For my 2016 A to Z theme I used a meme that I ran across on the blog of Bridget Straub who first saw it on the blog of Paula Acton. This meme is a natural for me to use on my memoir blog. It's an A to Z concept and it's about me. No research and nothing complicated. I'm given twenty six questions or topics to discuss that are about me.
In April I kept my posts short and uncomplicated. In the midst of it all you might learn a few things about me that you didn't previously know.
Showing posts with label Maryville Tennessee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maryville Tennessee. Show all posts
It's time for the leaves to change though here in California you wouldn't notice much.
Roller at Cockington A lawn roller leans against an oak tree at the side of 49773. Keywords: Cockington Court, autumn leaves (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In my lifetime I've put many a mile behind me while pushing a lawnmower. We had a huge lawn when we lived in Tennessee and since I was a teenager when we moved there, the job of mowing that lawn fell upon me. After I moved away from home my parents bought a riding lawnmower, but I guess they figured that since I was young and healthy I would be just fine pushing a lawnmower for a few hours on a hot summer day. That story changed when they didn't have me to push the mower. I'm not sure why my younger brothers didn't have to push a mower, but apparently my father ended up mowing much of the time and that was enough to inspire him to buy a riding mower.
One job that I never had to do was rake leaves. There weren't any leaves back then in the late sixties and early seventies when I was living there. In the years after I moved away the trees in the yard grew bigger. Hence in fall there were leaves on the ground and somebody must have had to rake them up. Since I've rarely been in Tennessee during the fall since I left my parents' house, I haven't seen much in the way of fallen leaves.
That is until late fall of 2014 after my mother died. I stayed at my mother's house for a while in order to help get affairs settled. As a matter of fact I was there nearly a month in November and December. Since the young man who cut grass during the summer when the grass was growing didn't come during the winter, someone need to rake up the leaves that had accumulated in the yard. There was a leaf blower at the house, but I couldn't get it to work. So I found a rake and began raking. In that large yard raking was a formidable task.
I raked once while I was there and because it was so late in fall and there were no more leaves in the trees to fall onto the ground, that was the one and only time I had to rake. Raking was easier than pushing the mower on a hot day. Still I'm glad that I didn't have to do any raking back then. I would have done it if I had been given the chore, but thankfully the chore didn't exist when I lived there.
Let's face it--I'm not a fan of yard work. Even now I have somebody come over to cut my lawn where I live now. Not that it's a big job--our lawn is about the same size as our living room and that's not especially big. Our lawn guy has a blower and all the other lawn care tools to keep a well-manicured lawn for us. I don't need to buy tools or exert any effort. A few bucks twice a month is worth it to me.
Mowing the lawn when I lived with my parents was fine. It not only didn't kill me, it was also good exercise and a time to escape into my own mind while I walked in circles for a few hours. Mowing was my job after all. Raking leaves was the yard work I never had to do.
What kinds of household chores did you have to do when you were younger? Do you currently have a yard that you keep up yourself? Have you ever jumped into a pile of leaves?
Front of a yellow school bus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After summer is abruptly interrupted by the start of another school year, an almost imperceptible change occurs as students go to classes and daylight hours grow too short for lingering outside. Besides, there is homework to be done and the new television season to sample. Tree leaves turn from green to a myriad splash of yellows, reds, oranges, and eventually, brown. Another summer gone as fall signals the end of another year.
But first comes football season. As in small towns all across America, Everett High School in Maryville, Tennessee is all about football. The cheerleaders lead the student body in pep rallies during home room period. It's all about the game on Friday night for most of the students. Well, except for the non-sports-minded students like me. I never got into football or any sports for that matter. It just wasn't my thing.
My sister thought that I should go to the games and become more involved. Maybe find a girlfriend. I would have liked that too, but going to the football game didn't seem like the way that I would have wanted to do it.
When we hear that there is an away game scheduled in Cleveland, Tennessee some 80 miles away, I figure maybe this would be a time to go to a game. I've got a friend living in Cleveland whom I can meet up with. I call to make arrangements to meet up with him. He's glad to hear this and so am I. Secretly I'm hoping to see a girl who I had met over the summer when I stayed in Cleveland for a couple of weeks with my friend.
On the Friday of the game, my sister and I are dropped off at the school by my mother in order to join the others who will be taking the bus ride to Cleveland. It's one of the yellow school buses that take students to and from school every day. Now a caravan of yellow buses will be taking a small army of Everett High students to the rival team's field.
