A Walking Tour
A couple of weekends ago, I set out walking to return some books to the public library. While there, I wanted to pick up a couple of novels set in Knoxville, by local authors (James Agee's A Death in the Family and Cormac McCarthy's Suttree). While there, I fell into conversation with a wiry jackdaw of a librarian who spoke animatedly about how she'd moved to Knoxville in the 60s, when the downtown was crawling with the sort of seedy denizens described in McCarthy's book. She said she was happy for the sprouting development that has occurred recently but also confided with a wink, "I also miss those wild folks I reckon some are happy to have seen move on." She gave me directions to a mini-mart where I could get batteries, and I happily set out to explore downtown with Duane's camera in tow.
I first walked across the pair of bridges that cross the Tennessee River to the generally south side of downtown. I walked right down Gay Street (yes, our address) and across the bridge, past the looming mauve-ish hospital on the far banks and back across the Chapman Highway bridge, pausing to look at how the kudzu loosely carpets the bank on the far side.
Once back across, I turned east again almost immediately, following the old and neglected buildings that still stand between office buildings facing the river. I ran upon a delapidated, gothicized home behind cast iron fencing:
You might note the red-dressed woman at the door I beheaded and the tiny stuffed crow that sits beneath the row of windows above. This house sits right next to a gutted home with some interesting graffiti:
Having just moved from Memphis and noting the relatively smaller number of African-American folks in Knoxville, I was surprised but oddly comforted to see the bald house given such a jarring facelift. Especially since both houses nearly faced an old apartment building with its own face-work:
The busting balcony was absolutely quiet and still but also absolutely gay, its plants and blooms pinched in with hanging plates, metallic balls, strung beads, cheap sculpture, and -- my favorite -- the hanging pair of running shoes.
Around the corner and up towards the government buildings was another old apartment building, converted into law offices:
Everywhere, in the architecture, the signage, the fencework, I started to sense a place that would bear resemblance to Harper Lee's Maycomb, but instead of being set in the flat, Deep South of Alabama, the small city downtown had been set right against the river, across which pressed through the haze, those low, old mountains. Moving further north, you see the older buildings bear the mark of other decades' influences, you see the law offices nuzzle in between government buildings, parking lots and garages, old churches, abandoned industrial buildings, diners, barber shops.
I paused and looked at this next building, remembering.
The Duncan Federal Building. Where, when I was in college at Maryville in the early 90s, Beth and I and several friends had joined a knot of others to protest the Gulf War. Eight others -- including a complex and earnest friend -- held a sit-in in the offices of Al Gore, Jr., then a Tennessee senator, until they were arrested and carried out between the others of us marching outside. I remember it being cool, people shouting "No blood for oil!", bongos, that there was an odd mix of people -- younger, alternative sorts with salt-and-pepper-haired hill hippies, singing "We Shall Overcome". I remember being intrigued by the latter but simultaneously at disjunct with their Christian-tinged songs.
I had forgotten this time, that I had even participated, until I walked up on the face of the building.
There was an Episcopalian church with the reddest door.
It was right beside a much more auster religious building.
I wanted to see the sanctuary of the Episcopal church and so entered, could find no one. I looked at the old photos of bishops lining the wall until an elderly pair appeared and sweetly told me the building was closed but welcomed me back later. The priest of the two had a silver goatee that fell squarely to the bottom of his sharp rib cage, his cheeks shaved reddish. He asked me where I'd moved from and kindly held the door open for me to leave.
I continued up the street but wanted to get in the spaces more, like I'd nearly done at the church, rush past the facades to something more intimate, into alleys, into the small objects around corners and behind windows.
I found a short turn of alleys behind this old, beautiful house, that I imagined might have been a brothel or an informal casino or boarding house once:
A couple of days before, I had passed by and noticed a hand-full of nervous, Hispanic teenagers smoking a joint in the alley, so of course, now, I walked right in myself:
And came out facing a church cemetary that was on the national register of historical places:
I liked the stillness of the shade, the relative cool, the quiet off the low hum of Gay Street. I liked the way the headstones huddled together, as if for sudden company. I recalled how white-haired Dr. Cartledge -- a very liberal religion professor and amateur photographer at Maryville College -- used to say of secular, historical spots, "A holy place is a holy place is a holy place," almost to turn Gertrude Stein's rose outside itself. When home, I looked again at Agee's A Death in the Family, set in 1915, read how the narrator remembered as a boy walking to see a movie downtown with his father then passing the shop windows, with mannequins and a cap he wanted behind the glass:
If he asked his father now, his father would say no, Charlie Chaplin was enough. He watched the absorbed faces pushing past each other and the great bright letters of the signs: "Sterchi's." "George's." I can read them now, he reflected. I even know how to say "Sturkeys."
And then how, his father looking for a drink,
They turned aside into a darker street, where the fewer faces looked more secret, and came into the odd, shaky light of Market Square. It was almost empty at this hour, but here and there, along the pavement streaked with horse urine, a wagon stayed still, and low firelight shone through the white cloth shell stretched tightly on its hickory hoops.
And I know I just learned to pronounce the name of the building we live in "Sturkey," I know I have a newly raised movie theater just down Gay street from where I live, and I know I have had my few drinks the few blocks over on Market Square. And I know somehow our living manages to live on in the places we have done it.