Blue Highways: Morristown, Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least-Heat Moon ponders, briefly, giving up his journey after a harrowing drive through the Clinch Mountains and a cold night in Morristown.  Luckily, he didn't quit, and we have more locations to scout.  Click on the map thumbnail to see where Morristown is located.

Book Quote

"I might as well admit that the next morning in smoky Morristown I was asking myself what in damnation I thought he was doing.  One week on the road - a week of clouds, rain, cold.  And now it was snowing.  Thirty-four degrees inside the Ghost, ice covering the windshield, my left shoulder aching from the knot I'd slept in.  'It is waking that kills us,' Sir Thomas Browne said three centuries ago.  Without desire, acting only on will, I emerged from the chrysalis of my sleeping bag and poured a basin of cold water.  I thought to wash myself to life.

"Outside, the spiritless people were clenched like cold fists.  A pall of snow lay on the city, and black starlings huddled around the ashy chimney tops.  Clearing the windows, I wondered why I had ever come away to this place and began thinking about turning back.  Could I?"

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 18

Morristown, Tennessee

Main Street, Morristown.

Quitting.  Nobody likes it.  But we often reach points where we think it might be the best thing to do.  When I decided to run a marathon, I trained for months.  By the time the marathon came about, I was really in the best shape of my life.  I was in my late 30s, and a 15 mile run was no problem at all.  26.2 miles, however, proved to be my undoing.  I was cocky and fast out of the gate.  I finished the first half of the marathon faster than I had ever gone before, and had peeled my shirt off to run in the humid New Orleans weather.  By 20 miles, I was on a sub-3 hour pace.  But I hadn't counted on the weather getting colder, so having my shirt would have helped.  I started developing cramps, and by mile 24 I was limping along and halfway delirious.  I couldn't make the last two miles.  I quit.

On the bright side, quitting was probably the best thing I could have done.  When I stopped, I was shivering (probably because I had lost enough body heat to be slightly hypothermic) and I collapsed in a friend's car and passed out.  But on the other side, I didn't finish a marathon that I had expected to finish.  I couldn't keep a pace at mile 24 that seemed so easy only 4 miles previously.  I kicked myself over and over again and labeled myself a failure.  My friends finished...why couldn't I?

So when LHM writes about quitting after a really hard drive and a hard night in the cold, I can understand him.  I feel every leaden movement he makes as he gets up in the 34 degree chill inside Ghost Dancing (his van, in case you forgot) and wills himself to wash.  I feel his lethargy toward forward movement as he asks himself if he shouldn't just aim the car on the freeway for a nice day's ride back home.

But even if it were for the best, he would have regretted it.  If one sets a goal, then one usually means to keep it.  Not keeping it implies a sort of failure, even if it were for the best of reasons.  The goal is left unattained, the grail is still out there.

I was afraid that my PhD studies would turn out in failure.  After all, I had the examples of lots of previous failures to overcome.  My father felt himself a failure for not rising above a certain level of management at the lumber mill, my uncle never attained his PhD in Political Science.  After I quit the marathon, I began to see my PhD pursuit in marathon terms, and wondered if I would ever attain it.  I was terrified by the example that my uncle set, in that he became a shadow of himself, the ever-present graduate student teaching classes until UC Berkeley wouldn't admit him any more.  He wasted away, never attaining his goal and never living up to the expectations of the people that supported him.

I got my PhD, and now I face a different situation.  I am having trouble landing a job in my field.  However, I this time, I am trying not to turn my situation into a marathon-like metaphor.  I am trying to look at it as one race among many, and if I don't attain the goal in this race, I can join another race where I might finish and perhaps even win.

How does this relate to LHM's stay in Morristown?  We all have our Morristowns, just like we have our Clinch Mountain hell-rides.  Our Morristowns are smokey and cold places where we ask ourself why we do what we do, and whether we should continue doing it.  We have Morristowns in relationships, Morristowns in our professional lives, and Morristowns will dot our path as we progress through our lives.  We may decide to drag ourselves up and continue on our chosen roads, or we may quit and go home.  Both of these can entail hurt and hardship, as well as regrets, but there are also rewards for each choice.  LHM decides to continue on, and Blue Highways was the result.