There's not much I can remember about the night other than I met up with my friend. There was a crispness in the air with a faint smell of burning leaves wafting about. An enticing aroma of popcorn and hot dogs emanated from the refreshment stand. We get snacks and hang out around the bleachers. I hardly watch the game and neither does my friend since like me he doesn't seem to be much into football. Maybe that's why we feel a kinship. After the game we said our good-byes and parted ways.
It's a lonely bus ride home. I don't really have any friends who have gone to the game. I sit by the window gazing out at the darkened landscape passing by. I didn't see the girl I had hoped I would see at the game. And truth be told I hadn't really expected to see her. She probably had no idea that she'd even met me back in the summer.
My mind starts wandering as I wish I had a girl to sit with on the bus ride home. As I often do when I'm lost in my own thoughts, I begin composing a song in my head and my imaginary voice begins to sing, "It's so lonely in the back of the bus." That's the only line in the song for now but I sing it over and over in my head. Not a bad song I think to myself.
I don't remember much more about that night except that song which I can still sing those repeated lines, "It's so lonely in the back of the bus...It's so lonely in the back of the bus." In fact that's the only football game I remember going to. Never a home game. No more football games after that.
Did you go to the sporting events at your school? Did you ever ride the bus to the away games? What is your favorite fall high school memory?
It's often said that life is strange, but compared to what?
Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory (1931), Museum of Modern Art (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Time can be a very precise measurement of the present, but it is often inaccurate when looking at the past. Memories can meld together or get placed out of chronological order. The memory can be an unreliable narrator regarding past events as it conveniently discards the unpleasant while exaggerating the importance of relatively insignificant events. In the following post I question my memory in regards to a song that is among my favorites.
In this post I offer another in my Soundtrack of My Life series. Robin at Your Daily Dose has been doing the Soundtrack of my Life posts on her blog for a while now. I had done a few of my own "life soundtracks" on my Tossing It Out blog as well as the song series (starting at this post) I did for my 2014 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge on Wrote By Rote. Be sure to visit and follow Your Daily Dose for more Life Soundtrack info. For my current back to the past post, I'm using the song "January 23-30, 1978" by Steve Forbert as my inspiration. If you like you can listen as you read the story that follows...
"January 23-30, 1978"
What seems to be a somewhat odd title for a song actually is a time period described by the narrator of a song story by Steve Forbert. While this date range can fit easily into my own life, there is no special significance to my knowledge that would be applicable in my personal history. During that January week in 1978 I was getting ready to set out on tour with The World of Fantasy Players with my wife and our six month old baby. I would have celebrated my birthday sometime that week since it comes on January 30th, but I can't recall any special thing that happened in connection with that event.
But it's not anything about the song title that impacts me--it's the content of the lyrics, the events Forbert describes. This song seems so akin to my own life experience that the story told within those lyrics touches the heart of my memory and reminds me of things that I too have lived through. With a few changes this could be my song--a snippet of my own life history. I am stirred within each time I hear this song as it has become part of my own life soundtrack.
After I'd essentially moved away from my hometown in Tennessee to run away with a magic show in 1975, my visits home became fewer as time went on and my show biz life meant more time on the road away from home. As each year passed I became less close to my old circle of friends thus less aware of what their lives were like. Old friends were getting married, starting families, and embarking upon careers or other endeavors. When I would go back to stay with my parents for short visits I would try to hang out with friends and catch up with their lives. The fact was though that we were growing apart, they in their small town world and me traipsing about the country.
Now some nearly 40 years later my memory is faulty about when I first heard the Forbert song. Somehow I came to associate first noticing this song in early 1980 when I was separated from my wife and staying with my parents in Tennessee. I had taken a job driving for the limousine shuttle service at the Knoxville Airport. My shift started early so I would drive to work at about 4 AM.
In my hazy memory I seem to recall driving through Alcoa, the town where the airport is located, early one icy cold morning and listening to my cassette copy of Steve Forbert's Jackrabbit Slim album. When "January 23-30, 1978" came on the lyrics really hit me as describing how my visits home had started to feel. I got a sense that soon I would be gone to another town and living a life far away from my home that held so many fond memories for me.
