Appalachia

This past week we drove the long way through Tennessee. It's a pretty state, filled with idyllic rural landscapes dotted with perfect "country" farm houses and populated with very friendly and easy-going people.

After a 10 minute stop in Nashville to buy my grandmother a keepsake from the Grand Ole Opry (had to, she knew I was going past it) we made it to Knoxville where we prepared to get our brains filled up with knowledge at the Museum of Appalachia, and then at the American Museum of Science and Energy. These two places are about a half hour away from each other, but each presents a VERY, VERY different facet of Tennessee history.

The first stop was the Museum of Appalachia, which had been built by a guy whose passion was collecting artifacts and first-hand historical and cultural knowledge about Appalachian life. Many artifacts on display had quite personal first-hand stories accompanying them and there were thousands of things to look at - we could not have read every word of every exhibit in a single day, I don't think.


The Appalachian people made beautiful furniture and pottery, wonderful music, and scary scary horrifying "art". We'll cover the artistic stuff in a separate post. The museum had stories about quirky individualists and stoic mountain men.

One crazy guy thought God was telling him to make gigantic cement crosses with religious messages on them and erect them everywhere in the solar system. He got a bunch put up in different parts of the States before he died, but the ones he had set aside for Jupiter and whatnot are now at the museum.


There were also stories of people who lived self-sufficient lives in mountain cabins into their eighties, nineties, and beyond. At one point America's oldest living person was a 108 year old woman living in the woods in the Appalachian mountains, still spinning the wool that she used to clothe herself and her two elderly children - in their eighties, I think - who still lived with her. She finally died at 115, if we remember correctly.

There was a cabin in the middle of the museum grounds that had three Appalachian musicians jamming in it when we entered. We talked with them for a bit as they played us songs and Mark ended up jamming on the mandolin with them for a bit.


The next day we went to the American Museum of Science and Energy. Well, it turns out that Oak Ridge, a suburb of Knoxville, was the town where they enriched the uranium that went into the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. The government created the town all at once, and although at the time it was the third largest city in Tennessee (population 75,000), it was not on any map and armed sentries controlled access into and out of the fully fenced-in city. Everyone from the age of 12 and up had to carry an i.d. card with them at all times. To this day, Oak Ridge's nickname is "the Secret City".

The town was created, as I said, to make the uranium for atomic bombs. At the time, nobody had ever made an atomic bomb and they weren't sure if what they were doing would actually work. The museum covers WWII from a nuclear perspective mostly but had other related exhibits too. It made us think.


On a more positive note, I did get to put on these crazy "contamination room" gloves and play with children's toys through the wall.


We rounded out the educational portion of our week by going to Jonesborough, Tennessee, to visit the International Storytelling Center. Sadly, the storyteller-in-residence does not begin his season until June, so we wandered around their gift shop and then left. Fortunately, the town of Jonesborough is absolutely adorable and the previous evening we had accidentally found the birthplace of Davy Crockett and slept at the campground next door to it.


So, Even if the Storytelling Center was a bust (no tales of rolling cheeses down the hill...you know who you are...) the area itself was worth it for a million tiny reasons, and that's what this trip is all about.

As I write we're camped by a lagoon on the Virginia/Kentucky border. Tomorrow we will be going to "The Poor Folk Arts and Crafts Guild" and afterward will probably drive through the town of Hazard, Kentucky, which became famous after the Dukes of Hazzard - set in a fictional county in Georgia - came out. Who cares about details?! Not the fans of The Dukes of Hazzard, apparently!


I was interrupted in writing this post a minute ago by a trio of Mallard ducks that walked past the open door of the Boler and paused as though to ask me if I had any Ritz crackers available. Yes, yes I do.