But sometimes, and I'm trying to keep in this in mind, our Morristowns might also lead us onto a completely new path.  After all, if we are taking stock of our situations, we might be inclined to be more open to new possibilities.  I hope that my Morristowns in my relationships will reforge themselves into something new, healthy and supportive.  I hope that my Morristowns in my professional life will lead me to a fulfilling career, and I hope that any other Morristowns I encounter will either push me onward toward my goals, or point me toward better ones.  Such is the underestimated value of Morristowns, and thank God for them.

If you want to know more about Morristown

City of Morristown
Morristown Chamber of Commerce
Morristown Citizen-Tribune (newspaper)
Wikipedia: Morristown

Next up: Whitesburg, Bulls Gap and Chuckey, Tennessee

Blue Highways: Tazewell, Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least-Heat Moon (LHM) again finds himself driving in wretched conditions, leaving him to ponder briefly the juxtaposition of thesis and antithesis.  Directly contradictory things locked together.  And it all happened near Tazewell, which you can find by clicking on the map.  Comments and e-mails, if you like what you see or have suggestions to make it better, are welcome...just go to the bottom of this post to leave a comment or navigate to the e-mail link on the right side of this page.

Book Quote

"I should have stopped at Tazewell before the light went entirely, but no.  It was as if the mountains had me.  Across the Clinch River and into the Clinch Mountains; a YOUR HIGHWAY TAXES AT WORK sign loomed up and then one in heart-sinking, detour orange:  CONSTRUCTION AHEAD.  It should have said, ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.  Figuring I was past the point of return, I pressed on....At each bent-back curve, my lights shone off into clouds, which turned the route into a hellacious celestial highway.  It was as if I'd died - one of those movies where somebody breathes his last but still thinks he's alive.

"....Helen Keller, who never drove the Clinch Mountains, said life is a daring adventure or it is nothing.  Adventure, an advent.  But no coming without a going.  Death and rebirth.  Antithetical notions lying next to each other, as on a globe the three-hundred-sixtieth degree does to the first.  Past and future."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 17

Claiborne County Courthouse in Tazewell

Tazewell, Tennessee

LHM really speaks to me in this passage, which I've condensed a little, because of his focus on opposite forces that are linked together.  It seems that nothing really exists without its opposite.  We usually see one side of the coin or another, and if we're lucky (or unlucky sometimes) we see both.

For example, LHM in his passage is driving through the Clinch Mountains near Tazewell.  From photos I've seen on the Internet while doing some background for this post, the area is lovely.  The Clinch Mountains are basically one long ridge that extends from Tennessee into Virginia.  For you bluegrass lovers, you will recognize the name in the band The Clinch Mountain Boys, a seminal bluegrass band led by Ralph and Carter Stanley.  On any day that LHM, or anyone for that matter, were to drive this route, they would probably be taken in by the breathtaking scenery as the mountain road winds its way along the ridge.  Even the construction, which would make drivers go slower, might also make them see more scenery and help them appreciate the beauty.

But for LHM, who decided to press on to Morristown rather than stopping in the little town of Tazewell as the light failed, the breathtaking scenery turns into something else entirely.  Opposition forces, day and night, light and dark, change the character of the road.  LHM references Dante's Inferno.  "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."  The road become dangerous, a trip not only through construction obstacles in the dark, where in places our only way of seeing (headlights) shine out into the nothingness beyond.  The Inferno describes descending into hell as spiraling down through nine circles.  LHM winds up along the ridge even as his mind spirals down into fundamental questions of life and death itself.

This speaks to me for many reasons.  How many of us have touched opposition forces and seen their power in our lives?  How many of us can traverse a forest path with no difficulty in the daytime, but at night are scared silly to be in the same place?  How many of us have experienced sadness and happiness in the space of a single day, a single hour, even a single minute?  How many of us have seen love turn to hate, or hate turn to love?  How many of us have seen vibrant life go dead, but also cold death somehow spark new life?  I'm 46 years old, I've seen all these things many times and will experience them many times more along my journey, my continuing advent, my adventure of life.

