Independent Lens

Man

Actually, uh, kind of a funny story. This ball goal used to actually be a full court basketball goal, and me and a couple of my friends were playing a pickup game, and we needed an extra player, and goes, like, "Can I play?" So we're like, "Yeah." Didn't know--didn't know who he was, played for about an hour and he said, "I really got to get going." Well, he walked away. About 30 minutes later, one of the prison guards, who was a buddy of ours, brought a picture and he was like, "Have you seen this man?" I was like, "Yeah, man. He can play some basketball." And he was like, "What?" I'm like, "We just got done playing with him." He was like, "He escaped from prison." I was like, "What? "Well, you guys may have wanted to be a little bit quicker because we played for, like, an hour and a half." And they're like, "Which way did he go?" and I'm like, "There's only one way out of town." So we actually got to play ball with a pri-- Turned out he had written a bad check, and he was in prison, and I think it was his son's birthday coming up, and he wanted to be there, so he escaped. You are currently standing in the Wheelwright Historic Society headquarters, which is also the Wheelwright Library and Museum in Wheelwright, Kentucky. Wheelwright was actually founded in 1916 by the Elkhorn Coal Company. When the coal companies ran the town, anything you wanted was here. They actually thought about renaming it after Inland Steel came in to Camelot, and when coal left, no one had a backup plan, and it just kind of fell apart from there. You know, I hear the stories from my grandma and from my mom and dad about what Wheelwright used to be, and there's still-- you can talk to certain people, and there's still that little glimmer of hope. For a while, the prison was sustaining the economy really well, and then the prison pulled out, so now it's kind of back to the way it was. We've gotten word that the prison will be reopening, so there will be jobs coming back.

Woman

How do you feel about that? Uh, I love it. I would love to see that happen.