Commentary: Giving big names to those who lived small

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By Dan Carpenter
TheStatehouseFile.com

I see where the conglomerate that owns Kentucky Fried Chicken is waging a social media campaign to have the new I-65 bridge between Jeffersonville and Louisville named for the late Col. Harland Sanders, father of the finger-lickin’ fast-food staple.

Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of "Indiana Out Loud."

Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”

Commentary button in JPG - no shadowJust shows you money talks. So does another suggestion, from a Kentucky state legislator: Make it one more memorial to a patron saint of America’s haves, Ronald Reagan.

My choice for would be a stretch wider than the Ohio, politically. I’d honor two people who spent their lives telling money to shut up.

Harlan and Anna Hubbard would be strangers to overseers of business empires and massive engineering projects; but they are known at Hanover College, at the University of Kentucky, in the Louisville arts community and to devotees of the art of creative living throughout two states and beyond.

The Hubbards – he died in 1988, she in 1986, both in their 80s – resolved early in their four-decade marriage that they would forsake the urban world of their conventional backgrounds and make a life on the land by their own hands.

After an inaugural adventure navigating a houseboat of their own construction from Kentuckiana on the Ohio all the way to the Gulf of Mexico on the Mississippi, they settled in a densely wooded patch of Kentucky riverfront across from Madison, Ind.

There, Harlan built a stunningly elaborate house from found stone and wood; Anna cooked gourmet meals from their garden, wild plants, squirrels and woodchucks; they welcomed frequent visitors from both sides of the river, many of whom Harlan rowed across in his johnboat; and they made art. Harlan churned out paintings and drawings that adorn private and institutional walls near to and far from Payne Hollow, as their Eden was named. He and Anna entertained themselves sublimely with his violin and her piano.

They hardly had two quarters to rub together. And their immense wealth was manifest to all who knew them. The great Kentucky writer Wendell Berry, who narrated a documentary film about them called “Wonder,” wrote that they “lived at the crossroads of a vital paradox: By having little, they had much; by living frugally they lived abundantly; by living ‘apart from the world,’ they lived in the world abundantly and truly.”

I thought of them immediately when I read of the Yum! Brands campaign for KFC’s founder because the freighted business of naming public structures presents a paradox in itself.

Our leaders, political and commercial alike, even ecclesiastical for that matter, profess to be about values that are above price – integrity, independence, frugality, spirituality, neighborliness – and yet so often find themselves turning to the usual superficially successful suspects when  it comes to handing out awards and tokens of immortality. It’s understandable, especially when there are donors with large, delicate egos to please.

Yet is seems so pedestrian compared to seeking out a true role model for individuality, whose merit and obscurity are part of one another. A silly idea, I know; a contradiction in terms by our terms of greatness. Worse, an invitation to escape the economy that feeds us Yum! But from what I hear, Anna’s smoked creamed goat flanked with asparagus beat the Colonel’s best.

The Harlan and Anna Hubbard Memorial Bridge. That would have ’em scratching their heads. The throngs of motorists and the Hubbards themselves as well. Great way to stir up a conversation about connections.

Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, a contributor to Indianapolis Business Journal and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.”

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Ah, yes indeed. Name a bridge that benefits all that traverse it after a couple that lived their lives removed from society and whose only goal was to satisfy themselves.
    While I like the idea of their Thoreau-ist lifestyle, I see nothing noteworthy enough to justify commemorative acclaim. I don’t care for the Colonel’s chicken, but he did create thousands of jobs while suppying a source of decent affordable food. What Yum! has done with it doesn’t reflect on the man.

    • Bravo! disaffected, The Colonel followed his dream, persevered and reached his goal. I like that.

  2. It’d seem to me that any party that wants a public work named after them should foot the entire bill for its construction.

    • Well, I suppose that’s why naming rights are sold to the highest bidder. It’s part of the project that is more affordable and can be changed with only the cost of signage.

      And you actually think a private company should foot the bill for an interstate river bridge just so they can hang their name on it? I don’t believe you really do.

  4. “Make it one more memorial to a patron saint of America’s haves, Ronald Reagan.”

    Yeah, you’ll float that idea by whining class envy and insulting a majority of people who actually like Reagan better than Carter. Even if they name the bridge after no one, it still won’t be called the “Dan Carpenter” bridge.

    This would have actually been an interesting article, but leave it to a bitter liberal spoil the pudding.

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