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Shakesthegrounds Rumblings
Shakesthecoffecan:
At 204,000 miles, the Silver Bullet still runs like a top, but the CD player is f'd up and my Ipod was dead and I had not packed the cord to charge it. I did have a radio. As soon as I reached Marion I tuned into 89.5, WETS in Johnson City, Tennessee, the first public radio station I ever seriously listed to and the gold standard by which I will always judge others. After 30 years it is still a golden meeting ground of blue haired classical devotees and left wing Appalachian Activists.
George McGovern was dying. "A family spokesperson reports that he is in the final stages of his life and resting comfortably in Hospice care surrounded by his family. The 90 year old former Senator has been unresponsive since Wednesday."
I was treated to the audio portion of a 2005 documentary about McGovern, and how the 1972 Democratic Convention brought conventions out of the smokey back rooms and into the lights of the TV. I would argue that had probably started 4 years earlier when the whole world was watching. It was my first exposure to politics. Age 9 when I learned how to hate. Validated two years later when when the eventual victorr of that race came on the TV and said he would resign the presidency effective noon tomorrow.
By the time I reached Knoxville the signal had faded and presumably the senator could have too. I was delighted however to find many other public stations and just generally cool ones playing bluegrass and classic country as I made my way down the road, looking for Athens. I had already decided Athens was as far as this road was taking me. My calculations put me sling shotting around Chattanooga about rush hour and I had no desire to get in that mess. At Athens, Tennessee l left the Interstate and stopped and got me a Nutty Buddy and took a right out of the gas station onto Rt. 30, and into the mountains.
Shakesthecoffecan:
Here, I was cutting fence. This road would take me some place I had never been before, never seen. Signs in years for candidates I had never heard of, knew nothing of and did not want to know. 50 miles an hour, did I mention it was a beautiful fall day in sprite of the dust, which was still everywhere? It was the temperature perfect, the road winding, Rt. 30 changing from William Jennings Bryan Highway at a bridge being redone. It was reduced to one lane with a stop light to regulate it. A sign there reading that the delay would be no longer than three minutes. Since I was the lead car I had to stay on the ready for the light to turn green.
I crossed over that wide river and landed on the Old Washington Road, which carried me to Dayton, a little town where you have to be on your toes or you'll miss your turn. Take a right and go down two blocks where the bald headed man in polyester pants is sweeping the funeral home parking lot. Then climb, climb again. Somewhere, there is no sign that I saw, is the border with the central time zone. Only my all knowing phone could tell me that now I would have to subtract an hour from the time on my dashboard.
Here were the sought after leaves, yellow and red and rust and an occasional wild purple like a tunnel opening out unto a dusty vista of the valley below. A sign said this road was part of the trail of tears, the route the Cherokee had travelled when President Jackson decided they were not worthy to remain where they had lived for centuries and needed to to go "Indian Territory". Down, down the switch backs that my phone was showing me was just a crawl forward. Down the mountain. Down to Pikeville.
Here my quandry, turn south and take a more direct route to my destination or continue west thru McMinnville. I elected south on 127 and was glad I did. The beeline road went down the valley for miles. The Sherriff not paying any attention sitting in the middle school parking lot. Here were farms and cattle and horses and churches with inpronouncable Cherokee names like Ewtowah. The clouds gathered and I took off my shades. Lonely places. I soaked them up into my soul.
Shakesthecoffecan:
At Dunlap, I got on Rts. 8 and 111 and climbed the mountain again. A nervous four lane where a couple billion years of history could be seen in the excavation of the road, like a mural that just came as a result. Up ahead a road block, flashing lights slowed the traffic so that approximately 30 uniformed officers could assist in the towing away of a broke down semi, a livestock carrier, empty of contents. I wondered it they had had to effect a transfer there on the road. Soon I was up on the plateau and took a left on Rt 399, which I think was called Shooting Range Road. It was two lanes and carried me far into the country, and up behind another semi, loaded with a sweet mash I suspect having to do with the local distilleries, it travelled 15 miles and hour for a long way and I cracked my windows to inhale the sweetness of the grains, but not so much or so close as to be pelted by the hard bits falling off of it.
Intersection ahead, please turn left. Ah hell no.
I passed through the oddly named for that region community of Gruelli-Laager. What lost bunch of northern Europeans had settled on this place I wondered. I would have to read up on it later, the constant mental calculations with the dash board time piece ever reminding me that trying to arrive at a place one has never been before in the dark is always a GDBOAUS.
Shakesthecoffecan:
The Sweet Smelling Semi pulled off onto an unnamed gravel road, never to be seen again and I was left to navigated the last set of switch backs into the valley, into Franklin County where I crossed over the interstate 24 that I would have no use of, and on toward my destination. Time for the GPS again. In the potential shadow of a water tank with Nissan on it I set in my Nissan and goodled Tims Ford Rustic State Park. I wonder if the car detected it was near its birthplace?
Down Rt. 50, the Veterans Memorial Highway, toward Winchester. First however was the very well preserved town of Decherd, pronounced as far as I could tell "deckard". Here the train was passing though town so I had chance to look at all the old store buildings, home now to occasionally run antiques stores, and a hardward store gone dark. Ear bud in my ear, I approached the birthplace of Dinah Shore in the rush hour traffic, maze of strip malls and CVS, Republican Headquarters and "in a quarter of a mile (DING DONG) right on (DING DONG)" both the phone was ringing from home to see if I had made it and a deluge of text messages betwixt Lynne and Wayne discussing a shopping list with the admonition to Drive Carefully.
Up by the court house and the square lined with old businesses and a right turn on High Street. It was like the cuttin' horse road twixt Rocky Point and Lightning Flat. Take a right, talk a left, take a right, take a left. Drive, drive, drive. Cross a bridge. Welcome to Tims Ford Rustic State Park, and Golf Course. Cabins, this way.
But before I could reach it, after every other obstacle had been exhausted, here come a flock of Guinney Hens. There were about 2 dozen of them. Dumbest birds that ever lived, sharing one brain cell betwixt the entire flock. I can remember as a kid watching a regular chicken go out into the road to coax a Guinney on the rest of the way across. They were in the process, stopping (each one) to scratch at the pavement. I rolled down the window and asked them why they won't already roosting.
She come running out of that non rustic cabin like I'd come home from Iraq.
Penthesilea:
Maybe she was the one coming home from Iraq.
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