612 N. Main
612 N. Main
Chuck Stinnett
612 N. Main welcomes Chuck Stinnett to the turret.
Chuck is one of the most fascinating people you'll ever meet! He's a man of many talents...historian, comedian, health enthusiast, Hall of Fame journalist, family man, walking baseball encyclopedia...but maybe above all else he's a true community servant.
He and Donna are Hendersonians through and through.
Get know Chuck Stinnett and you'll be a better person for it.
Here are some links to a few items we discussed:
Hey guys, welcome to six 12 North Maine. If you're interested in learning more about the Henderson Evansville Owensboro area, well, you're in the right place. This is where you hear the story of us and amazing stories. They are to sit back and relax while we welcome our special guests to the term. My guest today is an amazing person. Somebody who I've admired from afar for a long time, it was probably a decade before I actually met them. It was a one-way relationship, which sounds a little weird as I say that out loud, but I read Chuck Stinnett column almost every day, every day that he published. Anyway, he was the voice of Henderson and he, along with his wife and the power couple that are the Jenkins, they were the quintessential voice of Henderson through what I think is one of the best local papers I'd ever read. Chuck's done at thanks for being here with us on the podcast today and welcome to six 12 North main. It is my pleasure, Brent. I didn't meet Chuck until a few years later when he came into a leadership development course that I was, uh, very happy to take part in Henderson leadership initiative. I think we'll probably talk a little bit about that later, but he came in to give us hint the history of Henderson, Kentucky. Do you remember that? Uh, that course, Chuck, have you done that once or twice in your life?
Speaker 2:They've done it a number of times and I think it was in 2018. I got a phone call from the then HLI executive director, Danielle Crafton. And she said that, uh, judge Snyder who an HLI graduate at HLI fellow had raised the idea of always before I had done it as a lecture and a PowerPoint at great. And Brad Snyder had the idea that this be converted to a walking tour. And the only thing that disappointed me was that it wasn't my idea. I, I instantly loved the idea. Uh, the HLI board was a little skeptical and, and we had to have a dinner meeting about it. Cause they, they thought when I was doing it, the retreat was just fine, but we did it. Uh, we did it in 2018 and it rained on us. We did it in 2019 and it rained on us. We were going to do it in 2020 and we had a pandemic. And so I looked at the weather forecast for 2021, uh, mid April, April the 16th. I think it was. And the weather looked perfect. And I was so excited. We do about a two and a half mile walking tour of downtown Henderson and I was all jazzed for it. And the day before the tour, I was diagnosed with it attached retina and was told by my ophthalmologist that I was not going to be doing a walking tour on April the 16th. So we've yet to do the, I call it the magical history tour, uh, in downtown Henderson. And we've yet to do it in ideal condition. So there's always next year.
Speaker 1:Well, we're going to have to make an offering to Colonel Henderson or something to get past this bump because that is too good to miss Chuck's. We have this podcast, which is evolving as we speak. We have started the program as a format of two questions. One is who are you? And the second is what do you do to stay healthy? So we're going to start down that road and we may merge here and there because you are just too interesting to leave this alone. And we don't have enough time to get in all of your stories because sometime this week I'll have to go back to work, but Chuck's done it who are
Speaker 2:Well, um, I'm a writer, I'm a husband, I'm a father. Uh, I'm a nonprofit administrator of two organizations. I'm a community volunteer. I'm a community booster and I'm a proud hinder. Sonian uh, proud
Speaker 1:Nina indeed. In fact, I believe I remember that you and Donna are, uh, citizen citizens of the year recipient is that right?
Speaker 2:The chamber was nice enough to do that. We've been citizens here for 41 years this month, uh, April two as of April, 2021. And we really dug into this community. Uh, we've been involved in organizations. We love the community. We love downtown. We love the river walk. Uh, this is home to us and we're pleased and Henderson. What habits,
Speaker 1:How did you come to become a hinder Sonian?
Speaker 2:Well, I was working for a daily newspaper in Somerset, Kentucky, and I was dating the former Donna buckles. Donald was working for a daily newspaper in Glasgow, Kentucky. Neither paper would hire the other person since we were a couple. Uh, and then one, uh, March day I got a phone call March, 1980, got a phone call from my first college newspaper editor, Tom cuddle. He was the associate editor of the Gleaner, which had a great reputation as being a fine small daily newspaper. A lot of people from Western Kentucky university journalism program had passed through here. So it had a great reputation. And Tom called to ask whether Donna and I would like to work for the same newspaper. So we came up and we interviewed and we looked at the pros and cons and all the list was all pros and no con. So we said, well, um, how about this? Uh, let us give two weeks notice to our newspapers and uh, give us two weeks so we can get married and have a honeymoon, but we got married on two weeks. Notice it worked fine. It has stuck for 40 years. And we started working with Gleaner at Ryder photographers at the time the owner or the, I should say the publisher walked deer. He wasn't the owner yet, uh, had been on vacation. And when he got back in town, he told Tom, he said, I, I see you fill those two vacancies in the newsroom. Tom said, yes, sir. And Walt said, I noticed they have the same last name. Uh, are they brother and sister? And Tom said, no, they, they just gotten married. And Walt said, don't we have a nepotism here, which was pretty comical because this was the most inter married and, and husband and wife and father and son company that you could ever imagine. Uh, it it's, it would take a genealogy program to make all the connections, but there were lots of people who were, were related, uh, uh, three generations in some cases of, of family members working here anyway, Tom shrugged, his shoulders. And, uh, we remained with the Gleaner for another 35 plus years. Do you remember
Speaker 1:Your very first article?
