By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
In a previous column several years back, I wrote about the inspiration I gained from a sweet gesture my seventh-grade teacher at Grant’s Lick Elementary School, Mrs. Helen Gosney, made especially for me. Knowing I liked reading anything about Kentucky, on Mondays she thoughtfully brought her Sunday copy of the Courier-Journal/Louisville Times (CJ) for me to read when there was free time.
Joe Creason, shown on cover of book, The Best of Joe Creason
I tackled the sports pages of the CJ first, but when I finished with them, I made sure I read “Joe Creason’s Kentucky,” a column. It was easily read material and I loved his subject matter, mostly snippets or anecdotes about ordinary Kentuckians and the column had a light, if not hilarious, tone. Creason had a large and beloved following around the state, not only because people read his words, but because he traveled all around Kentucky and met “real” people to share their stories; he was known as the state’s “goodwill ambassador.”
When I think of writers from the past to emulate, Joe Creason is certainly one of them. It wasn’t only for his style, but also for his obvious love of the state of Kentucky. On my bucket list would have been to sit down with him over a cup of coffee. Sadly, that won’t happen. He died while playing tennis at a park in Louisville now named after him. I can imagine what it would have been like, though, to have had a conversation with him.
Fortunately, he left behind a couple of books he put together that bring pleasant memories. They were Joe Creason’s Kentucky (1972) and Crossroads and Coffee Trees: A Legacy of Joe Creason (1975), and in 1991, William Creason, his son, published The Best of Joe Creason. And though I’ve not listened to it, a vinyl record was released in 1976 called Joe Creason Spins Kentucky Yarns.
I grin often as I look at some selections from his columns that are in the books. Here are a few that I have paraphrased.
Creason wrote of a Presbyterian minister who dealt with a Lexington car salesman. Trying to gain leverage, the minister claimed he was “just a poor Presbyterian preacher,” to which the salesman replied, “I know. I’ve heard you preach.”
Joe Creason’s Kentucky book cover
In Greensburg, a little boy was getting tired of helping his grandfather dig potatoes. “Grandpa,” the child asked, “what caused you to bury these things in the first place?”
A story from T.C. Demon, who Creason noted ran the Beaumont Inn, in Harrodsburg, told of a perennial college student who had already “hung around for eight years, sipping at the fountain of knowledge.” Someone asked the student’s father what his son was planning to be after graduation. Sadly, he answered, “I guess he’s gonna be an old man!”
Then there was the teacher in Ghent, in Carroll County, who corrected a first-graders grammar. The child blurted out “I ain’t got no pencil.” The teacher responded, “No, dear. I have no pencil, you have no pencil, he has no pencil.” That brought a quick and frustrated reply from the child: “Then who in hell has got all them pencils?”
And regarding political elections, Kentucky’s history of vote buying long ago has left a bit of a stain on our cultural history. Creason shared that a defeated candidate bemoaned the fact that the problem had diminished, saying he “longed for the good old days.” Asked what the candidate meant, he responded: “I mean the good old days when you could buy a vote and it stayed bought.”
A racehorse, Creason explained, lost a race it was supposed to win easily. The horse’s trainer yelled at the jockey, wanting to know why he didn’t go to the front. And the jockey’s answer? “Because I wanted to stay with the horse!”
Steve’s step-granddaughter, Lily Kourdeltchouk, standing at the entrance of Joe Creason Park. (Picture courtesy of Chelsea Zoeller)
Here’s a partial summary of Creason’s life highlights:
• born in Benton, Kentucky, on June 10, 1919. He called it “the only town in Kentucky where I was born.”
• after graduating from UK in 1940, became editor of newspapers in Benton and Murray
• began writing for CJ in 1941, staying there until his death
• started “Joe Creason’s Kentucky” column in CJ in 1963
• co-wrote acclaimed “The Civil War in Kentucky,” a CJ newspaper supplement published in 1960
• lead in the movement to make the Kentucky coffeetree the official state tree, though it was later changed to the tulip poplar
• served as president of the UK Alumni Association
• in his honor, the UK School of Journalism established the “Joe Creason Lecture Series” in 1977
• died of a heart attack in 1974 while playing tennis at what is now called Joe Creason Park and is buried in the Bath County community of Bethel, the homeplace of his wife, Shella Robertson Creason
Old-timers, what are your remembrances of Joe Creason? Share yours by emailing me at sflairty2001@yahoo.com.
Sources: Joe Creason’s Kentucky (Courier Journal/Louisville Times); Crossroads and Coffee Trees (CJ/LT); The Best of Joe Creason (Butler Books); HMdb.org; ExplorekyHistory.ky.gov; Wikipedia; cidev.uky.edu; Kentuckytourism.com; parkrun.us; columbiamagazine.com.
