Main Street – More Ordinary than Strange in Hollyhill

Hunting Strange on Main Street 

Hello. Jocie Brooke here reporting from Main Street, Hollyhill, Kentucky where everything seems pretty ordinary the same as every day. My fellow reporter, Wesley Green, thinks I’ll spot something strange to report here in our new venture, the Hollyhill Book of the Strange. But I’m still thinking the Book of the Ordinary would suit our little town better. He shakes his head at me and says everything seems pretty strange to him, seeing as how he landed here from Jupiter.

How can I argue with that? I’m sure if I was up on Jupiter, I’d think things were strange. That’s the one that has all the moons. Wes says over sixty of them, but only four of them look much like our earth moon.

Still and all, think about how it would to look up at the sky and see four moons shining down on you with dozens of others popping out here and there like bouncing balls. Wes says folks going out at night on Jupiter have to wear hats to keep from getting moonburnt. That could definitely make a book of the
strange. But here in Hollyhill we only have one moon to shine down on our Main Street.

So, come along and we’ll walk down it together. You can poke me if you notice something strange that I’ve looked at all my life and think is ordinary as can be. Of course, then I may just think you’re strange.

First we’ll go down Main Street where the stores are lined up on either side, snuggled edge to edge. We have two stoplights – one in front of the courthouse and another up by the post office on the north end of town.

The post office was built during the Great Depression by the WPA. That was the government giving people jobs and our little town got a great big post office out of it. That’s kind of interesting but not exactly strange since it happened in towns all across the country. Then again it might be strange that they built it up so high off the
street. The workers must have had a fondness for building steps or maybe it was just to make the job last longer.

We have two grocery stores, two ten-cent stores, two banks, two drugstores, two ladies’ dress shops, two lawyer offices, two hardware stores, two furniture stores, two laundromats, and two grills.

Notice a trend here? Well, before you decide Hollyhill has two of everything which might be decidedly strange, I’ll point out we only have one newspaper office, one barbershop, one defunct hotel, one chiropractor’s office. There are three poolrooms that are off limits to kids like me. To make up for whatever mischief might go on in them, four churches anchor both ends of Main Street – First Baptist, Presbyterian, Christian and Methodist. The Pentecostal and Second Baptist churches are on back streets behind Main.

Wait, I forgot the jewelry stores – two of them too. You should have nudged me when we passed them so I’d remember to mention them. But only one men’s store.

There used to be a movie house, but it went out of business years ago. Dad tells me when he was a kid there was a bowling alley in the upstairs rooms over where the wallpaper store is now. That’s strange enough to think about. Somebody bowling over top your head.

Once upon a time the town used to have an Opera House and hotel too, right across from the train depot, but that’s on a side street up from Main.  Then we have some car dealerships, Ford and Chevrolet, right on Main Street. And two gas stations at the end of town past that courthouse stoplight going south.

Whew, I’m beginning to wonder how all of these places can be squeezed along one Main Street. The churches and the post office do spill on down the street from the two and a half block center of town.

That very most important building, the library, is on an intersecting street up from the Post Office. We have Andrew Carnegie to thank for that. I looked him up in the encyclopedia. He gave building grants to start over 1,600 libraries in America and Hollyhill’s was one of them. Thank you, Mr. Carnegie!

So we’ve walked down Main and taken a side trip up to the library, but I’ve not spotted much strange. Did you? If so, let me know. I might need to take a second or maybe a hundredth look.

Come back soon. Something exciting is sure to happen sometime. Right? I suppose anything is possible. Even in Hollyhill.