Project Dateline

Photos By David Stephenson

DSTEPHENSON@HERALD-LEADER.COM

Story By Amy Wilson

AWILSON1@HERALD-LEADER.COM

PICNIC –

The ridge road is high and filled to overflowing with early morning mist. The creek bottom is low, filled to overflowing with grass, black-eyed Susans, butterfly milkweed, native Kentucky cane and — where Gary Firkins has managed to put it in — tall, impossibly green corn.

The corn in the very back of the vast river bottom in Adair County is where the town of Picnic once stood. That was back when the mailman came by horseback down the old stagecoach road that hugged the banks of the creek — or so Firkins’ grandmother explained when she talked about life before the Depression. Now a chimney is said to be the only thing left standing of Picnic.

“To get you where you can even see Picnic, I got to go get my chain saw,” Firkins, 40, says.

He says you can’t get all the way there anymore. Then he changes his mind. “Oh, you could, but I wouldn’t try it.”

He has the chain saw, and the big mower, a cold Mountain Dew and his cigarettes. A man can work forever with such a satchel of provisions. But then, just before 8 a.m., Firkins’ uncle Lee Tucker drives up with the cold beer, because the Dew will give out soon enough.

Tucker lives in a cabin on Green River Lake but comes to Picnic to work because, he says, “this time of year, there’s so many people up there you need to get away.”

To Picnic.

Picnic is still on the Kentucky atlas, listed as a real place. It lies south and a little east of Columbia, out Ky. 61 and east on Ky. 533.

Independence Ridge overlooks it. Nobody here remembers why the town or the ridge were so named. Some even say Picnic could be mistaken for Dirigo, which is less damp but not much.

Either way, there is no finer place on the Fourth of July to contemplate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — and all that entails — to know that God’s grace has been generously shed here, American flags reverently unfurl here and the corn grown here is not the sweet kind but the gristmill kind best laid in by working folks.

It is also important to know that just off Independence Ridge, just after passing through Howard’s Fork Creek, Cherokee Allinson lives alone with AK-47s, car parts, his Northern Lights Canadian whiskey, a beagle named George W. and everything he can’t forget from 1969.

Allinson, 58, is a Vietnam War veteran with a Silver Star and two Bronze Stars, citations for valorous conduct, heroism in battle and gallantry in action.

The medals he displays are old, rusty, dirty and mounted on poster board. He can, even dead drunk, recite his name, rank and serial number, which is also tattooed on his arm alongside the words “I don’t care if tomorrow never comes.”

It came.

An Arkansas native, Allinson moved to this collection of old hill shacks, demolished cars and mangy dogs 14 years ago. The first thing he did was build a monument to the fallen and raise a POW-MIA flag to the top of a pole that he swears is perfectly straight. Being just one guy, he shot the monument seven times in a scaled-down personal version of a 21-gun salute. He takes time every day, he says, to “thank those who died so we can exist in the good old U.S.A.”

He likes it way out here. As understatement he explains that after the war, “I had a problem readjusting.”

Allinson says he was in the Special Forces and has the right papers to back that up. He says he was a scout, once staying 121 days by himself watching the enemy and relaying positions.

He says he was afraid all the time in Vietnam but, later in the morning, as the whiskey warms him from the chill, he admits, “I loved those days. They were the most best times of my life.”

He is proud of his service to this country, which, he says, might prefer that he stay isolated up here. Heck, he prefers it.

Allinson has found his greatest measure of peace below the ridge, away from his family, psychiatrists and anyone who might judge him.

Life was never the picnic he was told it could be. Let others have picnics; he has liberty and vast amounts of self-knowledge.

In Picnic, below Independence Ridge, Gary Firkins will mow hay until after dark today. Lee Tucker will avoid the masses.

And Cherokee Allinson will try to remember the details of every day he fought for them and us, always sure of why he fought, never quite sure if he survived.