Speaker 2:I remember my very first photo. It was covering the Henderson chamber of commerce, uh, annual dinner. And, uh, I was the photographer to shoot the picture of the, uh, the surprise and distinguished citizen of the year. And I got tipped off in advance as to who it was. And I got into a position and I shot a picture of, uh, Mr. Hayes, just as his wife was leaning over to kiss him. And that was my front page picture of the first day. And I think Donna, uh, the newly minted Donna Stennett, um, did an interview with[inaudible] D huddle
Speaker 1:D Huddleson man that takes him back. I haven't heard that name in a while. So journalism, how do you start the process of writing an article? I assume you enjoy research. Oh, I do. I love it. So, uh, what is your process? Is there a specific thing that you just start digging and wherever the threads lead, that's where you go?
Speaker 2:It really depends on the kind of article I'm working on, but, uh, just added convenience sake. I usually start at the beginning. If I'm doing a story about a person, I go back to the, the, the earliest REL relevant, uh, moment, uh, in, in my opinion, and just kind of take it from there. And interview subjects are usually pretty content to go, uh, in a chronological kind of kind of manner. And we just, uh, discover along the way. Um, just very recently, I got a phone call from, uh, the folks at the Gleaner and they had gotten a tip that the former Geneva, uh, United Methodist church building, uh, was going to be demolished and the next day, and they asked if I would be willing to do some kind of a feature story about it. So I started by going to the Geneva store and asking the ladies behind the counter, if they knew anything about the church. And they said, we don't know anything about that church. And there's nobody in here who knows anything about that church. So I called back to the newspaper and I said, well, I'm betting zero four zero right now. Uh, I don't know if this is going to pan out or not, but, uh, I ended up going to the library. I ended up going to the courthouse. Uh, I started, uh, asking people on the Geneva area. Who'd be a good person to talk to. I made some phone calls, uh, and ended up turning in a 2000 word story about the history of the Geneva Methodist church and a subsequent, uh, Baptist church and, um, managed to weave in the history of Methodism and in Henderson, uh, put in way too many hours and probably wrote more than was necessary, but it was a fun journey.
Speaker 1:That sounds amazing. I mean, I would have, if the ladies at the Geneva store don't though I'm done, you know, that's the end of the road for me. Do you have a favorite story that you've worked on or produced or something that you're exceptionally proud of or is it more of a, there's not a favorite child situation?
Speaker 2:Um, th there are stories I remember really fondly, um, maybe fond isn't the right word. Uh, two of the most powerful stories that I wrote, uh, made me cry while I was riding them. Uh, one of them had to do with the senseless death of, uh, of, uh, a really promising teenage boy who got hit in the head on collision by a drunk driver. And I got to, uh, subsequently later, like weeks later, uh, interviewed his, uh, his parents and his girlfriend and some of his classmates, he was a real popular, a kid chased rent that's who it is, healed out near Zion. And I remember interviewing his girlfriend's mother and the girlfriend, his mother made the comment that, that chase was the kind of boy that a mom wanted her, her daughter to, uh, to date. And so we both had tears in our eyes, as she said that. And then a day or so later, as I'm writing the story, I had tears streaming down my face. So it wasn't a fond story, but it was a powerful story. And I thought it was well re uh well-reported and, uh, and, uh, emotional and got to the heart of it. Um, a goofy story that I may be the only fi uh, the only fan of was a series of stories. I did some, I don't know, 15 or 20 years ago. I was at, uh, uh, the old planters coffee house and the then owner Virginia Morris, uh, had found in a box that she had bought at a yard sale, a scrapbook from the 1920s that she thought Donna would be interested in looking at, and she brought it to the table. And I said, let me see that. And what it was was, uh, a mother, uh, Mamie Bo, uh, Vogel, uh, had documented a car trip in 1926, where she took her 21 year old daughter, her teenage youngest daughter, her youngest daughter's brand, who they were taking back home to Iowa. I think that the friend had lived in Henderson across the street from the Volvo bottling plant once upon a time and probably had come down for a summertime visit. So 1926, Mamie Vogel and three girls get in their model T and start driving down the gravel and dirt road from Henderson to Chicago, and then to Iowa. And she had photos from this trip, uh, and she also, uh, documented it. She, she told the story and there were enough little misadventures along the way that I turned it into kind of a 1930 style, uh, uh, episodic cliffhanger where, uh, you know, some catastrophe or possible catastrophe, certainly bad news or something mysterious happened. And you had to read the next day to find out what happened. In one case, it was a knock at the door and a Western union telegram had arrived from Henderson. And that was, that was the cliffhanger. It was, it was just a fun project. Um, I can't say that I got a lot of feedback about it, but it was, uh, it was personally, uh, entertaining.
