A visitor in Buzzy’s Country Store a few weeks back said something I hear quite frequently “This place reminds me of a country store in my hometown.” I followed up with “Where is that?” He informed me “Clinton, Western Kentucky in Hickman County. It’s about as far west as you can go in Kentucky save for Fulton County.”
I pulled out my dusty old Rand Mcnally Road Atlas that John Wayne Raley had passed along to me several years ago and looked up just where these two counties were. The fella in the Store pointed out Clinton and noted that it was the location of his Grandfather Thomas Clebern Maxey’s store that he operated until 1976. .
Later I did some trolling on the www and found the following on a FB site centered in Clinton, Ky.:
To read all of the FB comments made about Maxey’s (click here and scroll down,) However, I was unable to find any other info on Mr. Maxey other than this brief blurb about his passing:
Moving on from the Maxey Store location in Clinton, I was looking at the map of Western Kentucky, and noticed that a part of Kentucky is not really adjoined to the rest of the state, In fact, because of the course of the Mississippi River and there being no bridges to it from Kentucky nor Missouri, the only access to this territory is via a road thru Tennessee.
Turns out that when the state boundary lines were being drawn after the 1818 Jackson Purchase, this 11 square mile area was lumped in with Kentucky despite Tennessee’s protesting it (click here.) Because of its appearance on the maps then, this area is often known as Bubbleland. Call it one of those geographical oddities.
As for music, Contemporary Christian Music singer Steven Curtis Chapman is from Paducah, Kentucky which was also part of the Jackson Purchase. Check him out here co-writing a song with a couple of guys who had mentioned him in one of their songs: