Snowy Top, not Rocky


Got out the winter coats for four inches of snow. Tonight is supposed to be even colder, down to 12˚; it's already 14.9˚.  We are in Rocky Top in eastern Tennessee, next to the town of Clinton.

The town song: Rocky Top by the Osbourne Brothers. It is one of the ten official songs of Tennessee. In a weird twist, the town was named for the song, in 2014.

Welcome to Clinton TN

This mural graces downtown. The leftmost picture is the Norris Dam, the first Tennessee Valley Authority project, and location of our campground and snow. The rightmost panel commemorates their desegregation issue in 1956. 

The Clinton High School became the first integrated high school in the South. This happened the year before the Little Rock (1957) Little Rock Nine. Clinton (population 4,000 then) was about 90% White and 10% Black

Following the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision and a subsequent case in Tennessee, the school board integrated the high school. Twelve African Americans were registered to start September 1. All was going fairly smoothly until John Kasper, a KKK member from Washington DC,  arrived and commenced instigating riots at the end of August. By all accounts the students were getting along; it was parents and other White adults who created problems. The Tennessee National Guard and State Police were stationed in town for two months. Kasper was sentenced to multiple six month imprisonments for inciting riots. In 1958 the high school was damaged by three explosions with an estimated 100 sticks of dynamite; nobody was hurt.

The community and school stuck together. The first student was graduated in 1957 with news coverage, but no incidents. The second student was graduated in 1957 without news coverage or incidents. After the explosion, the community rallied, and apparently the community has healed and there have been no other ugliness. The town now has about 10,000 people, about 94% White.

The town has a very nice museum and monument about the incidents.


The "T" of the mural is for Hoskins Rexall Pharmacy. While in Nashville we saw the exhibit of the Woolworth sit-ins at the Nashville Public Library, but the original Woolworths is long gone. 

This looks exactly like all the pictures of the sit-in protests at Woolworths in Nashville and Greensboro (February 1960), minus people. Pemba is in the background.

While the lunchroom was empty when we arrived, it was almost full when we left.  The Rexall Pharmacy is superficially a historical anachronism.  They also have a current website, an app for refilling prescriptions, health newsletters, etc.

Old Inventory. They also had free Covid shots.

Barbara really loved the BLT sandwich. Recommended. 

I had expected the "up to six inches of snow" to be a crisis. Nope, roads plowed, traffic flowed easily, just not a problem. A pleasant surprise. 


My last epistle mentioned some of the remarkable women of the Civil War. I'm reading Liar Temptress Soldier Spy by Karen Abbott, which is about these (and other) women. Really enjoying it. 


Happy Trails,

Krem and Barbara


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sardegna - The Roads Less Traveled

Image
​ We arrived to Sardenha, which Americans usually call Sardinia. Our first night was in Burumini, the site of a nurse hi. Never heard of a nuraghi? Me neither.  It is “just an old pile of rocks”. The one at Barumini dates back 3600 years (1600 BCE), and was occupied to the sixth century BCE. For comparison classical Greece was just beginning in the sixth century.  Turns out this was not unique. There are about 7 to 10,000 nuraghis in Sardenha. Hundreds or maybe thousands were destroyed. Farmers used the rocks to build stone fences. The highway department used them for Below is the map of Burumini nuroghe. The guide said this was basically a large family compound, 20 to 40 people lived here over a thousand years.  The wall in the Maltese cross area is about ten feet thick. The tower originally stood about 60 feet high. The small circles were rooms and houses. Fascinating old culture I had never heard of. Everything was made of stacked rocks without any mortar.  N...
Read more

The Round Up

Image
We finished the Great Circle and are back in Rockport. Bye-bye, Nova Scotia We drove Blueberry 4,141 miles, towing Boma for 2,197 of that. We also drove the Tesla loaner about 400 miles. All together, we consumed about 2 MWh of electricity in 40 days. Not a fair comparison, but the wholesale cost of energy in New England was $32.59 /MWh, so about $65 for the voyage. We made six car ferry crossings. The shortest crossing, at Little Narrows on the Bras d'Or Lakes, was only about 100 yards. The longest was 47 miles from Digby to St. John.  The 400-foot long Digby ferry is about the same length as Little Narrows crossing.  Before this trip I think I've only driven on three ferries in the last 20 years.  The Little Narrows ferry The short ferries on Cape Breton are cable ferries: they are attached to an underwater cable and pull themselves across the crossing. The captain only needs to have the skills of an old fashioned elevator operator. These ferries are free and have no s...
Read more

On the Road Again

Image
Blueberry (our Tesla)  got out of the shop. Ate out downtown to celebrate.  A cute Pet Nat from Nova Scotia, with rose hips and elderflower with dinner All charged up, we left leisurely the next morning for Digby, but after 100 miles or so a worrisome message said "Service is Required". Turned around, recharged, dropped off the trailer at our campsite, and went back to the shop. By the end of day it was resolved. Went back to our campsite for the night, and binge-watched Only Murders in the Building until 2 AM. finishing Season 2,  Happy Trails, Krem and Barbara
Read more