However, thinking back I'm not sure I had that cassette copy until a few years after the date that stood in my memory. Perhaps my listening to this song driving through Alcoa early one morning reminded me of driving to my airport limousine job and all of the other events of my life. Maybe it was another visit. It's kind of crazy how mixed up my memory is about this minor incident in my life. From the standpoint of the scope of my entire life, hearing this song at some specific but some unknown time shouldn't have meant that much and yet that drive and that song at that moment vividly stands out in my memory.
I'm reminded of that famous Salvador Dali painting "Persistence of Memory"--you know the one with the melting watches on the surreal landscape. That depiction of time flowing and melding into the wholeness of everything is symbolic of the fluidity of all that I've been and where I've ended up in my life, a life where the past is not perfectly cataloged. Not my life at least. My mind seems to pick out certain things to remember even if they are not in the correct order.
It doesn't really matter that much I suppose. I understand what memory is telling me. And yet I could be misinterpreting things as a matter of convenience.
What I do know is this: There was a time when I was younger, when responsibility was a debate that I held within myself and consequences primarily affected only me. We were all young, my friends and I, and then we moved on to other things and other people and other lives. In other words we grew up--or pretended to.
Rarely do we capture the magic of the past in our tangible everyday lives. Oh, sometimes we might get together with old friends for a few fleeting hours and everything seems as it once was. Most of the past is only accessible by memory. The memory might be spurred by a song such as this song from my own life soundtrack. A song that might mean little to someone else, but something vast, strange, and maybe even unknowable to my mind. A mystery that is really no mystery at all when I think about it, but a mystery nonetheless.
Do you have a song that is attached to a memory so strongly that it haunts you when you hear it? Did you drift away from most of your old friends from youth? Do you have a disconnect with certain memories where you are no longer certain of when exactly they occurred?
If life were a theatrical film, there would likely be a soundtrack with meaningful songs played during key scenes. Do certain songs evoke special moments or eras in your past? This is what I've been doing with my "Soundtrack of My Life" series of posts: Looking back and putting my life to music.
One of the biggest summers of music for me was 1966. My family was staying in Maryville, Tennessee while my father was working at a new project location for the industrial contracting company he'd been working at for a number of years. It seemed like a vacation for me and my brothers and sisters since we were staying in our 17 foot travel trailer at a mobile home park that had a number of spaces set aside for vacationers to the Great Smokey Mountains.
While my father worked during the day, my mother took us kids on a number of sightseeing excursions throughout the area. As one of the primary vacationing spots in the United States, there was plenty to see around the area where we were staying. There was always plenty to do away from that trailer park, but I also found plenty to do on those lazy summer days when we just stayed "home" which is how I thought of that trailer since we were living there for a couple months.
Having just finished middle school in Northern Indiana where we had been living, I was interested in many of the same things that others my age enjoyed--one of the main things being the pop music scene. For the previous three years I had developed a keen interest in the chart hit artists such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and so many others. Music had become a primary focus for me. Soon after arriving at that Tennessee trailer park I discovered the local top forty station WNOX. That radio station became the soundtrack for my summer of 1966.
There are so many hits that stand out for me from that magical summer. With the radio playing almost continually throughout the day, those songs became cemented in my mind. My little transistor radio--the first I'd ever owned--became like an attachment implanted as a part of me. Daily the radio was always playing those hits that were cycled throughout the day in regular rotation.
One of the stand out songs that I remember hearing was B.J. Thomas's version of the great Hank Williams classic "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry". Thomas was new to the top forty scene and this song was his first big hit nationally. Judging by the frequency I heard the song on the Knoxville station I'd call it a monster hit in East Tennessee. To me the song was a new one. If I'd ever heard the original prior to hearing the Thomas cover, it didn't resonate with me. I was no fan of country music at the time--or at least I didn't think I was even though I had bought or enjoyed records by artists like Johnny Cash, the Statler Brothers, Buck Owens, and others. Country was something I ridiculed unless a song of that genre happened to cross over onto the top forty charts and in those cases I figured the songs weren't country.
The mournful sound of B.J. Thomas singing "I'm So Lonesome..." perked my ears whenever it came on the radio. The words could actually be easily understood unlike some of the songs that were played. They were lovely poetic words that tapped into a melancholy place within me. It would be a down time of contemplation for a few minutes sandwiched between the more frantic hits of the daily playlist.
