Day 4: I have the glimmerings of a tradition of road-tripping west once a year. I was thinking about this last evening. In 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998 I headed out to Kentucky or Tennessee at least once every year. My planned trip for 1999 was cancelled on account of a drinking accident. I didn’t again pick up the road trip tradition until a 2002 trip to Kentucky. Now I add to the total with my 2003 and 2004 Labor Day adventures to south-west Virginia and Tennessee. Part of the new tradition has been an annual stop in Charlottesville, VA for supper at a nifty little place off The Corner called the Biltmore. I spent many a happy evening there while my brother was studying at the University and a friend was working in the hospital and it’s always a pleasure to go back and make sure the place is still standing.
The goal for today was the Biltmore. But first, Greenville, TN.
When Casper Rader died early in the 19th century his children divvied up the inheritance and moved across the border into Greene County, Tennessee. All of that second generation and most of the third generation settled permanently in Greene County. One enterprising fellow of that third generation, also named Casper, packed up his things and went to Indiana thus dividing my branch of the family from the rest of the southern Raders. Still, lots of folks stayed behind so imagine my delight when just down the road from Greeneville was a tiny little strip of hovels along a railroad track which showed up on Mapquest as Rader, Tennessee.
I don’t know who lives there and I failed to photograph the telephone book as I had planned but it’s awfully hard to say the little whistlestop down the road from where I took that picture wasn’t founded by, and may yet contain some, distant cousins.
After that little sidetrack I toured Andrew Johnson’s home, tailor shop and gravesite in Greeneville. He was a common man, no doubt. Probably the only President who could make his own suits and, if you believe the National Park’s interpretation, the saviour of the nation and Constitution. I happen to think that’s bollocks. I think Johnson was poor white trash who happened into the Presidency because he was the only southern Democrat who didn’t betray his country and when he got the reins of power did his best to raise his people – white trash – up at the expense of both the southern aristocracy and blacks. While I’m all for punishing southern aristocracy I cannot conscience doing so at the expense of freedmen. But the jury is still out.
The best part of Greenville was my sudden realization that I was in Eastern Tennessee – good Unionist country.
You can’t see it from the picture but that’s the soldiers’ monument in the courthouse square. Anywhere else in the south there’d be a monument to the local Confederate regiment and maybe – in border states – a grudging acknowledgement that some local fellows went off and fought for the Yankees. Here in Greeneville there are two monuments to the Civil War: one celebrates the local fellows who fought for the Union and the other celebrates the killing of the Confederate radier John Hunt Morgan nearby. My kind of town.
On that happy note the trip wound to a close: a couple of hours up to Roanoake, a couple of hours across Virginia to Lynchburg and a couple of hours north to Charlottesville. A quick stop for supper and a beer and it was on home through ground well-travelled and well-known and a bit of a cheer for what next year will bring.