Day #232 – Dental VIII & Museum of the Appalachia

 Gatlinburg TN

Today started with a trip to the dentist.  He inserted the permanent crown over my cracked tooth and sent me on my way.  I had such a wonderful sense of relief.  Kelly and I weren’t sure the best way to celebrate, so we just headed down a road we’d never been on before. 

We passed the Bush Bean plant, Clint’s BBQ (live music several nights each week), and a Ball (canning jar folks) plant.  All this was in the midst of farms and fields – definitely not an urban or factory setting.  Neither of us felt like touring these places, so we kept driving.

We ended up at a museum outside Knoxville that I’d wanted to visit.  It’s called the Museum of the Appalachia (http://www.museumofappalachia.org).  I had read many descriptions of this museum.  The one I liked best was this:  The founder was a pack rat whose need for old farm clutter got a bit out of hand.  When his family threatened to “do something” about it, he out-foxed them by turning his collection into a museum.  He’s collected buildings, machinery, tools, quilts, artwork – everything to do with the culture and lives of the people of the southern Appalachian Mountains.

If you’ve traveled much off the Interstate, you’ve probably seen the large concrete crosses, with writing on the vertical and horizontal parts of the cross.  Usually, the crosses say something like, “Jesus Saves” or “Get Right with God”.  Well, the founder of this museum was friends with the Rev. Henry Harrison Hayes, who put many of those crosses along the road (http://www.themountaineagle.com/news/2010-04-14/News/Highway_markers_memorialize_Appalachias_concrete_e.html).  It was his life’s work.  This particular exhibit included about twenty crosses, a map showing the routes the man had traveled, plus many of his writings which explained why he devoted his life to this project.  It was his dream to have these crosses from the exhibit erected on the Moon and Saturn.  He apparently gave the crosses to the curator in exchange for a promise that the crosses would be erected in those places.

We’ve seen a lot of cabins and barns over the last few months, so we went through those exhibits pretty quickly.  But, face it: I was there for the music.  We plopped ourselves down on some cabin steps and listened to four musicians play “old time” music.  As best I can figure, old time music is what came before bluegrass.  Examples include, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away.”  We’ve been told that songs from Virginia, such as “Barbara Allen”, country, and generic folk music do not make the cut.    We listened to them for over an hour.  Apparently, that was a challenge for them.  They were used to audiences who stayed for one or two songs and then moved on.

When we returned to the campground, we got some good news.  In our absence, the manager had asked Fran to clean a cabin.  The cabin had been trashed.  Fran showed the manager, who showed the owner.  Fran now gets paid again for cleaning cabins.  Yippee for all of us!