With seven of us crammed into the small space of a travel trailer there wasn't much of a chance of being alone--at least not for long. Neither was I lonely during that summer. Not only did I have my family, I made some good friends who became an integral part of my years to come. In fact as I reflect over my life I cannot recall feeling lonesome for any extended period of time. Though I might have had periods when I felt somewhat alienated, aloof, or in a situation where being with others wasn't easy for me at some particular moment, deep rooted loneliness has been something I haven't felt too strongly in all of my years.
Loss has haunted me on occasion, such as the periods when my marriages fell apart and I felt the pain of longing for a relationship that previously filled my life. Sometimes desire might have filled me with a sense of desperation of wanting another person to share my life with, but that was a feeling that mostly impacted me in the years prior to my first marriage. They were the times when doubts about my life and the insecurities of not being in a relationship filled me with some sense of emotional fear. But I didn't have a problem about being alone.
Lonesomeness as an ongoing state of mind has not especially been a concern of mine. I've always enjoyed having time alone. My pursuits such as stamp collecting, music, and reading are primarily activities that thrive best in solitude. Even now, while I enjoy the company of my family and friends, I have to have times when I can be alone.
I certainly get what Hank Williams was saying in his mournful song. For a brief span of time I feel the pain and pathos expressed in the song while I'm listening to it. Memories might linger for a little while in my mind as I fall into a reflective state of mind thinking about my life and my world. Crying about being lonesome seems almost alien to me now.
When have you felt so lonesome that you could cry? Do you enjoy being alone? Have you been in close situations when you had to spend a lot of time with other people?
English: Olympus 4.0 Megapixel 3x zoom Digital Camera. Taken in 2002 in Cocke County, Tennessee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Thomas Wolfe is famously attributed to the saying "You can't go home again" which was taken from a posthumous novel of that name. Most often the saying is more in reference to the fact that you can't recapture the place and circumstances of your memories. We can fondly remember, but usually we are disappointed and disillusioned when we visit home hoping to find things like they once were.
The fact is that things change--people, places, and all that our memories embrace. Those things might be there in one manner of speaking, but rarely can we completely recapture the old feelings or experience the same sensations like they once were way back when.
It's been 23 years since that last time I lived in East Tennessee and that was for only a few years having spent a previous 13 years on the road with a traveling show. When I left my parents' home in 1975 for a life of travel it was not so much a severing ties as it was a beginning of new chapters in my life. It's a decision that I'm glad I made, but my leaving created a gulf in the familiar relationships I had enjoyed during the years previous to that departure.
As time passed, my old friends established newer relationships with people I did not know. Some of those friends went on to get married and start families. Others moved away like I did while a few passed from this life. Over time even the face and spirit of my home town changed as more people from other places moved into the area, old landmarks disappeared, and newer places were built in their places. Highways were improved and bypasses were built. The small town that I had once known took on a greater urban feel. Where once I could be out and about and almost have a guarantee of running into someone I knew, now I might be out all day all about town and never see an old familiar face.
Change is to be expected over time and probably a place would not be economically healthy if that change didn't occur. Geographically my old Tennessee stomping grounds still exists on the map, but for someone who grew up there it is barely recognizable in many ways.
Friends grow older and gain new responsibilities with careers, lives, and families. I don't feel quite as comfortable just dropping in on many of them for fear of intruding or interfering with their busy schedules. There are still a handful with whom I maintain fairly regular contact, but rarely do I actually see them. The old Tennessee stomping grounds holds a fond place in my memories. However, these days when I visit East Tennessee in some ways I almost feel like just another one of the many tourists who pass through there each year.
I would imagine that if I still lived there I might feel a lot different about the old homeland. But I don't live there anymore. And I don't know if I ever will again. Not that I wouldn't want to. It's just that things change and sometimes going back home can never recapture the memories of what once was.
Are there places from your past that you've gone back to and they just felt different to you? Do you currently live in a place where you grew up or that you came back to after an extended time away? How do you feel about the Thomas Wolfe observation that "you can't go home again"?
When my family first visited Maryville, Tennessee in the summer of 1966 I fell in love with the place. We had been living in Northern Indiana near Chicago at the time and the experience of East Tennessee was something completely different for me. Now my father was being offered a work transfer and we were scouting the area to see how we liked it. A decision was quickly made and by end of summer we were in our new home.
