Some folks know a town. Addie Granath is one of them. South Knoxville born, UT raised, known for her cruising in her tan Sequoia with the windows down.
We sat down at the Downtown Grill & Brewery and wandered all over the East Tennessee map and into North Carolina! Addie just wrapped her bachelor's in agricultural resources, economics and starts her master's this fall, which means she thinks about land the way most of us think about traffic. Farmland is finite. Once you build on it, it's gone. That's the work she's headed into, and she'd rather do it here than in Nashville, thank you very much.
We covered a lot of ground:
Gay Street then & now, Loretta chasing down strangers on the back side of it, and a brother Lenox doing push-ups on the concrete while the Masons walked by. Gentrification from North Hills to Park Ridge to Fountain City, and the Linden Avenue house I sold for $12,000 that's worth over $500k. Dysfunction Junction, the World's Fair, and what happens when twenty to thirty people a day move into Knox County but the lanes stay the same.
Campus growth and new mega high rises over the caverns, the Thompson-Boling collapse rumors, and whether the university can actually seat everybody it admits. Market Square when it was tumbleweeds and TVA quitting time, the Mercury Theatre where Preservation Pub sits now, Tomato Head, Cafe 4, Chesapeake's, Pete's, Cappuccino's, Barley's, Sunspot, Cumberland Grill, Kazzy's, Stir, Stefano's, and why you owe yourself a night at A Dopo. Xül and the food trucks, Yee-Haw and Ole Smoky and the Jackson Hole ski run that gave Yee-Haw its name.
East Knox, Magnolia Ave., Pizza Palace and the Bel Airs, the Kern's bakery smell in '99, Fourth & Gill, Mechanicsville, Emerald Youth, and the question Addie put straight to Randy Boyd about bridging South Knoxville. James White Parkway and the Baker Creek Preserve. The closed Gay Street Bridge, Henley Street, Chapman Highway, the kudzu hill, Checkers, Disc Exchange, Shoney's, Aretha Frankenstein's, and getting stuck in a Krystals highchair at ten years old.
Old City ghosts, Long Branch, the Half Barrel turned Leaderboard, Sassy Ann's rattling the windows next door, Maple Hall, Studio 16, the Mill and Mine, Pilot Light, the Southern Railway station, the Civic Coliseum where Kiss played, Alumni Gym where I saw the Spin Doctors, and Hodges Library back when the World's Fair exhibit was still up. Billy Graham and Richard Nixon in Neyland, the Jacksons, Garth Brooks and Morgan Wallen.
Oak Ridge and John Hendrix, the prophet who saw the whole thing coming. Bearden Hill and Thunder Road. Hardin Valley Mcmansions, Seymour, Strawberry Plains, Farragut, Lovell Road Costco, Royal Oaks and Shaq flying into McGhee Tyson, Harrison Ford in Morristown. Fort Sanders and Ball Hall sitting on the bloodiest ground of the battle. Reese, Humes, Carrick, Hess, Melrose, Shelbourne, Church Row, Gus's, Tyson Park, McClung.
Then out of town: Kodak and the old Smokies stadium, Covenant Health Park, Ober Gatlinburg where she learned to ski, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, Tanger, Clingmans Dome, Townsend, the Dragon, the Sinks, the Ocoee, Polk County, Cleveland, Murphy and Bear Paw where a 99 year old great grndma cuts raw tobacco and keeps a revolver over the door for poachers. Grainger County tomatoes. Beans and rice, every night, and never got tired of them.
Battered Vol Syndrome. Burning couches after Bama. Ghost hunting in Old Gray Cemetery, which I do not recommend.
We're bringing her back for the Halloween episode.
