Appalachian family

In many ways, we were a typical Appalachian family. My father's "good job" was in Oak Ridge, as it grew into The Atomic City. But he was from the country, and his family lived in the country, or small towns, a little distance from us. So about once a month, when he had the weekend off, we traveled to see them. This was when I was very young--before the interstate system. Primarily we would drive from Oak Ridge to Sweetwater, where my dad's brother lived. We wound through the countryside, passing farms, hills and valleys, going through small towns on our way. We went through Lenoir City, then passed over a big bridge (or so it seemed to me), just before we got to Loudon, and then we were almost to Sweetwater.

My mother and I would play "cow poker" to help pass the time. If you have somehow missed out on this experience, cow poker was a game of counting cows along the way. I would count cows on one side, and my mother would count them on the other side. The only catch was if we passed a cemetery, our number was wiped out and we had to start over. After all those trips, I knew where the cemeteries were, of course, so I picked the opposite side to count my cows. (My mother also knew, but she allowed me to have this advantage. Did I mention that I was an only child?)

I was never a patient traveler, being a very young child. And one of our first trips to Sweetwater, as we went over the Loudon bridge, I plaintively asked, "Are we almost to Hotwater yet?" My dad really laughed at that one, and it became a family story, greatly amusing my parents.

Eventually I got to know the route very well. And I could always see when we were almost there, because we'd come up over a hill, and in the distance I could see the towers of TMI (Tennessee Military Institute) surrounded by trees. TMI was on the highway going into Sweetwater.

Now the interstate has replaced that old route, and I have not gone on the old highway in many years. But I still remember the old landmarks--the turkey farm, the Loudon bridge, and TMI towers giving me the good news, "We're almost there."