongs and Joe's OK Bayou are also having Fat Tuesday festivities today.


But nothing says New Orleans like, well, New Orleans. Catclaw's own Terry is down in the heart of the quarter diggin' the scene live and firsthand right now as we speak, and I'm jealous, dammit. Last we heard from her, she's havin' a ball and will file a full report with the head office when she returns and recovers.

Harry Dean Stanton

Get down on your knees, Planet Earth, and thank Kentucky once again for bringing you raw talent at its best. Harry Dean Stanton, one of Hollywood's greatest maverick actors, and known for being a character offstage as well as on, is a Kentuckian.

Harry was born in Irvine in 1926, and graduated from the University of Kentucky in Lexington before moving on to a theatre and film career in California. His long film oeuvre includes How the West Was Won (1962), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), The Godfather Part II (1974), Alien (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Repo Man, (1984), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), and Inland Empire (2006), among others. Youngsters today probably know him best as Roman Grant, the elder in the Mormon-themed HBO show Big Love.

While he's still kickin', I'd love to do some research about Harry's Lexington years, and find out what clubs, bars and taverns he frequented - it's entirely possible that he and the great writer/pool hustler/drinkin' man Walter Tevis' paths may have crossed, either knowingly or unknowingly. Tevis was born in 1928, and spent a lot of time in both Irvine and Lexington. Since Winchester and Richmond lie directly between Irvine and Lexington (on Route 89 and Highway 25, respectively) it's a certainty that these cities were part of Harry's teenage stomping grounds as well.

Johnny Allman's Restaurant

Johnny Allman's Restaurant was located along the Kentucky River in Boonesboro, not far from the present location of Hall's Restaurant. From the 1940s to the 1970s, it was a immensely well-loved spot, with mobsters, businessmen, bikers and "river rats" side by side, enjoying the fine food and the fine view overlooking the river. Even Sweet Evening Breeze was a regular diner there (and sometimes caused a stir by choosing to use the men's restroom).

Beer Cheese was invented at Allman's Restaurant in the 1940s. There are many who would have you believe that Hall's invented it. They did not. Today Hall's offers a very similar, but not quite the same version of Beer Cheese in their restaurant. The "Hall's Snappy Spread" sold commercially in stores is a totally different formula and nothing like what you get in the actual restaurant.

Allman's went up in a gigantic fire in the 1970s. I'll never forget the day my family and I drove down there about 6pm for dinner, only to find nothing left but a charred skeleton of the building, still smoldering. Allman's was such an institution that it was unthinkable that they wouldn't rebuild. So everyone waited. And waited. But the new Allman's never came.

All that remains now are the memories of that Beer Cheese that can never be tasted again, and scraps of effluvia such as those pictured here. We are attempting to track down pictures of the restaurant in its heyday. Do you have photos of Allman's Restaurant? Please e-mail us if so!

Did I say their beer cheese could never be tasted again? Well, that's not exactly true. Bob Tabor of Winchester is keeping the original Allman's recipe alive with his River Rat Beer Cheese which started out available strictly in the central Kentucky area but now is branching out all over the state. When I first tasted it, I almost cried. It is indeed, as their slogan states, "Just Like Johnny's".

Grillo the Clown

The first reported sightings of this unique Kentucky eccentric were in the early 1990s, on the streets of towns like Winchester, Paris, and Cynthiana. Nowadays, however, Grillo is mainly found around the downtown/UK areas of Lexington, dressed in his usual outlandish regalia and masks. A self-styled performance artist, street musician, and panhandler, Grillo also has his own rent-a-clown business, but we'd be surprised if anyone has ever hired him.

There are many stories about Grillo's past but all are contradictory. Grillo himself tells radically different versions of his life story when asked. Although his only internet access comes from visits to the public library, he maintains a considerable web presence with numerous sites by and about him.

The stories of Grillo's misadventures and malfeasance are legendary and worthy of compilation in a tome of their own. My favorite Grillo story is the time he actually took up residence in the men's room of a University of Kentucky campus building, to the extent of actually bringing in chairs, lamps, books, and a TV set. Apparently this went on for many weeks, with only a few "Do not remove" signs taped to his stuff being sufficient to keep unquestioning janitors - or anyone else - from messing with his belongings. It was then that I knew Grillo really was a true performance artist!

Thinking I could harness his radioactive powers, I hired Grillo to perform his act at my Clowns in Love art exhibition in New York City and paid for his bus fare, but it was not to be: he showed up at the very end of the show in an altered state of consciousness, made a mess of the place with shaving cream pies for a few minutes, and then departed into the night with my 200 bucks and two bottles of vodka.

Oh well, that's show business.

A couple years back, my indie record label Creeps Records cut a deal to release Grillo's album Grillo Sings the Hits of the 90s (He wanted to call it Blubbering Buttsteaks of Eternal Torment). Despite the painfully low-fidelity nature of the recording we were given, and despite the fact that he's singing these songs acapella, the album is actually selling pretty well, so maybe this is a new career for the clown.

Then again, we also received a report from someone that one cassette recently purchased from Grillo on the street, supposedly of music performance by him, actually turned out to contain the audio portion of a TV broadcast of a 2003 Bengals-Chiefs game.

More about Grillo on page 99 of Weird Kentucky.

Building balanced on four Silos

Hey, look. It's a house up there. Balanced atop four huge silos. In Winchester, KY. Huh. Ain't that somethin'.