Speaker 1:So one thing that's been a theme throughout some of these podcasts are the changes that have occurred in media over time. I lament the loss of the newspaper. Let me just tell you, and you must feel that as well, profoundly, you know, uh, there was a time when you open the newspaper and that was not only an informative session, but it was also how you relax and you centered yourself and that sort of thing. Uh, I don't know if we're ever going to get that back now. It's social media and notifications. Uh, well, what do you think, are we ever going to see the newspaper return?
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know that we'll ever have the kind of atmosphere that, that I saw even in Henderson in the early 1980s, when I would show up at a, maybe a youth baseball league or something like that. And I'd have my, I did a lot of photography in those days, and I had my Nikon and with my, with the motor drive and I was very avid sports photographer. And at the time there was a commercial or a brand of Canon camera that you could get a motor dry for. So I show up with that motor drive and start shooting. And the kids on the, in the dugout would start yelling and an 81 and 81, which was the model of that camera. And they were excited if, if you got your picture in the paper and sometimes years would pass and I'd run, run across somebody and they'd say, Hey, you took a picture of me in the paper. Do you remember that? Well, I took thousands of pictures and hundreds of them appeared in the paper over several years. Uh, the odd thing was that if I could ask them to describe what they were doing at the time, I can remember if it appeared as a horizontal picture or a vertical picture. I often remember the shutter speed and the f-stop and can describe the lighting situations, because that's what I was concentrating on was the, the composition of the photo and the technical aspects of it. And whether it ended up being a horizontal or a vertical, uh, that none of that was very satisfying to them, but it was a big deal to them. Now, everybody has a camera in their pocket and their pictures appear, uh, you know, all over the place or live on social media for many people. Uh, their, their picture appears a lot. So the thrill of getting your picture in the newspaper, uh, it's not what it once was. You still get a reaction to every now and then. Um, I saw a picture of some friends who were with their, uh, their adopted baby in the park, uh, a few weeks ago on an early spring day. And, uh, I got a PDF of that front page that it appeared in and emailed it to a doctor, my friend, and he, he would, he was kind of tickled. He was surprised that someone came to take up, but a professional photographer showed up to take the picture. But yeah, it was kind of pleased that, that he and his wife ended up on the front page of the paper. It's just not quite what it once was. The circulation is foursome on a much smaller, and there's so many other ways for, uh, for images and for news or what w what passes for news, uh, at least texts words. Uh, they're, they're everywhere now. So, uh, it's, it's a different era. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it seems like the vetting process has gone. Right. You know, there's not the editor, uh, that's saying, eh, maybe you want to get one more source, or I'm not sure if this is really an accurate portrayal, or are we being objective about this? Are we just going to serve our own needs? Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, it it's in the back of the day, uh, every story would be read by at least one copy at occur. If not two, it would be read by the managing editor, uh, all with a critical eye, all suspicious of everything as it should be. Um, uh, I remember one time I'd handed in a story. I don't know what the, it doesn't matter what the nature of it was, but a copy editor asked me if I could be more specific about something and I didn't have that information. So I coined a phrase in the newsroom that I heard again, years later, uh, let's be vague for the sake of accuracy.
Speaker 1:I like it vague for the sake of accuracy. I'm going to write that one down
Speaker 2:Number in the summer of 1980. We got word that president Jimmy Carter would come to Henderson in July of 1980. And, uh, this was a deadline story written at night, all in the white house, get confirmation, got confirmation, uh, and come into the Gleaner in 1980 was the first time I'd ever used a computer before then. I always typed on a manual typewriter, uh, sometimes with, with, with proper paper. A lot of times I'd write on old pieces of newsprint, not use newsprint, but th th the enrolled that they will cut into a typing sheet, and you literally cut and paste, you would take scissors and you would take scotch tape, uh, and re reorder. Uh, some of the stories I handed in looked like they'd been through a tornado is I was trying to craft the story the way I want it. Well, anyway, I was riding on a poppy graphic computer. I only been doing it for a couple of months, and I don't know what I did, but all of a sudden the story disappeared and I still had my notes. But for some reason, I think I'd written a twelve-inch story, pretty short for me and do what I could, I could never get more than 10 inches out of the second version of that story. I don't know what, what got lost that didn't usually happen that way, but that was a vivid memory of trying to get back at 12 inches. Just couldn't quite do this. Couldn't get there.
Speaker 1:Do you remember what brand and model your typewriter was?