LHM quotes Helen Keller, a person about whom, every once in a while, a fact turns up that amazes me.  Yesterday, while doing a crossword puzzle, I learned that this deaf and blind woman introduced the dog breed known as the Akita to the U.S.  Her idea, that life is an adventure or nothing at all, is something that I would do well to remember when in moments of despair over whatever is wrong in my life, I forget that adventures consist of opposites and are not always exciting and exhilirating.  Sometimes they are just plain difficult.  Sometimes we all must traverse the obstacles and navigate the dangers to fully appreciate the beauty of the celestial highway called life.

If you want to know more about Tazewell

Claiborne County Chamber of Commerce
Clinch Mountain
Clinch River
Wikipedia: Tazewell

Next up:  Morristown, Tennessee

Blue Highways: Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapToday's stretch of our journey with William Least-Heat Moon (LHM) brings us back to the Cold War, as we enter the once secret city of Oak Ridge.  Had he traveled in the 1940s and 50s, he might not have been able to find it as it did not appear on any maps.  You can find it now by clicking the map thumbnail.

Book Quote

"The mountains opened, and Oak Ridge, a town the federal government hid away in the southern Appalachians during the Second World War for the purpose of carving a future out of pitchblende, lay below.  Here, scientists working on the Manhattan Project had made plutonium.  In the bookstore of the Museum of Atomic Energy were The Complete Book of Heating With Wood and Build Your Own Low Cost Log Home."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 17

Oak Ridge, Tennessee

When I was young, I used to daydream about finding someplace secret.  I spent long hours daydreaming out at some wilderness property we owned imagining whole cities that I would discover when topping a ridge, or rounding the next bend in a small valley.

The literature I read also often dealt with lost or secret places.  I knew the myth of the lost city of Atlantis.  Arthurian legend says that Arthur was taken to the mystical island of Avalon.  I read the book and saw the movie Lost Horizon, which introduced me to Shangri La.  As a high schooler, I devoured the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, and in The Silmarillion, he tells the history of the secret city of Gondolin, a city of elves hidden in a secret vale in the mountains.  He also wrote of the hidden land of Valinor, haven of the Elves, which was ultimately separated from Middle Earth when the men of Numenor encroached upon it.  Other fantasy books, which I was also very into, often had worlds hidden from us physically and temporally but interacting with us.  Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books had Tarzan helping and going up against lost civilizations, his Mars books detailed the adventures of an earth man among the various civilizations and races of Mars, as did his books of Venus.  Robert E. Howard created an entire world hidden from us through time because of cataclysmic occurrences altering the geography of the earth.  This world was the setting for Conan the Barbararian, and Kull the Conqueror before him.

I write all this not to implicate myself as a complete nerd - which I have just done anyway - but to show that the desire to discover secret places, places only we know about, seems to be a universal desire.  Before the world was completely and fully known, it was easy to fantasize and fear undiscovered places.  As the world gets smaller, the loss of a frontier to explore leads us to look elsewhere - in space, in time, and even beyond those to new dimensions.

So, what fun, and how sobering, it was to find out that during the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. both established and maintained secret cities connected to nuclear weapons research and production.  The Russians had dozens of such cities, which were surrounded by concrete walls and gates, where permits were required to live and to enter and exit, and where the people working and living were under heavy surveillance by the KGB.  Nobody was allowed to acknowledge the existence of these places.

The U.S. had only three secret cities, but they were remarkably like the Soviet secret cities.  Located in Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee they also required immense amounts of security and secrecy.  Oak Ridge, for example, was built on land appropriated by the U.S. government through eminent domain, and people were evicted, sometimes forcibly.  Once built, the city did not appear on any maps, people who lived and worked there were not allowed to acknowledge its existence, any mail originating in Oak Ridge was censored, and proper permits and identification were required for entrance and exit.  Conditions at Los Alamos and Hanford were very similar.

Secrecy warning once common at Oak Ridge

Of course, the work was nuclear in nature, part of the Manhattan Project which developed the bomb.  In all three cities, components for the bomb were made.  Oak Ridge enriched uranium and had a pilot program for plutonium, while Hanford was devoted to developing plutonium.  Los Alamos was the final assembly site for the first atomic bomb, which was detonated at the Trinity Site in what is now the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

After the war, Oak Ridge and Los Alamos became sites of National Laboratories, while Hanford became a site of nine nuclear reactors which are now largely decommissioned.  While Oak Ridge and Los Alamos are still municipal entities, the town of Hanford was largely destroyed to make way for the facilities.  At Oak Ridge today, the Department of Energy operates a number of research facilities that study in diverse disciplines such as biological systems, energy, advanced materials, national security, chemical sciences, physics, electron microscopy, nanosciences,and nuclear medicine.  According to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, it is even working on cutting edge technology to find child pornography and nab predators.