Considered the "Gateway to the Smoky Mountains", Maryville was a stopover for many vacationers and there was much to do in the area. The town itself was small--almost like a throwback to the previous decade--but it had a charm for those new to the area. I had made some friends quickly and looked forward to going to a new school. I would be entering high school that fall.
Once the novelty of the area had worn off and school had started it was pretty much back to business as usual for my life. Old me in new environs. School wasn't horrible, but it was still kind of a drag for me. My friends from summer lived across town from where I now lived. They went to the same school as I did but that's usually the only time I saw any of them.
Don't get me wrong, I still liked where I lived. But I was in high school--restless and in a state of ambiguity about where I was going in life. I was never totally bored but sometimes life in the small town seemed boring. There wasn't that much to do. It was like Nowheresville.
After high school I attended the university in nearby Knoxville while still living at my parents' house. In evenings and on the weekends my friends and I would hang out, often going to the mountains. We were somewhere, but it often seemed like nowhere. The restlessness for something more ate at our young souls. I looked toward the world away from Maryville. Someplace, anyplace far from nowhere.
Then I left. My parents were still there so I visited frequently. I gained a greater appreciation for Maryville and though I'd only started living there when I was in high school this was the place that I thought of as my home town. I became kind of proud of that place and still am.
Now Maryville, Tennessee is a much bigger town with a lot more to do. More shopping, more restaurants and night spots--more of everything that the town didn't have when I was living there. I no longer think of Maryville as Nowhere. Now I think of it as the home that for now I am away from.
Did you feel like you lived in Nowhere when you were younger? Has the passing of years changed your attitude about the places you lived when you were younger? Does it sadden you to see modernization come to a small town?
Over the past several weeks we've been all over the place in the story of where we keep our stuff. Many of us in the United States and elsewhere can hardly contain everything we own under one roof. In my series we've looked at closets, drawers, and attics. One place we have not set foot in yet is the basement.
Many houses do not have a basement. Some have a sort of a bottom floor they might call their basement. This sort of partially subterranean room is often another room in the house used as a family room, an extra bedroom, or even a garage. In other cases the basement--or cellar as it might be called--is an underground dungeon-like place of darkness and dampness. Some of these basements may have rough stone walls and concrete or even dirt floors. These latter types of basements are more the type that might be used for storage.
The more utilitarian basement is often the place where the homeowner will keep tools, garden equipment, and seasonal items. It's not uncommon to find boxes and bins of stored items getting relegated to the confines of the space under the main living quarters. If the basement is not typically seen by visitors to the home, the area may begin to look much like a warehouse with stacks of storage containers and old furniture. Those basements are visited when something is needed, but left to gather dust in the darkness for most of the year. If care is not taken, those basements also become the living quarters for unwanted creatures that can cause quite a scare when happened upon.
Most of the houses I've lived in have not had basements. A duplex in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where my family lived when I was in second grade had a sort of basement area that was actually a garage under the house. My parents didn't have much stuff back then so not much was in the basement other than their car. In some strange moment of inspiration, my father purchased a number of colors of paint and painted the individual cinder blocks of the walls with alternating colors, giving the basement garage a sort of patchwork quilt appearance. It was all very festive and quite random. We moved to San Diego after only living there for less than a year. I have wondered if those walls are still painted as my father left them.
The next house we lived in that had a basement was the one in Maryville, Tennessee where we moved when I was in high school. That house had a half submerged basement that was essentially finished with a fireplace, wall heaters, and a laundry room that also had a toilet in it. This basement made for a nice family room. During my college years our family basement became a hangout for me and my friends. Many of my records and books still have a musty basement smell. After I moved from home my parents added a pool table and bar. My mother has it fixed quite nicely now. There are some items stored there, but they are mostly in closets or neatly set in places around the room.
The most intriguing basement of my life was that in my maternal grandparents house in Morgantown, West Virginia. They lived in a grand old house that had been built in 1909. The basement of that house was a dark dingy place with one bulb to light the area. I did not go down there much when I was a child so I do not recall what was stored in the dark recesses of their basement. The one thing I do distinctly remember was the old white wringer washer that my grandmother had to use to do her laundry. After the clothes were clean she'd haul them up the stairs to hang out to dry on a line in the small back yard. Some things from back then are not missed.