Speaker 2:Well, growing up, I used a Royal typewriter. My dad, it was an office gray typewriter. He was a writer of sorts, certainly a correspondent, uh, but, uh, he, he had a proper full-size typewriter. I taught myself to type with two fingers and a thumb and high school. Once I started working for the school newspaper, uh, and my parents saw the possibility that I might type professionally. Uh, they insisted I take a typing class kind of protests a little bit, cause I was doing okay with two fingers and thumb course. I'm glad that I did it. Uh, and in those days when you took it back in class, you would take a test for speed and accuracy. See how many words per minute you could type it with how many errors. And I think I was typing 65 words a minute with, with both hands and, uh, and that that's okay. Uh, and there'd be a few errors. I still am not a perfect hypothet for all of a year, but I got curious one time, how well I could do with two fingers and a thumb. And I took the piping test and I had 45 words a minute with one error. I felt a little bit dedicated.
Speaker 1:Well, uh, I I'll tell you that I'm old and grumpy enough that I think that every high school student should have to type, not print, but type a term paper on an Olivetti manual typewriter as I did and not use white
Speaker 2:Doubt. Awesome. I don't think I could do that. Uh,
Speaker 1:I did it one year. It was not fun. Uh, I will never forget that typewriter was my dad's. He was so proud of it and I will keep it forever. That's awesome. You mentioned baseball earlier. I want to turn our attention to that. You are a serious Cardinals fan. Well,
Speaker 2:I have been a serious Cardinals fan. I think it was in the spring of 1968 that I walked back through my dad's bedroom and I saw there was a publication laying on his bed and it was a celebration of St. Louis Cardinals, 1967 world championship. And up to that point, I'd paid no attention to baseball at all. Uh, I was a Kentucky Wildcat football and basketball fan, and two of my early heroes were Roger Bird who ended up moving to Henderson in not to Henderson. He married a hinder Sonian and, uh, and Sam ball. They were some early heroes. I got to beat both of them. Roger ended up being my insurance agent. Bam ended up being a friend. Um, but this put baseball on the map for may. So I thought, wow, this is my dad follows a good team. I think I'll start following. And I became a super fan in 1968. Uh, regrettably, the Cardinals lost in the seventh game of the world series for the Detroit tigers. Uh, but the great Bob Gibson had one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time. And he had an era of 1.1, two and six or seven shutouts in a row, just an astonishing team. And, uh, back in those days, uh, you saw one baseball game on TV a week, the NBC game of the week. Uh, and really it was a pretty glorious thing because you knew that you were, if you were a baseball fan, you were going to carve aside those three hours on a Saturday afternoon to watch baseball. You got to see every team, I'll all 20 teams, uh, in the, uh, in the two leagues. And, uh, you know, you pretty well knew the lineups of all the teams. And, and I knew the Baltimore Orioles lineup nearly as well as under the Kardos lineup and had a lot of fun with that. I followed baseball, really avidly. I read a lot of history. Dad, not dad was a baseball historian. We always would a trivia quizzes with one another and, and catch one another up. The big term paper that I did in seventh grade was on the history of baseball, heavily illustrated a lot, all the footnotes and everything like that. It was a two volume set. Uh, I got, uh, a writer from the 1940s and fifties who was famous at the time. His name was H Allen Smith and he collaborated with, uh, another fellow named Iris Smith, no relation. I was Smith collected baseball anecdotes, and H Allen Smith crafted them into humor. Uh, one of them was called Freeman on third. That was the one I I read. And re-read that book. And I used to boast that if you can name any famous baseball player from baseball's past, I can tell you an anecdote. And I did pretty well with that somewhere in my teenage years, I discovered there was another gender. And, uh, and I also discovered I got a driver's license and not a car. And, uh, so, uh, my interest started, uh, getting, uh, so you're lost your way with priorities a bit. Uh, I've still had a lot of great memories since then. Uh, my wife and I followed the 1982 cartilage, pretty avidly, mostly through, by watching WGN when the Cardinals would, would play the Cubs in the afternoons before Wrigley field had light. We follow that team very avidly and they beat Milwaukee for the world championship. Uh, I was in St. Louis for the world series in 1985 when they were up three games to one. And then at the Kansas city Royals, uh, won three straight games, including two of them in St. Louis, not the first time, the Cardinals would be up three games to one and would not win the world series. Pretty heartbreaking, same thing, something similar happened in 1987, uh, 2011, 2012, Carlos put together another world championship. That was a lot of fun. They've had a lot of great players. They've got a great one on may of two great ones on their team right now with yadi Molina, who I'm sure will go to the hall of fame and, uh, Adam Wainwright who had a really good outing fan just this past week. So, uh, I remember, uh, my wife, uh, uh, PBS has been replaying Ken burns, baseball, uh, series, great show. And I still remember enough that, you know, they'll show a picture from 1915 and I'll say, Oh, that's Christy Mathewson or a picture from 1909. Well that's Honus Wagner or, uh, uh, Walter Johnson. I recognize obviously Demasio and mantle and so forth, but I really made a study. Uh, my dad would tease me that I went all the way back to the 18 hundreds. He had no, no interest in the 18 hundreds, but the rules were different before, but, uh, from, uh, 1900 to 1970, uh, I had, uh, uh, a real journeyman's knowledge of baseball. Uh, I haven't followed it that closely since I still pull from my Cardinals. Uh, as of right now, I think they're eight and 10. They they've only won one series so far against, uh, Miami. I think it was so, uh, you know, we just picked up a great third baseman, I guess, the best third baseman game right now. And he's had last time I looked for homerun. Um, but, uh, I have other interests, uh, we've really enjoyed watching Ted lasso. Oh, absolutely. The last few months. So maybe instead of me tuning into a Cardinals game, well, it's no longer on Fox sports Midwest that that hurts. Um, but watch a lot of Ted lasso. I think we've finished eight. We've watched the first season, eight times, uh, Brad Snyder. Another one of your interviewees. Last time I knew he had watched the entire first season with his wife 14 times. I think it's 15. Now. I'm surprised it's not eight. It's a remarkable show. Uh, it just has a lot of heart at the very positive show is too bad, is only available on, on Apple TV. Uh, we happen to have Apple TV because my wife had bought a new eye book or a, the tablet iPad, iPad. Thank you. Uh, and so it just kind of fell in our lap and then we became aware of this thing called Atlassian. What is this? Well, next thing you know, we are going down the vortex of watching Ted Lasser.
