Daniel Boone Festival

Last night I went to the annual Daniel Boone Festival in Barbourville, Kentucky. Its about 50 minutes away from our place. Daniel Boone's name is used for all kind of things in Kentucky - The Daniel Boone Motel (there are a lot of those), the Daniel Boone Dollar Store, etc., etc. If you cross the border into Tennessee, everything there is named after Davy Crockett.

There are a lot of these festivals in the South - mostly in the fall. It seems to me that what I think of as a county fair, they call a festival. They're basically the same thing. There are carnival rides, music, and food booths. There were a few people dressed like Daniel and they have a cool statue of him. The statue is inscribed with his best quote, "I was never lost, but once I was bewildered for about three days."

 A couple things stand out when I see big groups of people where I live. One is that it is 99% Caucasian. Another is that A LOT of people smoke. Its a major pastime. I haven't looked up the statistics, but I would think the life span is not very long in this area. I heard a nurse once say that there is a lot of respiratory disease here. A lot of comes from working in the coal mines. I'm sure its not as dangerous as it was decades ago, but its still doesn't seem to be a very healthy occupation. Aside from all the things that can go wrong when you're in an underground tunnel, there is the lung cancer and black lung disease that come from breathing in coal dust. When you also take up smoking as a hobby, you probably have some health issues.

I don't really care for festivals or fairs all that much. I can walk around for about an hour without getting bored. That is what ended up happening, so a successful outing.