Last of Last Summer's Tennessee Pictures

After reading two especially--to my sensibility--poisonous articles on the internet in near succession the other day, one about the clientele of Sotheby's auction house and the desirable young female employees carefully vetted for their discerning pleasure, and the other about Picasso's sex life, I was a little extra fed up with the whole trajectory of my own social life, and I began to ask myself, what if I just go off the reservation at some point and refuse to be my regular limpid self one minute longer (or at least take a temporary vacation from having to live constantly as that annoyingly constrained and limited gentleman)? To reiterate what is ultimately the only theme of this blog, without great talents, or at the very least intelligence and capabilities developed to a very high degree, personal power and sexual magnetism, life can be pleasant enough, and even amusing enough in places, but can it really be said to be worthwhile? I do believe there is a kind of strong serenity, and perhaps wisdom--though my confidence in this last, at least as regards people of my own time and place, is shaky--to be found in a simple existence given over to committed religious devotion, if one really grasps what that means and is able to live confident in all that would be implied by such an understanding. But I am a long way from being seriously able to undertake anything resembling this manner of life either. I am still to attracted to wealth, power, pretty girls and various epicurean and other aesthetic delights, though the enjoyment and possession of these things have been rare occasions in my life.

1. Posing By the Sign Near the Main Entrance to Great Smoky, etc, National Park, near Gatlinburg

I am aware that there are thousands of pictures on the internet of people doing the same thing. However I like signs and other familiar landmarks as kind of narrative markers or breaks when putting together albums or picture sets. Filmmakers do this, or at least used to do this, all the time. I often find it to be a satisfying technique.

As you can see we were there on an especially bright and verdant day.

I am also aware that I look ridiculous. I am trying to upgrade my wardrobe. Developing an instinct for taste at this late stage of life and the presumption to confidently wear clothes above my wonted social station is more difficult to pull off than one would think.

2. View From Clingman's Dome (The High Elevation Point of the Park)

A clearer day than when we were there the previous year. This is not an arduous or long hike. You drive to an overflowing parking area about a mile from the peak and walk up a steep, but paved path to the top along with several hundred other people at any given time. The children like it--the payoff is a large space age observation tower at the top--and there was sentimentality involved so we took care to go back for a second time.

3. Near the Beginning of the Path to Clingman's Dome

Nothing to say about this, other than that the sight of a bright, clean, organized, not to say open, information center has for me a reassuring quality. Yes, I am that mentally beaten down by contemporary civilization.

4. 2-Yr Old Trapped in Stroller Atop the CCC/WPA Dedication Monument at Newfound Gap.

Newfound Gap is right at the center of the park. There is a huge parking area, as quite a lot is going on there. Besides this monument there is a celebrated view (see picture #6), the geographical boundary commemorated in picture #5, and the Appalachian Trail passes through the midst of this scene as well.

5. What it Says.

There are a lot of pictures of this sign on the internet as well. While I do keep many lists and go see many places that are almost wholly devoid of visitors, and indeed, to take matters to extremes, life at all, I do have in certain things an instinct to go where the people are, especially when to do so does not incur outrageous expense. The picture session at this particular sign with the children (there ended up being 7 or 8 photos snapped, with various combinations of persons) I noted at the time as having more than the usual share of stress. I certainly do not demand that anyone pose for a picture who does not want to, and I am pretty sure it was they who wanted the moment recorded at least as much as I did. Perhaps the obviousness and sense of necessity of the task at hand was the unconscious cause of anxiety.

You may observe that in contrast to other family/tourist bloggers, we have very few pictures of ourselves at table, and none of our food. This is partly because such times are fairly chaotic with us, but even during my time in Europe before I had any children I had not the instinct (perhaps because doing so in a restaurant with an old manual camera would have been fairly conspicuous) for the most part to photograph my dinner.

6. Newfound Gap, View.

The same view that Daniel Boone himself would have looked upon, according to one of my books from the 1960s.

7. Little Girl By the Hotel Pool

My daughter is ten months old now (she was 2 months here). She sits up, and says 'mama' and 'dada' and clearly understands other words ('bottle') but she has not figured out how to crawl yet (my oldest son was walking at 10 months).

8. One Version of What a Motel-Cabin in the Smoky Mtns Looks Like!

Because as we know, the learned world whose opinions I care so much about is full of snob types who will never come to a place like this on account of its frightening reputation. This cabin has two rooms like the one above with a small kitchen, visible in the back, connecting them. You can apparently rent just one side and share the kitchen with strangers, but we took up the whole joint.