Speaker 1:Didn't it hit at the right time in the world of partisan politics and COVID back, uh, co Colby vaccines. Uh, COVID in general, we have this show that it's okay to be positive and to care about people and to be, uh, you know, um, it's okay to have fun. So we just love the show. We share it with everybody we know. Yes. And, uh, constantly, constantly are quoting Ted lasso lines. Oh yeah. Oklahoma, Oklahoma. Uh, I'll be your Underhill anytime. Oh, that's my favorite. And then, you know, to, to quote my favorite player. No.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But possibly with an expert of it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, absolutely. That we love Ted lasso. I have to go back and ask you a couple more baseball questions, um, just quickly. Um, so I was a little surprised that they continue to have a ghost runner on second and the extra innings. Um, you like that rule, you don't like that rule.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm not a fan of that rule. I thought that was strictly a 20, 20 COVID rule to get games over with as quickly as possible. Um, I mean, who enjoys a 1989 game? That's a lot of baseball, but me that is baseball. I'm pretty traditional. I'm not a big fan of the, of the DH. I've always been a national league fan. Uh, and, and th the Cardinals have been fortunate enough again, through the years that they've had some pitchers who could hit well, uh, my dad and I used to Marvel going to games and seeing Bob Gibson and batting practice hitting left-handed and hitting the ball out of the park Gibson wouldn't have amazing athlete. We lost him last year. Of course, uh, uh, you know, he had a reputation for being a pretty snarly guy. Uh, even with his teammates, I've heard, it said of either Tim McCarver or Dow Maxville at one time, uh, between pitches. And one of them came trotting to the mound to talk with him. And he snarled at him and said, get out of here. The only thing you know about pitching is you can't hit it. So, um, I met Gibson briefly one time, and that was kind of
Speaker 1:This person has too, he was, yeah, he was not a warm and fuzzy guy. So is there a place in the hall of fame for the asterix players, Maguire Sosa, Pete Rose?
Speaker 2:You know, it's funny that, that you mentioned, uh, Maguire just by sheer luck. My dad was on a baseball trip, uh, the year the McGuire and social work we're pursuing, uh, Mariss record. And dad was going to be in St. Louis. I think it was going to be who's the after labor day in early September, and we managed to get tickets or tickets. So my wife daughter and I met dad were out at the old Busch stadium at the Stan Musial statue. Of course, that's how you do things. And our seats were on the very top row of the stadium ever sat there before so much so that one of the seats was strictly speaking in the aisle because there didn't need to be an Island anymore. So if they squeeze in another seat in there and we were there when McGuire hit a number 62, and the mayor's family was there and Sosa came trotting in from right field. And it was a big moment and pretty exciting. And, uh, you know, horse later learned pretty certainly that, uh, that, that McGuire was what hidden steroids performance enhancing drugs. He was juiced. He was juiced, uh, and it's a disappointment because McGuire was pretty likable kind of guy. And it, and it was a big season. I don't know if he or bond belongs in the hall of fame. I thought you were gonna ask me about Pete Rose. I, you know, I can almost forgive Rose Moore after all these years, what a great player. He, you know, he played his heart out. Uh, I'm not a red fan. Do not get me wrong. I, I didn't like the franchise. I like individual players. And back in the day, what players played players like Lee Mae and Tony Perez and Johnny bench, maybe the greatest catcher ever, uh, you know, they, they had terrific players. Uh, Rose was a, he was an asset to baseball. Uh, I think he's been punished for a long time. He was.
