PURPLE FLASHES

CANEYVILLE, KENTUCKY

Welcome to the new home for memories.
A time when all things are possible
and dreams always come true.

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This site is courtesy of Honus Shain, Jr. and maintained on the 

Pine Knob Theatre web server.

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NEW GRAYSON COUNTY BOOK
In 1958 Vernon and Susy are living out their lives in two very different towns in the hills of Kentucky. The two teenagers are separated by only a few hundred miles, but the divide runs much deeper than mere distance. He is a fragile farm boy — she was born into a life of luxury. They have nothing in common, until one day Susy's father — a pilot in the Air Force — crashes his jet on the land belonging to Vernon's aging parents, and this one event propels them into a world where they are forced to reevaluate everything they have always believed in.

Larry Small from the Bulldogs Class of 64 has written a book about the time and things we grew up with in Grayson County.  This book, "The Sandstone Rock", is available for $18.95.  Go to www.bbotw.com and put "The Sandstone Rock" in the title search.

The 40th year reunion of the class of '64

Some Photos of the Saturday Night Gathering

If you have photos, please email them to me.

Rex Evans has photos too, click here!

By DONNA BUCKLES. STINNETT
Features editor

Listen to one of the Leitchfield Caneyville Games Just Click Here

Everybody has a basketball story, says Kentucky Educational Television. The
network wants Kentuckians to share them at a Web site forum that complements
a long-form documentary broadcast this week titled "Basketball in Kentucky:
Great Balls of Fire."

Mention memorable moments in Kentucky basketball to Gleaner editor Ron
Jenkins, who launched his writing career in sports, and he'll talk about
unbelievably skillful players and teams he's seen play.

Among his recollections: A breathtaking one-handed mid-court shot by Austin
Dumas of Lexington Dunbar that beat Breathitt County in the 1961 Sweet
Sixteen.

The Kentucky High School Athletic Association lists it in their annual state
tournament program as one of several noteworthy "shots heard around the
state."

My basketball story isn't about talent or tournaments, though, it's about
atmosphere. The atmosphere around a small-town high school team during
basketball season.

Basketball was undoubtedly the social center of my alma mater, Caneyville
High School. On Tuesday and Friday nights (and sometimes Saturday night too,
if it got to be late in the season and the team was building stamina for
tournament time), everybody in town showed up for the game.

Often there would be an all-you-can-eat pancake supper or chili supper in
the school lunchroom beneath the gym so the townfolk would have a chance to
visit longer before the game actually got under way.

It was unbelievably hot in our crackerbox gym that had old-style wooden
bleachers on one side of the gym and metal folding chairs right on the
baseline around three sides of the floor.

Just like in church, people had their regular seats among the folding chairs
and somehow even the visiting fans knew they weren't supposed to sit there.

The women's restroom door was a fourth of the way down the long side of
folding chairs, prompting the necessity to look both ways upon exiting if
the action was especially fierce.

When it got really, really hot, somebody would crack the gym's side door
that opened up on the alley (another small gap in the long line of folding
chairs), but somebody had to be prepared to catch a player whose momentum
got going in that direction.

The portable bleachers that were pulled out on the stage and the two-story
balcony that was open at courtside on the other end of the old school
building were reserved for the real rowdies.

Even today when I mention that I attended high school at Caneyville, someone
old enough to remember will often recall: "Oh, yes, ... Caneyville... the
Purple Flashes... That's the place where the fans hung out of the rafters."

The fans were fierce -- and loyal.

When the team made it to the semi-finals of the Sweet Sixteen in 1962, the
whole town (it seemed) got in cars decorated with banners and crepe paper
streamers and drove to the Grayson County line to greet the team bus on its
way back from Freedom Hall. It was no accident that the route went through
the towns of cross-county rivals Clarkson and Leitchfield.

Six years later when our school was once again the tournament's Cinderella
team, The Courier-Journal sent a reporter to Caneyville to see what the
atmosphere in the town was like. That writer found one sole citizen on the
streets of town, and he was shooting a few hoops on the school's outdoor
basketball court. Everybody else was at Freedom Hall.

Summing it all up like this, it doesn't sound like a whole lot.

But for a small town in Kentucky it was everything. It was basketball.