By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune contributor
I was saddened to hear about the recent fire that destroyed a Northern Kentucky landmark. The Rabbit Hash General Store, in Boone County, was a small locale that brought people together in a big way—and all the way back to 1831, according to the Rabbit Hash Historical Society.
The Rabbit Hash experience as a special community forum reminded me of a version I had as a youth. While growing up in Claryville, in Campbell County, Schack’s General Store was definitely a place to gather, to buy a few items needed and also unneeded, and get the latest news. One of my brother Mike and I’s family chores was to take Mom’s grocery list to Schack’s and fill it while Dad and she were at work. We often scraped up enough coins, too, to buy a Zero candy bar, a pack of baseball cards, or maybe even a pack of BBs for our air rifle.
The store was owned by Harold Schack and his aging father, Albert, two kindly men. I remember boarding the school bus with a dozen or so other kids there, and one year we met a bus at Schack’s on a Saturday night to go skating at RECA Roller Rink, in Alexandria.
There were often hangers-on in the back part of the store near the coal stove, close to where the bologna and cheese were sliced. World problems were solved, tobacco crop conversations took place, and gossip was heard. The store took on a real personhood in this small-town community, and the fact that I’m describing it in detail some 40 years later bears witness that Schack’s General Store left me with an indelible imprint.
I can only imagine the sadness at Rabbit Hash, which was noted throughout the state—and both a local spot and a destination trip for out-of-towners.
Recently, Terrie Markesbery, the proprieter at the Rabbit Hash store, blogged on the GoFundMe site set up to raise money for a rebuild: “The bell that rung every time someone opened the door sounds in the forefront of my mind. It reminds me of how many people are out there feeling a similar loss and sadness. It reminds me of how many lives the old store touched and how many people experienced the feeling of ‘coming home’ to Rabbit Hash.”
Debbie Kremer is a Ft. Mitchell travel writer specializing in the Bluegrass state. She knows small dots on Kentucky maps quite well.
“It is amazing the feelings this fire has brought up in so many. It feels like a community member has died,” she said.
Though I’d not actually been in the Rabbit Hash General Store before, I had driven by it several times and read Callie Clare’s book, Potions & Notions: The Legacy of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky (The Merlot Group, 2011). It’s obvious that the aura of this place near the Ohio River has settled into the minds of many. Don’t be surprised to see the place be rebuilt and come back with a flourish.
Here is the review of Clare’s book I did for Kentucky Monthly:
“Wherever I go, I am always seen as the girl from Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. I don’t have a problem with this.”
So Callie Clare begins Potions & Notions: The Legacy of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, a book adapted from her MA thesis at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University in 2007. And as readers will likely attest, Clare actually embraces the idea of being “the girl from Rabbit Hash.”
The hamlet of Rabbit Hash “is officially only a three and a half acre plot of land along the Ohio River, just across from Rising Sun, Indiana and thirty miles downriver from Cincinnati, Ohio in rural Boone County, Kentucky,” explains Clare. The main thoroughfare, Lower River Road, “is one lane so when two cars happen to meet, there’s a standoff until one of them pulls to the side.”
Oh, but the charm the place engenders. The image of the Rabbit Hash General Store’s front porch might rightly be called iconic across the state. It seems to show up wherever the state’s tourist attractions are promoted. Clare calls it “the center of community life in Rabbit Hash and is where locals gather for all occasions…(where) having no secrets is bothersome at times,” but, according to Sue Clare, “people will also leave you to your peace and quiet.”
And there is the fact that Rabbit Hash has been flooded many times throughout its history, that it annually celebrates “Old Timers Day,” and that it has a museum housing its historical society. People around Rabbit Hash tend to put people before things and leave the rat race of life to run outside its boundaries. Callie Clare simply calls it “community,” and that’s not a bad thing at all.
I recently learned of an amazing Kentucky woman when a friend gave me a copy of the fall, 2015 issue of Communicator, a newsletter published by the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
The article, called “The Incredible Norma Lewis,” tells of a 93-year-old sign language interpreter for the Archdiocese of Louisville, a responsibility she has taken on for the last 39 years. That’s just a part of her compelling story, however.
In 1943, during World War II, she joined the United States Navy as a 21-year-old and was assigned to Naval Intelligence. Her responsibility was to help in the tracking of German submarines off the coast of the United States.
According to the article, Norma’s family didn’t know exactly what she did during the war. It was a secret. When asked, she told her deaf aunt and uncle who raised her that she “worked in the kitchen with food.”
Lewis was one of the 67 veterans doing the Bluegrass “Honor Flight” last summer from Louisville to Washington, D.C. She also served as the Grand Marshall of the Louisville Veterans Day Parade in November.
As an interpreter, Norma took the craft to the highest level, according to Suzanne Isaacs, a counselor who served deaf clients through the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. She worked with Lewis in the 1980s.
“Norma’s astute ability to interpret, translate, or voice for a deaf individual was absolutely amazing,” said Isaacs. “She could capture the energy, not just the words. It was as if Norma was also performing. She was the greatest I’ve ever seen.”
Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” was released in 2015. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)