Speaker 1:So you just has a problem. And, you know, did he ever bet against himself that man is not capable of betting against himself? So I think he's paid his price. Now, the other guys, I don't know, maybe I can see an asterix room, at least tell the story of baseball. Maybe not celebrate them as much as here's what happened. You be the judge.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think at the hall of fame, you can tell the story about a player without inducting him into the hall of fame, uh, which, who are, might not be very, very happy with, but it was certainly part of the history of baseball, but that's,
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think he understands this place and I liked the guy I enjoyed watching him play. I was exciting. It was exciting time to see it. Hank Aaron is, is, was, and will always be my baseball hero. Not only for the amazing athletic ability, but for his sheer, uh, power to ignore all of the, uh, racial, uh, divisiveness or threats against his family, or at least show no sign shall no sign of it. Yeah. So he will always be number one for me. And if you listen to this podcast, you already know that. So we'll, we'll move on. But baseball, the way a guy who did over 600 home runs,
Speaker 2:Weighed maybe 175 pounds. And he, you know, he would not a big Maguire monster, right. I kind of a guy, you know, he w he was an eerie man who was just a fantastic hitter,
Speaker 1:Fantastic hitter could run in his early years. He was great. He will always be the gentlemen of baseball for me. So Chuck's in it. You are a historian, uh, extraordinary, you know, more about Henderson than I think of the rest of the city combined, you know, more about this house that we're in, uh, than I do for sure. We're in six, 12, we're in the turret on the third floor recording this. Tell me a story that I don't know about, uh, this house or something related to this house.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, I'm sure you know, the story of, uh, Augustus Owsley Stanley. He was an attorney who relocated to Henderson, uh, not unlike bill Sullivan years later, and, uh, set out to, uh, I think boost his law practice by getting into, into politics. And then he became a political figure. Uh, but, uh, I think it was about 1918. He was in one of the most famous gubernatorial, uh, uh, general election of all time. Uh, he and his public and opponent whose name escapes me. Uh, they, they toured the state going from fairground and fairground. And this was back in the days when a political stump speech, both, both people would be there. They would have been two hours, uh, hacking each other, being pretty vicious. Um, I think it was in Somerset on a hot August day that, uh, Augustus Owsley Stanley, uh, had had a bit too much bourbon whiskey the night before. And he was sitting on top of a wagon in front of a fairground in front of a big crowd of people. You know, this is before radio, before television. That was the most interesting thing that would happen all year was to hear these two gubernatorial candidates, uh, clawed each other, and families sitting there and listening to his opponent with his sun beating down on his bald head. And finally it just got to him, got up, went to the back of the wagon and he threw up in front of all these people. And of course there's a stunned silence in the crowd. Once he was able to compose himself, he went up to the podium and said, ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry that you had to see that. But when I hear my opponent speak, it just makes me sick to my stomach. Perfect.
Speaker 1:I would love to see that. Yes. Now he had some interesting relatives. Did he not?
Speaker 2:He did, uh, he had a grandson also named Augustus Owsley Stanley. And, uh, I discovered long before I knew about Henderson or before I ever saw this house, uh, in Tom Wolfe's electric Kool-Aid acid test. Uh, I read the story about LSD in pop culture in the 1960s, especially as it evolved, not Ken Casey and PC's friend of the grateful dead and when ISI and the grateful dead brought acid, uh, it was called Owsley acid because it was made by a young chemist named Augustus Owsley Stanley. The third, uh, Owsley acid was the gold standard of LSD in San Francisco in those days. Uh, he was, he's mentioned many times, uh, in electric Kool-Aid acid test. Uh, I later met a writer from Lexington named ed McClanahan who had a pretty good legacy himself. He was in the Bay area at that time. He knew Ken Keesey. He knew outlay and I got to meet him. And I brought up Alice Lake. And at the time Alice Lee was kind of a wreck Lou someplace in Australia. He'd kind of gone off the grid and just stepped away from it all. So, uh, some years later, uh, I am driving on North main street and I see what is unmistakably a brand new historical marker at six, 12 North main street. It had black plastic over it. I could say we're going to have an unveiling in a day or so, but I got to stop got out of my car and I peeked underneath the black plastic. And I saw that this was the home of Augustus outlets. Danlyn I went, Oh, my Lord is this Owsley's granddad's house.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Six degrees of separation here for Henderson and the grateful dead. I love it. That's fascinating. Well, we need to move on to the next phase. The next big question. I could talk to you about baseball and history and the Gleaner forever, but Chuck, I know you're all about wellness and keeping yourself fit as possible. What do you do to stay healthy? Well, uh,
