For the love of junk and small towns!

"For most certainly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain to move and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you."- Matthew 17:20.

It began with a crazy dream.  A dream for the love of junk and the love we have for our once thriving, almost forgotten small town, West Louisville, Kentucky.  No, not Louisville, not west of Louisville, but West Louisville, just ten miles outside of Owensboro, Kentucky.  A once thriving small town folks said would be the next "Louisville."

 

The photo above is from a mural painted in a hallway of the school we bought.  We love this photo for one reason:  In this photo West Louisville is on the map!

West Louisville is a quite peaceful town...   We love small towns.  There's no better place than a Maycomb or Mayberry.  Although not made famous by fiction, there's not a more beautiful place on earth to me than the hills and valleys of West Louisville.  We are blessed to call this place home.

West Louisville has a local drive thru restaurant, a bar and grill, the largest gun shop in Kentucky, a campground resort, and a post office (well, we did) and that's about it.  But once upon a time, there was a hotel, a pharmacy, a roller skating rink, a couple taverns, a mechanic's garage, a bank and more in West Louisville.  It also has its fair share of great stories involving a fairly famous bank robbery, two confederate soldiers executed by firing squad, a diamond ring lost in a lake, and several scary tornados.

Several years before this old school was auctioned off, a possibility started stirring in my soul.  What could one do with a big old building like that?  For me the answer to this question was a simple one, but the vision was far from ordinary.  Something inside me believed I could create something extraordinary in that tired old school, breathe new life into her soul, and make her rise again.

 

This is a newspaper clipping my grandmother had in her scrapbook about when the school first opened in 1950, after the former school on the site was burned to the ground in 1948. 

So, what do you do when you have this lovely idea floating around inside your brain?  Well, I tried to lay it out on paper.  Maybe if I could show it to my husband?  Maybe if I could show it to my parents?  Maybe someone else could see the possibility I see.  I'll never forget that starry night on the back porch, long before the school was auctioned off, when I showed them this two-sided "vision" board of what I'd like to do with the old school.

 

 

Did I mention my mom and I love junk?  If it doesn't come from an auction, flea market, yard sale, or thrift shop, we don't want it.  Some day I'll explain more about this love of junk and all things old.  But, yes, there is a big insane love of junk that is huge chunk of this dream.

I'm sure there are many who would describe us as two half-witted crazy blondes who had no idea what they were getting into when we chose to buy that old school, and this, too, we admit, is a version of the truth as well.

But, then, again...  This is our field of dreams.