Of course, with the advent of satellites, secret cities are a thing of the past.  But they once were an integral part of the national security of two adversarial nations that between them controlled the known world.  The idea of secret cities are exciting, but the sobering part is that our secret cities have been busy developing a technology that, regardless of whether you think it has had positive or negative effects, could have led to world destruction and possible human extinction.  It makes for good Cold War intrigue, but ultimately, I wish the some of the potential consequences of our secret cities weren't so dire.

If you want to know more about Oak Ridge

City of Oak Ridge
Ellen Smith for Oak Ridge (blog)
Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground (blog)
It Dawned On Me: Oak Ridge, TN Developed the Atomic Bomb and Now Stopping Child Predators (blog)
Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau
Oak Ridge National Laboratories
The Oak Ridger (Newspaper)
Wikipedia: Oak Ridge

Next up:  Tazewell, Tennessee

Blue Highways: Wartburg, Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapMoving through Tennessee with William Least-Heat Moon, we get turned back by Wartburg.  Like other towns, it rolls up its sidewalks during the evenings and on weekends.  We also learn about the intriguingly named Frozen Head State Park, and are treated to allusions of Greek mythology counterposed with allusions to coporate America.  Where else but Littourati can you get so much fun?  Click on the thumbnail of the map to see where all this happens.

Book Quote

"Wartburg, on the edge of the dark Cumberlands, dripped in a cold mist blowing down off the knobs.  Cafes closed, I had no choice but to go back into the wet mountain gloom.  Under massive walls of black shale hanging above the road like threats, the highway turned ugly past Frozen Head State Park; at each trash dumpster pullout, soggy sofas or chairs lay encircled by dismal, acrid smoke from smoldering junk.  Golden Styrofoam from Big Mac containers blew about as if Zeus had just raped Danae.  Shoot the Hamburglar on sight."

Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 17

Morgan County courthouse in Wartburg, Tennessee

Wartburg, Tennessee

Wow, Tennessee appears to be kicking LHM's ass.  It's cold, it's largely closed for business, and it's full of trash that's not properly disposed of.

I suppose that life can feel like that sometimes.  You are traveling along through your days, and you come upon places like Wartburg.  The cafes are closed and you are wondering where you are going to get sustenance and nourishment.  You just want someone to talk to, perhaps a nice waitress or a person in a warm tavern, who might listen and share something that will give you some strength for the journey ahead or, if not, to simply be there as company.  But when you roll into town, all you see is emptiness, loneliness and people behind closed doors.

I'm sure that Wartburg isn't like that all the time.  In fact, it is probably a very nice place.  It got it's unusual name because it was founded by Germans and named after a famous castle in Germany.  But in LHM's journey, Wartburg doesn't offer anything to him, and he has to retreat into the mountains and back to his loneliness.  Remember, he undertakes this trip because of troubles with relationships and his job at home.

But the mountains may not offer solace either.  They're cold and wet and you must traverse the forbidding places like Frozen Head State Park.  The mountains around my hometown, the Coast Range, are often like that in winter.  They are wet and gloomy, and there were times traveling through them that you just wanted to push through and get to the other side where it was a little warmer in the inland valleys.  Dante painted Hell not as a fiery furnace, but as a cold and forbidding place.

I'm not sure I understand the trash allusion in relation to Zeus' rape of Danae.  Does the styrofoam trash represent the Danae's clothing scattered around?  And how does Danae relate to McDonald's?  It would make more sense to me that McDonald's represents Zeus.  Is the styrofoam the golden rain (Golden Arches) that Zeus used to impregnate Danae?  Though I agree, we should shoot the Hamburglar on sight...I never liked that guy anyway.

