Oct 10, 2008 I am seeing a Tennessee I have known all my life and yet never experienced quite like this before. The view is different along the old byways. And at bicycle speed it all comes into sharp focus.
For the third Friday in a row I mounted my Diamondback Crestview and started down the highway. The still active ninety-six-year-old Art Linkletter urges senior adults to take on new challenges to stay young at heart. So at age fifty-five I have taken his advice and begun my adventure: the length of Tennessee by bicycle. I am traveling via U. S. 70, from the North Carolina state line to the Mississippi River at Memphis. As a working man I must carry out my dream in stages, as my ministry at First Baptist Church of LaFollette allows opportunity.
As any Tennessee schoolchild knows, our state is comprised of three Grand Divisions: East, Middle, and West. (I have always loved that expression Grand Division; it sounds so majestic!) But the grand divisions I experienced on a forty-mile ride from Knoxville to Kingston last Friday were: big city, rural countryside, and small town.
This leg of my journey began at Chilhowee School, my elementary alma mater. It’s amazing how schools and prisons change so little over the years. Feelings of dread resurfaced from my first day there forty-plus years ago. We had just moved to the city, and I didn’t know a soul. But even imposing old Chilhowee School could not dampen my spirit on this day. I was biking through Knoxville, where history was made. Established around 1786, this city was the capital of Tennessee until 1817. Personal history was made here, too. Pedaling up Magnolia Avenue (near my boyhood home), down Gay Street, past the old Tennessee Theater (where I first saw The Long Ships with Richard Widmark and Shenandoah with James Stewart), past First Baptist Church (where our family attended for years), and through the University of Tennessee’s campus (where I graduated with a B.S. in Civil Engineering), I relived various stages of my raising in Tennessee’s third-largest city.
Kingston Pike with all the noise and traffic characteristic of city life quickly brought me back into the twenty-first century. I discovered that traffic lights not only know intuitively to stop motor vehicles as often as possible, but they also like to stop bicycles as well. And motorists are not always respectful of bikers. I looked forward to getting out of town and hitting some open highway.
The road from Knoxville through Loudon County and on to Kingston is pure Tennessee country. Rolling hills, blue skies, shirt-sleeve temperatures, fields with huge hay bales, woods with trees timidly giving up their green in lieu of yellows, reds, and golds—such a day is why people leave less fortunate states to move to Tennessee. I thought I could die of pure pleasure! But then the steep upgrade began—up and up, top a rise only to see another rise unfold before me. Would this upgrade never end? My muscles aching, I pedaled by faith, just knowing the next bend would reveal a long, breezy downgrade. It didn’t happen. I thought I could die of pure fatigue! I finally did hit some short downhill sections of highway, but I learned a new corollary to Murphy’s Law for Bicyclists: Downgrades never equal upgrades. My thirst was raging, my legs crying for relief. Rounding a bend, I happened upon an oasis in the desert: a little convenience store with cold drinks, shade, and a clerk named Jessie, who allowed some conversation and a bench to sit and rest. No I-40 rest area ever looked so welcome.
Kingston, a busy little town centered around the Roane County Courthouse, came into view after a few more upgrades. While it has traffic, red lights, commerce, and lots of people like the big cities, it nevertheless has the charm and personality of a small town. I proudly took a picture of the courthouse with my bicycle in front only to discover that there was a second courthouse right next door, a much older one. A plaque beside it informs the world of the town’s claim to fame: for one whole day Kingston was the capital of Tennessee. Apparently, in order to satisfy a treaty agreement with the Cherokees, the capital had to be relocated from Knoxville to Kingston. So the Tennessee General Assembly convened there—for just one day. Afterward, they resumed meeting in Knoxville. I couldn’t help but wonder how the Cherokees and lobbyists reacted the next day to find the capital missing.
Knoxville, Kingston, rural Tennessee—What a city! What a town! What a state! You might even call them Grand!
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