The following is the oral history of March 2010 Living Treasure Wendell Moore. The history was recorded by Nancy Theiss, PhD and transcribed by Educator Jan Jasper. The Living Treasure Program is a joint endeavor of the Oldham Era and Oldham County History Center.

I was born April 9,1933. We lived in Oldham County but I was born in Trimble County because when my mother to have me went over to Trimble County and stayed with her mother. At that time, I don’t think but one out of the seven kids were born in a hospital at all. I am one of seven I have three sisters and three brothers. One of them is dead; the rest of them are still living. At that time, a doctor usually came to the house. There would be a neighbor or someone who would come and stay with the birth mother until she could get on her feet. So that is why I was born in Trimble County because I was at my grandmother’s. My mother was Laura Powell Moore. That family was originally from Trimble County. It goes way back.

My dad’s name was Earl Moore. We were tenant farmers up until I was about nine or ten years old and then my dad bought a farm down around Organ Creek which is right off Hwy 42. He bought 220 acres. We farmed that. We had a dairy and we farmed with horses until right around the late forties – ’49-’50 – when we got a tractor. We put up our hay. We stacked our hay out in the field. You have heard of hay stacks? You would stack the hay up and when you got ready to bring it into the barn, you would have to fork it all again back onto the wagon. And the cows when we first started milking, we milked by hand - you would have to go out and squeeze your hands.

On the tenant farms, if you are familiar with a tenant farmer – we had our own horses and our own cows, we had our own stock - but we lived in a tenant house and then we got half of the crops we raised. That was our payment. The other half went to the land owner.

We didn’t have anything like we have today to play. We didn’t have TV for one thing. What we usually did is we made our own play things. We took a barrel hoop and would make something to push it with like a hoop. We would race with that and then we would play field hockey with tin cans and get a good stick for our hockey stick and we would play it just like they do with real stuff today. We had a lot of fun.

We had dogs but they were usually the dogs that took care of our cows; they would go out with us when we would bring the cows in for milking. We had sheep and they would protect the sheep and run the other dogs off. You had to watch for foxes back then. But we had a collie. I remember the collie that was part collie and part shepherd. He got caught in a steel trap and cut half its leg off. That was the smartest dog we ever had. You would get ready to bring in the cows in the evening for milking and if the cows were visible, you could just point at them and tell him to go get them and he would go get them and bring them into the barn.

We also had hogs and pigs we would have to ring the pig’s nose so they couldn’t root out. No matter what kind of fence you had, they would root underneath of it.

We always had a bull with the cows. It wasn’t until later on that we had artificial insemination so we had our own bull. The bulls would want to get out of the pasture to somebody else’s cows. So you had to put a ring in their nose and put a chain on the ring so when they tried to jump the fence or tried to go through the fence, that chain would hang that we put on their nose and they couldn’t get out.

I remember back when we raised tobacco, we didn’t know about fertilizer when I was real little. My dad would go back in the woods where the leaves had composted for years and pick out a good fertile place to place a tobacco bed where you sowed your tobacco bed. Usually there were always stumps there so you would have to plow that up and I had what you would call a Rastus plow. That was the brand name for the plow. It just had a little plow with the handles. If you hit a stump, not bigger than we were at that age, it would hit your ribs and make you sore.

I remember we had one horse plows when you plowed tobacco and the corn fields – later on we got what you call two horse plows. There were two horses and you sat on this plow and it had iron wheels on it and you would go down through and plow the tobacco and the corn. But before that we had this one-horse plow, the Rastus Plow, and we had this one horse that got foundered by eating wheat mash out of a barrel that we fed cows. That horse went blind. But my dad some how trained the horse to plow and not step on any plants. Then you could tell the horse what you wanted it to do, just say ‘Gee’, ‘Haw’ and that horse would turn around and go between the rows and start back and never step on a plant.