Speaker 2:I came from a family that could put on weight pretty easily. Uh, my parents and my siblings, uh, battled weight. I battled weight. I was a fat kid when I was young, not until I started playing backyard baseball and playing basketball in the driveway, quite a lot that I finally slim up, but it still, it is still a challenge with me. I like to eat. I have a sweet tooth. So, uh, in high school I started jogging a little bit, uh, in college. Uh, I bicycled sambal ran campus when I went, went to the Western and a bowling green is a very hilly campus. So it was, uh, it was mountain climbing every day. I took a jogging class, uh, I think in about my junior year. And I started jogging pretty avidly. I did one road in K road race, uh, and then started taking, uh, soon as I came to the Gleaner, the YMC was located right across the street. So I immediately got a YMC membership. I've had the same locker for 40 years over there. Uh, and, uh, I played racquetball. I did robotics glasses. Uh, uh, a fellow started a mince fitness class, a couple of couple of nights a week, and then included a jogging component and the original universal gym machine, a single weight lifting machine. Uh, and I took that class and I probably did not have proper running shoes. I think I was basically wearing basketball shoes and it messed up my Achilles tendon. Uh, so at that was a problem and I had to give up jogging, uh, continued with, with other classes. Did, did aerobics quite a bit. Um, I've worked out at the Y at noon. I've worked out at the Y after working evening. I've worked at the Y six o'clock in the morning of gosh, 10 or 15 years ago. I was lifting weights, the weight machines in the Y and my friend, Kevin Frankie came in and he looked around and he didn't want to lift weights, but he said, did I want to play racketball? Well, I had a racketball racket. I played SEM in the, in the eighties. So I said, sure. So we started playing three days a week. And then my friend Jim crafted, I happen to mention casually to him that we were playing racketball. He had played Polish a lot and he asked, could he come play with us? So we started playing cutthroat three guys on the court that was new for us. And then I think I, uh, rented, I met Steve Waddell and mentioned racquetball to him. I think it was, I would have an elbow problems. He'd been a football coach. So I asked him if he had any advice. Well, next thing you know, Steve was showing up six o'clock in the morning. It ended up about eight of us who were actively playing racquetball three days a week, sometimes for as long as two hours, which is not just, was not just one-on-one. It was two on two typical. Typically, uh, we came the racquetball boy. We celebrated by having a Christmas potluck, uh, if the Y and invited some of our other friends from, from the Y. So I have a lot of history with the Y. Um, eventually the elbow pretty well gave out and I had to give up racquetball. That was a shame because it was, it was great exercise, but also a great social event. And I made two really great friends doing that. Um, I had a neighbor who wanted to get his wife active and going to the Y. And I said to support them, I would beat them at six, six o'clock in the morning, work out with them. Uh, and they ended up not, not doing it for terribly long, but then my watch started coming along. And then a few years ago we discovered the Les mills classes, their videos, the ones that we do, they come from New Zealand, Les mills, wasn't a New Zealand Olympian, kind of a legend that country. Uh, we, it, it's a fun class. It's very fast paced. Uh, there's core work. There's light weightlifting, there's pushups. There's crunches that you can do as a yoga day and so forth like that. Uh it's as an international, uh, cast of exercise leaders, most of them from New Zealand, they talk a little bit different than we do. Uh, so we kind of make fun of them. We get to know their personalities. We, we, we talk at them. Uh, they play, uh, pretty, uh, international style of music. Uh, so it it's fresh music, at least initially it was, uh, it's been a really great class. Uh, so is there still room for people to join in that sort of thing at the Y? Uh, there are, they have both, uh, what they call virtual classes, which are video as well as live classes. Uh, the live classes pre COVID we're, we're pretty busy, especially on the weekend. It was room full of people, uh, and it could be a heck of a workout. Some of those classes last for, for an hour. And if you get a good workout, you don't work with very heavy weights, but you do a lot of reps and very fast paced. And I break sweat every time, really love that. Uh, in addition, uh, years ago, when our, our daughter started going to kindergarten and our mornings were freed up back in those days, Don and I worked afternoons evenings at the planar, uh, after Rebecca had gone to kindergarten, Donna and I would go for about a two mile walk from our home down to the downtown, to the river and back. And we did that for many years, but lots of people would see us. And we came kind of locally noted, leaked among friends for being big walkers. And I've continued that, uh, if I don't walk a few miles on a day, I considered what a disappointment, uh, at the end of 2019, uh, somebody had mentioned that they had walked, uh, 2019 miles that year. So with the help of my Fitbit, I got online and I saw that I had just missed that by like 30 miles or something like that. I could so easily have written a walk 2019 miles in 2019. So I pledged online January 1st, 2020 that I intended to walk 2020 miles in 2020, uh, doing it on the Riverwalk, almost exclusively, uh, mostly doing the entire river walk, uh, which is about a five mile loop. Uh, I've determined that I needed to walk 12,050 steps averaged 12,050 steps a day to get to, uh, 2020 miles one year. Uh, and as it so happened the first week of November, uh, I achieved that, uh, I think in fitness, that setting goals is really helpful. I think having an exercise partner, whether it's racquetball boys, whether it's your spouse, whether it's your buddy, having somebody that you're accountable to that, you know, maybe on a day when you don't, you could roll over and not do your normal workout. Uh, you know, you, you just feel compelled that you need to do it. Uh, having a, an exercise buddy is, is a great thing to do, uh, something, uh, we're doing a podcast here, uh, when I'm walking by myself, which is most days these days, uh, I listen to podcasts. I have a whole collection of podcasts that I listen to, and I learned some things and I'm entertained. And, uh, I've made friends on the river walk, uh, people at Kenny and happy and his dog Darcy. And, uh, I've met a couple of Christie's, uh, uh, over the years, uh, Randy, uh, you know, people who were strangers and then they've become acquaintances, and then you learn their names and then you learn a little bit about them. Uh, you know, it, it makes for a little bit of a, of a community. So, uh, setting some goals, being determined, not to miss a day, possibly could, uh, to stay healthy, not be injured. Uh, now I'm not saying I have a size 32 waist to this day. I do not, but I certainly have remained, uh, more active than, uh, any of my other family members and have had a lot of fun doing it.
