"We were crusading journalists," said Mendes of his literary comrades. "We wanted to change the world, save the world, in a time of war and racial strife."
While Mendes, Holwerk, and Salmon, among others, were attending the University of Kentucky, they wrote for The Kentucky Kernel, which at the time, "was an activist paper," said Mendes. "The blue-tail fly was an outgrowth, in a way, of the campus protests of '69 and '70, that closed down campus both years, and cancelled finals. The first year, it was about student rights--getting out from under in loco parentis, the university as your parent. Four students were busted for having pot in their lockers, and they were kicked out of school, right before the end of the semester--before they were tried and convicted of anything. They weren't 'innocent until proven guilty.'"
Building on the success of the Civil Rights Movement and the local Black Student Union, students took action. "We were inspired by the Black Student Union--they were the first protestors. I think we learned from them and from the whole Movement that you can take to the streets, you can get people together in mass, and they can't ignore us.
"So the Kernel, which we all worked for at the time, editorialized and called for demonstrations, and low and behold, several thousand people showed up," continued Mendes. "We organized a protest in front of the administration building. Then later that day, we protested at Memorial Hall and stayed overnight."
Mendes said there were several thousand protestors in front of the administration building, and as a symbolic gesture, the cannon out front was turned to face the building and the cowering administrators inside.
Now hanging on the wall in Mendes' home- studio are pictures from that turbulent era; one, included in the book The University of Kentucky: A Pictorial History, shows Mendes in front of the administration building holding a bullhorn. The caption reads "the most dangerous moment in UK's history," to which Mendes laughs. "I have to disagree; I mean, I had a tie on! We were wearing ties. This was a peaceful protest."
It wasn't long after that the reign of liberal, crusading editors at The Kernel came to a halt. At the time, departing editors could choose the next year's editor, but because of the paper's support for anti-university commentary, the role of editor was given to the sports editor and "it became more of what you would expect from a Southern party school campus newspaper. And except for a couple random pieces," added Mendes. "I haven't seen much gumption and activism out of the Kernel since."
Mendes and several other Kernel journalists quit the paper, and it was during the summer of '69, when Mendes was doing an internship with Newsweek, that the first ideas for blue-tail fly took flight.
"There was no other news source about peace and justice, protests, the Black Panthers, the fledgling women's movementÖand we knew the word was not getting out to people about the war and racism, sexism. The Leader and the Herald weren't doing it, those right-wing rags--they were still under the ownership of Fred Wachs, who discriminated against blacks in his news coverage. So we pooled some money--we actually got close to $500 from this radical older man from Louisville named Henry Wallace, a kind of socialist sympathizer, a wealthy man. We had a few hundred dollars to start--it cost $200 an issue--and nobody got paid."
The paper got its name from a song Mendes' mother used to play on the piano, titled "The Blue-tail Fly." Many remember the song from its chorus "Jimmy crack corn and I don't care, Jimmy crack corn and I don't care, Jimmy crack corn and I don't care, My master's gone away." The 'master' being "war-mongering, paternalistic society," said Mendes.
The first issue came out in October 1969. On the cover is a collage of the Constitution and three Muldraugh (a small town in Meade Co., Ky.) coffeehouse patrons, sitting in front of the standard signal of distress--the upside down flag. There was an uproar in this small town because of a coffeehouse that had opened to allow soldiers a place to talk and protest the war, ultimately bad-mouthing the Army and its career soldiers, or "lifers." The back cover shows baton-wielding policemen standing outside the "Spring Republican Governors Conference 1969" at The Phoenix Hotel. Below the picture reads "kentucky needs the blue-tail fly."
Mendes said there wasn't a hierarchy to the paper, just "six or seven people really" with additional pieces submitted from outside sources. "There was David Holwerk, Darrel Rice, Rick Bell, Sue Anne Salmon, Jack Lyne, Gretchen MarcumÖand Don Pratt handled our distribution. We had alliances with some wonderful writers, like Wendell Berry, Ed McClanahan, poems by James Baker Hall. We had Harry Caudill writing about strip mines, we had photographs from people like Ralph Eugene Meatyard. We benefited from our association with these types of writers, and artists like Jack Stone at UK, and others."
The first couple of issues appeared monthly--there were 11 issues from '69 to '71--and were being printed at Georgetown News, until the btf staff wanted to print a bleeding flag on the next month's cover. "The printer there had, like, a porno novel in his back pocket and a cigar hanging out of his mouthÖbut he took one look at our cover and said 'I'm not printing that.' Then we tried printers in Louisville and Cincinnati, and they said 'are you going to use four-letter words?,' and we said 'it's none of your business.'"
"We finally ended up going to east central Indiana, to a little town called Fairmount," continued Mendes. "There was a printer there that printed underground papers from Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and he printed the blue-tail fly. He was from Kentucky originally and he told me once that the only paper he read, that he printed, was the blue-tail fly. And I think it was because we had Wendell Berry and Gene Meatyard. We had politics, and culture, we had real authors; we had radical news from the Liberation News Service and other sources."
