A Visit to Knoxville - Day 4, Lebanon to Knoxville

We left Lebanon in the morning and headed east on I-40.  The leaf color, along the Interstate was very bright.

 

With only 170 miles between Lebanon and Knoxville, we decided to take a scenic detour off I-40 and drive the final 60 miles through some of the Tennessee back country. Our GPS indicated we would only add 36 minutes to the trip with this detour.  We expected it would take us longer.  We left Interstate 40 at exit 320 (Genesis Road) near Crossville, Tennessee, and headed north on Tennessee 298 toward Wartburg.  We were quite surprised by the gasoline station at that exit.

Buc-ee's, a Texas based chain has been rapidly expanding (The Winchester, Kentucky, Sun says "spreading like Kudzu") in the southeast United States.  The Crossville unit has 120 pumps and serves up a variety of barbecue sandwiches and other treats.  Unlike a Pilot or Flying J, Buc-ee's doesn't allow 16-wheelers.   Their latest Tennessee installation, in Sevierville, reportedly has 20 fast EV charging stations in addition to their 120 pumps.  Linda captured an image as we drove past. 

  

Genesis road took us on a beautiful winding route through the western foothills of the Cumberland mountains near the Obed Wild and Scenic River.

About halfway along our scenic detour, we approached the tiny town of Lancing on the Nashville Highway (TN 62).  I was intrigued by a sign pointing toward Production Tool & Die, just a couple of miles up Shady Grove Road near the Shady Grove Church.  We decide to go take a look.

 

Soon we had arrived at the intersection of Melvin Howard Road, G. Howard Road, and Shady Grove Rd.  After reading some of the signage at this intersection we thought that we should visit the nearby Shady Grove Church, and we did so.

  

Returning to the intersection, we headed up Melvin Howard Rd. to the machine shop.  Note that a single phone number serves both the machine shop and Melvin's Hay business.

  

 

Melvin was sitting outside the shop on his tractor and said that his wife was inside and would give us a tour of the facility.  Naturally, we accepted and did a quick walk-through where we found a nice facility with a couple of employees at work on the machines.  There are several rural machine shops here in Morgan County, presumably serving the needs of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the numerous high-tech small businesses that surround it.

Production Tool & Die has a website with a photo of the shop's exterior as well as interiors. 

The view from the top of the hill back toward Lancing displayed great fall color.  This Tennessee hilltop would be a perfect spot for anyone that could work remotely.

 

Since we were headed toward Wartburg, we expected to, perhaps, find a Lutheran community.  While the town does have German origins, we never did see a Lutheran Church but passed numerous small churches.  These are all found near Lancing, Wartburg and Oak Ridge:

• Saint Ann Catholic Church
• Oak Grove Church
• The Assembly of the Church
• Shady Grove Church
• Living Waters Church
• Liberty Baptist Church
• Beechfork Holiness Church
• Union Baptist Church
• Milestone Church
• Coalfield Seventh-day Adventist Church
• Middle Creek Baptist Church
• Big Mountain Church
• Kellytown Baptist Church
• Beech Park Baptist Church

After returning to the Nashville Highway, we stopped a couple of miles east of Lancing to take a picture of the signage at The Assembly of The Church.  

It was clear that the pastor here has a point of view on infant baptism and is willing to stand by it.

A Visit to Knoxville - Day 3, Part2 - Paducah, KY to Murfreesboro, TN

After touring the Wall to Wall murals along the riverfront in Paducah, we continued on toward our final destination of Knoxville, TN.  I wanted to stop at Murfreesboro to see what General Mills had made of the old Pillsbury (Totino's) pizza plant.  Linda didn't think that sounded like a worthwhile stop until she recalled that she followed the owner of a furniture store in Murfreesboro on YouTube, so we placed that destination into the GPS.

Along the way, we definitely wanted to make a stop at a fork in the road near Franklin, KY.

The routing through Franklin took us through some interesting and scenic areas.

Going directly from Paducah to Knoxville is only about 350 miles along the Interstate, but for us this took two days.  The mandatory stop at Franklin quickly took us off I-24 and onto U.S. 68.  We passed through the town of Fair Dealing and into The Land Between the Lakes national recreation area - the two lakes being Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, the latter we recognized as being named for the thirty-fifth vice president.

The areas near the Land Between the Lakes are populated with summer homes.  The delightfully named "Golden Pond" area where the National Park Service's headquarters is located, reportedly once had a national reputation for its moonshine production during the prohibition era.  Today, the area plays host to a herd of Elk and Buffalo in what was once a native prairie habitat.

  

    

 

Continuing on for about forty miles past Golden Pond, we passed through Fairview, Ky.  Fairview is a town of about 250.  As we were approaching town, we noticed a very tall obelisk just off to the right and pulled off the highway to drive in that direction.

 

 Nearby signs revealed that Fairview was the birthplace of Jefferson Davis and this was the site of the Jefferson Davis monument and museum maintained by the state of Kentucky.

  

 

 

We have spent enough time passing through Mississippi and along the Gulf Coast to visit the Davis Presidential Library and hear references to "President Davis," but had no idea there was a monument of this scale in Kentucky.

We pulled into the parking lot for a quick tour.  The parking lot was empty but we found an attendant supervising the exhibits who informed us that the elevator to the top of the 350 foot monument was not working, but that we could tour the museum.

The exhibits include an excellent history of Davis' government roles before the Civil War as well as during and after.  There is a rare Confederate Flag on display as well as a very large portrait on loan to the museum.

  

  

Continuing on to Franklin, Kentucky, we found our destination about eight miles off the beaten path along a very winding route.  It's located at the junction of Bunch Road and Uhis Road, after taking a turn off Salmon's Blackjack Road.  As we rounded the corner, we saw it - a fork in the road!

