NC state line to Newport

Sept 26, 2008
I felt like an idiot. Even the dogs along this route seemed to have enough sense to come in out of the rain. But I was afraid to put off the project even one more week. I could feel the dream beginning to slip away. So I mounted my bicycle—in the pouring down rain—at the North Carolina state line and began to pedal toward Newport.

I am a pastor from LaFollette, Campbell County, who is looking for new challenges to keep active and fit in my senior years. Having just turned fifty-five, I take Art Linkletter’s and Mark Victor Hansen’s advice seriously, to make “the rest of my life the best of my life.” Therefore, I have embarked on a long-time dream: to travel the length of Tennessee by bicycle on U.S. Highway 70. There is so much more to see and do along the old secondary roads than on the interstate highways. (CBS’s Charles Kuralt once said interstate highways make it possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing a thing.) And the best way to experience these byways is by bicycle. A car is too fast. Walking is too slow. Pedaling is just right. It allows the traveler to smell the wood of the sawmills, see the wild turkeys, and hear the rush of the French Broad River. The traffic was light, the grades not too steep. I was amazed by the variety of bridges along this route, including a tired old steel truss bridge eagerly awaiting its partially-built, reinforced concrete successor to take over. The view by bicycle is a different experience altogether.

So last Friday was the beginning, the North Carolina line to Newport. (The goal had been Dandridge, but the rain and a broken spoke cut it short.) As a working man I’ll have to complete this project in stages: soon, Newport to Knoxville. Then I’ll tackle Knoxville to Cookeville, Cookeville to Nashville, Nashville to Jackson, and Jackson to Memphis and the Mississippi River. My wife Marcia will shadow me along the way in our car. My target date to finish is March of 2009.

But this visit was not my first to Newport—just my first by bicycle. One Saturday ten years ago I entered the town in a Ford F150, driven by the late Norman Gary Hughes. Norman grew up in Newport. A loyal and dedicated man, he served as a deacon in the church I pastored in Bristol. Norman wanted to introduce me to his old stomping grounds, so we drove down one Saturday, stopping first at Brocks, where we purchased Philly cheese steak sandwiches and a large roll of paper towels to use as napkins (we needed them!). Afterward he bought me a suit at Newport Dry Goods Store and introduced me to the proprietor, Carroll Kyker. Norman worked there during his high school years. As we stood outside the store looking toward the railroad track, I had the distinct feeling I had been on that street before. Suddenly it dawned on me. “I’ve seen this town from the train, when I was a boy!” I told Norman excitedly. Big, quiet Norman pondered that revelation and then asked, “Well, why didn’t you wave?”

In 1965 Southern Railway still ran a passenger train from Knoxville to Columbia, South Carolina. I would ride it on occasion to my grandmother’s house in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The view of Tennessee by train is altogether different from the view by highway. It affords a look at the back side of numerous towns, as well as valleys, rivers, and bridges not seen along any highway. But I was always intrigued by the town with the store fronts facing the train track and shoppers scurrying here and there. It seemed as if the train were traveling down Main Street. I never knew that the town was Newport. Nor could I have guessed that many years later I would be entering one of those stores with such a supportive friend on a trip down from Bristol. Or that even more years later I would be visiting these now familiar sights yet again, buying good dry clothes on a rainy day from Newport Dry Goods, and feasting once more on a super-messy, super-good Philly cheese steak sandwich—but this time by bicycle. It’s like seeing the town from three different viewpoints. Tennessee is a fascinating state and Newport an interesting town, whether seeing them by train, Ford truck, or bicycle.