Traveling the Highways & Byways with Bill Graves
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ast Tennessee is part of Appalachia. It has the soft peaks and broad, river valleys of the Appalachian Mountains that run up the East Coast. It’s the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the country-music metropolis of Knoxville. Here too is the “secret city” of Oak Ridge, where the nuclear material was secretly produced for the two atomic bombs that ended World War II. The roots of the homegrown folks run deep into Appalachia. I suspect many can tell stories of their early kin, their struggles with poverty, of life and death in the coal mines, of clan feuding, and makin’ moonshine. Remnants of those days are found in antique shops all over eastern Tennessee. But nowhere are antiques and collectibles bought and sold with more frequency than in Clinton, population less then 10,000. It has 22 antique stores: more than any town this size that I've been in. I normally don’t go in antique stores, but in Clinton, it’s what ya do. I discovered they were selling as
Clinton, Tennessee “antiques” things that were in my life when I was a kid. I watched a couple happily paying good money for a cor-
Steve Jennings, Marvel Comics.
rugated washboard. I remember when my grandmother appeared equally happy when she tossed hers in the trash, the day she realized her new washing machine had replaced it. Then again, this is Tennessee, bluegrass country, where music is often made with a washboard in the mix. That couple may have been famous musicians, who I would have recognized, if only their world of music connected with mine. Most of the antique stores are on Market Street. Two days a year, in May and October, the town Clinton closes its streets twice each year for antique festival. closes the street Photo ©Clinton Downtown Historic Association.
26 • Byways