According to a story in the Franklin Favorite newspaper, the fork was erected in early May 2018, and built by the senior welding class of Franklin-Simpson High School. Made of stainless steel, it is 21 feet tall, weighs 680 pounds, and is anchored with a ton of concrete.

 

Naturally, we paused for a photograph.

 

The route is supervised by a small herd of beef that were admiring the fall color in the nearby pasture.

  

Nearby, we saw another "barn quilt," similar to the ones that we had seen in Canada earlier in the year.

  

Heading on toward the town of Murfreesboro, some 35 miles southeast of Nashville, we arrived at the northern city limits of Nashville at about the peak of rush-hour and spent close to an hour moving from the north side of the town to the south.  We made it to Linda's destination, JD's All About Home furniture store,  twenty minutes before closing and she was rewarded with a surprise gift from the owner by mentioning the magic word, "YouTube."

 

 

 

 

It was just a short five mile trip from the furniture store to what is now General Mills Yoplait yogurt plant.  While it seems like only yesterday, it has been over fifty years since I was writing computer programs for the Pillsbury Doughboy, later acquired by our crosstown rival, General Mills. I still like to drive past the former Pillsbury manufacturing sites when the opportunity presents itself.  Sadly, many of the plants are long ago demolished.  But the current Murfreesboro plant, created with a $8 million investment in 1977 to manufacture Totino's frozen pizza at low cost, has grown to become one of General Mills largest plants.  Pillsbury dough products like Crescent Rolls and Cinnamon Rolls are also produced here.

In between our two stops in Murfreesboro, we found quite a flock of birds settling in for the evening.

  

We headed northeast as dusk settled on Tennessee, joining the Nashville - Knoxville traffic and stopped for the night in Lebanon, Tennessee.

More photos at this Flickr album.

 

 

 

A Visit to Knoxville - Day 3, part 1 - Paducah, Kentucky

Tuesday morning gave us the opportunity to drive downtown to the riverfront in Paducah.  The town has a population of about 27,000 and is located at the confluence of the Tennessee and Illinois rivers with a rich history of riverboat and railroad activity.  A twenty block area of downtown is designated as a historic district.

A large collection of murals, about a quarter mile in length, has been created on the town's flood wall over the past quarter century.  These are worth a detour for anyone in the vicinity.  Other attractions such as The National Quilt Museum, likely known to any quilter, the Paducah Railroad Museum (not open on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday), the William Clark Market House Museum and the Inland Waterways Museum all are located near the flood wall murals.

The murals tell the town story over a long period evolving from wilderness to the Atomic Age.

Water Street, along the river, forms the foreground for the murals.

A drive down Broadway passes through the historic district and ends at Water Street.

We took a good look at the river, then walked the length of the murals.

  

 

 

 

 

The founding of the town dates back to the Clark brothers: George Rogers Clark, a Virginia surveyor who claimed the land in the late 1790s and his younger brother, William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, who returned to found the town and sell lots in 1830.

 

Riverboats and horses dominated the early history of Paducah as the town grew to something approaching its present size.

 

 

 

 

As a transportation hub, Paducah held a key position during the Civil War.  The murals and plaques depict the complexity of positions for this pro-Confederacy town in a pro-Union (but slave) state.

 

At about the time of the Civil War, railroads had begun to dominate American transportation, even through river towns.

 

  

 

Paducah became a center for locomotive maintenance for the Illinois Central Railroad, now part of the Canadian National Railway stretching north through Wisconsin and Minnesota into Manitoba.

 As the town grew, churches, a synagogue,  a Carnegie library and a hospital all took shape.

  

 

 

The river remained important as freight was shipped by barge through the network of locks and dams.

    

 

Following World War II, as America built up its nuclear arsenal, a large uranium enrichment plant was built near Paducah along with a huge electric generating power station.  This was one of three such plants operating in the 1950s and '60s, the other two being the original one at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and another at Piketon, Ohio.  Decommissioning and decontamination work here will provide significant employment into the foreseeable future according to the attendant in the Inland Waterways Museum.

 

 

 

The Paducah uranium enrichment plant completely transformed the economy of the Paducah area.  A 1953 United Press article told the tale:

Western Kentucky farmers have deserted berry patches and orchards for jobs in such industries as the atomic energy plant here.

As a result, fruit production, once the biggest money crop for farmers in the area, has stopped almost completely. In only a few years - since World War II – the area has shifted from a farm economy to an industrial economy.

Many thousands of farmers have taken jobs at the new atomic energy plant, in chemical plants, and with the many other industries that have located in the Paducah area - one of the chief "boom towns" in the country.

The "atomic boom" as it is called locally, is reflected in fact that strawberry production in the Jackson Purchase area has dropped to only 250 acres. In previous years production has totaled 5,000 acres, along with more than 2,000 acres of peach orchards and 1,000 acres of apple orchards.

The MeCracken County Strawberry Growers Association once was the largest strawberry co-operative in the world, and shipped more than 1,000 carloads of berries to northern and eastern markets.  Now, the area produces only enough to supply local demand.

Land formerly used for strawberries has become pasture. Orchards have become the sites of trailer camps or subdivisions to house an estimated 20,000 defense workers in the area.

 

This infusion of jobs and wealth into the Paducah after WWII was, no doubt, influenced by the presence of Alben Barkley  in Washington as representative, senator and vice-president.  To most modern day Americans, Barkley is only an answer to a trivia question.  There was, at one time, an Alben Barkley museum organized in an old Paducah home in 1970, but, as an indicator of how fame is fleeting, it ran out of money and closed the doors in 2008 and the interesting-sounding collection was distributed elsewhere, including some to the nearby Market House Museum.  

 

One final mural caught my eye, depicting the growth of telephone communications in the area.  The old "cord boards" here were not replaced until 1979.