LOOuhvul

That’s how the locals pronounce it although Louis XVI, for whom they named it, might have preferred the way the rest of us pronounce it. Louisville.

Back in the late 1700’s when trade began to ply between Pittsburgh and New Orleans, the flatboat and keelboat operators found the Ohio River a convenient route for the first leg . . . 981 miles, all downstream, from the convergence of the Monongahela and the Allegheny to Cairo. But, halfway down (or up, after paddle boats came along) they encountered the Falls of the Ohio, a two-mile-long drop of 26 feet where the river slotted into narrow foaming chutes carved by the river into the limestone. Passable by intrepid canoeists perhaps but not by cargo boats except during springtime flood stages.

Some boats anchored above the falls awaiting the surge. Others docked on the Kentucky shore, off-loaded, and hauled their cargo to the calm water on the other side of the rapids. The drayage roads eventually became the main streets of the town that grew up to handle the trade — LOOuhvul.

Other felicitous coincidences ensued.

Booze. The proximate corn farmers found that they could convert their bulk crop into small kegs of valuable amber liquid — bourbon. In 1783 Evan Williams established the first commercial distillery in Louisville and then got rich shipping his barrels of bourbon downstream to New Orleans. Others followed suit, and these days bourbon ages in barrels numbered in the millions out there in the hinterlands.

Horses. In 1875 a little racetrack opened just south of town and in that same year ran a little horse race they called the Kentucky Derby. Churchill Downs. They have been running for the roses annually ever since, and have expanded the grandstands with bleachers and seats and luxury boxes the length of the home stretch and into the curves. On race day 170,000 spectators now squeeze in there to sport fancy hats, swallow mint juleps, and wager on the ponies. Out in the countryside towards Lexington thoroughbreds amble in verdant fields, crop grass, and gambol with their colts.

Bats. In 1885 woodworker Bud Hillerich turned a bat on his lathe for Pete “Louisville Slugger” Browning, star of the Louisville Eclipse. The following day Pete broke a batting slump with three hits. Word got around, and the next thing you know Hillerich and Bradsby Company was making bats for Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig. They’re still at it, right there at the factory on Main Street where you can heft the Babe’s own mammoth stick and buy a couple of Louisville Sluggers for the grandkids back home. UPS will drop a pair of them on my front porch next week, one with the name Jack burned into the barrel, the other with Austin. On the way back to the hotel you pass metal bats planted into the brick sidewalk next to plaques honoring the players who favored bats fashioned by H&B.

Louisville has done a swell job of maintaining its old-timey feel. When a building on Main Street begins to crumble, they tear down everything but the street front facade and then build in a new hotel or office building behind it.

In addition to bourbon and racetracks and bats, Louisville produces famous people . . . Jennifer Lawrence, Diane Sawyer, Pee Wee Reese, Paul Hornung, and the Louisville Lip himself . . . Muhammad Ali.

If I didn’t love California so much I’d be tempted to move there. A quaint riverfront town with history, bowered neighborhoods, good likker, and homes that go for a tenth as much as their Sonoma equivalents.