Children 1 & 3 on Antiquated Swing Set at Antiquated Motor Hotel

You can kind of see the rise of the mountains in the background. This hotel is at least off the main drag but still very close to the park.

10. #'s 1-4, Inclusive, on Swings

Probably a redundant picture, but at least it is from a different angle.

This year I am sure we will definitely go somewhere different, assuming we are fortunate enough to be able to go anywhere at all. Of course I would be a little sad if we never went back to Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains again. I am forever sad at the prospect of never again going anywhere I have liked even a little bit, or that is consistently interesting or lively in some way across time, of being personally done with it forever. It is a mild feeling, but it is also characteristic of the pessimist, and I always have to remind myself that there is no reason to imagine that I won't live out my days in hopeless poverty and squalor or die by some grotesque manner of execution, mainly for the crime of just appearing to somebody to be a sap. So I always have the sense whenever we have a lovely time that we quite possibly may never be so happy again.

Pictures From Tennessee I


After Alabama we went back to Gatlinburg and the Smoky Mountains park for four or five days (this is all last summer of course). Obviously in spite of all of the grotesque, and mostly depressing, schmaltz that stretches outside the gates of the park for twenty miles, and the circumstance that most of the more accessible trails inside the park are ridiculously crowded compared to almost any other natural preserve in the country, we had a pleasant enough time the year before to want to come back and do more. Given my social and cultural pretensions, I cannot really justify my not reacting to this place with total revulsion on several levels, however--the park and the mountains are beautiful in a way that does uplift the downtrodden spirit, and even in the pancake houses and mini-golf venues down in the town the visitors have a kind of earnest enthusiasm for these modest pleasures that is kind of infectious to be around (I was even almost tempted to pop into the giant "As Seen on TV" outlet store in Pigeon Forge, but having seen on the internet the photo reports of other visitors that it is full of nothing but the worst kind of junk, I am pleased to have resisted that temptation).

1. Along the Trail to a Falls, I Believe Grotto Falls
This first set is mostly nature pictures. Due to my wife's having just had a baby two months previously, we had to stick to the easier, and thus inevitably more popular hikes. These were nonetheless worthy and aesthetically satisfying hikes. The variety of plant life on the trails in this park is extraordinary compared with pretty much anywhere else I have seen in the eastern U.S. One often has the sense of being in an arboretum rather than actually outside in nature itself.

2 & 3. Along the Grotto Falls Trail.

These don't really give the sense of harmony that one experiences among the diffuse elements of the scene there.

As I usually do in instances such as this when I am selecting 20 or so pictures for display out of a selection of about 500 or so, I generate a number of them randomly, just keep the ones that seem acceptable enough, and jettison ones that I don't think are any good. These seemed to say more when they were blown up fairly big.

My procedure of picture generation did happen to generate a picture of me and a few of the children congregating behind the falls at the end of the trail. It was a good picture, except that I looked fatter than I generally like to have known to the greater world, so I suppressed it.

4. Ripley's Amazing Mirror Maze, As Seen From Across the Parkway in Downtown Gatlinburg.

My children are sentimentalists in the same vein as I am, and thus in addition to the new things we intended to do in town, they also wanted to do the same things they had done on their previous visit, which thankfully had only been a couple of things.

5. Inside the Maze.

I managed to get out of the maze by way of bumbling around until I happened upon the curtain which led back to the Willy Wonka-esque candy shop which is attached to the maze. I did not figure out the layout--I was primarily tailing my five year old to make sure he didn't get scared, and not really paying attention to the pattern--but I also reasoned that a clever well-educated father of a past era would not only have noted the pattern but related it to something like a Mozart aria and kept up a banter with the children throughout that elevated the whole experience somewhat above mere sensation.

I did notice on the streets of Gatlinburg more of a rougher, lower class element than I did the first time we went, especially in the evening. People slapping their children and that sort of thing. Hiking for the sake of hiking (as opposed to hiking for the sake of say, fishing, which still draws more of the salt of the earth crowd) seems to attract people and families on the more organized end of the societal scale nowadays, as a general rule. On the hike in the following pictures, there was a cheerful and good-looking group of college kids from Nashville who were going all the way to the top of the mountain and staying at the lodge that was up there overnight as getting up there took the whole day (we did not do this, but that is the sort of thing I would like to do sometime). They were quite friendly and upbeat. Indeed I felt like the professor in Wild Strawberries around them, which was pleasant but a little disturbing as I was 41 at the time and the character in the movie is around 70. I'd better start doing something so I have something to look back on in my life when I am 70.