The best memories [as a child] are just to be able to be with each other. We were happy; we were a happy family. It was rough back then because my dad had to go through the Depression. Most of us boys were born right after the Depression and still had the affects of the Depression. I can remember that when we lived down on Patton Creek – we were tenant farmers then – we had some rough times. He told me about it and I remember it but I didn’t know we were having such a rough time because we always had food shelter and clothing. But I remember it was back when they had the WPA work program that President Roosevelt had back during the Depression years.[Wendell’s father helped to build Hwy. 42 under the WPA work program.] He would get up and milk the cows. At that time we only milked enough to have milk for family. We were not selling any. He would walk to work. We did not have a car until 1940 and he would either ride a horse or walk. They built Hwy 42 with horses and scrapers, horse-drawn graders and hand concrete mixers. He worked on that as well as raised the tobacco crops and milked cows.

From Patton Creek the closest grocery store was about five miles. We had what they call the Market Truck. The Market Truck came out of Sligo which is where Trimble and Oldham all come together. The guy’s name was Earl Rogers. He had a grocery store there and had what we called a Market Truck. He would load up cans of food and different vegetables like that, flour, meal and all that, and he would go through the country and he would stop at each house and you would meet t

he Market Truck and that is how you got your groceries, because at that time we didn’t have a car. When my dad finally got a car where he could take us, we would go [to LaGrange] Saturday night. That was the only time we would go. We would come to LaGrange and we would go to what we called the ‘picture show’. I think while they [Moore’s parents] would go to the grocery, we would go to the picture show. I think it cost $.0.15 or something like that, popcorn was a nickel. If you ever got a dollar, oh, you could have a wonderful time for a dollar.

I started [school] when I was six years old. We were living on 42, I mentioned we were tenant farmers. I started at Liberty School and was there for eight years. The teachers were very strict. If you did something wrong, you got a whipping. They didn’t beat you, it was nothing like that, but they would sting you a little bit, paddle you. The principals had the authority. It wasn’t written authority, but it was accepted that if the teacher sent you to the Principal’s office, and you were guilty of something you were accused of, or at least they thought you were guilty, you would take your pants down to where your butt was showing and there would be a paddling.

Moore described some of the school activities: In the earlier grades there was recess. So everybody chose up and you played softball. Then they played various games, but it was not organized; it was what you organized yourself. Then later on in the 7th and 8th grade we had a 8th grade basketball team. We didn’t have a gym. We played on an outside court. When we played games like with Crestwood or LaGrange, they had gymnasiums. But Shirley McKenzie was principal then. Of course, Shirley had basket ball fame behind him; he played for Murray or Kentucky Wesleyan, I don’t know which. He was the coach and the principal. Teammates included Perry Hall, Oren Clore - I’m trying to think of some - the Bells, Pete Bell, Jimmy Hicks, Wilmer Hicks from over at Westport. At that time the teachers had a building that they lived in. It was owned by the school board. The Principal lived there. It was a different world then than what it is today.

Moore described chores and life on the farm: Well, if it was winter time I was expected to split the wood. The cooking was done with a wood stove and our heat was wood. We sort of alternated as boys. One of us would help Dad milk the cows. We had electric then. They were electric that produced vacuum pressure that would milk the cows. So some us would help carry in the wood. Some of us would help milk the cows. Of course we had hogs, so we would feed the hogs.

We put up hay, forked hay, hauled hay to the hay loft, forked it up to the hay loft in the spring time. In the winter time with all the cows, all the manure, we would wheelbarrow it out every day and pile it all up, and in the springtime that was our fertilizer to spread out on the field. We had a manure spreader and it was drawn by horses. My dad would be the one to drive the horses out in the field and spread the manure. We would be the ones to fork – we had pitch forks and shovels – and filled the manure spreader up. While he was gone - it would take him a while because we didn’t have a tractor; the horses were a little slower that the tractor - so we would have to rest. And you would have your lunch and the horses hand to have lunch, too, so we would take them to the barn and feed them corn and then after lunch – we always took an hour for lunch – and then between loads of manure that had to be hauled out, we had a basket ball goal near the barn. There were three of us boys. The youngest boy, he was too young at the time – we would play basket ball while he was gone. He would come back and we would load the manure spreader up again and he would go unload it.

