Kentucky Kitsch
Interesting finds along Kentucky byways

You’ve got to love a state with a racetrack that harvests a bumper crop of soybeans from its infield. The Bluegrass State is rife with oddities, be they personalities, attractions, overnight lodgings, restaurants or events. Ellis Park, where the Thoroughbreds run in Henderson and the infield yields extra annual income, is but one.

Growing up in a town where Edgar Cayce’s name was a household word, I didn’t think much about the fact that my grandfather had been part of a team of physicians called in to determine the cause of the man’s sudden loss of the ability to speak. Turns out no physical causes ever were found, but in 1901, through self-diagnosis while under hypnosis, Cayce prescribed a simple treatment that ultimately restored his voice. With it came the ability to diagnose illnesses, often with little more than a name and address. The Hopkinsville native became an internationally known and respected psychic, who gave 14,256 clairvoyant medical and life readings.

Called the “sleeping prophet” because of the sleeplike trace from which he would perform readings, Cayce also made predictions, among them the miracle cure of an illness that would quickly kill him in 1945. (Find out more at www.commercecenter.org or at the Pennyroyal Museum in Hopkinsville.)

Sweet dreams
Forty years ago, Tom Kelly purchased a 1930s-era, 32-room motor court in Florence, Ky. Cashing in on a craze, he added a hot tub room in the late ’70s. His decorator wife, Linda, then designed several Victorian rooms, each with a spa. On a return flight from mission work in Africa, Tom saw the movie, Fred Flintstone. A cave room with a spa followed.

In the ensuing years, the spa rooms multiplied to number 31. Now NASCAR fans can sleep in a retired official racecar in the Speedway room. An African safari-themed room houses guests in bush huts around a lagoon. The Western Room sports a card table with four poker hands and a spa that looks like a horse-watering trough with a western town scene behind it.

The year-round resort now boasts a 10,000-square-foot heated pool in a tropical dome with a rain forest. Spa room themes include Oriental, Royal, Venetian, Cupid, Happy Days (you’ll sleep in a restored 1959 Cadillac convertible) and four cave themes.

Undaunted by a February 2004 fire that destroyed five suites, Kelly plans to add 12 new suites – a number will be for families – to the 26 remaining by year’s end. (Check it all out at www.wildwood-inn.com.)

Dining in paradise
The year also ushers in yet another clever nutritional offering from one of Esquire Magazine’s top four fun restaurants in the country. Beginning in June, Lynn’s Paradise Café in Louisville’s Highlands area hits a home run with “Platter Up: A Culinary Road Trip of America’s Favorite Major League Baseball Parks.” Can you smell the bratwurst?

Inspired to become a restaurateur when she was eating breakfast in a California café and was asked to fill in for a waitress, Lynn Winter gave up designing and handcrafting furniture, learned the food service trade and in 1991 opened Lynn’s Paradise Café.

Describing the business as “an art project that got out of hand,” she created the giant red coffee pot fountain and concrete cups in the parking lot, the corn mural on the side of the building and handmade tiles on the breakfast counter. Fun, Lynn philosophizes, doesn’t happen just by accident. Each week, she and her staff pass along good food, funk and fun to some 4,000 folks, 80 percent of whom are repeat customers.

Open seven days a week, Lynn’s is known for its breakfast extravaganza with truck driver portions. The menu is “hip Southern,” i.e. fine home cooking with a twist. Inventive artwork and entries from an annual “Ugly Lamp Contest” adorn the interior, and patrons show up in sleep attire at the New Year’s Day Pajama Party Brunch.

No surprise this kitschy café has made the Oprah Winfrey Show, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. Get your saliva flowing at www.lynnsparadisecafe.com.

Want more?
Strangely enough, visitors also can see snakes milked at the Kentucky Reptile Zoo in Slade, ogle eerie ventriloquists’ dummies at the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, spelunk through the dark and dank at Carter Caves’ January Crawlathon in Olive Hill, or at Halloween in Bardstown, wander down Psycho-Path, Kentucky’s ultimate haunted trail. Unearth more of the unusual at www.kentuckytourism.com.

Katherine Tandy Brown is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
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