6. On the Way to Alum Cave Bluffs

This is a wonderful trail. Alum Cave Bluffs are about halfway up the 6,000+ foot Mt Lecomte, though the walk gets much harder and steeper apparently after the bluffs, which are a worthy attraction in themselves. This hike starts out along a river among thickets of rhododendron bushes, some of which happened to still be in flower, there is a cavelike portion of the walk, lots of water, above is part of one of the vistas seen when one gets higher up on the trail. I recommend it highly.

7. Approaching the Bluffs

We have beautiful nature, but if we do not generate beautiful art or greater intelligence from it, what good does it really do us?

8. Arrival at the Bluffs

This is halfway up a mountain. I made the joke at the time that this is what America is supposed to look like, at least in part. It isn't Manhattan--what is?--but it is great after its own manner.

9. Jellyfish Tank at Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg

This place is first and foremost a money making extravaganza, and the corporation that owns it is supposedly about as sinister as they come, but it isn't a bad aquarium, especially for children, and the children for whatever reason really wanted to go to it, and they often talked about it during the year, so I took them. I found at the end that I was quite emotionally spent by the visit. It was strange. I had not expected it. Kind of as if I were to suddenly--well, do anything I often think about doing but never actually do, though I can only imagine what that would take out of me. I bought myself a souvenir tumbler which I frequently drink my morning Coca-Cola in as well as the occasional stiffer drink.

10. I Don't Even Know What Kind of Fish These Are, But I am Fond of the Picture
I would put some further anecdote here, but I think I'd like to get this post up tonight and I have to go to bed now.

Changes

My eight year old has reached the age where he has become interesed in certain kinds of facts--about presidents, states, television shows. In addition to those morsels of knowledge that can be definitively stated--such as that Warren G. Harding was the 29th president and died in office, or that Lansing is the capital of Michigan--he desires me to give or direct him to more subjective judgements, what are the best, and especially, what are the worst, presidents, movies, states, cities, and so on, to which I give the best answers I can, though usually with so many qualifiers as to be ultimately unsatisfactory to the eight year old mind. I suppose I could give him books like Howard Zinn's Children's History of the United States, which offer more confident assessments of historical events, but the particular variety of stridency and point of view of such books I must confess I am not in a very close sympathy with. This is not much of moment at present, however. Of those more solid facts that are printed in his books, he sometimes quizzes me, partly to see what I know, and partly to be reassured of the truth of his reading, and I don't do too badly; however I have noticed that according to his atlas--a recent publication--the largest cities in quite a few states are different from what they were when I was eight. As these changes had taken place with me wholly oblivious to them, and I have always had some interest in populations and the history of them, I was curious to see what had been going on, and whether or I could glean any insight from the patterns and answers I discovered.

In all, 6 U.S. States have a different largest city than they did in 1962, the date of the primary reference atlas of my youth, which I still have. For a while I thought there were 7, but the last turned out to be an error in strict detail, thought still revealing much in drift. I also have an atlas from 1938 which gives population figures that I would think would be of much general interest, not only in the remarkable growth of certain locales both national and international, but the comparative stagnancy of others. So for even more vivid effect I will include the data from this atlas in my essay too.

The states with new largest cities fall into 3 groups. The first, being those states where a longtime champion has been recently toppled from its provincial primacy, group thus consists of three states. They are:

Connecticut. In Connecticut the competition for population supremacy among its cities has long been a tightly contested affair between the big 3 of Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven. In '38 Hartford edged New Haven 164,000-163,000, with Bridgeport holding 3rd place at 147,000. In '62 Hartford still carried the prize with 162,000, while Bridgeport had risen to 2nd with 156,000 and New Haven slumped behind at 152,000. Currently however Bridgeport has taken a surprisingly substantial lead despite having a considerably reduced population of 139,000, Hartford and New Haven being in a veritable heat for 2nd place at around 124,000 apiece (and still falling?).

These numbers are interesting to me because all 3 of these cities have a reputation in New England as being dumps, and Bridgeport especially; while I have driven through each of the three at least a hundred times in my frequent travels across the northeast I have always made a general point of avoiding stopping in them (though years ago there was a diner in New Haven I used to stop at somewhat regularly, and cannot remember when or why I stopped doing so). Bridgeport's relatively strong continued population showing would seem to be objectively inexplicable, unless it is warehousing a lot of people who can't afford to live anywhere else in what is an expensive area. I was just in Hartford last week (which trip I intend to write about more at length in an upcoming post), where I had never spent any time at all before, and while my visit was brief the parts I was in anyway I found to be much less unappealing than I had expected. This, combined with the general trend in much of the rest of the country that state capitals and other seats of government seem to be growing at the expense of the old industrial cities, makes the city's continued shedding of population and inability to generate much enthusiasm for itself a mystery to me.

