Smiths Grove is where author Gary P. West took his first steps, rode his first bicycle, saw his first bowling alley, watched his first movie, attended first grade and drank his first chocolate malt at the downtown drug store, and got his first stitches from the town’s only doctor. He was a second grader when the school exploded and blew most of the windows out of the house he lived in several blocks away.
With Buc-ees arrival in Smiths Grove along with a couple more restaurants and shops, the town’s economic pace has quickened a bit.
Let’s, however, take a look back to see how it got to this point.
Everyone who lives in the central time zone of Kentucky is said to be on slow time. But, some towns seem to be slower than others and Smiths Grove is one of those. Time seems to have stood still in the second largest city in Warren County, fourteen miles from Bowling Green.
It’s a good bet that the thousands of cars speeding up and down I-65 have no idea that this no-stoplight village is home to less than 800 residents. Even if travelers pull off at exit 38, they immediately get the feel of a very busy interchange. Like most, fast foods, service stations, and up until a short time ago, a motel. Add, three truck stops all in a small area, makes it look like Smiths Grove is a thriving metropolis.
For those curious enough, a mile down the road reveals the slowest of Kentucky towns.
“That’s the way a lot of people like it,” offers the 81-year-old Maurice “Buddy” Marr, born and raised in Smiths Grove. “The only time I left was four years in the Air Force.”
Marr, a city commissioner, is someone who along with wife Pat, keeps their ears to the ground and for years have been a good source for information about the town’s past.
Supposedly a fellow named Smith came to the area years ago where a thick grove of beech and oak trees attracted millions of birds. He liked to hunt and the area became… you, guessed it, Smith’s Grove. Somewhere along the way the apostrophe disappeared.
This was decades before 1871 when the town’s name became official. Nine years later by 1880, 400 people called Smiths Grove home.
By all appearances, Smiths Grove was in position to become a community to be reckoned with both agricultural and livestock. Bowling Green and the Barren River, only a few miles away, and nearby Dixie Highway (31-W) all added up to a bright future.
Businesses did come to Smiths Grove. A bank, a lawman, a high school, movie, bowling alley, restaurants, dry cleaners, drug store, grocery stores, hardware, clothing, a doctor, new car dealer, a funeral home, and believe it or not, a preparatory training school for Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
The L & N Railroad played a big role in Kentucky’s development, especially Smiths Grove’s. The depot there was busy enough that it employed an agent to oversee freight and agricultural shipments as well as passenger service in the late 40s into the 50s and 60s.
Early on, little traffic ventured off of 31-W to drive the three miles on Hwy. 101 to the small town. At that road junction, however, was one of America’s iconic tourism stops… Stuckey’s. Their bright roofs, easy in and out, and the promotion of pecan log rolls, pralines, postcards, tacky souvenirs, restrooms and fuel appealed to the traveling family at the time.
“My dad had a contract to paint many of their billboards back then, and they had a bunch,” recalled Marr, the Smiths Grove resident.
At one time the Stuckey chain had over 350 locations and though the interstates led to their demise, they still have over a 100.
Leon Tarter operated a dry cleaners and grocery next to the railroad tracks in town from 1945-1955.
“I came back from the war,” Tarter said, before passing away a couple of years ago. “I got married, and needed something to do to make a living.”
His business touch and desire to become an auctioneer turned into a lifetime in real estate for the war hero who found himself landing on the beach at Normandy in France three days after D-Day.
“Oh I missed everything and everybody,” he recalled in remembering his overseas days of WWII. “And when I got back Smiths Grove was where I landed.”
When people in town who have been around long enough to remember, several say not much excitement has taken place over the years. But, for the old-timers they reflect back to July 5, 1951. That’s the day a gas explosion blew the front out of North Warren High School. A concrete boulder the size of an automobile leveled the house across the street, while killing Grover Kincheloe, the school’s janitor.
“It shook the whole town,” Tarter remembers. “I thought my cleaners had blown up and it was not even close to the school.”
Some recalled a plane crash in 1942 that killed six servicemen. The Army aircraft was flying in a formation with three others headed to a landing strip in Nashville when engine troubles developed. There was what was referred to as an emergency landing area just outside of Smiths Grove that the pilot was searching for. Without lights and it being nearly 10 p.m. the field was impossible to see. The plane ripped through trees, barely missing a family’s house.
In 1894, the Kirby Brothers constructed Farmers Bank. It’s white limestone facade, with a gable front and a stone turret on each side, is still the most attractive building in town. Several years later Robert Kirby, the bank’s president was killed in a bank robbery. The bank closed in 1931, and for several years served as the town’s post office and then an antique shop.
A garage today stands at the corner of Main and Second Street. For years across the front read “Priddy’s Garage.”
Anyone living around Smiths Grove heard the story. The man who ran it was the brother of NASCAR driver Tom “Cotton” Priddy who had been killed in a race in Memphis in 1956. It was a conversation piece for years.
Smiths Grove had its fifteen minutes of fame back in 1978 when filmmaker John Carpenter, who grew up in Bowling Green, talked about the Smiths Grove Sanitarium, a fictional facility from which Michael Myers escaped.
Historically, a claim to fame for the little Warren County town is the cemetery.
Susannah Henry Madison, the youngest sister of patriot Patrick Henry, lived for a time on 31-W, not far from Smiths Grove. She died there in 1831 and decades later, in 1916, her body was moved to the cemetery in Smiths Grove. A headstone notes her history.
Although the town has fewer people than it did in 1920, there are several businesses that have found Smiths Grove a great place to do business for a long time.
One of those was Ray Hendrick, who in 1948 opened Farmers Hay & Seed Company with an associate. In 1955, however, he became the sole owner and the business became Farmers Fertilizer on Mill Street.
Son Jimmy Hendrick had worked with and for his dad throughout the years during summers and in 1964 after college graduation came on full time.
“I remember those summer days at work,” Hendrick said. “My dad rated the pay as to how hard I worked. If it was a hard day I got $5; for a medium day it was $4; and a light day I made $3.”
The one-truck operation that his dad began with has blossomed into several, plus 40 pull spreaders and sprayers.
Farmers Fertilizer conducts business in several surrounding counties, and to help service them has an additional plant in Warren County.
A few years ago Jimmy brought his son Brent and daughter, Stacy, full time into the day-to-day business, and continuing the legacy Brent’s son Clay is learning the ropes.
“It will be a fourth generation that we hope to continue,” Jimmy Hendrick says. “The technology and price of equipment is changing so fast and it will be up to all of us to stay on top.”
When Joyce Massey bought an existing ice cream hut on Main Street in Smiths Grove in 1964, by her own admission there were those who doubted she would be around long. Fifty-six years later she had expanded her Flavor Isle eatery into one of the most popular places around. A concrete block building with inside service adds to the outside walk-up where customers enjoy burgers, fries, hot dogs, shakes and cones.
With Ray Hendrick getting his start in 1948 and Joyce Massey in 1964, they pale in comparison to Hardy’s Funeral Home.
In 1926, F.B. Hardy in search of “finding his own way,” stepped off of a train in Smiths Grove for a little breakfast. “Funeral Home for Sale,” read the sign so he thought he would put his Cincinnati School of Mortuary education to use. He bought the business and the rest is history. Into the fourth generation of Hardy’s, they now have locations in Smiths Grove and Bowling Green.
There’s no excuse, get up, get out and get going! Gary P. West can be reached at westgarypdeb@gmail.com.
