4:30 p.m.
The bright pink "Hot" sign outside Krispy Kreme on North Broadway means someone must be baking on the inside. Manager Tom Zinch helps Robert Willis adjust the donut squirter, which plops circular globs of dough into a sea of sizzling oil. The mechanized fryer/baker turns out finished, glazed donuts in a matter of minutes.

4:40 p.m.
From after school until dark, Fountain City Park is a hive of adolescence. Teenage girls loll on the swings, boyfriends and girlfriends share ice cream cones, and the basketball court becomes a trash-talking proving ground. Fourteen-year-old Reggie Lewis goes up for a shot.

11:20 a.m.
Robert rests during a lull at Reasonable Ron's, a Fifth Avenue tire store that can mount and balance your new wheels faster than a pit crew. Ron's has been in this location for the last 14 years and sells 200 tires a day. Despite the volume, Ron's is a small operation—no pneumatic lifts and cash only, which offers more proof that a business has to be good, not grand, to thrive in Knoxville.

5:20 p.m.
Rowing in the shadow of Baptist Hospital—
The UT women's rowing team often rises before dawn, sculling the cold waters of the Tennessee River in the dark. But they also get out on sunny September afternoons, stroking past the industry-lined banks of Knoxville's big muddy.

11:50 p.m.
We encountered a gang of Chi Phi fraternity members sitting on their lawn on an old ratty couch. They were all too happy to show us the T-shirts they were selling for the next day's Houston game (the caption reads, "Vols on Viagra rise to the occasion").