The image that LHM presents reminds me of some areas of the developing world, where trash disposal is taken more lightly or is not possible due to strained government budgets.  I remember traveling through areas of Mexico, El Salvador, Bangladesh and even Thailand where trash was often dumped, impromptu, at the side of the road.  Those images in turn remind me of more impoverished areas of the U.S., such as Appalachia, where more trash than I usually see accumulated by roadsides.  Even in cities, old ratty sofas are often left at the sidewalk by college students that have moved on.  The sofas sit like faded courtesans, inviting you to partake of their comforts even though their tattered corners and ratty accoutrements give you pause.

Finally, at the end of this rambling post, I am reminded that even trash can become beautiful.  In my hometown, there is a beach called Glass Beach.  It is so called because for years, the town dumped its trash over the bluffs straight into the ocean.  The dumping was discontinued in the 70s in favor of a county landfill, and in the decades since, the glass bits from hundreds of thousands of broken bottles wore into shiny, smooth, colorful and beautiful pebbles that are enjoyed by locals and visitors alike.  From environmental disaster to beauty (sometimes), we journey as if from cold, wet and forbidding places back into the sunlight.

If you want to know more about Wartburg

Tennessee State Parks:  Frozen Head State Park
Morgan County Chamber of Commerce
Morgan County News (newspaper)
Obed Wild and Scenic River Campground
Tennessee Vacation: Wartburg
WECO Radio: Wartburg
Wikipedia: Frozen Head State Park
Wikipedia: Wartburg

Next up: Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Blue Highways: Cookeville, Tennessee

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapLeaving Nameless, heading through Tennessee toward the East Coast, we continue on our journey.  I applied for a job in Cookeville once, and it's nice to learn more about it now.  To see where Cookeville lies on our route, click on the thumbnail of the map!

Book Quote

"COOKEVILLE:  Easter morning and cold as the bottom of Dante's Hell.  Winter had returned from somewhere, whistling thin, bluish snowflakes along the ground, bowing the jonquils.  I couldn't warm up.  The night had been full of dreams moving through my sleep like schools of ocean fish that dart this way, turn suddenly another way, never resting.  I hung in the old depths, the currents bending and enfolding me as the sea does fronds of eelgrass."

Blue Highways:  Part 1, Chapter 17

Downtown Cookeville, Tennessee

Cookeville, Tennessee

Cookeville, Tennessee is associated, for me at least, with much the same sentiments as LHM's quote above.  I've never been to Tennessee other than a brief touchdown on Southwest Airlines in Nashville, a 30 minute wait on the plane, and then a takeoff to DC.  But in 2009, I applied for a job at Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, and had a phone interview with a nice young female professor before getting the form "thanks for applying but we've found someone else who fits our needs" letter.

This is not a rant about Tennessee Tech turning down the best possible professor they could have ever gotten, nor is it a rant about my difficulties finding a job in a terrible market for academics.  Rather, this is just a wistful look at what was a difficult year professionally.  LHM speaks to being buffeted by the currents.  I felt the same way.  I applied to 80 jobs that year and got one offer.  During that process, I began to question myself.  Some of the questioning was self-destructive, i.e. "I'm a failure, I'm not worthy of a good job..." etc. etc.  Some of the questioning was healthy, i.e. Do I really want to be an academic?  Do I really want to put myself in a position where I do just as much work as getting a PhD just to keep my job after seven years?

So all these questions were coming fast and furious at me.  I had been in a kind of despair over my prospects.  But for a brief moment, Cookeville was kind of a shining light as long as it offered hope for me.  For an instant, the buffeting of the currents pushing me to and fro ceased as I spoke to the nice young professor, ripe with possibility that I could take an office and teach students in the middle of Tennessee.

LHM seems to be in the same type of place, professionally and personally, and the current that drives him is the ribbon of road that stretches before him.  My professional prospects in Cookeville didn't pan out.  LHM didn't stop in Cookeville, and we'll see how his journey unfolds.  But Cookeville, for a little while you offered me a small professional beacon.  And from what I understand, you're a neat little town in a beautiful area of Tennessee.  Perhaps our paths will cross again someday.

By the way, LHM refers to jonquils in his quote.  I didn't know what they were.  They're pretty flowers, at least judging by their online images.

If you want to know more about Cookeville

City of Cookeville
Cookeville.com
Cookeville Chamber of Commerce
Cookeville Herald-Citizen (newspaper)
The Scoop with Jim Herrin (blog)
Tennessee Tech University
Wikipedia: Cookeville

Next up: Wartburg, Tennessee