SHARPE, Ky. — Keith Holt spent vacations during his childhood looking at roadside attractions around the country. Now, he's turning his home into one.

Holt and his wife, Diane Karnes, are converting old family property on U.S. 68 West, just south of Paducah in far western Kentucky, into a tourist spot — the Historic Apple Valley Roadside Attraction.

The property features, in various stages of completion, an Old West-style storefront complete with live chickens, potbelly pigs, geese and turkeys. There's also an old country store, a toy museum and a fake roadside zoo.

Between the store and the zoo lies the "Hillbilly Gardens," a collection of flowers and plastic pink flamingos, a "lawn-mower ranch" that consists of four push mowers sticking out of the ground in an homage to the famous Cadillac Ranch in Las Vegas, a broken-down minivan with rocking chairs resting on its roof, toilets decorated as tombstones and other bathroom supplies serving as a fountain.

"You need attention to get people to stop," said Holt, 45. "As I think of things, I just put them up."

The idea grew out of the family's attempt to restore the original Apple Valley store, which has been on the property for nearly 80 years. The store belonged to Holt's late grandparents, Oral and Myrtle Wallace, who opened a Gulf gas station and roadside stand on the property around the time of the Great Depression. The store remained open through the 1960s.

Holt and Karnes want to make the store a gift shop and museum, selling souvenirs while displaying vintage items from the original store, including newspapers, signs, gas rationing cards from World War II, bottles and cans. The only item missing from the original look of the store is the gas pump that was once near the road. Myrtle Wallace disposed of it years ago.

"We wish she had left the pump," said the couple's son, 14-year-old Ian Holt. "She just wanted it gone."

Various roadside attractions decorate the property around the store. Signs around an old chicken coop say "Rattlesnakes" and "See the Tigers," but the fake roadside zoo has only one exhibit so far: a giant fake snake.

Nearby is the "Hillbilly Riding Mower," which is an old, rusted bicycle screwed on to a push lawn mower and dozens of pink flamingos scattered about.

It's nearly anything and everything Keith Holt imagined or can visualize once he finds material to work with.

Well, almost everything.

"He wanted to have a shoe tree, but I put my foot down," said Karnes. "I didn't want a tree full of shoes out there."

Other than that one setback, though, Keith Holt wants to model the property after Tinkertown in Sandia Park, N.M., and other fading roadside attractions and museums — an eye-catching amusement on a long stretch of rural highway. "I'm going to try to put as much stuff on display as I can," he said.