Missouri. I knew that St Louis had been going down for some time, but this really shocked me. Here are the numbers: 1938: 1. St Louis, 822,000 2. Kansas City 400,000 3. St Joseph 81,000. 1962: 1 St Louis 750,000 2. Kansas City 475,000 3. Springfield 95,000. 2010: 1. Kansas City 441,000 2. St Louis 320,000 3. Springfield 150,000 (in case you were wondering, St Joseph's is in 7th place currently, down to about 71,000).

I know I may seem to have a habit of going to places and finding them not as bad as their reputations, but St Louis, which 100 years ago was one of the great cities of North America, and really the world, was truly depressing. What in the heck happened? Percentage-wise, the population drop from 1938 to now is greater than Detroit's (and I would say that the cultural contribution of St Louis, including music, was substantially greater than Detroit's). The other obvious question is, Why has Kansas City, also seemingly not quite at the center of the action of modern life, been able for the most part to hold its population?

Ohio. 1938: 1. Cleveland 900,000 2. Cincinnati 451,000 3. (tie) Columbus & Toledo 291,000. 1962: Cleveland 876,000 2. Cincinnati 502,000 3. Columbus 471,000. 2010: 1. Columbus 736,000 2. Cleveland 449,000 3. (tie) Toledo & Cincinnati 306,000.

Cleveland's decline has been well documented; it is the rise of Columbus that was stunning to me. I had no idea the place had over 700,000 people. The other question is, why is Toledo comparatively doing so well? It is dead smack in the midst of some of the most depressed and rapidly depopulating areas in the nominal first world. I stayed in a Motel 6 on the outskirts of Toledo on one of my driving trips once, and the place had one of the worst vibes I have ever felt anywhere. And this impression was before I was awakened in the middle of the night to find the hallway full of cops who had been called to intervene in a domestic dispute that had been taking place in a room down the hall.

The second category consists of one state where a former champion has re-ascended to the penthouse.

Florida. In 1938, the biggest city in Florida was Jacksonville, with 146,000 souls, followed by Miami at 128,000 and Tampa at 100,000. By '62 Miami was the biggest city with 291,000, followed by Tampa at 274,000 and Jacksonville dropped to 3rd at 201,000. Today however Jacksonville, which occupies a huge area and was born to absorb sprawl, is back on top at a whopping 797,000, with Miami a distant 2nd at 382,000, and Tampa still trailing 324,000.

Jacksonville looks like it would be a singularly ugly, boring and depressing place to live, but I know a number of people who retired to that city, the main reason given for which is that it is cheap. The appeal of cheap can never be underestimated, though it frequently is by people like me in the Northeast who are perpetually boggled by how millions of people can endure living in dreary endless apshalt hellholes like Houston or Phoenix or Jacksonville. I suppose I could endure it if I had a steady stream of hot girlfriends drawn from the local pool of Applebee's and Hooters waitresses and for-profit college students, but otherwise...no.

Orlando had only 30,000 people back in 1938 but even now it has only 207,000, not near as big as I thought and is only the 6th largest city in Florida (behind St Petersburg & Hialeah, for the record).

That leaves two states where there has been a different largest city in each of the three years.

Montana. I know nothing about any of these cities, Montana being surely in the handful of the most obscure states in the country. In 1938 the biggest city there was Butte, with around 40,000 people, followed by Great Falls (29,000) and Billings (16,000). In '62 Great Falls (55,000) had taken a slim lead over Billings (52,000) while Butte, now 3rd, had slipped all the way to 27,000. The methodical ascent of Billings has carried into the present, where the population now stands at 99,000 and its position as the main municipality of the state seems to be pretty solid for the foreseeable future. If there is to be a challenger however, the money would like to be on the new runner-up, Missoula, seat of the state university and, it is my impression, an increasingly popular destination for the organic food and natural body hair crowd (a crowd I secretly kind of like, incidentally), which has come out of nowhere to be the home of 63,000 people. Great Falls at 56,000 has remained stagnant now for half a century, and Butte, the one time champion, now dropped to fourth with a count of 34,000 people, has yet to regain the population it had in 1938.

