This morning we awoke in Chattanooga, and got a good, greasy breakfast at a place called Aretha Frankensteins. The restaurant is in a tidy house on a residential street, where the cook was smoking a doobie out on the porch.
The interior is a mish-mash of horror movie stills, plastic skeletons, and various Halloween props. The biscuits were, um, to die for.
Suitably fortified, we headed out eastward to Red Clay State Historic park, just over the border from Georgia. This served as the Cherokee’s national seat of government from 1832 to 1837. But wait, you say: Wasn’t New Echota, Georgia (that we visited yesterday) the Cherokee capital? Indeed it was, but in the early 1830s Georgia passed a state law making it illegal for the Cherokees to gather and officially vote on anything. In order for their national Council to convene, therefore, they moved across the state line into Tennessee. See the two points at the right-hand end of the Trail of Tears, below.
The state park at Red Clay includes the reconstructed Council meeting house, as well as other structures. It’s much less impressive than New Echota, and clearly served as a makeshift site for a government-in-exile.
From Red Clay, we roughly followed the northern route that the Cherokees took when they were forced from Georgia to Oklahoma. We passed through a number of small, out-of-the way Tennessee towns, and skirted around the west side of Nashville. Along the way we stopped in McMinnville, TN (pop: 14,000) for lunch. We tried the Vanilla Bean Bakery, which hooked us up with baked goods an coffee. (I never said it was going to be a healthy lunch.)
On the way out of The Vanilla Bean we passed a narrow, granite monument of sorts that was squeezed between two buildings. The monument reads: “JESSE WALLING. I enlisted in the Lord’s cause when young. Later I enlisted in the Confederate cause and was wounded at Murfreesboro and later discharged by President Davis. The Lord has been good to me 85 years.”
And just beneath the monument is an engraved notation: “This stone is not to be moved for love or money.” So evidently, Jesse’s wishes have been honored.
It turns out that Jesse Walling had been mayor of McMinnville, and he’d founded a bank, a power company, and a cotton mill. He died in 1930 at the age of 89. The Lord had been good to him, indeed.
A little later along our route, in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, we encountered this Transformer-like yard art.
It even has (barely) moving parts! Watch it in action.
I’d love to see it go head-to-head with this medieval bad boy that we found guarding a junkyard yesterday:
Eventually we entered Kentucky at roughly the same point that the Cherokees did 183 years ago. We headed up the “Dixie Beeline Highway,” and eventually found ourselves in the quaint town of Hopkinsville (pop: 32,000). It’s home to an unusual 1892 depot of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.
Hopkinsville was one of the few towns in the region permitting alcohol sales. It’s said that Hopkinsville was often referred to as “Hoptown,” because it was only station between Evanston, IL and Nashville, TN where a passenger could “hop off” and get a drink. I’m not making this up.
Speaking of drinks, on today’s drive we encountered a few pink elephants. Though located in different cities, they appear to have been manufactured out of fiberglass from the same mold. Alert readers will recall that I’ve run into a couple of similar (though slightly different) pink elephants on my Route 70 trip (see near the end of this post and this post.)
Finally, just three minutes before its 5 pm closing time, we arrived at the Hopkinsville-Christian County Visitors Center. It was on this land that Cherokees on the Trail of Tears camped, were reprovisioned, and (for a couple of them at least) died. We were greeted by Amy, who was the only person so far who’s showed any enthusiasm for our trek. In fact, Amy seems to show enthusiasm for everything, including a story about aliens landing in the area in 1955. It seems that the Lankford-Sutton family, which lived in a farmhouse a few miles up the road, watched a spaceship land on an adjoining field on the night of August 21, 1955. Little silver beings emerged from the ship and converged on the farmhouse. Some of the menfolk in the house fired shots at the beings (as one does), but the shots had no effect on them. The police were called out, but they could find no evidence of an alien invasion. The story was largely forgotten until 2005, when some townsfolk figured a 50th anniversary celebration would be a good way to draw tourists. There’s been an annual “Little Green Men” festival ever since. (Never mind that the men were originally claimed to have been silver, not green.)
We spent some time chatting with Amy about her job (the Lord answered her prayers and led her to it two months ago), her home (on her parents’ 150-acre farm), the Trail of Tears (there’s going to be a big commemorative meeting of Indians at the Visitors Center this weekend), and various other topics. Sensitive that we were keeping her at her job well past closing time, we let her lock up while we moved outside to the area where the Cherokees had camped. Next to a creek were the graves of two Cherokee chiefs who had succumbed during the forced march. These are among the very few verified graves along the Trail of Tears.
After a quick trip to a nearby field to view the “flying saucer” that commemorates the invasion (see above), it was time for us to take a long detour off the Trail of Tears, and head to Louisville for a day or two on Kentucky’s Bourbon Trail. But before we could start that detour, we got clipped by a maroon Dodge Caravan, which shot across four lanes to make a turn while we waited patiently at a stoplight. We tried to catch up with this hit-and-run driver, but lost him/her. Let us know if you see this vehicle!
Eventually we did make it to Louisville. It was now quite late, so there was no time for a BOTD. In fact, we barely had time to get a drive-though sandwich from Subway just as they were closing. Notably, Michelle (the cheerful southern belle who was working the take-out window) insisted she could guess our occupations based strictly on our voices when we ordered through the microphone. “One of you is in insurance, and the other is in the ministry.” She didn’t indicate who was the minister. But either way, she’s zero for zero.
Chasing Phantoms 