First of all, since I only had 5 days to pull it off, I adjusted my trip schedule to drop the first two places I lived, which were Nolensville and Lafayette, as I was too young to have significant memories of those houses, and definitely not the churches. Maybe. I have vague memories of a church that doesn’t fit any of the others, so maybe it was a Lafayette church. Or maybe it was just another church we visited at some point. Those memories are too old to be clear.
I emailed all of the churches weeks ahead of time, and only one of them responded. A couple of days prior to leaving, I called them all and left messages. Nobody called back right away. Actually, only one called back at all.
I wanted to make the trip somewhat earlier than I did, but I took a long time to wrap my mind around the planning of the whole thing. I needed time to get things together, and I needed to assemble the pieces, to plan, to contact everyone and see what I could arrange. I needed someone to check on the cats, and I needed some pre-trip car maintenance. There would be massive driving, after all.
On Wednesday, November 15, I set out to complete the trip. My ex agreed to watch our son for that day, adding a day to her time, as I would have not had him for the next four days anyway. We’re generally really good at covering for each other as needed, and I’m grateful that she was willing to give me an extra day. So I dropped him at the bus, came home, finished packing, and pulled out of my driveway, headed South.
I made it to Nashville before one of the churches called me back. Mountain City. The pastor wasn’t going to be in town for the day I’d be there, but he connected me to a church member who would show me around the church.
My first stop was Winchester Springs, which was where my dad’s family lived when I was growing up, all centered around my grandparents’ home. I stopped at their church, which is where my parents and my dad’s parents are buried. I spent some time at the graves, then saw that someone was in the church, so I dropped by and met the pastor. I got to walk through the church, took a lot of pictures, and talked about my family and the church. Then I dropped by my grandparents’ house. They’ve been gone for years, and the house isn’t in the family, but I talked to the owner, who knows the family, for a while. After that, I dropped in to visit my Uncle Jim and Aunt Shuron for a few hours, and I got to take a lot of pictures of family history and photos. Jim is in his 80s and certain he isn’t going to make it through the winter, but that seems like an opinion more than a fact.
After visiting Jim, I got to have dinner with my Uncle Mike and Aunt Nena, and then drove to Hazel Green, Alabama, to stay the night with my childhood best friend, John. We talked into the night, then I crashed on his air mattress.
On Thursday, John drove me to Loretto, and he pointed out a lot of places around town where we had made memories. We drove some, walked some, talked constantly. The pastor (the only one who had responded to my emails) led us through the house, which I didn’t expect, and I was struck by how much I remembered it. After that, we toured the church, and then we went our own way again, eventually ending up at John’s family house, where I spent a lot of my time back in the day. We walked the neighborhood with his mother, had lunch, looked through his house. We also visited dad’s second church, closed down, and we drove around Barton Hollow, which was right behind his neighborhood. Yes, like the Civil Wars song. (John remembers going to school with John Paul White.) His mom gave me an orange chiffon cake, my childhood favorite that I haven’t had since, and we drove back to Hazel Green. I packed up and drove to Chattanooga, where I had a hotel room for the night.
Friday morning, since I was there, I drove through the Chattanooga neighborhood where I had lived for a couple of years in my 30s with my ex-wife, and I sent her pictures of the house we’d rented. I dropped by McKay’s in Chattanooga, then in Knoxville, on my way to the Tri-Cities (Northeast Tennessee). Between the two McKay’s, I stopped at Cleveland, TN, where I lived after high school (summers during my junior college). That church is no longer a church; they sold it, and it was converted into a school for adults with disabilities, and I struggled to find it. When I did, I got a tour and I drove by the old house, which is no longer a parsonage, and snapped a couple of pictures from the road.
After driving most of the day, I arrived in Abingdon, Virginia, the place we lived after Loretto. I tried to visit the towns in order, after all. It took me some time to find my way around, and the pastor at the first church said he didn’t have a key to the church, that it had been loaned to a member, so I left, a little dejected that I couldn’t see inside. Dad had a second church (he always had two churches when I was growing up), and I drove to it, where the guy next door let me in the church and showed me around. He remembered my family. Washington Chapel was the oldest church in that area, and he told me they moved the church further down the hill at one point, using mules and rolling logs to move a whole building. I said my goodbyes, looked around downtown some more to try to think of how to find my old neighborhood, and ended up asking at the town hall. They pointed me to Roses, which was still there, and I easily found the house from there. I drove the neighborhood for a bit, then drove to Kingsport to stay with a friend (that night and the next).
Saturday, I drove to Mountain City, where I got the planned tour of the church, and the tour guide was a guy who started attending when dad was the preacher. After that, I wandered town, including seeing the outside of the parsonage and the hill I spent so much time on. I tried to find the church in Trade, but I ended up giving up and drove back to try to get to the next stop. I drove to Bristol, found both churches, but they were both unoccupied and locked up. Bristol was a one-year appointment, so I was both a little heartbroken and not surprised. I took photos of the outsides and the parsonage, then went to Jonesboro to find my aunt’s house. I took pictures of the outside of her place, then went to Johnson City, got pictures of my college apartments in my 20s, had pizza at the Italian Pizza Pub, and walked to the back, where I took a couple of pictures of the Pub Outback, one of my regular places to see live music in town. Then back to Kingsport.
Sunday, I dropped in on the churches in Elizabethton, which were open for services. In Taylor Memorial, I met an older lady who remembered my parents taking them to Carowinds, and my mom trash talked her into riding a roller coaster. I then got to the second church, looked around, drove around town for a bit, then decided to drive back to Abingdon. I arrived right after service, and one of the remaining church members remembered my family. He gave me a tour and told me that my next-door neighbor still lived in that house, though his parents don’t, so I dropped by there and said hello before I left town. I went back to Johnson City, visited a second cousin (mom’s cousin) for a while, and drove back to Ohio.
There was a lot of driving over those five days, but I managed to see the outside of all of the houses I’d lived in (and the inside of one) and the inside of most of the churches dad had (minus Trade and Bristol). I also saw the outside of all of the schools I’d attended, though the one in Loretto had been converted into a place where you rented machinery. Was it a success? I believe it was. I got to reconnect with my history in a very real way, especially in Loretto, where I had a friend to remind me of several specific moments when we reached the spots where they happened (“and this is where you lost the kite, and we chased the bobbing spool until…right over there, where it flew up and got stuck in the top of that tree”). It was emotionally meaningful to go on that trip, and it helped me to write better about my times in all of those places.
I’ve added trip photos here.
Bill Abbott, poet, web page 