Do you have a basement? Is it used for storage or has it been finished for other use? What is the most memorable basement in your years? Do you know anyone who has a bomb shelter?
A delicious-looking meal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
So I was talking on the phone to my mother and she was telling me about what they'd had for lunch and about how my sister was going to buy pizza that evening and invite my brother and his family over. I was kind of envious because I really liked the pizza at Giovanni's when I ordered it during my visit there last month. That's in Maryville, Tennessee where most of my family lives and it's welcome to see a darn good Italian restaurant opened up in that area.
When I was there at Giovanni's I ordered a New York style pizza with anchovies, onions, and pepperoncinis. Not many takers on this one which was okay by me since it's my favorite kind of pizza and taking some leftovers home wasn't all that bad. My brother and youngest sister both tried some and they liked it. That surprised me since I usually don't find many others who like anchovies. Maybe it's kind of a family thing.
After talking about the topic of their meals with my mother, I told her about the meal I had fixed the previous evening for my wife and I and how much my wife had enjoyed it. Then I went on to describe the big breakfast I was planning for Saturday morning--a feast that would include scrambled eggs, patty sausage, potatoes O'Brian, biscuits, and gravy. We do enjoy our Saturday morning breakfasts.
At this point my mother interjected, "All you do is talk about food."
Initially I protested that this was not so because food is not the only thing I talk about, but then conceded that I do talk about food a lot. When the family is together we often go off on the topic of food. I've found this to be true in many scenarios with other people as well. After all we all have to eat, eating can be very enjoyable, and what better thing to talk about since we all probably have some interesting food stories to tell.
Especially when the family is all together for the holidays we'll talk about what we're going to have for dinner that night, go off on a food buying mission for ingredients, spend time preparing the meal, and then talk about food while we're eating and after the meal. Eating is inevitable and the meals together can be significant events.
Now don't get me wrong, we talk about plenty of other things, but the meals are the catalysts for getting together and having conversations. When I think about the pot lucks, the restaurant outings, ceremonial meals for things like weddings and birthdays, and all of the other ritualistic gatherings in which food is consumed, I realize the importance of breaking bread together.
As many of us gather together for Thanksgiving and other holiday meals in the coming weeks, conversations will be flowing. The meals can be excellent prompts to delve into memories of the past. People who have passed on will be remembered. Stories of days gone by will be told. Favorite recipes will be shared. There's nothing like a happy meal together and the conversation that goes with it.
What's for dinner?
Do you find that food is a common topic of discussion when you are with others? At gatherings with family or friends is meal preparation and consumption an important part of the day? Have you found meal times to be useful for gathering information and enjoying entertaining stories?
Blount County Court House (Photo credit: jimmywayne)
When my parents took our family to East Tennessee in the summer of 1966 it seemed like a vacation, but I guess we knew it was going to be a relocation. This would be my sixth move in fifteen years. I guess I was ready to move again, but to the small town of Maryville?
My parents and my two brothers and two sisters were living that summer in a 17 foot travel trailer parked in the Tarbett Road Mobile Home Park. The trailer park was primarily for more permanent dwellers, but they had a few smaller slabs that were reserved for tourists or itinerants like ourselves. Our small trailer made for cozy confinement. We had often stayed in the trailer when we worked at fairs and circuses so we were accustomed to it. Besides it all seemed like a summer adventure to us.
Having most recently come from the Chicagoland area, Maryville seemed like a real hick town to us. People talked differently than we had been accustomed to--a countrified twang that sometimes made us laugh. Soon I discovered that there were some really fine people there. I started making a number of friends in the trailer park neighborhood. When the decision to move to this town was announced by my parents, I had no problem whatsoever. I was looking forward to a new adventure in a new place.
I ended up graduating from high school in Maryville and living at my parents' house while I attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a short distance away. The East Tennessee area was a great place to live. Only 15 miles from the entrance to the Great Smokey Mountains, my friends and I would be camping, hiking, or doing something in the mountains whenever we had the free time which seemed often.
In 1975 I went off on my own working in touring shows. Whenever I was able to I'd go back to stay with my parents and enjoy time with my friends. Sometimes I'd bring some of the show people to stay in Maryville if we were touring in the area. I always felt proud to bring them to my hometown. Yes, that's the way I eventually came to think of Maryville--my hometown. And even though I haven't lived there in over twenty years, I still think of Maryville as my hometown.
