Treasures in the Attic

Many of life’s milestones cause us to dig through the remote recesses of attics, open boxes closed for decades, thumb through photo albums not visited for years, and rediscover other items yellowed and rendered smelly by years of hiding in dark, damp places. Most of us have been faced with this retrospective journey because of…

Read More

Remembering Cherry Park-In

There were more than a few gathering spots for East Hi Mountaineers in the 50’s and early 60’s….Babe Malloy’s on Chapman Highway, The Tic Toc on Magnolia with root beer in a frosted mug, Nan Denton’s Orange Julius on Magnolia near Park Junior High and the Blue Circle at Chilhowee Park, to name a few. …

Read More

The Cruze Connection

Already crowded when the U.S. entered WWII in 1942, Knoxville High School was bursting at the seams a few years after the War concluded in August of 1945. This fact, coupled with the projected post war business expansion, led the city fathers and educators to project city growth into areas away from the core of…

Read More

A Dichotomy of Miss Ora Dowell

A few weeks ago I was in the supermarket with one of my grandkids. In utter amazement he recognized his schoolteacher and was stunned to see her “out and about,” doing things that…well…everyone does. I think he thought she lived at the school. Then I thought back to my school days and remembered that I seldom,…

Read More

Preserving Voices from the Past

Today we are swamped with technology that enables us to listen to virtually any music and other recorded sound at anytime.  To capture and reproduce these sounds in extremely high quality we have, among many MP3 and computer devices; iPhones, iPods, iMacs, iPods, iShuffle, iNano and soon to come…iCloud.  Can an iPen and an iBiscuit…

Read More

“Hey Big Lo…I love you my friend!”

Saturday afternoon October 29, Charles “Bud, Big Lo” Lobetti passed from this life to a much better place.  His physical absence from the body of East High grads leaves a gigantic hole and hundreds of shocked and intensely saddened friends.  I miss him now and always will. I think “Big Lo” is a moniker he…

Read More

Einstein…Knoxville Zoo’s Talking Parrot And Favorite Son

How dare anyone question the intelligence level of past or present residents of Knoxville, Tennessee.  The next time your southern drawl is equated with compromised mental capabilities tell them that even zoo animals in Knoxville enunciate clearly and have expansive vocabularies. A case in point is one, Einstein, the Knoxville Zoo’s famous, and for good…

Read More

Knoxville High School WWII Casualties

If you were born in Knoxville or have spent a number of years there, you are certainly familiar with Knoxville High School and the stately brick structure on Fifth Avenue that was home to KHS students for 41 years.  The Albert Bauman, Sr. designed building, first occupied in the fall of 1910, stands to this…

Read More

September 11th…Reflection and Projection

Ten years to the day from the infamy of 9/11, I can remember in vivid chronological detail where I was, what I felt and what I did on that day.  A dollar to a donut says you can too…virtually everyone who was a teen or older on that day can do likewise.  It’s not something…

Read More

Remembering and Preserving a Family Heritage

She told me she was tired.  She didn’t have to, I knew.  Her voice was soft, which it always was, but it was also weak, which it never was.  Further, she wasn’t up scurrying around trying to make sure everyone had everything they needed.  “More tea, how ’bout a hot roll, can I get you…

Read More

The Night We Locked Our Door

The night we first locked our door I knew the world had changed… never to be the same again.  And I was right. Life on Cherry Street in Knoxville was peaceful and placid… no two ways about it. Occasionally a car would bottom out coming south down Cherry as it crossed Jefferson and make quite…

Read More

Lest We Forget…2011

Two years ago this week I was kept spellbound by a small cadre of airmen from the 381st Bomb Group of the Mighty Eighth Air Force who served our nation with incredible heroism during WWII.  The occasion was the annual reunion of this rapidly dwindling number of men who as  “boys”, just out of their teens, bravely…

Read More