I often brag that the little town I live in is the best kept secret in the world. The scenery here is beautiful, sometimes stunning, and incredibly diverse. Although Lake Cumberland dominates the tourism media and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, there are other little nooks and crannies of this area I enjoy almost as much. Keno is one such place. To get to it, you have to go over this little tiny bridge that offers this view:
You’re a couple of hundred feet or more above some train tracks that have been carved out of a mountain. Why they didn’t just tunnel through is beyond me. Rumor had it that you could drop a match from the bridge and it would light on the way down. We tried it a few times and I swear it worked with the old wooden matches. Someone I "knew" once dropped an old refrigerator off the bridge. It absolutely exploded when it hit. Don’t ask me how I know that.
Looking the other way offers a similar view:
Now, ya see that little road crossing the tracks down there? That was one of my hangout spots in high school. To get there, you take this dirt road that meanders around and down the hill. If you meet another vehicle in the wrong spot, you’d have to back up that dirt road quite a ways. Once you got there, it looked something like this:
Now, once you see the tracks, you’re not too far from them. That led to some interesting tales when I was a kid.
Now, ya gotta understand, a guy only took a girl there for one reason only. And, occasionally, I did. One particular time, I had a couple of friends and a date who would, in my possibly all-time favoritest car, my ‘66 Convertible Monza, which looked something like this:
Except it was silver.
Me and my buddy had enough beer and drinks to figure we could score, so we headed out for the cheapest place to get some. Which, at 18 years old and in a small town, meant the woods. So, we headed to Keno. We got there easy enough and pulled right up to the tracks. It was a perfect evening. I had the top down ( on the car ), the Moon was setting in between the hills ( the tracks head due west ), and everything was progressing perfectly. During the make-out session, I opened my eyes, and the platinum blonde babe I was making out with was actually glowing. I mean it, she looked like an angel. There was like this halo surrounding her hair. Then I kinda noticed the halo was getting brighter and bigger. So, I finally looked a little closer, and around her, and saw it was a train coming. Now, trains in town move at about 30 miles an hour, and this thing was still in the distance. So, I just released the emergency brake ( Corvairs didn’t have Park ). The car slowly started moving off the tracks. It wasn’t ten seconds later that the entire planet just seemed to erupt in total chaos. The car was rocking and bouncing, there was this incredible roar, and it just felt like the entire Earth was falling apart. It seems that in the country, trains go a LOT faster. Now, I’m here to tell ya, when you miss a train doing eighty miles an hour by about five feet, you WILL remember that forever. Needless to say, we didn’t score that particular evening. And, we didn’t really care at the time. I can’t remember my date’s name, but I do remember that train, and my car, to this day.
Another time, same plan, different date ( the other one wouldn’t go back with me, although, I’m told, she did with a lot of other guys ). There was this story of the Keno Monster that all males used to entertain and sometimes scare dates. You have to understand there is not a light of any sort for miles within that bridge. The trick was to sit on the bridge, which is scary enough, and tell the story of the Keno Monster doing in, by varying means depending on the storyteller, kids making out on the bridge. Smart plan huh? Well, I was executing that plan in a different vehicle at the time ( my Mom’s 78 LTD, MASSIVE back seat ). Things were progressing smoothly, I had my date pretty much incredulous that anyone would sit on the bridge just to taunt the monster that only attacked those sitting on that bridge ( it’s only about 50 feet ). But, the plan is to get the date to drink hard liquor and subsequently succumb to our whishes by getting them to sit on the bridge and drink. So, the plan was working. We got kinda close and things were going the way things usually go with two eighteen year olds drinking alcohol in the middle of nowhere. When, all of a sudden, we heard this horrible howling and screaming, and something started pounding and rocking the car. Whatever it was climbed on top of the car and jumped while simultaneously pounding on the hood and just raising total hell for about five minutes and then it totally disappeared in the dark. We had to leave immediately after the Keno Monster attacked for fear it would come back. I ditched the date ( mutual agreement actually ) and went to exactly who I thought it was. However, none of my friends would confess, and all had alibis. There are only two conclusions that can be deduced from that terrifying event. Either the Keno Monster is real, or, less likely, some total stranger had a hell of a laugh that night.
That’s all I’ve got to say about Keno.
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Technorati Tags: corvair, keno, making-out, Personal Pictures, Tales, train
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