Tag: kentucky

From Kentucky to North Carolina: A Personal Reflection

When I’m asked “Where you from?”, these are the people and places that come to mind.

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In the loft of this Amish-built barn, not far off Grove Center Road, is where I’ve done some serious writing, including the first third of a novel tentatively titled “Bend In the River.” (Photo by Michael Banks)

For the past 25 years, I’ve lived in North Carolina – minus a 15-month sojourn to the Mississippi Delta, where I believe I rediscovered the writer living within me.

Prior to my move to Gaston County (NC) that last week of September 1999, I’d lived my entire life — now counting 58 years — in Kentucky. Western Kentucky to be exact.

There’s a town within Union County, not far from the Ohio River, and surrounded by coal fields and corn and soybeans, where I grew up and spent a good portion of my early career in newspapers.

Morganfield is my hometown and my maternal grandparents lived across the road and my uncles and cousins are sewn along Highway 130, which we called Grove Center Road for most of my childhood.

I attended college at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green and spent nearly two years working at a newspaper in Murray, Ky., and another in Calhoun, Ky.

I know that part of Kentucky – its topography (rolling hills interspersed with fields of grain) and its people. Oh, the people.

I’ve done a bit of looking into the Banks and Robinson family trees and discovered, for the most part, my people came to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s from Virginia and North Carolina. Maybe that notched wedge of land — not far from where the Wabash River dumps into the Ohio — was their very own land of milk and honey as not many of my relatives have left.

I’ve discovered those woods and creek beds and thickets of my youth often find their way into the stories of that I write today. The ballfields, taverns and courthouses of my later years also linger and serve as background in those same stories.

It’s the same with the people that I’ve interacted with during my time on earth. There are bits and pieces of many of them mashed together to create delightful and, often, confounding characters who fill my scenes. Their dialogue and the tales they spin are the ones I’ve heard from the lips of others or imagined so.

I’m every bit Kentuckian.

Outside my window, the redbuds are in their early stages, heavy with purple. Mockingbirds, searching for a mate, squawk and defend their turf. The days are longer and I stay seated when the morning sun slants through the window and its warmth lands on my shoulders.

I think of the first Saturday in May and the crash of the starting gate and hooves hitting the dirt as they near the first turn at Churchill. 

“Have you got your Derby horse,” they’ll ask.

“Soon. Very soon,” I reply.

When the 20 horses and their riders take the track, the band plays “My Old Kentucky Home” and New Yorkers and Californians and Texans in their pastels and linen will tear up and raise their frosted glasses and toast that “old Kentucky home, far, far away.”

But for us, who truly know Kentucky, it’s a lot more personal.

It’s spring and pulling up old barn wood and digging up fat earth worms and flinging them into country ponds lined with green moss and waiting for the smallmouth to strike.

It’s walking the first rows of a corn field in late July, enduring the slice of a sharp leaf, to find the sweet corn and how it will taste when its boiled and the butter and salt will stick to your lips.

It’s the sounds of old hymns sung by others before us and incantations of the traveling preacher man filling the pews at Bethel Baptist, the harmonies and spirit pouring from the open window and weaving among the headstones covered in autumn’s rust. 

It’s winter and it’s dark and the hawk — that brutal wind — roars from the north and we gather by fires and sip bourbon and tell stories from days warmer and know that more await. 

Editor’s Note: Work continues on my novel, tentatively titled “Bend In the River,” that includes many of the places and characters compiled from my days and nights spent in Kentucky.

Once a Brave, always a Brave

These 2024 Braves are a special bunch who are carrying the hopes of a school, an entire county and all those who have gone before them.

Writing is a funny thing. One can never be certain what will resonate with folks.

            In some ways, it’s akin to coming across a rain-filled ditch. You may have a good idea of what awaits, but you never really know if that first step is going to be free and easy to the other side or leave you underwater, gasping and spitting as you try to climb to the surface. 

            When I first started to put down the words Friday morning to the “Ghosts of Baker Field,” the work was fed by the very stark realization that it’s now 40 years since I played my final game of football. And as I’ve gotten older, the memories are more and more persistent, often tapping on my brain in the early hours just before dawn.

            I was quite surprised with the response. More than 1,200 visitors read the story and hundreds more liked and shared the article via Facebook with many offering kind comments that were most appreciated.

Former players from far and near, old and young, shared their memories of their final games and their lifelong bonds with their teammates. Family members told of how they were unsure of what to answer when their son, defeated and dejected after a season-ending loss, sprawled out on a patch of torn turf in some faraway town, looked up at them and asked, “What am I supposed to do now, Momma?”

            But the highest praise came from Union County head football coach Derek Johns who said he read the column right before the team took the “Brave Walk” down the hill at Baker Field Friday night, where later they would celebrate a dominant, mistake-free 43-21 win over Belfry that sends them on to the state championship game.

That comment really hit home.

            In a way, Johns allowed the ghosts of Baker Field into that locker room one more time when he shared those words. The Thin Twenty from 1972. The 1976 and 2008 teams that had stood exactly where they were only to come up just short. And the 5-6 team from 1984 of which I was a part of.

            “Once a Brave, always a Brave.” I heard that from so many.

            These 2024 Braves are a special bunch who are carrying the hopes of a school, an entire county and all those who have gone before them. They’re now 12-2 and will play for the Class 3A state title when they take on Christian Academy of Louisville next Saturday at the University of Kentucky’s Kroeger Field. 

This band of Braves has gone where no other Union County football team has ever gone before. They’ve already established their place in local lore. What awaits is a place in the state record books.

            But, perhaps most prominent in their minds, is the guarantee that they get the chance to lace up the cleats and put on the pads. They’ll pound their fists upon their teammate’s shoulder as they huddle at midfield, eyes locked, breath heavy. And, at the end, when the final horn has sounded, they’ll form a circle, take a knee and come together as a brotherhood one more time.

            You see: It’s just one more game.

            One more game.

Editor’s Note: Michael Banks was a member of the 1982, 1983 and 1984 varsity football teams at Union County High School. He is once a Brave, always a Brave.

Ghosts of Baker Field

Ask a former football player what’s their one wish and often the answer is: One more game. Just give me one more game.

Forty years ago, on a cold November night, I played my final snap of high school football.

            The Bermuda grass at Owensboro’s Rash Stadium had turned a muddy brown and it was a meaningless football game between two .500 teams. There was really nothing memorable for the scattering of fans – mostly family and friends — spread out along the metal bleachers. The game was one of those “three handoffs and a punt” and the final score was 7-0.

            But the memories of that game, and others before it, remain all these years later.

            Tonight, on a cold November night, my alma mater will try to do something that’s never been done in the school’s 60 years of existence: advance to a state championship football game. Not just win a state crown, but to actually make an appearance in the title game.

            That’s pretty heady stuff for a Western Kentucky community of 16,000 mostly made up of farmers and coal miners. Good country folk, you see.

            From afar, I’ve followed the fortunes of the 2024 Union County High School football team as they’ve marched to an 11-2 record and an appearance in the Class 3A state semifinals. Many could argue tonight’s home game at Baker Field vs. 11-2 Belfry is the biggest in school history. You can view and see the game live via local radio station WMSK’s Facebook page.

Baker Field is prepped and ready for the Class 3A state semifinal game between Union County and Belfry high schools on Friday, Nov. 29, 2024. (Photo from Facebook page of UCHS head football coach Derek Johns)

            You ask a former football player what’s their one wish and most will answer quickly: One more game.

            Just give me one more game.

            There’s something about football that sticks with you. Something that makes those hot August practices, that cleat drug across your shin, a dislocated finger, all worth it. Maybe it’s that smell of fresh-cut grass, that rhythmic drum beat from the marching band, the feel of the leather football on a crisp fall night.

            It’s pure adrenaline. The Calloway Special. A pancake block and a hole wide enough to drive a tractor through and 45 open yards to the endzone. It’s an airborne opponent reaching for an errant pass and you poised and ready to deliver the hit.

            It’s a feeling many of us will chase long after we’ve played that final snap.

