Sunday, September 05, 1999
Old Timers Day draws Rabbit Hash revelers
BY KRISTINA GOETZ
The Cincinnati Enquirer
RABBIT HASH — Rabbit Hash, Ky., is where I wanna be. Corn bread, molasses and sassafras tea. ...
Those were the lyrics to a bluegrass song the group Tom Taylor and Friends sang at the 20th annual Old Timers Day on Saturday in Rabbit Hash.
It was also the feeling in a lot of other folks' hearts.
In front of the Rabbit Hash General Store, a couple hundred people gatheredunder tents to eat pork sandwiches and creamed pull candy, drink sarsaparilla root beer, and listen to a children's dulcimer group while watching the river roll by.
“People just come for the music and to eat and the ambiance of the town,” said
Alexis Scott, an owner of the general store. “My dad started it. Originally, it was just for locals.
“Obviously, the focus has changed.”
Now people from all over Kentucky and Indiana make the trip along the narrow, winding road near the river to the store that's been there since 1831.
A woman who calls herself Pioneer Annie sat in period clothing and showed children how to spin thread, make corn-husk dolls and churn butter. The kids also learned to string a rope bed.
“It goes along with preserving our cultural heritage,” said Annie Silva of Bowling Green, who has been making presentations across Kentucky since 1990.
The smell of sweet kettle corn wafted through the air. An older man stood in front of a 35-gallon steel kettle stirring the kernels as they popped and then added sugar and salt.
The story behind the big kettles goes back to Germany in the 1700s. German families used the leftover lard to pop popcorn and then added sorghum or molasses to make it sweet.
Some ate that sweet kettle corn under the big tents as they listened to a fiddle player and fanned themselves with their straw hats.
Another group that has been coming to the Old Timers Day for about eight years picked their usual spot under a shade tree and played euchre, a card game.
“When he gets that fiddle a goin', we'll be out there belly-rubbin',” said Lee Landrum, 71, of Crittenden. “That's dancin'.”
Others wandered through the Rabbit Hash Museum, full of old black-and-white pictures of the town, and the Rabbit Hash Treasure Hut, an antique store full of skeleton keys, books and hat boxes.
Don Clare, who runs the museum, has been coming to the Old Timers Day since the beginning.
“This is my 20th,” he said. “I remember the first like it was yesterday. What's different? Not much. People are a little older, and it sure was a lot smaller then.”
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