Where the Road Bends Home

By Cassie Hamilton

Sweet Owen Copy Editor/Contributor

"... I love it. I love Owen County, and all winter, I'm ready for Spring here." - Gene Rose

Every summer, Gene Rose spends a day or two going for a drive around Owen County. He wants to see what has changed, an inventory of sorts, the way the land shifts, and the new houses at the end of a lane. The way others are starting to appreciate an uncluttered lifestyle. He takes in the terrain, the rolling hills, and the river bluffs as he winds his way through Monterey, Gratz, and Perry Park; it’s all pretty on its own, he says. Around the “Golden Triangle” he goes, looking at the many acres of lakes.

On 127 heading North, you’ll pass Greenup, where Gene Rose was born on April 3rd, 1933. It looks a lot different on your way through there than it did back then, when you were coming into town, where his family moved to in 1937. On the drive through town, at the Seminary traffic light, to the right of you used to be Owenton School. Gene attended grade school and high school there, graduating from the same school his parents had attended. The class of 1951 was the last class to graduate there. He takes a moment to reflect that he is glad the students now have the chance to attend such beautiful schools and enjoy ample opportunities.

After the light turns green, and you glance to the right, there’s the old Saveway, where he spent 1960-1961 working on it with Malone Bourne, Billy Ray Cobb, and Charlie Lusby. Shortly after that beginning, he began his 45-year campaign with Lexington Loose Leaf, working alongside his brother and father. In 1985, 25 years in, he and his brother added antique-dealer show weekends, running them for the remaining 20 years.

If you keep winding your way down the hill, passing McDonald and New Funeral Home and First Baptist, you’ll see the old Chrysler building on the left, where Gene once worked with Bud Dunavent and Bill Smoot in the 1950s after leaving the University of Kentucky. He mentions Bud starting small engine repair. He also takes a moment to remember Brother Robert Allen, his agency, and John Deere. The key to this operation was small margins on sales. (While I write this, I think of driving by with memories of my mom working there while I was attending kindergarten in 1998.)

Moving further up 127, past Southern States, beyond the fairgrounds, there starts to be cuts in the hills of farms on either side of the road. Gene talks about how the hills were pushed and flattened to create the road. In 1970, Gene and his wife Alice had purchased their farm from C.W. Cobb, the Chevy dealer in town. It might have been named Windy Hill, but it is also possible that it wasn’t either way, Gene never chose a name for it. They have lost two barns over the years to wind damage, one he initially loved for its character and three large double doors, so that seems a logical name. To him, though, it is still the field where he played football after Sunday School when he was 12 to 15 years old. He never dreamed his football field would one day be his home.

The property was an interesting one, with a two-story, two-room home from the 1700s sitting on it. It even had two fireplaces. Gene believes it may have been one of the first homes in the Owen County area. It had hardwood flooring and walnut beams, a trap door, but more interestingly, it had a four-foot-deep cavity underneath the entire house. By 1970, the house was unlivable, so it was torn down. The main house on the property was built between 1899 and 1900, with a separate building nearby for storing wood, coal, and a smokehouse.

As you make your way up the steep hill created by 127 and down the lane, a perfectly calm pond sits, reflecting sunrises and mirroring the images of hay bales in the summer on its crystal-clear surface. While the engineers were working on 127, they needed a dam to help with a natural spring. Gene laughs, looking at it, still remembering the conversation with the engineer asking him when he was set to begin. The engineer asked to start that night and finished the project in three nights. They cored it out efficiently, and it’s still a spring-fed 30-foot pond now--a home to blue gill, bass, and crappie, with the road running on the other side of the hill.

Now, Gene drives around the farm and down to the dock for fishing or just to watch nature, with frogs croaking and birds chirping, while he thinks to himself, I love it. I love Owen County, and all winter, I’m ready for Spring here.

While he has had many adventures and worked with and met numerous people, he admits that it has all gone by so fast. Over the years, Gene and Alice’s farm had tobacco, cattle, and even a thoroughbred operation in the 1980s. Which Gene admits the horses were not very profitable, but definitely a lot of fun, as it included trips to Chicago. Alice worked as a secretary of the Rural Electric Co-op after attending secretarial school in Louisville. She and Gene married in 1953, shortly after graduating from high school, and ran their farm and home with two children, Cam and Jean Allen, who also ended up on the farm, followed by their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Alice is someone he certainly misses every day.

Looking out from his back porch, he has many memories of playing, and it would be hard to

picture them happening anywhere other than Owen County. And while a winding drive around memory lane might be traded for the fast lane in some places, it’s actually better to take the back road sometimes here.