Speaker 1:Great advice. And I see you out there all the time. Uh, uh, I'm happy that you mentioned what you listened to as you walk along. Let's talk, I was going to ask you about that. Let's let's instead talk a little bit about the Riverwalk. I mean, what an amazing asset to Henderson, we have not only these wide streets, and maybe you can explain to us why we have wide streets, but we also have this amazing walkway that is as functional as it is. Beautiful. Uh, can you tell us how we came to have those,
Speaker 2:I guess this was 20 or 25 years ago? I should know. I think there's a marker in Parkfield that a note when the original Riverwalk open, it was developed by operation community pride, which began as an anti-litter group, and then it became just kind of community beautification group. And so a, a, a winding walk, uh, was, uh, made an Atkinson park from starting at Parkfield where the youth baseball fields are and, uh, winding along the Hill and ran a corner along the river, uh, through past the volleyball courts and park past the hospital up the Hill to 12th street. And there the original, uh, river walk ended, uh, eventually a sidewalk was built over to main street, so people could use the knife sidewalk on North main street to, to continue walking. And then, uh, eventually w we got an interesting city finished and got a federal grant, the help of Senator Mitch McConnell, who make improvements, the riverfront, uh, discipline transportation improvements. Uh, I think we ended up with seven or$8. And among the things they did was a extended the river walk through what had been some pretty rough riverfront property between 12th street and, and downtown, they cleaned up a lot of that property. They finally got beads to all of the property, uh, and they built, uh, about an eight foot wide asphalt sidewalk has decorative fences along much of it it's lighted at night. So even if you don't walk it, if you drive a merit drive, uh, at night, it's, it's just a beautiful scene. It incorporates terrible a number of Hills assemble, which could be a pretty good pool. If you're walking at a fast pace, I was such an enthusiast of river walk that while I was still at the Gleaner in the early 19 teens, uh, working with the GIS folks, the city, uh, I, and also using a, uh, kind of a pedometer. I created a map that showed that the, the distance of river walk, uh, ostensibly with the idea that there's somebody wanted to walk, let's say two miles on a flat surface. I would show them where they could do that, or if they wanted to walk nothing but Hills, I could show them where they would do that today. Those maps now are actually appear in a couple of places on the river walk. And, uh, I just, I really became an advocate for people taking advantage of the river walk. Uh, it's beautiful at sunset. It's beautiful at Dawn. You can get a pretty good aerobic workout. You can beat other people, uh, used to be the Don. And I played a little game where we thought it was a complete down on the river walk. When w when we saw other people, we saw somebody walking a dog, and we saw somebody with a baby care, kind of the, the milestones. Uh, it, the river walk is quite diverse. We see people of all ages, all genders, all races, all kinds of physical condition. Uh, I have reached a point in my life where, uh, middle-aged women pass me on the river walk. I used to believe I was the fastest Walker out there, but, uh, there, there are neuro ladies who passed me. So God bless him. Hey, leave me in the dust. Uh, the podcast, uh, helped pass the time. I used to have a collection, a podcast I listened to for the past year. I really do wrote it on just a single podcast called stuff. You should know. That is a more in a much more informal two guys, Josh and Chuck, who obviously are our buddies. They have a real comradery between them, and they just pick a subject, might be stuff you should know about zippers or stuff you should know about dirt. One of them was called stuff you should know about grass. And then paranthetically yes, grass, um, stuff you should know about a moment in history and someone else has done research, or they've done research, and it's not really scripted. I think maybe they have bullet point, uh, the golf on tangents. They're famous for their tangents. Uh, they start talking about something will be mentioned, and they'll say, well, that would make a great band name, or they'll start talking about M uh, getting reminded of, of a movie. So, you know, Andrew's long, uh, it's just entertaining. It's formative. It makes miles go by, don't have somebody to talk with. And it, uh, it really become a pressure in my life. So in addition to the physical benefits of just getting out and moving and walking and using these amazing assets that we have in Henderson, I find it improves my mental health as much as it does my physical health. You can't find a prettier sunset than walking down the river park, uh, and looking over the bridge and seeing these amazing colors pop out. Would you agree with, uh, I do. I'm usually not there at sunset, but I have many friends, uh, who are sunset enthusiast, and I'm not about I'll kick myself saying why didn't I drive down the Riverwalk or the riverfront, uh, and see that and witness that. But, uh, yeah, Henderson is a great place for us for spectacular. So, Hey guys, future brand here, we had a few audio technical difficulties there at the end of Chuck's interview. I didn't want to scrap the whole interview because there were just too much good stuff in there to throw away. So I reached out to Chuck and we're going to do an entire podcast just on HLI, which is Henderson leadership initiative. It's that portion that we were talking about when things just got a little bit inaudible. So Chuck, thank you again for doing a great job and being a part of the, the beginning of this journey that is six, 12 North main street. We appreciate you and Donna, and we can't wait to have you back. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:[inaudible].