Given the relatively small population figures for these towns, it does not require much of an influx or outflux of people to have an effect on their statuses vis-a-vis each other. However I should do the service of researching a little what has gone on in these places to explain the patterns of growth and decline.

Butte was a copper boomtown that actually reached its peak around 1920 or so. It underwent a major decline in the 1950s.

Great Falls, due in part to the hydroelectric possibilities suggested by its name, became an industrial, transportation and supply center for both the mining and agricultural industries--the town's main landmark until it was demolished in 1983 was an enormous smokestack for a copper smelter. After the 1940s there was also a military base. All of these enterprises declined precipitously in the 1980s.

Billings originated as a railroad town. Even in the beginning, it was known as "The Magic City" because it 'seemed to grow by magic'. Today it is the 'financial, medical, agricultural and cultural center for the Northern Rockies/Great Plains', and the nearest city larger than it is 350 miles away. It must have a good location. The photos of it are pretty, but the surrounding landscape reminds one more of one of the remote cities on the Trans-Siberian railroad than an American city.

Virginia. 1938: 1. Richmond 183,000 2. Norfolk 130,000 3. Roanoke 69,000. 1962: 1. Norfolk 304,000 2. Richmond 219,000 3. Portsmouth 144,000. 2010. 1. Virginia Beach 425,000 2. Norfolk 234,000 3. Chesapeake 199,000.

The geography of Virginia is somewhat difficult to keep up with. Virginia Beach, now officially the largest city in the state, is listed in the 1938 atlas as having 2,000 people, but that municipality was but a small part of the present city called Virginia Beach, which is the result of the consolidation of a good number of formerly separate towns in 1963. Also Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach are all right next to each other and together, with a few other places, make up a significant metropolis of over one and a half million people that most people even in the northern part of the state are barely aware of the existence of. Norfolk seems to still be considered the primary "city" around which this conurbation is oriented, with the other places, even 400,000+ Va Beach being suburbs. Needless to say I have never been down there to try to make some sense of what looks like a mess. And man, there are a lot of people living there. What do they do? Are the girls hot? (I'm running a comparison on Hotornot.com between the women of Billings and the women of Virginia Beach. The Va. Beach team has more depth and overall hotness, but the Billings girls look cleaner and bring a lot less attitude--and when they are hot, they are really hot, and in a manner largely exotic in quality to those of us in the northeast--all this just for the record).

I don't know where this state is going in the future.

Tennessee. I started all this because my boy's book had Nashville listed as the largest city in Tennessee with 511,000 people, surpassing longtime king Memphis, and indeed in 1962 Memphis was home to 497,000, with Nashville logging a distant second at 170,000. Subsequent researches have left me pretty certain that Memphis is in fact still the biggest city there, though not by too much, perhaps 100,000 for so. Nashville has grown much during my lifetime from a respectable but decidedly minor league sized state capital and cultural center to a fairly major city. A lot of formerly modest state capitals have followed in a similar vein, particularly those that are also home to mega-universities. Austin, Texas is the size of Boston now. Madison, Wisconsin it is my impression is more of a big city than the intimate all-American kind of place it was formerly. Columbus of course. Is Sacramento a major city now, or do I just imagine that because they have an NBA team? (ed--est. current pop. 407,000, up from 191,000 in 1960).

Further Thoughts on Recent Subjects

The bit from Norman Mailer about John Kennedy's presidency having, for a brief time anyway, inspired Americans to dress better made a big impression on me. Are there any political leaders nowadays who actually cause multitudes of people to earnestly seek self-improvement in small ways by mimicking certain aspects, or perceived aspects, of the leader's behavior? There was obviously some hope that Obama was going to be this way, perhaps especially among blacks and other minority groups, but as yet I have not seen any such response. Plenty of people loved Reagan's attitudes towards taxes and Communism, and many set to reiterating these in a spirit of great faithfulness, but I have noticed many people actually aping the man himself wholly separate from his ideologies however. Kennedy on the other hand, along with the sartorial example set off a speedreading fad among a certain segment of the public when it became public that he possessed and frequently resorted to this skill, as well as convinced many young boys especially (such as Bill Clinton and my father) that being a student of history and showing respect at least towards important figures in the arts could be cool (and not be a hindrance in skirt-chasing either, if you must go there. Kennedy's famous book, or the book that was published in his name, Profiles in Courage, which seems to have been shrewdly modeled after the vigorous but still cultivated works of admired fellow patrician-politicians such as Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt, was still selling well and had a pretty wide readership even into my childhood in the 70s. Of course armies of scholars and ideological enemies have been diligently at work over the last 30 years exposing Kennedy as a fraud--who doesn't know by now that he preferred Ian Fleming's james Bond books to those of the Nobel Laureates and legendary poets he was fond of entertaining at the White House? This is still largely beside the point, however. He exuded a certain degree of real urbanity and idealism, wherever or however he picked it up or packaged it, to which a great many ordinary people were attracted and aspired to emulate. I don't think this was such a bad thing. John Kerry (whom I voted for, but didn't particularly like) by many accounts is in his private life a genuinely cultivated man after a fashion, but politically he had no sense of how to turn this to any advantage with the public, and obviously in George Bush's America regarded it as something to be hidden from view at all cost. This very trait was the genius of most of the great political figures in American history however--making the people believe that fundamentally you really are one of them, in fact are just a somewhat more perfectly realized version of themselves.

