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Pisgah Presbyterian Church, founded in 1784, is located near the Fayette-Woodford County Line, west of Lexington, Kentucky.

The first church building was made of logs, erected in the spring of 1785 and stood just below and to the west of the present church. In 1812, the congregation moved farther up the hill and built a meeting house of dry stacked stone. This building was remodeled in 1868 in a Gothic effect that remains today. Around 1900, stained glass windows replaced the clear glass windows of the 1868 renovation. A pipe organ was given to the church in 1932 and installed in the balcony. It replaced a pump organ on the nave level.

Former Commissioner of Major League Baseball and two-time Kentucky Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler is buried in the church cemetery.

The Church is located Just west of the Fayette County Line in Woodford County, Kentucky. Follow U. S. Route 60 west past Keenland Race Track and the Blue Grass Regional Airport. Almost immediately upon entering Woodford County turn to the north at a local landmark known as “The Castle” on Pisgah Road. The Church is located about ½-mile north of Route 60.

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Pisgah Presbyterian Church, founded in 1784, is located near the Fayette-Woodford County Line, west of Lexington, Kentucky.

The first church building was made of logs, erected in the spring of 1785 and stood just below and to the west of the present church. In 1812, the congregation moved farther up the hill and built a meeting house of dry stacked stone. This building was remodeled in 1868 in a Gothic effect that remains today. Around 1900, stained glass windows replaced the clear glass windows of the 1868 renovation. A pipe organ was given to the church in 1932 and installed in the balcony. It replaced a pump organ on the nave level.

Former Commissioner of Major League Baseball and two-time Kentucky Governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler is buried in the church cemetery.

The Church is located Just west of the Fayette County Line in Woodford County, Kentucky. Follow U. S. Route 60 west past Keenland Race Track and the Blue Grass Regional Airport. Almost immediately upon entering Woodford County turn to the north at a local landmark known as “The Castle” on Pisgah Road. The Church is located about ½-mile north of Route 60.

( 1 of 5 photos this set )

Christmas gifts from 2011 and 2008 ........... One cost seven hundred dollars and the other is priceless.

The gourd was grown in Daddy,s garden in 2003. Daddy was rather proud of the large gourds that he grew that year and had several of them put in the garage. There they stayed with Dad passing away the next year . For a reason I suppose, they were left to thoroughly dry out and wait for someone to either throw them away or luckily find a use for them. Jeannie furnished a couple photos of Mom and Dad along with a few shots of their house and garden to a local artist. With me only having the ability to draw stick people it is amazing how a talented person can take a worthless gourd, a few photos to go by and come up with a priceless heirloom !

Located in downtown Raywick, Kentucky.

This house was built in the 1880,s and served at one time as a combination City Hall / City Jail.
Information for this came from Charlie Bickett, as told to him by his grandaddy, Earl Bickett. Earl owned this home in the early 1900,s and it is still in the Bickett family today.
Discount the addition to the back and to the side of the building it looks just as it did in the 1920,s. ( Check out the last photo in the comment section )
The top floor of the house was used as the jail,s office and the town,s city hall. As Charlie said....... " being locked up here .. Was pulling hard time ".
The floor of the jail was and still is dirt only. Amazingly even to this day the small square hinged door that was used to lower down food and water to the prisoners is still there and operational. The trap door is located in the center of the house, leading me to believe that the entire lower floor was , one big jail cell. ( Andy of Mayberry,s jail it was not! )

