Crossroads and Coffee Trees: A Legacy of Joe Creason

by Joe Creason

Few people have more intensely loved or more thoroughly understood the Commonwealth than Joe Creason. He visited the state's crossroad communities as well as its large cities, writing about the people he met and the uniqueness of their lives.
Creason arrived at The Courier-Journal in 1941 with a degree from the University of Kentucky and experience on two small-town newspapers. After covering sports for a year, he began a stint as a Magazine staff writer, the position which gave him his first glimpse of the state to which he would become so devoted. 

In 1963, he began his daily column, "Joe Creason's Kentucky," later shortened to simply "joe creason." He said he wanted to write about the "humor and pathos and irony that touch us and our neighbors." Until his unexpected death, Joe Creason's column was the most popular feature in the newspaper. For his legion of followers, reading Joe Creason every morning was a rite, a celebration of people and places and events. 

This book is a storehouse of Kentucky folk history, wisdom and tales written in the Creason mode of humor tempered with sincerity. His younger son Bill introduced this volume and selected the writings from the vast Creason collection.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975