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May 23, 2008
Kentucky rambling
Well we've fetched up in Berea. We left Louisville this morning and made our way to Elizabethville and then to Hodgenville and the park now occupying the site of the farmstead on which Abraham Lincoln was born. The Sinking Spring Farm is now a National Park, the huge memorial building at its heart above the actual spring encases a log cabin which replicates the one in which, in February 1818 the USA's greatest President was born.
Abraham Lincoln epitomizes the "American Dream", the idea that a boy or girl from humble and very ordinary beginnings, can rise to the very head of a nation. Thinking about it carefully, I am forced to the conclusion that he is the ONLY man ever to have done so. I cannot think of any other US President whose origins so clearly lie with the working classes. Honest Abe was certainly a remarkable man - all the ore so because so much of his education fell within the definition of "self-study." He rose from the soil of a small and probably hard to work, farmstead, to become a successful lawyer and the nations orator, conscience and leader. He left an astonishing legacy, yet managed to remain incredibly modest abut his achievements.
Driving through Danville, Springfield and Lancaster we finally found ourselves in Berea - and booked into the Boone House Hotel - also known as the Boone Tavern. Now, having had a superb dinner, it's time for bed.
Posted by The Gray Monk at May 23, 2008 01:56 AM
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