The process of laying out the paper was tedious--there were no computers. Everything was typed out using an IBM executive typewriter, then the pages would be laid down on cardboard flats, and the whole thing would be shipped, by Greyhound, to Indiana. Then a few days later, someone would have to drive up to Fairmount to collect the 200-300 copies. "We never had a huge pressrun," said Mendes who became the unofficial layout guy. "Then we'd sell them on campus and the student center for a quarter apiece. We'd hoped it would be a monthly but it wasn't; there were 11 issues over two years."
In between issues the staff was busy attending protests here and in Washington, D.C. In 1970 Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia after promising to end it. Then tragedy struck Kent State, just six hours north of Lexington. Outraged students and faculty gathered on UK's campus once again to peacefully assemble and share their anguish over the unnecessary actions of the Ohio National Guard.
During that same sit-in, an Air Force ROTC building on UK's campus was burned to the ground, and Salmon, one of btf's staffers, was arrested and charged--all because she was seen near the area carrying a large bottle (thought to be gasoline). The bottle in question was discovered to contain ginger ale, as Salmon had explained upon arrest, and she was later exonerated. An interesting note: While Salmon was in custody, she was asked repeatedly if she worked for blue-tail fly and a policeman admitted he read the paper to "know what was going on," (according to an issue of blue-tail fly).
"To this day, no one knows who burned down that building," said Mendes. "But because it was burned, Gov. Louie Nunn sent in National Guard troops with live ammunition and tear-gassed us all. They blocked off campus and had guardsmen patrollingÖI mean, Kent State could have happened here. When Tiananmen Square happened in China, people were wringing their hands, saying 'how could they kill their students?' We did it here. Nixon did it in Ohio. And it could have happened here."
Salmon's run-in with the police, unfortunately, was not an isolated case. Don Pratt, who distributed the btf, was also arrested later that year, and Mendes after that.
"I was an independent newspaper distributor," said Pratt. "So I used a group of 20 or so little kids, all from low-income families, that could help me sell some papers. We had a nude on the inside, as in nude art, and apparently someone had it out for me, and I was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. I was charged but not long after, the charges were dropped."
"I was an innocent," said Pratt, on looking back. "I had no idea what was really going on in the world, until I started becoming active on campus. I was enlightened by the war, by the Civil Rights MovementÖI didn't know about the abuse of power by whites. When I was asked to help out with the paper, I was excited. I enjoyed the stimulation to think about so much more than the average person was thinking about. It was a great service to the community and the community needed it. It became a wonderful newspaper."
Regardless of the many rocks thrown in their path, the btf staffers continued their pursuit for truth and justice--the mission was the same, only the issues changed.
Toward the end of the paper's run, Mendes was attending demonstrations against nuclear power because of plants being built in Louisville and Cincinnati. "Again it was one of those situations where you have to go and protest," said Mendes, who got arrested that day for crossing a fence and symbolically trespassing. "And ultimately, they cancelled those projects.
"Like Vietnam, you protest and you protest, you get beaten in the head with a club, you get gassedÖbut ultimately, it was the people's army that helped stop the war. Without the incredible protests on the coasts and in-betweenÖI mean, this was Lexington, Ky., sleepy college town, but we had a couple thousand people out in front of the administration building. It was a very exciting time, a contentious time."
Mendes is quick to point out that while many other underground papers were printing stories said to be 'off-the-pig' or against cops, that wasn't the message behind blue-tail fly. "We weren't out to break down society or to break windows or burn buildings, that was not our intention; our intention was to make things better. Some would say we were nothing but a bunch of loony hippies, but we had something to say. Hippies were a good thing, they helped bring about change, they brought about the end of the war, they promoted social change, they promoted community."
In a world where nothing is free, the lack of money, normally generated from advertising and subscriptions, meant the gradual demise of one of Lexington's most spirited voices.
Mendes said the publication did have a few advertisers, but after it was discovered what type of paper blue-tail fly was, ads were pulled. "Occasionally we got a national ad, like an ad for Woodstock," said Mendes. "And we made up plenty of phony ads, like the one of the student body president wearing an 'Official National Guard Target' T-shirt."
"If we'd had some kind of endowment, some pool of money," added Mendes. "We could have kept printing."
When graduation time came around, Mendes and many others refused to take part in the ceremony.
"We felt the university was complicit with the U.S. government and all the other forces," explained Mendes. "The university was part of the problem, and the fact that they brought in National Guard troops. That, to me, was the most dangerous moment in UK's history, not when we protested in front of the administration building in '69, but in '70 when the troops walked across campus, ready to shoot if they had to."
To look back on the array of people involved in the btf is like looking at a modern-day Who's Who of Lexington. Those "six or seven people" have grown up and done some great things, from lending their voice and expertise to national newspapers and establishing non-profit groups to producing shows for PBS and KET.
While many may learn of the blue-tail fly for the first time while reading this, others remember it clearly, and to this day, while speaking of it, their eyes become alight with reflective awe.
"I miss that camaraderie," said Pratt. "The time period was incredible, so loaded. It changed things on campus, people became aware of their own issues, such as women's rights and protecting the environment. Everybody took on so much, then money became so prevalent and we lost so much."