Saturday, 29 April 2006 - Appalachians

I spent the weekend with my cousins in Tennessee. We went sight seeing around the little towns and saw more of the back roads. The pieces of the Appalachians that we saw were beautiful. You can tell that if this area were vacated today, it would not take long for the vegetation to take over the land again. Trees line every road, and where the land has not been cleared, the woods are very dense. It’s hard to imagine any frontier people making their way through this country for the first time.

As we drove around, I saw for the first time, some of the mountain people (a.k.a. hillbillies) and where they live. As seen on TV, the houses are very old and run down. Maybe they were painted once, back in the 1800s. Some look like they should be demolished for safety and health codes. Many look as if it wouldn’t take much force to knock them over, either.

This is also the land of 50,000 churches as my cousin referred to it. Every corner we turned, there was a church. The main town even has “Church Circle,” where several red brick and white wooden churches, of differing denominations, face a traffic circle that is the center of town. I imagine people coming out of church on Sunday mornings, yelling denominational slurs at each other, but my cousin said that it’s actually quite peaceful.

Must Sell Fast!! Charming 300 sqft on spacious 30 acre lot.
Great starter home - needs TLC.
Close to recreational area and many churches.

We stopped by a place called Carter Fold, which has ties to Ruth Carter Cash, Johnny Cash’s wife. The house belonged to her uncle, A.B. Carter, and housed Ruth and Johnny’s rocking chairs. Next to the house, sits a music theater where they alternate between Bluegrass and “Ol’ Time Music” at 7:30pm on Saturdays. At 6pm, the place was already filling with cute old couples, mostly in their 70s and 80s. This Saturday was Ol’ Time Music, which is supposed to be a little less lively than bluegrass. So we decided to head back to the house and cook dinner over the bonfire, (or the “farrr” as we called it the rest of the night).

Carter Fold

Where riding lawnmowers go to die.

It's not so much the FallING rocks to watch for, but the ones that aren't moving anymore