Located in Manton, Kentucky.
From time to time in the last few years have posted photos of this store. ( Might make this a New Year Tradition )
A year ago it was closed and has since been reopened in the last few months as an antique consignment shop / general store. The taking down of the shed that was built on to the side gives it better balance and finally lets in a bit of daylight.
Vannie Newton was the long time operator of the store,and to find out what Vannie left on the wall you will have to read Bob Hill,s article from March 2000. I remembered it from when it was published in the Courier Journal and stumbled upon it tonight following goggle searches on the photo of the park shelter that i posted a couple days back .
Hope that you enjoy the column!
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Courier-Journal, The (Louisville, KY)
STAFF
March 5, 2000
THE COUNTRY STORE
These warm little places
once seemed to be everywhere
now Newton's Grocery is a rarity
BOB HILL, The Courier-Journal
MANTON, Ky. - When's he's not whistling to himself, Vannie Newton is telling stories to other people. The whistling is constant, sometimes spirited, mostly indecipherable except for occasional snatches of ``polly-wollydoodle all the day.'' The stories are throaty, dry and wry, mostly told on himself or customers of his venerable Newton's Grocery, the punch lines not the least bit worn out from all the telling.
Or - if the setup suits - Newton can deliver a whole story in one sweet line:
``Vannie, this place ever been held up?''
``They'd have to get it on credit.''
Newton's Grocery occupies a sagging, rusty, 80-year-old tin-sided building in what's left of Manton, Ky. It's in Washington County, faces directly across Hardin Creek into Marion County, with Nelson County just down the ! watershed, a rustic, knobby area that's spawned equal amounts of Kentucky history and characters.
Newton's is one of a dying breed of old general stores, unchanged by time, customers or remodeling. There are other stores in nearby Loretto, or Botland, but they've been modernized somewhat. You can't even find Manton - much less Newton's store - on most Kentucky maps.
``I don't think there's any more stores like us around here,'' Newton said. ``At least not that I know of.''
Newton's doesn't come with postcards of itself for tourists, the commercial self-parody of stores in Rabbit Hash or Rooster Run, nor the poetic tilt of Penn's Store in Gravel Switch. Newton's comes with a worthless TV antenna on its roof, cigarette smoke, a lumpy pile of coal to feed its potbellied stove, bologna sandwiches for the lunch crowd and an owner who has been there every day - without vacation - for 50 years, save two spells in a Louisville hospital for heart surgery.
! ``The furthest I've ever been is right there in Paducah,'' said Newto n, 69. ``I have been to the Smoky Mountains, but that's not as far. . . . We ain't been much travelers, I can tell ya that.''
The ``we'' in Newton's travelogue refers to his bachelor brother, Bobby Newton, 57, who farms the family place nearby. Bobby comes by the store for about two hours each midday to give Vannie a rest. Bobby's been as far as Indianapolis. The brothers are well aware of the larger world. Many of their neighbors and family work in Louisville Newton's Grocery long sold The Courier-Journal. The larger world just doesn't hold much appeal in parts of downtown Manton.
``I'm on vacation all the time,'' said Bobby, whose body just seemed to fold neatly into whatever chair in which he was sitting.
``I was in an airplane once, but no more,'' said Vannie. ``I didn't like it.''
He was standing behind an old store counter, a lean, whitehaired, chain-smoking man in a plaid shirt and work pants. The morning light pushed dimly through high, re! ctangular windows. The potbellied stove radiated heat through the store. Two other potbellied stoves, not in use, sat next to it a country store can't have too many potbellied stoves.
``The first one came from Belknap Hardware in Louisville,'' Vannie said. ``It was shipped out by train. I ran up across the second one somewhere, and the third one I bought from somebody else for parts.
``People has tried to buy it, but I don't care if I sell it or I don't.''
An air compressor, barbed wire, old hubcaps, a rusted stack of license plates all sit in one store corner. A wheelbarrow of coal will feed the stove. A halfdozen fans steer warm air around the store, serving as its only air conditioning in summer.
Wooden shelves are lined with motor oil, insect repellent, empty bottles, bread, soft drinks, shampoo, breakfast cereal, toilet paper, SOS pads and cookies. Way in the back of the store are bottles of shoe polish so old that all the liquid has evapora! ted. A couple of drink coolers squat heavily on the wooden floor. Smal l pieces of tin with numbers on them - once used to advertise gasoline prices when the store had pumps - have been nailed to the floor to cover some of the cracks. A 1977 calendar hangs just to the left of the front door.
``I left it up there for the good it has done,'' explained Vannie.
He has about the same gentle philosophy regarding the half-dozen signs still nailed to the building bearing the names of local political candidates past, present - and dead.
``They didn't all win,'' Vannie said. ``I just leave the signs up there for the trying.''
He went to grade school in Manton, a three-room school operated by nuns who arrived every day by car and would cook liver and onions for lunch. Polio had struck him as a child and paralyzed him from the neck down, almost killed him. He required surgery at Kosair Hospital in Louisville, walked a mile from home to school on crutches and went on to graduate from Fredricksburg High School.
