The Story Behind The Story, Part 2: The Invention Of The Former "Folk Tales" Series At The Bowling Green (KY) Daily News

      In May of 1990, I was hired on in the newsroom at the BG Daily News or more commonly know back then as just "The Daily News."  It was one Bowling Green's and Southcentral Kentucky's premier news outlets at the time besides the local television station WBKO.  Of course, we also had and still do, our fair share of radio stations in the area.  The early 90's, were long before the days of the "Super Information Highway" or just the "Internet" as we know it today.  Nowadays, as we all know there's a lot of competition where people get their news even for local news.

     

I always had a strong desire to write every since my English classes in high school where we learned to journal and developed the"first person voice" in our writing style.  I suppose the writing bug stuck with me even into college. But at first, I was a little confused and wasn't quite sure what areas of study I wanted to go into.  But eventually I found my way into print journalism and developed a keen sense and interest in the "human interest" story. 

     After a year or so of working in the newsroom, I brought the idea of a human interest story series for the newspaper to Don Stringer, the former longtime managing editor of The Daily News.  He loved the idea and decided to call it "Folk Tales."  He gave me a $25 gift certificate to O'Charley's restaurant for giving him and the newspaper the idea.  It was one of my proudest accomplishments while working at the newspaper.  The series featured in depth news articles about local and common people in Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky community or just plainly spoken, "the folks of Bowling Green and Southcentral Kentucky."  I had the honor of writing several of these stories and they were always published as front page stories with big and bold headlines.  One of the stories that I wrote and was published, I was the one I wrote about J. Frank Gerard, a local and retired dairy farmer who was 81 years-old and blind at the time.  Of course,  J. Frank has been passed away for many years now.

     J. Frank had lived in Bowling Green and Warren County his whole life and had a dairy farm on Cemetery Road on the outskirts of town where the gated Rivergreen community is located now and where Sen. Rand Paul lives among other prominent and wealthy citizens of Bowling Green and Warren County.  I had met J. Frank originally through our one of elderly next door neighbors on a street where we used to live.  Patty and I used to drive our neighbor and J. Frank and take them out to eat.  But J. Frank always on insisted on paying for our dinner.  He loved to tell us stories about growing up in Bowling Green and what the town was like back in the "good ol' days" and what it was like being a dairy farmer back in then too. 

    Eventually, I asked him if I could write a story about him and he said, "Sure, I would love it! It turned a out to be a fantastic story for the newspaper with great reception from everyone I knew and who had read it.  I received lots of compliments from readers in the community.  Eventually, the Folk Tales series had run its course and was disbanded. But the one quote I remember most that J. Frank said about his dairy farming days in the story, he said he remembers when the milk was "sweet as ice cream!" Now, that's one quote for the history books, folks!

The Story Behind The Story: 'Metros' Cars And Center Street In Bowling Green, Ky.

BOWLING GREEN, KY _ I had been working in the newsroom at the Bowling Green Daily News for almost two half years by the time, that former Managing Editor, Don Stringer and Roger Jones, former advertising director, decided to create a local car section tabloid insert loaded with car stories and advertising for our popular daily newspaper.

   Back in those days, the Bowling Green Daily News and local television station, WBKO, dominated as the top media outlets in our community.  It was long before the days of the internet, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media. Although, I was probably one of Don's least favorite writers or employees of the newsroom, he did actually utilize my writing skills from time to time.  This story "'Metros' Man's Fascination Of Bowling Green" was an easy story to write.  It was simple, clean, cut and dry.  It was written in November of 1993, so that was 24 years ago this month.  But I can't remember if I interviewed the main subject in person or on the phone.  Most likely it was over the phone because that's how we wrote most of our stories at the time because of a "lack of time."  We had a noon deadline in our newsroom.  But with the special insert tabloid sections, we always had a lot more time to get our stories done.
    Looking back now, I think this how I wrote this story. I interviewed Mr. Ken Marshall, the main subject, over the phone and then he had invited me to his wholesale and salvage warehouse that was located on Center Street at the time near Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.  One of our newsroom photographers drop by and took some pictures for the story.  We used the best shot of Mr. Marshall using his elbow to lean up against one his blue and white Metro cars.  His warehouse used to be across the street from the old, former Jr. Food Store on the corner where the new High Tops Sports Bar and Grill is now located.  Of course, all those old houses and buildings have been torn down in the last few years and new fine brick structures have been rebuilt such as a hotel, a WKU alumni center, fraternity houses, apartments, restaurants and storefront shops.  And if I remember correctly, I did take up Mr. Marshall's invite to drop by to sneak a peek at his 'Metros' cars.  They weren't running but he had some really cool ones under covers and a couple stored up on some racks inside his warehouse.  Mainly, I just remember all the junk he had stored in his warehouse and that he was a real friendly fellow with a big smile.  I bet it took forever for whoever to get all that junk and cars out of that warehouse before they sold and tore down the building.
    Besides being an easy to write, it was a fun story with some interesting facts regarding the unusual cars and Mr. Marshall and his the junky warehouse. Also, reading the story over again, makes me take a trip down memory lane, remembering those long gone days of what Center Street in Bowling Green used to look like back in the early 90's. Very cool!