Bill Burton — Billy to his friends — grew up in the heart of Henderson’s East End in the late 1940s and early ’50s, by the intersection of Powell and Letcher streets.
“We had no TV. We had no air conditioning in homes. Everyone sat on their front porch, and neighbors stopped by to talk. And my dad was a good storyteller,” he said.
That gave young Billy a ringside seat to the telling of tales of local scandals — a murder amidst an East End love triangle, for example, or winks and whispers about illicit gambling at local saloons, with local officials on the take, paid to ignore it. It was a time when Henderson was known as Little Chicago.
“You got the sense that something nefarious was going on,” Burton said. “When my half-brothers came back from the war, they went to the Troc” — the glamorous Club Trocadero nightclub across from the racetrack then known as Dade Park.
“I was steeped in that as a child,” he said. “People around me did those things.”
Later, as a young man, he (like all of Henderson) hung on the news of a handsome young lead singer of a local band found beaten to death in his car outside a local nightclub in a crime that was never officially solved, though theories abounded.
Later still, he observed two respected local men stepping up to run for local office with a pledge to end cronyism in city government.
Murder, gambling, scandal and white knights.
Burton, 83, has compressed some of Henderson’s most colorful periods of the 20th century into a noirish novel, “Turn a Blind Eye,” available in hardback.
Its protagonist is Hoyt Cole, a fictional reporter for the Gleaner and Journal newspaper who, with training as a Marine during World War II, has the skills and toughness to endure physical threats while he endeavors to report on the illegal gambling, corruption and other vices that everyone in town seems to know about but most either ignore or sweep under the rug.
Some characters are based on real-life people, with names changed (sometimes to protect the guilty); some are totally fictitious.
“While critical” of corruption and the illicit gambling it protected, Burton said, “I try to offer an understanding explanation” of why much of the community tolerated them.
Henderson had endured dire times during the Great Depression. Henderson’s biggest industry, the Henderson Cotton Mills, which once employed 600 to 700 men and women, closed in 1931; the Marstall Furniture Co. factory and Heinz ketchup plant shut down as well. The once-vital tobacco market had tanked. A famous economist, Roger Babson, reportedly rated Henderson as the worst hit economically in the country.
Slot machines had been reported here since the early 1900s, but by 1930 the sheriff posted a notice that the county was “infested” with the devices. Burton believes that in desperation, people were willing to accept most any enterprise that brought cash into the community — and during World War II, saloons and other gambling venues here attracted Hoosiers and, especially, the 40,000 young soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Breckinridge during World War II.
“It’s not an indictment of Henderson County,” Burton said of his novel. “It’s a story about what happened and to relate how it happened and why it happened. It could happen anywhere.”
Burton’s creative juices have been flowing for some time. “When I retired in 2016, I started painting seriously,” he said. “I started instruction from (accomplished Henderson painter and instructor) Chris Thomas. I wouldn’t said I’m talented in that area; I learned the craft.”
Then about three years ago, he decided to try his hand at writing, using the provocative stories he heard as a kid as inspiration. He began research, such as turning to Rev. Charles Dietze’s put-of-print book, “The Henderson Crusade,” concerning the eventual crackdown on illegal gambling here.
He consulted with longtime local newspaper history columnist Frank Boyett, who has himself researched and written about those very stories. He asked a veteran journalist about the mechanics of a newspaper newsroom. He read stories online about the Club Trocadero, where couples dined and danced downstairs — or slipped upstairs to a casino. And he found an honors thesis about Henderson’s days as Little Chicago. “The library archive department was very helpful,” Burton said.
And he credits Dianne Bellis, senior editor for Butler Books in Louisville, for helping guide him through the telling of this story.
Burton doesn’t expect “Turn a Blind Eye” to become a best seller, but he does hope people buy copies.
“Working on a book is easy,” Burton said. “Selling a book is hard.”
***
Burton’s book can be purchased at www.turnablindeyenovel.com. It’s also available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other booksellers.
Copies will also be available for purchase at a presentation and book signing by Burton at 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 3, at the Henderson County Public Library.