I remember too that we had orchard grass. We raised that along with the hay and we would sell the seed. The combine – we didn’t have combines then, it was thrashers, what you would call a thrashing machine – and up at Sligo, Henry County, Mr. Kidwell had a thrashing machine and he would go from farm to farm and did the thrashing. Before that, you had to cut the orchard grass and shock it the same way you did wheat. Now the combines go out and do all that. To shock it, you would stand the wheat up on end and you would take what we would call now binding twine and wrap it around and tie that and you would leave it there until the thrashing machine would come around if it was wheat or orchard grass. Then what you would do, you would go out and untie the bundles and the machine would dump them on the ground. We would have to walk along and stand them up….all the neighbors would go together and they would share their labor and equipment. We would have 15 or more people that would come in and help each other. When they got through with us, we would go help someone else. Whoever helped you, you went to help them.

Our church was Sligo Baptist Church. It is where I still go to today, the red brick church on the hill. They [Moore’s parents] were adamant about us going to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night. We went three times a week. We didn’t always want to go, but it was one of those things we had to do. They expected it.

We had a couple of lakes, pretty good sized ponds, and that was our swimming hole. We had a diving board there and a rope up in the tree and would swing out and that became a sort of a neighborhood swimming hole, you know. People up around Sligo area and Organ Creek area, they would all come and we would have swimming parties. Maybe not like they have today, but we had a lot of fun doing that. Actually that is where we took our bath in the summer time after working in the hayfield. We would go take our bath in the lake.

[Moore and his wife Betty were childhood sweethearts and attended the same church and school] She was a sophomore and I was a junior. She graduated from Henry Central and she started riding to work with me. [at that time Moore had a job in the advertising dept. at GE.] Then I was drafted into the Army in the Korean War. We were going together at the time. Then I came home on leave and got married. We didn’t live together for about a year. I had to go back and I didn’t know where I was going to wind up at and she was working. I was spending most of my time out in the field. So we decided to just not live together. We will be married 56 years in June and a lot of people ask us what we contribute our longevity to. In a kidding way, I said, “When you get married, don’t live together for a year, then you find out how much you miss each other.” After that I went back to work for GE and I went to Athrens electrical trade school and became an electrician. Then received a diploma from DeVry Extension School. I worked as the planner of the Engineering Department and construction work at Appliance Park. Then I decided I needed some more education, so I took some night courses at Kentucky Southern College. I decided I needed Law. So I signed up for Law at LaSalle Extension University an did most of it from home and I had to do all my testing under the supervision of a licensed attorney. That would be Bruce Hamilton. I took my test in his office and sent them off. Of course he had to certify that my tests were given by him. I was 39 when I finished all of that. It seemed like I went to school all my life and worked too and raised a family.

[Moore began his life in public service as a magistrate.] It was 1966 and I was appointed to fill out the term of my uncle Raymond Moore. He resigned to go to work for the state. Then I ran for the office and I was there two terms and then decided to run for Judge. Judge Hall decided to retire. I ran in 1973 and took office in 1974. I held that office until 1994 when I retired. [In the early years as Judge, Moore had judicial duties which is not required of the county judges today].I had Quarterly Court, I had Juvenile Court, and we had Traffic Court every Saturday morning. At that time when I first got involved as a Magistrate, we had Judicial Duties as a magistrate, as a Justice of the Peace. Living on Hwy. 42, the officers over there at the time, the State Police, Kentucky didn’t have reciprocity with the other states. In other words if you got picked up with a traffic violation and they let you go and you were from Ohio or Michigan or something like that, if you didn’t pay your fine, nothing happened, nothing went against your record unless you happened to come back to Kentucky. So what the officers would do, I would have Traffic Court at home as a Magistrate. If they wanted to let them go and just get the ticket, they would bring them in and you would have Court then. It might be midnight. It might one o’clock in the morning. And they didn’t want to come all the way over to Judge Hall, drive all the way over here from 42, so there were three of us Magistrates that lived over here on 42. Joe Nay was one and I was one and the other was Harry Nelson.

