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FALL 2016 ISSUE 02 / VOL. 01
Left: There ' s a lot of history in old cemetaries like this one, and the colorful flowers suggest that the deceased are fondly remembered.
Anyone touring in the Knoxville area should go to the“ Secret City,” as Oak Ridge has been called; it did not even appear on any map until 1946. This is where the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb began in 1942 and ended with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. In the space of a few months, the U. S. government appropriated 60,000 wooded and farmland acres and built homes and laboratories for 75,000 people, including scientists and their families. The place still researches nuclear energy, and restrictions are still in effect, so we had to leave the bikes and take a van around the place to see how the Atomic Age has progressed in the last 70 years.
After two nights in Knoxville, we moved to the small town of Caryville alongside U. S. Route 25W and Interstate 75. The owner of our motel, Hack Ayers, told me the story of his Pa, John, being shot by revenue agents. Story goes that the police showed up and John wasn’ t home, but they found some illegal whiskey in the barn. And while they waited for John, they sampled the stuff. When John got back, everyone was a little too gun-happy and John got shot through the heart; the leather jacket he was wearing, with bullet hole, is on display in the motel. Hack did not seem to hold a grudge.
Making whiskey without paying taxes has been a tradition in this part of the country ever since the government decided that a tax on liquor would be profitable. And making moonshine, or white lightning, was not necessarily a small-time business, as in 1973 when
Christ Church Episcopal, in Rugby, was built in the 1880s.