            Any one of us former players would love to be in that locker room tonight. Fingers and feet tapping in anticipation, stomach in a knot. Forty years later and I can still see my own teammates, waiting, ready. Frenchy. Big Tim. Duck. Barry. Word. Burgoo. Danny. PeeLo. Jarrod. Omaha.

            You see. It’s not just yourself you’re playing for. But it’s also for a community, a school, your teammates and all those ghosts of Baker Field who put on the pads and walked the turf you walk tonight.

            Go, Braves, go!

The author is shown at Union County High School’s Baker Field in the summer of 2015. The school is located midway between Morganfield and Sturgis, Ky.

Editor’s Note: Michael Banks was a member of the 1982, 1983 and 1984 varsity football teams at Union County High School. None of those teams advanced to the state playoffs, but he made some lifelong friends along the way.

They call him Coach

It wasn’t so much about wins as it was life lessons for Gerald Tabor.

It’s been 10 years and I still miss my friend

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published Tuesday, June 4, 2013. It’s being republished here on the 10-year anniversary of the passing of my friend, Gerald Tabor.

I awoke Tuesday morning. Logged into my Facebook account and my spirits instantly fell.

Gerald Tabor had passed away during the night.

Here in North Carolina, Gerald Tabor’s name means nothing.

He was a girls basketball coach and taught history at a medium-sized high school in rural western Kentucky, where coal is king and corn runs a close second. I grew up in this small town, attended his history class and swam at the community pool he helped oversee during the summers. After graduation and landing a job in newspapers, I spent many a nights in the stands watching his teams compete on the hardwood.

One very talented squad won a Kentucky state championship and featured a Miss Basketball. And there were several regional champions in there as well. But there also seemed to be far more teams that finished with records of 8-16 or 13-11 during those years he spent working the sidelines at the Union County High School gym.

In Kentucky, basketball reigns supreme. College basketball, especially the University of Kentucky, can be seen on TVs and heard on radios from Pikeville to Paducah. The University of Louisville numbers a large base of fans, and you also have the grads and small school sympathizers who cheer for the other state schools such as Western Kentucky University and Murray State University.

In Kentucky, you are largely associated with “who you pull for.”

High school boys basketball has a similar draw. The state remains one of the few in the nation who crown just one state champion and, though attendance has lagged in recent years with college games on TV most nights and other entertainment options, the state tournament’s Sweet 16 at Lexington’s Rupp Arena and Louisville’s Freedom Hall were a true spectacle and a “must-have ticket” each spring.

But girls basketball? It ranks a very distant third.

And at a rural school on a cold and wet Monday night in late January where you have a junior varsity/varsity girls doubleheader, the stands are littered with a few hardy souls – mainly family, a couple friends, the team manager, scorekeeper and one unfortunate sportswriter who drew the short stick.

Basically, those who coach girls basketball at this level are not doing it for the money. Nor the fame.

They are simply doing it for the love of the game.

And that was Gerald Tabor.

I was there, off to the side, as Coach Tabor watched the members of his state championship squad cut down the nets in Bowling Green’s Diddle Arena one Saturday night in mid-March in 1996. There was a smile across his face, but you could almost feel a sense of relief and weariness radiating from him.

This had been a long time coming. There were plenty of times when his squads were on the wrong end of a 25-point blowout. A couple of seasons of first-round losses in the district tournament.

Yet, he remained. Teaching the fundamentals. Teaching teamwork. Teaching loyalty and perseverance.

He truly cared for each member of his team, whether they were a state champion or a squad that finished below .500.

On the day I heard the news that Coach Tabor had died, I read that Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino was planning to unveil Maker’s Mark bourbon bottles bearing his face and achievements.

Sure, Connecticut women’s coach Geno Auriemma has won eight Division One national championships and been named Coach of the Year on six occasions. Say the words Pat Summitt, and you instantly recall the victories and national titles won at Tennessee.

Say the name Gerald Tabor.

And the former players and his many friends and family say the life lessons he instilled in them and left them with are far greater than any bourbon bottle or national championship.

They’ll say he was simply Coach.