(Today’s article is by recurring guest writer and relatively recent Knoxville transplant Luke Frazier.)
Soon after I moved to Knoxville a friend told me I wasn’t in the real South. He said I was in the Appalachian South, and the real deal was something he called the Dirty South, which included Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. I kind of got it, the whole mystique around the deep south having been planted in my northern-born head over the course of a lifetime.
An early and enduring love of the music of The Allman Brothers set a course of appreciation for Southern-ness in general, later the novels of James Lee Burke and the art of Howard Finster solidified certain romantic notions about the idea and ideals of the south. Living in New Orleans for a year only served as an accelerant for all things southern-fried, sparking forays into Cajun, Zydeco and N’awlins music and culture that continues today.
My conception of the south is the product of both low and hi-brow cultural iconography related to hazy swamps, moss-draped oaks, familial complications, southern belles, sweaty preachers, muddy pickup trucks, words that sound funny, and alternatively boisterous and taciturn men. In other words a bunch of confused half-truths about a region(s) that, like the rest of the U.S., is becoming homogenized in the pursuit of consumer bliss. Knoxville didn’t hit all the stereotypical notes of those tunes, but even so, to a Connecticut Yankee like me, Tennessee sure felt like the south.
Early on a waitress at Pete’s Diner schooled us on sounding more southern (elongation of vowels was the crux of it) and the elevation of Pimento cheese to a scared substance suggested we weren’t in Ohio anymore. Then there was the architecture and a certain gracious attitude detected here and there, a hospitality underpinning a lot of otherwise routine interactions.
The fact was that we were physically below the historic Mason-Dixon line, therefore part of the Confederacy. That had to define something. Along those lines, I soon ran into an historic marker that identified the Lincoln Memorial University School of Law Campus on Summit Hill Drive as the site of a former Civil War Hospital. Another nearby marker at Immaculate Conception Church immortalized Father Abram J. Ryan, a Confederate chaplain and poet who wrote “The Conquered Banner” in Knoxville after Lee’s surrender. It includes rhythm and rhyme lamenting the lost hopes of the South but confirming the past will live on:
Furl that Banner! True, ’tis gory,
Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory,
And ’twill live in song and story
The whole idea of the weight of history has always felt deeply southern to me, probably because of the famous Faulkner quote I latched onto in long-ago tumultuous times:
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
For me, this suggested that time echoes in many different directions, not just in an orderly calendar-like fashion. It was Blanche DuBois eternally waiting, and a long night barely reaching day.
The idea of an inescapable, ever-present past resonated mightily at a certain point in my life. Events took tragic turns, loved ones were lost. In my scramble to cope I turned to drugs and alcohol, chasing relief and false impressions of transcendence. In the midst of madness real and imagined, history took on weighty shapes and sounds alternatively hilarious and horrific. Dark stretches, a bottom, seeking help, rebuilding, recovery.
Fast forward 20 years and life is vastly and beautifully different, and includes lots of walks around this gentle city of Knoxville. My past is a part of me, and I’ve learned to use it in a way that can benefit others. I also try to keep my eyes wide open.
On a recent walk I spotted graffiti written on several of the lights on the Henley Street Bridge. Not artistically rendered in the least, it’s a scribble of sentiments in both black and red magic markers. The message is whole in a couple of places and then spread across several lights for good measure.
The past is the past. What is done is done. So let’s move on!
The message stands in contrast to the deep south conception of the past of Faulknerian lore, where the past sits on your shoulder for the duration. It reads as hopeful, and corresponds with principles around not regretting the past but accepting it. The imploring “Let’s move on” feels both personal and universal, and individual plea writ large in the public sphere. It encourages releasing oneself from imprisoning thoughts and attitudes.
I have no idea who decided to take the time to stop and tag the lights in this way, and whether they think Knoxville is only the Appalachian South or something deeper. For me, there is a freedom found in carrying the past into the present, as long as it doesn’t dominate. Ultimately, I think Faulkner only got it half-right: the past is never dead, but it is in the past. That makes the Henley Street graffiti a nice addition to random instructions about how to live life, regardless of where in the South you find yourself.