5 Kentucky Traditions That Died With One Generation

A 1947 newspaper ad for the brand-new Florence Drive-In made one promise louder than any other: Nobody had to dress up.

Kids fell asleep in their pajamas in the back seat before the second movie even started.

That drive-in is gone, along with plenty of Kentucky habits that went with it.

These are the Kentucky traditions that died with one generation.

1. Growing the Family Tobacco Crop

Kentucky had just under 62,000 working tobacco farms in 1987, and burley was the crop that carried a family’s whole income in county after county.

Every August, smoke drifted out of barns across the state as families cut, hung, and cured that year’s crop by hand.

Kids worked right alongside the adults.

By 2022, Kentucky had fewer than 1,000 tobacco farms left, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Census of Agriculture data.

The warehouses where growers once auctioned their crop to buyers thinned out just as fast.

Kentucky ran close to 150 tobacco auction warehouses in the late 1990s, and by January 2001 only 52 were still taking bids, with just one left in Bowling Green.

A Christian County farmer ended more than 50 years of growing the crop in 2023.

He said the tradition of handing tobacco farming from father to child was largely finished for people his age.

Nobody buys at the warehouse door anymore.

2. Friday Nights at the Drive-In

Kentucky’s drive-in movie theaters gave whole families a way to watch a double feature without ever changing out of pajamas.

The Florence Drive-In outside Covington opened in 1947 with parking for 800 cars and a free bottle-warming service for infants.

Three more Northern Kentucky drive-ins followed it: Dixie Gardens, Riverview, and Pike 27.

All four are gone now.

Riverview closed in 1982, Florence and Dixie Gardens both shut down in 1988, and Pike 27 screened its last movie in 1992.

Similar theaters across the rest of Kentucky followed roughly the same timeline as cable television and video cassette recorders (VCRs) pulled families back indoors.

A handful of Kentucky drive-ins still run a summer season today, but many towns that once had a drive-in now have none.

The screen went dark for good.

3. Ordering From the Sears Wish Book

Small Kentucky towns without a Sears store still got a full store’s worth of merchandise delivered through one book: The Sears catalog, known everywhere as the Wish Book.

Kids circled toys in pencil for weeks before the holidays.

Nobody had to drive to Lexington or Louisville for it.

Sears announced on January 25, 1993, that it would end the Big Book catalog nationwide, part of a restructuring that also closed 113 stores and cut 50,000 jobs.

The last Big Book catalog reached mailboxes that spring.

Sears stopped taking phone orders for good on May 27, 1993.

The company blamed rising competition from big-box discounters and changing shopping habits.

The phase-out reached Kentucky the same way it reached every other state.

No more Wish Book.

A shopper waiting on a special order that spring found out there wasn’t a next catalog coming.

4. Picking a Movie at the Video Store

Video rental stores anchored Friday nights across small-town Kentucky, from the videocassette (VHS) aisle to the argument over the last copy on the shelf.

Blockbuster alone ran more than 9,000 U.S. stores at its peak before filing for bankruptcy in 2010 and closing nearly all of them by 2013.

Then it was gone.

Northern Kentucky's Blockbuster on Madison Avenue in Covington had already closed by 2010, three years before the chain shut its last locations nationwide.

The chain's very last store nationwide held on in Bend, Oregon, long after Kentucky's locations had already closed.

Rewinding the tape used to be somebody's job in the family.

Only a handful of Kentucky holdouts still rent movies off a shelf, among them Symsonia Video in Graves County.

That rarity is the proof: Picking a movie off a shelf used to be everywhere in Kentucky, and now it's a novelty.

5. Saturday Trips to the Five-and-Dime

Kentucky's small towns built their Saturday errands around the local five-and-dime, usually a Woolworth's, with a lunch counter up front and a wall of penny toys in back.

Woolworth Corporation had run the format since 1879.

In July 1997, the company closed its remaining 400 U.S. stores in a single announcement, laying off about 9,200 employees.

Big-box discounters and specialty stores had already pulled away many of its customers.

Woolworth reorganized around athletic shoes instead, and by 2001 it had a new name: Foot Locker.

Nobody replaced it.

No small Kentucky town got a dime-store stand-in.

The Weekly Sunday Dinner

Rural Kentucky churches once held "dinner on the ground" almost every Sunday, laying out covered dishes on long tables outside after the service.

Old Regular Baptist and shape-note singing congregations in eastern and south-central Kentucky built entire association meetings around a full day of singing, preaching, and eating together.

The custom grew out of horse-and-buggy travel, back when driving home for lunch and returning for an afternoon service wasn't practical.

Once cars became common, families didn't need the whole day.

Not every Sunday.

Many Kentucky churches still hold a dinner on the ground once a year, usually tied to a homecoming or a revival, rather than the weekly event it used to be.

The Rural Party Line

Rural Kentucky telephone customers used to share a single line, called a party line, with several neighboring households at once.

Anyone on the line could pick up and listen in on somebody else's call.

South-central Kentucky's Duo County Telephone Cooperative eliminated its last shared party lines in 1984, switching every one of its 6,500 customers over to a private line.

All at once, not gradually.