I can tell you where I was and what I was doing 45 years ago. Why? Well, today is the anniversary of when my family moved into our new house in Knoxville in 1971. I was 8 years old. It was a HUGE big deal to me to move to another state, another house, away from family and friends. Overwhelming but exciting.
I had never lived anywhere but Augusta, and I had no frame of reference for Tennessee except The Beverly Hillbillies. (Imagine my shock the first time we drove into our quiet suburban neighborhood, utterly devoid of shacks, moonshine, or barefoot hillbillies.)
I remember some things about the move quite well, but not others. Funny what one's brain retains over the years.
We had driven up from Augusta the day before in the family car, a 1968 Chevy Impala that my uncle Bobby, who was a manager at General Motors, had personally seen assembled at the GM plant in Doraville GA. (We drove that car for more than ten years, which was a long time in those days.) Anyway, it held my parents, me, my brother, our dog George and our cat, B.C. It was a cold, rainy drive. We went by the house and left George and BC in the garage because we couldn't keep them at the hotel with us.
The only decent hotel in West Knoxville then was a Ramada Inn across from where West Town Mall was later built. There was a Howard Johnson's next door -- a favorite place to eat, as they had a bunch of flavors of ice cream. I can't remember if we had dinner there or in the hotel. Doesn't matter. I can tell you what I ate. My standard restaurant order for years was always the same: plain cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke.
Below, me and Bruce in front of the house a few months after the move. We were still trying to get grass to grow in the yard. My mom later insisted the front door be painted blue, and then we could always say to people looking for the house "It's the green house with the blue door."
I didn't know until my mother told me the story just recently that the purchase of this house, the Venice Road house, was sight unseen. My dad had gotten the job with Valley Bank in Knoxville in the fall of 1970 and he and Mother went to Knoxville to find us a house. Mom looked and looked with a real estate agent, but didn't find a single house she liked. She had a terrible cold and that could have influenced her, or perhaps the fact the agent wouldn't show her houses anywhere but Sequoyah Hills.
Dad was given his orders to report for work, and He and Mom discussed what to do. They didn't want to make another trip to Knoxville because it was hard to leave me and Bruce with the grandparents and make the 7+ hour journey -- we are talking about a time before the interstates were completed. So a builder was found and Mother had a long talk with him on the phone. He was instructed to get us a house in a new subdivision, a brand new house, and the thought was if it wasn't right it could be sold in a year or two. He was building new houses in West Knoxville, in a subdivision called Gulf Park. The poor man was freaked out because typically people take a lot of time and care in choosing wall colors, flooring, fixtures, etc. Not my mother. She knew what she wanted.
Here is what she told him. "Paint all the walls white. In the den, put wood paneling. We want blue carpet upstairs and red carpet downstairs." The poor guy was really upset, not knowing which shades of blue or red she would want for the carpeting. She figured out the solution to that. "Go to the dime store [there's an antiquated term; she meant Woolworth's] and buy an American flag. Use the blue in the flag for the upstairs carpet and the red in the flag for the downstairs carpet." I think the kitchen floor was a fake brick vinyl which was popular at that time. Of course, the carpet had to be good quality and have the thickest pad available. Never skimp on a carpet pad, Mom told me years later. Good life lesson.
The day we moved it was cold and rainy. The yard was a sea of mud. The movers put big sheets of plastic all over the new floors but some of the red mud got tracked anyway. It was chaos.
I think that first night one of the neighbors brought supper to us. We had great neighbors in that house.
Within the first few weeks of moving we had a bunch of snow days. Bruce and I had almost never seen snow. Augusta Georgia is not known for getting snow. I think maybe I had seen a flurry one day there. Suddenly, in Knoxville, snow is everywhere. We learned to sled, and had snowball fights.
My grandparents in the basement of the Venice Road house.
After getting over the initial shock of living in Knoxville rather than Augusta, we came to appreciate that house and lived there for 7 years. We wallpapered and replaced carpet and generally made the house our own. The neighborhood was young and there were a lot of families with kids for me and Bruce to play with. The elementary and middle schools were walking distance from the house, although we usually rode the bus.
West Knoxville in the early 1970's was not so commercial as it is now. There were movie theaters, restaurants, and a skating rink, but it had the feel of a small town. I was a bit miffed that I couldn't continue to take ballet or horseback riding as I had in Augusta, but I got over it. I was thrilled there were little girls my age in the neighborhood to play with, something that wasn't true in the last house we lived at in Augusta.
On weekends we would often drive up to Pigeon Forge and eat lunch, long before Dollywood was built. It was a sleepy town, and Gatlinburg was not all that busy either. I knew Gatlinburg very well after years of visiting and walking all over town. Pigeon Forge had a great restaurant built out of an old train car, and we liked eating there. We would also go to the old mill and get stone ground cornmeal that was wonderful.
I grew accustomed to seeing the mountains everywhere, and of course I took them for granted after a while. I miss those mountains very much, and many of the wonderful people in East Tennessee. Thanks to Facebook, I still keep up with many of my childhood friends, though.
It's rather sad now to Google the old Gulf Park house because whoever lives there has painted it ugly colors and not kept the yard looking nice. In my mind, however, this is how it will always look.
"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
T. S. Eliot