Well when I first took office [as county judge] there wasn’t that much to do [regarding county management].. As the County began to grow, we needed a road department, we needed a parks department, we needed senior citizens programs, we needed a police department. Because at that time we just had a Sheriff’s dept and they didn’t get enough money to have that many people. So in 1978 we formed a County Police Department that is 30 years old next year. We started out with three officers. Then we worked with the State in getting land from the Reformatory to have a County park. Then we got us a road department and stared getting equipment in. But we did it as we got the money. Most of the Magistrates back then they also came up during hard times and they sort of believed that you don’t buy unless you had the money. It was pretty much how we had to do back then. There were14,500 in Oldham County when I took office in 1974 and now it is something like 60,000 after those twenty years. It was in the 50s.

The salary was set by the state; $12,000 was my annual salary. That was the maximum. That was derived from the Fee Office. That had to come out of the fees from Quarterly Court and Traffic Court – a certain fee went to the County and a certain fee went to the State. Our salary was paid from that. I supplemented my salary with a little bit of farm work.

One of the funniest things was, you see we also married people. I was still a Magistrate. I wasn’t a Judge when this happened. We could marry people when we were Justice of the Peace. One of my friends I worked with at General Electric – of course a Magistrate was a part-time job, we still had our full-time jobs. We were only paid something like about $15 a meeting and we only met once a month - anyway, one of my friends wanted to get married. He was divorced and the person he was marrying was divorced. Anyway, he comes up and he has his Tux on, he was married at our house. Each one of them brought their children with them. I married them on Saturday afternoon and they went back to Louisville to have their reception in Louisville. I guess they must have gotten drunk or something. Anyway she calls me us at mid-night, and she says, “I think I made a mistake. Can you tear that marriage license up? I don’t want to live with him any more.”

After Moore retired from the county judge seat he began working with FEMA as a first responder to assess damage from disaster: The first disaster was in Tennessee. It was the ice storms. I do inspections on public property – anything owned by taxpayers, such as a tax-supported hospital or college or university or high school, anything that is owned by the city, the utility co-ops, not-for-profit companies – then FEMA gets involved. They will send some of us in to inspect the damage and see if there is enough damage for the President to declare a disaster. So I am there on the first line for the declaration and also for the recovery. Some of the recovery lasts for a long, long time. But usually I don’t stay over 90 days. We can come home and stay ten days and go back.

This latest one this past year I spent two hitches in South Georgia and the Metro Atlanta area on floods. The year before that, I spent time in Alabama, the Montgomery area. I spent 60 days in Key West, Florida for Hurricane Ike. We investigated the beach damage and the building damage in the City of Key West and damage all along the keys, the municipalities there. The worst disaster I have worked was robably in Enterprise, Alabama when the school there was destroyed by a tornado and it killed twelve high school students and destroyed 22 out of the 24 buildings.

Moore always serves on several charity boards. I am a Board Member of the Community Chest. I was a board member of the Good News Shelter. It is run by the Baptists but it is non-denominational. And, I am a volunteer for the Baptist Builders. We build churches for communities in Kentucky.

Once I got involved with County government, I liked challenges and I could see a challenge in how the County was beginning to grow and develop. I could see a challenge in trying to provide the things that we needed like roads, parks, and senior citizens programs

. The biggest personal loss for Moore was that of his granddaughter: One of the tragedies that hurt me the worse is when my twin granddaughter drowned in the bath tub. She had a seizure.We all have faith in God. It brought us through knowing that there are better things to come.

As I grow older and look back, I think Oldham County really has got a little bit of everything. We are fortunate to have the YMCA - I would have never thought we would ever have had that or that we would have the number of high schools or grade schools that we have. I think our school system is great and our professional people, our doctors, lawyers. The hospital is one of the best things that has come here. It is one of the things we worked hard on getting. I had to go to Frankfort and testify several times before the licensure board over the certificate of need. At that time it was pretty hard to get that.