LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — Being well-known for their hand carved and hand painted chickens, Lonnie and Twyla Money are no stranger to doing an interview or two regarding their folk art. But the East Bernstadt couple were a bit surprised when Kentucky Monthly magazine’s Amanda Hervey showed up at their door to talk about Victory, an old Laurel County town that may still be on the map but now resides only in memories.

“We thought she’d come to talk about our artwork,” Lonnie explained.  “We’d had journalists come in to learn about how we got our start.”

“But she was looking for the Victory Post Office,” said Twyla.

On a mission to travel the state from “A to Z” as a series of 26 travel columns to be published in Kentucky Monthly, Hervey was given a name of a town and 24 hours to find the locale, find a story and turn it in to her then-Editor-in-chief Steve Vest.

“It started as a causal Friday conversation,” Hervey said.  She was assistant editor at the time, when Vest and she decided to give the series the green light.  

Her first assignment – Amandaville – was chosen in part for her name.  From B to Z, Vest then drew names out of hat.

“It was entirely random,” Hervey said.  “I wasn’t allowed to do any research on the town, other than to find it on a map.”

On her 22nd assignment, Hervey spent daylight to dark one night in July searching for the non-existent town near East Bernstadt, and she didn’t think she’d leave Laurel County victorious.

“It was a hard assignment, I thought,” said Twyla.  “She’d been out all day.”

About to lose hope, Hervey stopped at the home of Kathy Hurley, Twlya’s cousin, who gave her directions to the Moneys’ home and a possible lead on her story.

The post office was the heart of the Victory community, Twyla said, so it’d be natural that Hervey would try to start there.

“At that time, every community had a post office,” she said, “It’s different today.”

Lonnie’s cousin, Herman Nelson, was the last official postmaster of the Victory Post Office.  For a short time, Nelson’s wife, Mattie, assumed the role between his death and the office’s closing.

Hervey learned the couple couldn’t have children and knew it was destined that she’d met them. Hervey knew that same heartache.

She and her husband, Travis, had been trying to conceive for some time after their marriage without luck. But halfway through her A to Z journey, they received blessed news – they were expecting.

Whether it was irony or providence, Hervey said these coincidences popped up everywhere.

“It was like that throughout the whole series — over and over again,” she said.  “If I had any doubts about God, I don’t now.  I ended up where I was supposed to be.”

The tales were just as much as about her, as the towns Hervey visited.

“I had no intention of it (the series) having anything to do with me personally,” she said.  But she got back from her first assignment and there was only one way to tell about it.

“I told it like I was telling my daughter, like I’d tell my children I one day hoped to have.”

But even more so, the stories were about the people she met along the way.

“Wherever there are people, there’s a story,” she said.

Kentucky A to Z: A Bluegrass Travel Memoir is now available for purchase at www.kentuckymonthly.com/shop and at the Kentucky Proud Market.



editor@sentinel-echo.com