I spent a lot of my young life near Russellville and Lewisburg. Let me guess, something to do with Logan Aluminum? I'm from just up the road in Muhlenberg County.
Pegged it. I did the construction/installation end of upgrading all the automation hardware on the Reversing Mill, 3 Stand Hot Strip Mill, Cold Mill 1, and Cold Mill 2. I held the ends of approximately 100,000 wires in my hands at some point or another in that mill. I got to know all of those machines very intimately. Heavy workdays Monday - Thursday, usually 12-16 hour days, depending on which mill was having what kind of PM outage. But, I liked their philosophy of making sure everything was running good on Friday, and go home or just work on documentation. I didn't mind the work. I'm no partier, and I was approaching a divorce, so used what down-time I had to clear my head and figure out what would be an acceptable and amicable process of parting ways with the ex that wouldn't have me paying for her lifestyle the rest of my life. I wasn't getting OT on the job up there, but did at least get paid ST for all the hours worked, and banked the OT portion for deferred time off, which gave me some pretty nice extended holidays when the mill upgrades came to a standstill for whatever reason.
I rented from Maxine Hinton for most of the 3 years I was up there. Apparently, she was quite wealthy and really didn't need/want the money for the rent, but neither did she want the ladies in the church to start talking, so she only charged me a pittance for the house and the 12 acres it sat on. It was her birthplace and where she grew up. She was pretty happy with me as a tenant because I cleaned up a lot of overgrowth around the house and pond that had gotten away from her. Her ex son-in-law loaned me a riding mower while I was there so I didn't have to buy one, which made the cutting a bit easier.
The house was in the REALLY sharp curve on Wolf Lick Road, about a mile and a half off 431, going out to the lodge on the lake. Can't remember what the name of that lake that was, but it was DEEP, and the food at the lodge was absolutely delicious. I had my ski boat up there and occasionally put it on the lake for a Saturday/Sunday cruise. My normal Saturday evening entertainment though was sitting on the front porch and waiting for the squealing tires when folks realized that the sharp turn sign really meant what it indicated. Didn't seem to happen much during the week, but weekends it was GAME ON. Most of the time they left the road at a pretty good clip and got stuck in the ditch or on the bank on the opposite side of the road. I would drag them out and get 'em rollin' again as a friendly gesture. Strangely enough, most of 'em that did that were locals, not visitors/lost folks. And some were repeat customers, especially the ones more prone to heavier libation. Go figger. One would think they'd eventually remember that curve. Fortunately, there weren't any trees on the outside of the curve, or the coroner would have been there regularly. One of the things I noticed in KY, if they bother to put up a road sign, you better pay attention to what it's warning you about. They typically MEAN it.
One of my better experiences in life with people and their slightly different culture than my own.
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