``I started ! out in this store when I was 19 years old,'' he said. ``I was supposed to have a partner, Tony Cecil. He went into the Army and was sent to Korea about 1950. They sent him back home in 1952. Dead.''
Long ago Manton was named Blinco, after a family by the same name. No one in Newton's had the slightest idea where the name Manton came from. In 1950 the store building was owned by - is still owned by - the Holy Rosary Catholic Church. The newly restored church, tidy and elegant, is perched at the edge of Manton, its pews full every Sunday morning as they have been for 150 years. When Vannie moved into the store building it had been used for stripping tobacco. The windows were broken, the front porch sagging. A grateful church hasn't raised his rent in 50 years.
The church has gotten a bargain. A man doesn't get rich in Manton selling soft drinks and bologna sandwiches. But he can feel rewarded providing a community service, a place for the locals to swap stories ! and gossip, a Sunday morning stop after church. There would be nothing else around Manton to replace Newton's - and only the Newton brothers would care enough to keep it going.
``It keeps me going, too,'' Vannie said. ``The store hasn't changed much. It's like an old picture.''
Manton once had a distillery, an old warehouse that, old-timers say, once held sugar and grain, vital ingredients for homemade whiskey. The store itself has always been remote and basic, a part of Kentucky with a tough, independent, live-andlet edge. Vannie told a story of a time - maybe 35 years ago - when a customer might even find a slot machine on the store's back counter.
``We had one regular that just loved the slot machine,'' Vannie said. ``He came in here one day and asked me to watch the door to be sure his wife didn't catch him.
``I got to watching him and forgot to look at the door. He'd just hit a jackpot when his wife came in. I looked up and saw her standing there at the front door, her arms crossed.
``Her husband saw her! , quick threw a box over the top of the slot machine and stood there looking at her, trying to hide it, those quarters going `click,' `click,' `click' behind him all the while.''
Customers, mostly local farmers and/or retired factory workers, ebb and flow into the store, all of them as familiar with each other, their families, as Saturday is to Sunday. Coal delivery to the store follows a similar pattern every November a C.D. Jones of London, Ky., shows up with about 5 tons of coal - $70 a ton - and dumps it outside the store. Unsolicited.
``He just comes, regular,'' Vannie said.
When the Newtons started working in the store, most of the nearby roads weren't paved, the rivers had to be forded and people living on the far side of Hardin Creek crossed on swinging cable bridges. Or the like.
``I remember seeing the mailman walk across the creek on solid ice,'' Vannie said. ``We had one old man, Bally Drury, would cross the creek on stilts. He'd lay ! them down on the bank, come into the store, cross back over and lay th e stilts on the other side.''
Vannie and his wife, Mahala, 67, married since 1960, have seen their share of tragedy too. Ten years ago their son - one of two children - was found shot to death in a nearby cemetery, the crime still unsolved. The Manton area hasn't changed much, but it is changed.
``Twenty years ago you could have laid down on the front porch with a hundred dollar bill sticking out of your pocket and it would be there the next morning,'' Vannie said. ``It ain't hardly like that now.''
Regular guests at the store would include a third Newton brother, Blanford, more lovingly referred to as ``Blank.'' Just in from Louisville to visit was Tom Lyle, a small, slim man in tennis shoes who asked Vannie if Newton's had survived the Y2K crisis.
Even more regular is ``Hoss,'' a large, black traveling dog that belongs to Bobby Mudd two miles up the road. Hoss tours the neighborhood catching rides in the back of various trucks, sometimes making ! two or three trips a day to the store, staying just long enough to catch a ride home.
``He never comes in,'' said Vannie. ``He's just everybody's dog. He did come out to our house one afternoon, stayed all night, acted like he was home, but then took off again.''
With Vannie whistling over behind the counter, conversation around a rickety table centered on two deafmute brothers who grew up in the area. One had worked in a nearby laundromat and had purchased a four-door 1957 Chevy in mint condition, the envy of the neighborhood.
``Of course,'' said the storyteller, ``it didn't have a radio in it.''
A local farmer - loudly labeled ``the richest man in these parts'' by Vannie - came in for a morning break, a Mountain Dew and packaged apple pie. Two other men brought in a sugar-cured piece of ham and asked Vannie to slice it. He whistled while he worked.
Vannie returned, told a story of the time a state worker left a tractor used to mow the ro! adways near the store. One of the store regulars ``borrowed'' it to mo w a small patch of weeds nearby. Another regular wrote a legal-looking letter to the miscreant, requesting he show up at the county courthouse - with attorney. As the other watched, the guilty party moved to the back of the store to read the letter, mumbling all the while, ``. . . You guys didn't see nothing. . . . You guys didn't see nothing.''
At noon, Vannie went home for a nap and Bobby took over the store the tag-team Newtons. As afternoon drifted toward 6 p.m., a small crowd gathered again for what has become the daily closing ceremony at Newton's Grocery.
Each man put a $1 bill on the table and tossed two dice high roll, winner takes all. Vannie said it can take a 12 to win, but someone once won with a 4. No one wins any more than anyone else. It's all safe and comfortable - something to look forward to. The money, he said, just kind of changes around.

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