Trip down memory lane…….

Political commentary will resume this weekend. There is too much stupidity going on, on both sides of the aisle, that I just cannot let it pass. I also want to tell you my mother’s story-it deserves to be told-but that should wait until my thoughts on the matter can coalesce some more.

However tonight, I want to post some pictures from the trip up to Dad’s and back again. For more than a couple of reasons it was a trip back in time for me, and funerals make you think hard about the path that has brought you to that point where you stand above a green patch of earth holding the remains of someone you dearly loved.

I consider myself a Yankee-but I was actually born in the South. In Tennessee to be precise. For the first 10 years of my life I lived in a house in Alcoa, Tennessee. When the S.O. and I drove up to N.C. we took some time on the way to stop at some places that are of significance to me. It has been over 30 years since the last time I was at any of them.

Like the house I was a little boy in:

On that vacant lot, a house once stood. It had been built in 1913 by the Aluminum Company of America, (ALCOA) for whom both my father and grandfather worked for. My Dad was able to get a deal on it when he moved to Alcoa after the World War and it was in that town that all of us, spent our childhood years. The trees in the back of the yard where not so much in evidence when I was a boy. You cannot see it, but there was a sloping vacant lot behind where all of those trees where, and it was heaven for a 7 year old boy-especially when the snow fell.

There’s more to see. Follow me!

One of ALCOA’s fabricating plants is behind there but you cannot see it. After we left the street of my youth we went over to see the high school and the area around it. It had changed but it had not changed:

Its the Middle School now, but in the day it was the High School. Three of my sisters graduated from there-in a time when the girls had very formal senior pictures made and wore bobbie sox and black and white shoes and grease was simply something that went on cars.

The church we went to and I was baptized in:

It looked different in the day-and as I remember it, it sure seemed a lot bigger! One of my sisters got married in that church BTW. (The first time-there were a couple of other marriages later……).

On the way home from Franklin, after the funeral, we took the scenic route traversing from Robbinsville over the Smokey Mountains to south of Maryville. Route 129 is also of historic significance to my family, for reasons that need some explanation.

The smelting and fabrication of aluminum requires a lot of electricity. Along about 1911 or so, Alcoa had established manufacturing plants in Alcoa, and decided that it would be in their interests to generate their own electricity-harnessing the waters of the Little Tennessee river and bringing it by hi tension wires down to the town. That which they did not use, they would sell to the local utility company. For a good while, TAPCO, the company that Alcoa created to run this little enterprise was the town’s electical company.

So begining over 90 years ago, they built a series of dams (EDIT-Thanks Spike!) and power stations along the little Tennessee. My father, being an electrical engineer ( and a damn good one if I do say so myself!) was involved in one way or another with all three of the dams-and their associated power stations and transformer yards. That was his speciality by the way, the design of high voltage transformer yards and transmission lines. The first dam was Cheoah:

As I said Cheoah is 90 years old this year. Santeetlah was the next, of which I did not snap a picture, (Calderwood is also a part of the system) and the final dam was Chilhowee:

My mother joked that I was lucky to have been born, as my father was gone so much when the dam was fitting out and that transformer yard on the far shore was being installed. As my father had special access, I have been inside that grey power house on the side of the dam-which at the time was a novel design, seeing the massive generators from the both the top and the bottom. We used to get our Christmas trees, for free, on the closest bank in the picture. Dad knew the secret handshake with the security people and in the day there were no fences to stop us from coming down from the road. As children, all of us had been up that particular section of 129-now known as the Tail of the Dragon and very popular with bikers-but in the day was simply just another tough mountain road. Someone in the 70’s or 80’s seized on the idea of making it a biker mecca-and a tourist industry was born.

Before that though, the evening of the funeral, we went up and had dinner at the Jarrett house, which serves dinner the way it should be served-family style. It used to be the only hotel along the rail line there in Dillsboro. Kind of weird in a way, but we sat at a long dinner and enjoyed a great meal. My father, amazingly enough, actually joked that my mother was paying for it.  Guess its not funny in a macabre sort of way-but to tell the truth-we all laughed when he said that. My Mom would have acted pissed to have heard that-but not really.

The hotel:

Left to right-my daughter, my father, and the S.O.

And for Sourrain, the food:

 Speaking of food, if you find yourself in Franklin, have dinner here:

Good home cooked Southern food since 1978. And best yet-it is right across the street from the house my father and his family lived in while he was in college. ( They had moved to Franklin from Bryson City his Senior year in high school):

 

They bought the house after they had lived here for a couple of years. It was an apartment house in 1937 and it still is today:

There is more to see-but this post is long enough. Tomorrow, I will take you to Tapoco, where as I explained to the S.O. more than a couple of our family stories are resident. Ride the road!

Skippy-san 

Update! Thanks to Spike for pointing out that “Find and replace” is a “damn” powerful tool.