It was out of desperation that we went to Knoxville. My schedule is so painfully full, with two jobs, an internship, and going to school full-time, that my partner and I have had next to no time for one another, and certainly no time to ever get away for a change of scenery and for any "us" time. One of my jobs, though, is at a hotel, which entitles us to steep discounts at other properties in the big, happy family of brands of which my hotel is a part. That was how we managed to find a room in a high-rise luxury hotel in downtown Knoxville for about $50.
Why Knoxville? We'd never been, although I'm a fan of two things that call Knoxville their home: the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility (aka the "Body Farm") and a series of crime/thriller novels based on the founder of the Body Farm, Dr. Bill Bass. Knoxville is not a place you ever hear a great deal about, so it was interesting and fun to read about it in fiction -- and not just because in one of the novels, the protagonist transports a cargo of human arms to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville so a convention of doctors can practice dissection in a ballroom. Meanwhile, I looked the city up on Wikipedia before we left on Monday, and found that in 1948, it earned the dubious distinction of being the "ugliest city in America," according to
this book. And, of course, who could forget the
majestic Wigsphere?
Speaking of ugliness, however, while Wikipedia notes that earning the "ugliest" crown jolted city leaders into a series of beautification projects, modern Knoxville is still not what you call classically handsome. Paris and Vienna, nor for that matter, Charleston, Savannah, and Asheville will ever stay up late nights worrying about it stealing their thunder. Knoxville is unashamedly gritty and sprawly, and the bloom of the modern city lifts its head to the sun not very far at all above industrial and railroad roots.
Asheville, of course, is the city I can most readily compare against any place I travel. In Asheville, the buildings go out of their way to clash with one another, and the result is an energetic feeling. In Knoxville, the buildings just clash but it's a comfortable sort of ugliness, though. That is not a backhanded remark, either. Knoxville is rather ugly, but it's a very comfortable city that seems to have nothing in particular to prove. Take it or leave it, it doesn't care. It has plenty going for it, including a major university, a major research hospital, and that among the laurels in its cap is the fact that most everything we know about human decomposition comes to you courtesy of Knoxville and the little patch of land near the Tennessee River where scientists toss human corpses into the woods and watch them rot.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Shall we stroll?
• Video Link
The view from our hotel room.
Part 1: Knoxville by Knight
The Henley Street Bridge, which along with the Gay Street Bridge, is a very popular place for suicides to jump into the river. It is also home to the nation's largest, most terrifying population of spiders.
Beneath the struts of that stadium lies one of the world's largest and most important collections of human skeletal specimens.
Part 2: Knoxville at Knoon
Majestic Wigsphere No. 1
It's rather telling, and sad, that a city with this much historic architecture could ever be called ugly. The standards were higher in 1948. If the author of that book had been able to see the rise of Brutalism, and the American fascination with anonymous glass box towers -- most of them built at the expense of buildings like these -- he'd have had a stroke.
Never trust a man named "Buzz." What kind of parent would do that to a child?
I'm going to keep telling myself she merely sat in something.
Majestic Wigsphere No. 2
Majestic Wigsphere No. 3
And from the drive home... That mist is how the Great Smokey Mountains got their name.
And we returned home to discover that the rain in Knoxville had followed us home and had brought with it high winds that tore down the power lines in front of our house. It took hours for the electricity to be restored.
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