My wife and I have an ongoing argument about Chattanooga, Tenn. I love it and she hates it. She doesn’t mind the town … it’s the drive she doesn’t care for.
We learned this several years ago, not long after joining the Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Chattanooga, to which we drove every Sunday for a few years, a ride that made Rose uneasy and fearful.
“Those crooked roads!” she would say. “The big trucks! The traffic!”
This feeling was exacerbated when a fellow parishioner signed us on with her daughter-in-law obstetrician not long before Rose got pregnant with Raymond, our only son, a phenomenon that increased our mileage and anxiety.
It all went away for a time when, a year or so later, we joined St. Charles Anglican in Huntsville, Ala., settling into a weekly drive not without its own scenery but certainly absent some of the curves and climbs of our former Sunday trips.
The thing is, I never truly gave up on Chattanooga. How could I? There were just too many fond memories.
I tried to explain this to Rose. Just as she grew up going to Huntsville to shop or see doctors, when I grew up in Stevenson, Ala., a few miles north of her hometown of Scottsboro, Ala., Huntsville hadn’t grown into what it would become, so our only option for larger-town needs was Chattanooga.
“We didn’t think much about the steep and crooked roads or the traffic, because, back then, that was our only option,” I said.
There were other things, too, something about these trips that I couldn’t quite explain, leaving us both confused and unfulfilled in these discussions. I gave up finally, relinquishing our disagreements to the ethereal and undiscoverable past, never to be discussed again.
All this changed last week when I made an emergency trip across the state line to pick up a part for our lumbermill.
It was a tough day. Actually, it’s been a tough several months. The lumber market has been shrinking in recent years, much like other industries suffering from NAFTA and other terrible trade deals that have gutted our manufacturing. So we set up a growth plan to give it our best fight, putting in new equipment, hiring new people, opening new markets. It’s not been without its successes – or its setbacks … along with the attendant emotional anguish.
I was having one of those days last week, when our mill manager told me that a part wouldn’t be in, and we were going to miss a day’s production. We called the company and told them how desperate we were, and, thankfully, a couple calls later, I was planning a late-day trip to Chattanooga.
It was a great relief, but there were still so many hangups associated with what we were trying to do that when I set out, I was wound up tighter than a banjo string at a bluegrass festival.
I felt it as I crossed into Tennessee, and even still, when I saw the fireworks signs. However, when I saw the big, blue, half-moon bridge over the Tennessee River in South Pittsburg, something jogged loose in my memory that I wasn’t quite able to explain.
I sensed it again as I crossed the river at Nickajack Dam, where once upon a time Johnny Cash entered a cave suicidal and came out a born-again believer, and again when I rode under the old and rusty railroad bridge that crossed I-24 not long before approaching the town. Then, when I neared the Big Bend and could see the river on my left, flowing and full in the spring sunlight, with Lookout Mountain on my right with all its war torn history, while in between them stood the hollowed and ramshackle building that once housed Combustion Engineering, where my grandfather worked as a young man, I could feel all the heaviness start floating away, replaced by the strange newness of this gritty, industrial, historical town that meant so much to me growing up.
We are nurtured by our pasts in a way that gives us peace about where we’re going in our future. I felt it that day: seeing this place that I’d not visited for some time – and remembering, not only the time I’d spent here growing up, but also the intervening years and how benevolent Providence had been to me – gave me a confidence that, in the words of the philosophers, this too shall pass.
“It was ok, then,” I thought. “And it will be ok now.”
As I wheeled my way around the Big Bend, I turned the radio on, searching until I found a classic country station with the kinds of songs I remember listening to way back then.
“I’m going back someday / come what may / To Blue Bayou…” ran the words. It was Linda Ronstadt.
I picked up my phone and called Rose.
“Hello,” she said.
“I’ve figured it out,” I told her. “Just listen.”
I set the phone down, turned the radio up, and let the music play.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
