Out of the Frying Pan

Kentucky Legends & Lore, Part 2

There was a little problem – there wasn’t enough room for Mr. Johnson to turn his Jeep around. There were a few spots on that road where a person could pull over to let someone around them (barely), but if the vehicle was too big, one either had to back up to Mr. Johnson’s place or to the fork in the road to let the other car through. There were no guardrails either, the drop on one side was only about forty or so feet downhill – if a tree didn’t stop you first.

We had to drive to the fork, but the Jeep didn’t seem to mind the mud at all. We turned around and headed back to Mr. Johnson’s place. When we got there, he parked as close to his house as possible. He lived alone out there in the woods but didn’t seem to mind the solitude. He’d lived there ever since he’d come back from the Korean war when he bought the land from the original Mr. Hensley.

His place was small, four rooms and an outside toilet. He had a generator for electricity. There were small porches in both the front and the back and the living room was sparsely furnished with just a couch, a chair, two lamps and a TV. The TV got great reception because he had the antenna connected on the same tower as his ham radio. On the other side of the living room was a large room that had all his ham radio equipment in it along with a potbelly stove.

I guess Mr. Johnson saw us looking around at his furnishings because he said, “I know it doesn’t have much furniture in it, but if someone needs to spend the night they could sleep on the floor or the couch, depending on how many there were, I guess.” His bedroom and kitchen were in the back.

He had pictures on the wall of family and friends along with diplomas and his service discharge. He had decorated the room with a few military items, for example, there was a grenade on the hearth. All in all, it was a nice little house, but definitely a bachelor’s place.

He proved himself a good host and offered coffee or colas. My Uncle Hayes and I took coffee and my brothers went for the colas. Mr. Johnson started looking through scrap books and picture albums until he finally found was he was looking for.

“Here it is,” he said, “I knew I had it.” In his hand was an original newspaper clipping of the story of the tree. It was printed in 1903 and told about a dead man who was found by Mr. Hensley of Hensley Hollow. The dead man had been pinned against a tree, it appeared that he must have gotten lost and was trying to turn his wagon around just past the fork in the road. He must have fallen off between the wagon and the tree, and when the wagon slid in the mud, the hub of one of the wagon wheels crushed his chest. Authorities concluded that he had been there for a few days before he was found, because it had rained earlier that week and the markings in the road clearly indicated that the road had been muddy at the time the accident occurred.

The article went on to say that the reason Mr. Hensley had gone up that way was because he had seen a team of horses, still tethered together, wandering on the side of the hill. In his search for the team, he came upon the grisly scene. The man was still unidentified and the body was being held at Carman’s Funeral Home.

“Nobody ever knew who he was,” Mr. Johnson said, “and those markings on the tree have been there ever since. Mr. Hensley told me that the mark on the tree was where the hub of the wagon wheel hit the man, crushing him so severely that his backbone was stuck to the tree. As for the red, well, he said by the time he found the man, there was no blood left in him and guessed the tree sucked it up in the roots, ‘cause there was none on the ground, either. The other part that bothered Mr. Hensley was the fact that no animals had touched the man.”

My brothers and I sat wide-eyed, listening in awe to such gory details.

...To be continued...