Sometimes the most wrenching moments when we travel are ones we don’t appreciate at the time. Only much later do we understand what we saw. Or didn’t see.
“Isn’t there a college there?” said Betsy.
Most telling of all—southerners, not even in Kentucky, never speak of the Bowling Green Massacre. We never once heard it come up. Some catastrophes traumatize survivors for generations to come, and clearly the Bowling Green Massacre is something the region is not even close to coming to grips with. I met shopkeepers, gas station attendants, and night clerks along the way and I would have asked them—What happened that night in Bowling Green? (Or was it day?)—to see if they could muster a response. I’d have asked—What did Hillary have to do with it?—because in the south Hillary is behind everything [Not sure that’s fair.] and the understanding that’s so gets strangers talking like old friends. But I was too ignorant to ask these questions. I had never been told about the Bowling Green Massacre in school. Were you?
