“The Abandoned Old Prison Down By Airdrie Hill”

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Two years ago today we lost John Prine. He was one of the early famous victims of COVID-19. Prine had been on tour in Europe in February 2020, when news of the virus was just beginning to be talked about. By the time he got back to the States there were dire warnings all over the news. Then his wife and manager announced that she had it, and she was isolating herself away from Prine. Sadly, not in time to save Prine. He contacted the virus, which — even then, in the early stages of what we knew about COVID — was alarming. Prine was a two-time cancer survivor, including having part of a lung removed for lung cancer. In the end, there wasn’t much to do except wait for the sad news, which came on April 7, 2020. One of Prine’s most enduring songs is from his debut album, a song called “Paradise.” It’s paid a lot of bills for him over the years thanks to all of the covers over the years in pop, country, and bluegrass. Nothing can beat that original recording, however (not even the great cover by our own myLotter @TheHorse !), with its sparse instrumentation (fiddle by Prine’s brother, David, and guitar and harmony by Prine’s best friend, Steve Goodman). The lyrics tell of carefree childhood memories and corporate greed. The song’s story is completely true. It is about the life and death of a town in western Kentucky called Paradise. It was located in Muhlenberg County (what, you think Prine made that up?), in the same county that served as the home of the Everly Brothers. As Prine mentioned in the song, the little town was literally wiped off the map when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) opened an electrical plant (TVA Paradise), fueled by the Peabody Coal Company’s strip mining. The 59 residents’ hopes of growth in 1959 were dashed within ten years, when the pollution caused by the strip mining and the plant (which, from a distance, looks like a nuclear power plant with its similarly-shaped stacks) made the town uninhabitable. Six people were left by 1967, and the cheapest thing to do was buy them out (“eminent domain”). The Owensboro newspaper’s headline in 1967, when the Paradise post office officially closed, was, “Muhlenberg County Progress Closing the Gates to Paradise.” I’ve taken a “Paradise” road trip before, and a lot of the places he mentioned in the song are there. The Rochester Dam really is on the Green River (and, as he sang in the song [“when I die let my ashes float down the Green River, let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam”], some of his ashes were scattered there). The one thing I did NOT see, however, was “the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill.” Here’s where Prine was and wasn’t truthful in the song. Yes, a lot of people thought the large concrete ruins on Airdrie Hill had been a prison. It wasn’t. It was the Airdrie Iron Furnace. That’s a part of the story that required a little digging. (We’re talking about a three-minute song here, not an “Edmund Fitzgerald” epic. ) In the 19th century a man named Robert Alexander bought land and named it Airdrie, in tribute to his Scottish ancestry. He had an idea to tap into the region’s coal and iron ore, so he had the Airdrie Iron Furnace built there. As it was on a bluff overlooking the Green River, it was nicknamed “Airdrie Hill.” Long story short: the iron works foundry was a dismal failure. They couldn’t get it up and running, so Alexander abandoned the idea — and the building — by 1885. Where the idea of it being a “prison” came from was the fact that the Kentucky State Penitentiary, located in Eddyville, was going to be expanded in the early 20th century, so the state sent prisoners down to Paradise to get some limestone out of the ground for construction materials. While working the men were housed in the abandoned foundry building. As a result, people begin thinking it was being used as a prison. (As those were the days before the internet, gossip would spread, not the truth that we have today. ) All that’s left now are the memories, so beautifully articulated in Prine’s lament. To commemorate the importance of this song, the “main street” in Drakesboro (the closest town to where Paradise was) is named John Prine Avenue. (And that was while he was alive, so he got to relish that honor.) And, sadly, Prine is gone now, too. But we have those memories, forever etched in vinyl. John Prine was 73 when he died two years ago today. The song “Paradise”: