Taken out of the Bluegrass, heading west, the Wendell H. Ford Western Kentucky Parkway breaks it to you gently about just how bad it still is out there. First, the broken trees and limb debris with which our own region is familiar. Seemingly endless.
But drive on; it gets worse.
If viewed only from the highway, worse means the sheer number of crippled trees, the volume of downed detritus and the depth of nature's wound.
The scope of the ice storm of 2009 _ even this past Wednesday, a full two weeks after the cold rain seemingly coated the world in glass _ is hard to fathom until you've driven the parkway. The meaning of it is even harder to understand until you've gotten off the parkway.
Five men, all alone at their individual tables at the Leitchfield Dairy Queen, look tired, and it's not yet lunch. Larry Jones had come to town for some gasoline. Preston Greenwood for some groceries. Richard Hogan for some biscuits and gravy. They heard about the wind that was coming. That would mean more trees coming down in Grayson County.
Greenwood says his once-wooded 50 acres and his shaded house and barn already look as if someone "butchered it" while they were "logging it out." And who even wants his wood? Oh, sure, they'll take his wounded hickory and oak to burn, but nobody wants what's left of his poplar and sycamores.
Read the complete story at kentucky.com
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