One thing I left out in my account of my visit to Tennessee was how cheerful many people--and native-born Americans at that--were in working at what would appear to be very unpleasant and poorly-paying jobs in the service industry, the kind that in the Northeast, if they are not held by immigrants or the very young, are usually the provenance of, if not surly, decidedly unenthusiastic people indeed. I know I am working from a very small sample but the contrast was immediately large enough to make an impression. Obviously many of these workers, mostly women, but there were a few men, have children and all the usual expenses, they put forth a real conscientious effort both to do a good job and remain upbeat--I wish I could always say the same for myself--which contributes substantially to the quality of life, which by a cursory glance at the socio-economic statistics would appear to be rather low, in that area. I think they deserve a better deal, though maybe that will be their destruction, as the too easy life has (it is asserted) been the destruction of both the moral and intellectual vitality of modern Europe.

My understanding of both politics and economics is apparently so weak that even 'weak' as an adjective would give too strong an impression of it, but after some point doesn't the continued high unemployment rate, lack of job creation, etc, need to be addressed as a immediate political problem separate from a classical economics problem? The capitalists have done a very good job persuading important people as well as the general public that Franklin Roosevelt's policies exacerbated and extended rather than helped the recovery from the Great Depression, which would have come about sooner if the business cycles had been allowed to run their course. Why the general wage-earning public should trust the capitalists' interpretation of anything as far as it regards themselves, I don't know, but if the market determines that 20% or so real unemployment is inevitable for 5-10 years, or even more permanently, I certainly hope the government has some kind of plan for coping sensibly with a society living on these terms, which I don't think they do.

Another thing I don't get is the obsession right-wingers have with poor people not paying any, or even very little income tax. I suppose there is an argument that everybody with an income should have to pay something on principle, as a reminder of their having a stake in society, etc (which of course everyone does with regard to Social Security and so on). I would imagine however that classic economic analysis and number crunching would have determined that the sums acquired from taxing peole making $25,000 or so a year would not outweigh the increased burdens, services, etc that would result from the individuals' loss of that income...this last is just dashed off as I have to go. I will think it through more at another time.

Great Smoky Mountains National ParkI went here recently on vacation. It's hardly an unknown spot--it gets something like 10 million visitors a year, is the most visited of all the national parks, several of the towns around the edges of it are major, even notorious, tourist resorts--but I did not know much about it. My family when I was growing up was not much into parks or spending time in nature, so I have never been accustomed to think of these kinds of places as being on the list of destinations I might want to see someday. As far as I can tell, this area is not very well known in the Northeast generally. It is a pretty long way from New England but not terribly far--8 or 9 hours--from the Washington, D.C. area, not farther than Cape Cod and closer than Maine certainly, but I don't remember hearing of anyone going to the Smokies when I lived there either, though it is possible it did not register with me because at the time I did not know anything about the place and hearing about it probably would not have interested me.

As has happened in other instances over the last few years, I came upon the idea of going to the Smoky Mountains from my 1962 World Illustrated Encyclopedia, which offers travel recommendations rooted in the earnest enthusiasms and interests of an optimistic and aspiring middle class person of that time, with which sensibility I have a lot of sympathy. As I have noted elsewhere, this encyclopedia was especially keen on patriotic historical sites and parks, the main national ones of course, but a fair number of state parks or gardens and such were included as well. It liked the Smoky Mountains park a great deal, recommending the latter accompanied by numerous photographs in both the North Carolina and Tennessee sections (the park is located along the border of these states), but giving it its own article as well. Another set of (small) books I have from that same year, the American Geographical Society's "Know Your America Program" touts it enthusiastically and at great length as well. I was piqued and marked it down as something to look into, along with a few other possibilities within reasonable driving distance (defined this year as 12 hours or less either from New Hampshire or Philadelphia--Gatlinburg barely made the cut). Once I got on the internet and saw what a big deal tourism in the Smokies was and how fervently so many people loved it, and how fervently so many other people loathed the scene around the park and the masses who took part in it (no one loathes the park itself by the way) I was overcome with a very strong desire to go and see what this place was all about.

