Lincoln's stock shooting up

HODGENVILLE, Ky. -- The iconic image of Abraham Lincoln's sullen face drawn with a beard and topped with a trademark stovepipe hat will soon have the commercial draw of a pop icon.

With the nation preparing to mark the former president's 200th birthday, shops surrounding the spots of Lincoln's life are searching for every kind of knickknack to sell.

Sling shots and apple-bourbon scented candles graced with Lincoln's face. Pencil sharpeners fastened in a miniature bust of the president. Gourds adorned with his grinning mug.

Such trinkets are the trappings of a historic icon, said Eileen Mackevich, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission in Washington, D.C.

"Lincoln understood the value of appealing to people," Mackevich said. "He's always been commercial."

Lincoln was born in a log cabin near what is now Hodgenville, Ky., on Feb. 12, 1809. He bounced around Kentucky and Indiana until 1830, when he moved to Illinois.

A somber granite memorial now houses a replica of Lincoln's home, about 45 miles south of Louisville, where shops are stocking up on ephemera before the bicentennial begins in February.

Patty Reynolds, a park ranger, said the park has even turned down products bearing Lincoln's mug -- especially those with no educational value.

"We try to sell not just everything that comes along," she said.

Kristi Grant, who works at The Nancy Lincoln Inn near the Kentucky memorial, said her grandfather bought thousands of the wooden banks marked with Lincoln's image in the 1970s.

They, too, will hit the shelves of the inn's gift shop.

"I'm told I still have enough in my family to last a lifetime," Grant said.

The national Lincoln bicentennial celebration will begin on Feb. 12, 2008, at Lincoln's birthplace near Hodgenville. President Bush has been invited. The celebration will continue until February 2010 with other events planned in Washington, D.C., Illinois and Indiana.