From Azaleas to Zydeco: My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South

Good Old Rocky Top

Good Old Rocky Top To get from Gatlinburg to Knoxville, you pass Pigeon Forge, the home of Dolly Parton’s theme park, Dollywood. Pigeon Forge’s tourist attractions seem to be on steroids, much larger and flashier than Gatlinburg’s, which seem downright old-fashioned in their trashiness. Forget about the quiet of High Hampton and the quaintness of Ron Haven’s Budget Inn. Pigeon Forge is all about flash, outlet malls, and four-lane highways. After Pigeon Forge, the mountains and mountain tourist industry are in the rearview mirror. It’s a return to the real world. Knoxville is Tennessee’s third-largest city and the capital of east Tennessee. Every time I’m in east Tennessee I remember my father, a proud graduate of the University of Tennessee, saying that Tennessee is one of the most important states in the Union—parts of east Tennessee are closer to Canada than to Memphis. His characterization of Tennessee’s importance is pure opinion. But he was geographically correct: Bristol is a few miles closer to the Canadian border near Windsor, Ontario, than it is to Memphis. Knoxville and Memphis have little in common. Memphis—west Tennessee—is Democratic-controlled flat land, while east Tennessee is Republican-dominated hill country. That’s not to say that Knoxville is like most of east Tennessee. It isn’t. With a population center numbering over a million people, it’s certainly more urban, making it different from the rest of East Tennessee. It may be the lack of elevation: Knoxville sits 127 in a valley only 900 feet above sea level. Knoxville’s summer humidity reminds me more of the Deep South than of the mountain air forty-five miles to the east. Unlike most other mountain towns, Knoxville has an African-American community. Most probably though, the difference is the influence of the over 27,000 young people who come from all over the country to attend the University of Tennessee. One of them was my son, Will. During the half decade of his college matriculation, I got to know Knoxville, my birthplace. Yes, Knoxville’s different. Knoxville is the center of east Tennessee, and the University of Tennessee is the center of Knoxville. College football is the center of the University of Tennessee. Beginning late summer and throughout the fall, activities in Knoxville revolve around the university football team, the Volunteers, generally referred to as the “Vols.” In that regard, Knoxville is not any different from any other college town in the Southeastern Conference. Oxford, Tuscaloosa, and Columbia, I’m sure, are the same. The Vols play their home games in Neyland Stadium—pronounced “Nayland”—the largest stadium in the conference and third largest in the United States. The record attendance for a football game occurred in 2006 against the Florida Gators, with 109,061 spectators viewing the game. The stadium’s capacity has been reduced the past few years due to the installation of box seats for the well-heeled athletic supporters. Since 2006, a mere 102,037 spectators completely fill the stadium. In one of our son’s senior years at Tennessee, my wife, who has little interest in football, concluded that we had violated some collegiate obligation by not attending a parents’ football weekend. So we went to see the Vols play the University of Alabama (the one from the Birmingham campus, not the Crimson Tide). That other University of Alabama, the one from Tuscaloosa, was the number one ranked team in America and was slated to play my alma mater, the University of Arkansas, that same afternoon. Neyland Stadium sits on the north side of the Tennessee River. The river bank is only yards from the stadium. Because of the stadium’s riverside location, the Tennessee Vols have a unique group of supporters at each home game—the Vol Navy. The navy consists of approximately 200 boats that tie up on the river bank for each home game. Some come for 128 the day, some for the weekend, while some boats are a fixture on the river throughout the whole football season. The Vol Navy has a hierarchy. The earliest boats tie up to the dock. Late arrivers tie on to the earlier ones, thereby creating strings of boats. The outer boat owners then walk across the closer boats to get to the game. Now some of these boats are small, but most are not. One...