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood) especially, my researches were telling me, were abominations, nightmares, horrid and tasteless spectacles, Wal-Mart culture at its most depraved, the poor man's Orlando or even Branson. They bulged with the spawn of southern America's trailer parks, an astoundingly (for this day and age) white crowd devoted to Jesus and guns and tattoos, most of whom had never had any exposure to real civilization at all, let alone been within fifty miles of even a semi-respectable school. This all actually did worry me a lot, though more for the sake of my wife, who (knowing nothing of the area herself) I thought might be really angry to find she had been dragged seventeen hours from home to find herself in a hellhole surrounded by stupid and nasty rednecks. However there was still the allure of the park, of which the consensus even of the most vociferous Gatlinburg haters was that it was super-duper, and also I read through a lot of personal blogs by people who loved vacationing there, and they seemed nice enough, and their lack of pretentiousness compared to east coast people was actually kind of charming--pretty young wives expressing enthusiasm about going to a favorite pancake house or a hotel with a heated pool, that sort of thing. I thought if it turned out to be absurd enough without being really disastrous I could at least get an essay out of it like the famous one David Foster Wallace wrote about his trip on a cruise ship which everyone loved so much.

The park is truly gorgeous and spectacular, well worth going a long way for. Being from the east, and therefore at a long distance from most of the National Parks, this was the first one I had ever been to, including Acadia. It more than surpassed my expectation, which was high but based upon a much lower scale. Now I am curious to see more, though I don't know when I might get around to doing that, as must of the other famous ones are really far away (and then what does one do in say, Death Valley, anyway? It isn't like you can go hiking in the middle of the day, can you?). The Smoky Mountains are unique and interesting in addition to their beauty, which salient impressions I am not always on a sure footing with in matters of nature. The trees and plants and animals at the highest (4,000+ ft) elevations are similar to our mountains in New England, and southern Canada, a relic of the last ice age, the more common southern vegetation which gradually overtook the rest of the region having never conquered these peaks. The lower elevations, especially on the North Carolina side, have a more southern appearance, with horse trails and white water rafting and sycamore and oak trees. The air when one is up in the mountains is fresh and even primeval compared with what in usual in that part of the country in the summer, and even in town though it was in the 80s and fairly humid the air was still cleaner than one would have expected given the extent of traffic and other environmentally appalling human activity taking place there.

On the way back we came some of the way, in both North Carolina and Virginia, on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is a scenic road that is also administered by the National Park Service (several of the pictures on the page here--I believe the 1st and 4th from the top--were taken in North Carolina along this road). We did not go the whole way, as the road is 469 miles long through mountainous country and is rather slow going. At many points in North Carolina I had a hard time getting above 35 miles per hour. In any event I came away from this trip impressed with the work of the Park Service. Apart from the nature in and through which they operate, the human incursions in these parks--bridges, roads, trails, visitors centers, signs, etc, are tastefully and thoughtfully designed and beautifully maintained. I found the presentation of such information as regarded the natural and human history of the areas under consideration to be at a reasonable adult level of comprehension and interest without being overwhelming or abstruse for the amateur. A lot of people don't like government agencies as being unnecessary and bloated with incompetent and expensive employees, but most of the ones I come into contact with at my level of society are far more reliable, serious, on the level and accountable to the general public without the necessity of hiring legal counsel than most comparable private enterprises.

The horrors of Gatlinburg (where I ended up staying), of which I was so apprehensive that I only reserved rooms for four days in case it should all be too unbearably awful, were decidedly overstated, such that I regretted I had not booked an extra night or two when it was time to leave. The polite travel writing community repeatedly emphasized the place as a mecca for the hee-hawing, tobacco-spitting Dukes of Hazzard loving community, and the kinds of amusements that appeal to this type; there were a few of these people, but no more than at the scruffier beaches or lakefronts in New England, of which there are more than a few. A person I know in New Hampshire who used to live in Nashville assured me when I mentioned where I was going that if I hung out in the town I would see the fattest people I had ever seen in my life; I did not notice that the people were on the whole any fatter than they are anywhere else other than perhaps Paris. In addition the ratio of attractive women to people who made one depressed simply by looking at them was considerably higher than it is almost anywhere in the east, especially at the socioeconomic level that frequents Gatlinburg. The area attracts a lot of families and as such most places are very relaxed about children, which is something I have to take into consideration. We did not stand out nearly as much in Tennessee as we do in much of the north, where families our size seem to be rarer and are considered quite big.

Other misconceptions. The traffic in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, it was related in book after book and site after site, was reputedly a nightmare. While there is some congestion in town that makes for slow going, "town" is about six blocks long, which maybe takes 15 or 20 minutes to get through and has the advantage of very good people watching and the ridiculous/fascinating conglomeration of shopping and outrageous attractions to distract one's attention. If you have ever driven anywhere in the D.C. or New York areas between about 2 and 8 pm on a weekday you will wonder what the fuss is even about. The first day or two I took the recommended shortcuts to avoid this, but I found I actually enjoyed checking out the strip and that the amusement this provided the whole family was well worth the extra twenty minutes it took to get into the park.

A lot of people nowadays (doubtless from both the pro- and anti-diversity contigents) like to make note of the racial makeup of popular vacation spots and take this into consideration when deciding whether to go somewhere. The National Parks especially have become suspect in the eyes of many in recent years due to the fact that they appeal overwhelmingly to white people. It is true that there were very few blacks or hispanics at this place, though still more than you will find at similarly popular vacation spots in New England, with the exception perhaps of the city of Boston. Nonetheless, given the general area of the park's location, the absence of black people would have to be remarked upon by any sensitive reporter. I did see a good amount of Asian Indians there, as I do at parks and natural places in New England as well, and while I did not see any Indians of the American variety, there is a substantial Cherokee reservation just outside the North Carolina entrance of the park (with a big casino). I did not see a lot of Koreans, Japanese, etc, which one does come across quite frequently in New England during the popular seasons. I wondered if they had picked up on the fact that the Yale crowd doesn't think the Smokies are cool and planned their vacation accordingly. It is true that one does not see a lot of people who look like they went to Yale there, though there are certainly plenty of people who went to the University of Tennessee (which is only 30 miles away), and people who went there (as well as plenty of people who didn't go there) really love the University of Tennessee to a degree that would appear bizarre to most state school graduates in the northeast, few of whom seem willing to express the kind of passionate affection for their alma maters that people from Harvard and Bowdoin (people who went to Bowdoin I find really love Bowdoin) and the major state schools in flyover country do. Penn State is a partial exception to this rule, but that is because the school is at least half midwestern in personality. PSU-love is not especially detectable in Philadelphia but grows in fervor the further across the state, especially westward, one fans out.

Another demographic circumstance I suppose I must note is that openly gay people were in serious short supply--I didn't notice anyone obvious at all--and by extension gay couples with children, of which there is at least one family in nearly every class/team/congregation/office I encounter in New England now, were nowhere to be seen. Being me, I actually hadn't noticed this at first. I only minimally have any kind of progressive instinct, and am only conscious of certain kinds of people when they are present and forget when they are blatantly absent to wonder what it is wrong with the place that they should not be there. It was only when I commented to my wife how I was surprised by how friendly everyone was, after reading about how backwards and hostile to anybody progressive or educated they were supposed to be, that she reminded me that yes, they were, but then we are conventional white people with a pretty large family (also of course, I can obviously easily pass for someone who is neither progressive nor educated). This was a good lesson for me.

Al Gore Award. I know what you are thinking, I allowed myself to be overexcited by one of the sweet-talking Tennessee honeys and attempted an unwelcome and inappropriate love attack on her person, but no, though doubtless one can easily imagine a scenario in which such an unfortunate incident might come to pass, it did not do so on this occasion. No, it was my dear wife Sabrina, who hauled several large garbage bags of bottles all the way back to Philadelphia that she might recycle them, Al Gore's nominal home state evidently not having gotten around as yet to setting up a convenient system for doing this. When I asked Angie, the not bad-looking and slightly provocative-dressing manager of my hotel, what I ought to do with the bottles, she shrugged her shoulders and laughed mildly at the ludicrous earnestness of my question, and said in her Appalachian twang--I generally don't go for most southern accents but the Appalachian and general Tennessee versions really work on me for whatever reason--"Just throw 'em in the garbage."