Submitted for your approval: some Twilight Zone moments from 1998

by Jack Neely

You don't like to argue with people who say they like you. Try to undermine their argument and they might learn there's not much basis for their fondness for you, either. But what do you say to people who say they're pleased to find Republican, Democratic, Bull Moose, or neo-Whig messages in your column? What do you say to people who say they like you because you're promoting Knox-ville? Or people who say they like you because you're trashing Knoxville? And, above all, what do you say when people say, "This used to be a weird place, didn't it?"

I don't mean to be rude, I never meant to suggest any used to be. Take 1998. When I think back and try to distinguish 1998 from any other year, I'm not at all sure I'll remember just how uninteresting it was to turn 40. But I'll definitely remember a few peculiarly historical things that happened downtown.

Some people go to bars to let the world go by. The brewpub on Gay Street's different. The world still goes by, sure enough, but it goes by around the bar and right outside on the sidewalk where you can get a good look at it and, occasionally, join it as it passes.

Early in the year I was there enjoying an ale when I noticed an intense light outside on Gay Street. Figuring it might be the return of the Gay Street Comet, I ran outside and saw a bank of lights focused on the Tennessee Theatre, and about 150 people posing in a line at the box office. Above them on the marquee were the words ALL ABOUT TOWN. It was just the V-Roys shooting their album cover.

I think it was soon after that that I noticed bright lights out on Gay Street again and stepped out the front door expecting to see another V-Roys shoot. I didn't expect to about a dozen old De Sotos and Studebakers, a newsstand I'd never noticed before, and about 40 people in cardigan sweaters. I wondered if I'd hit one of those time warps Rod Serling used to talk about. "Cut!" someone called, and an assistant producer waved me off Gay Street. "You were in the shot!"

That night, of course, Gay Street was Indianapolis in 1957, as we'll see it in the movie October Sky. I apparently didn't fit that lady's idea of what Indianapolis in 1957 looked like. From Fouche Park I watched as cars and pedestrians went through the same carefully choreographed moment. They'd shout "Places!" and everybody would back up and do it again. They ran through that 1957 street scene at least a dozen times. That was weird enough, but the year was still young.

* On a hot day in May, I was honored to give a tour to a particularly esteemed university speaker. Sir Peter North is a well-known British judge, author, and administrator at Oxford University. It was the first time I'd ever met a knight, but Sir Peter put me at ease, and told me nearly as much about Oxford, which has its own, much longer secret history, as I told him about Knoxville. We even stopped for a pint at the brewpub and considered the Irish Question. Near the end of our walk, we went to the First Presbyterian churchyard on State. I took him there because it gave us a chance to talk about several of the early senators, judges, and educators who are buried there. It's not unlike an old English churchyard, tree-shaded with lots of graves crowded together, maybe the most Old World spot in town. I wasn't sure Sir Peter liked Knoxville, but thought this graveyard might be the one place in town that was just a little like Oxford.

We entered the gate, and there on the stepping stones near the 1840 grave of Senator Hugh Lawson White, was a plate loaded with cold cuts: baloney, salami, and pimento loaf, maybe a little turkey breast, sliced into convenient strips for purposes unknown, drawing flies and shriveling slowly in the hot afternoon. Sir Peter didn't flinch. "I'm not hungry," he said, stepping gracefully over the meal. "Are you?

* In July, I was at the brewpub trying the pilsner when a friend came in and told me there was something remarkable going on outside. We walked around the corner to Krutch Park, where a small crowd of strangers had gathered around that little gazebo where people smoke away the weekday afternoons.

The gazebo was crowded with this band, which included a couple of older guys accompanying a skinny young man in rhinestones and a white cowboy hat who was singing, "I Saw the Light."

A tour bus idled on Clinch. I asked what was going on, and one lady told me it was a tour group from Alabama and they were retracing the last Hank Williams' last ride. Two of the older guys playing keyboards and bass were surviving members of Hank's old band. I was told that one of the women in the audience was the wife of the policeman who pulled over Hank's car in Blaine, but I was too shy to introduce myself.

The lady directed me to the tour director, a fairly intense fellow who was amazed more Knoxvillians hadn't come out for this major event. My delegation from the brewpub was apparently the only local support. I told him I hadn't even heard about it. I gave him my card and told him to give me a call next time he planned something as weird as this.

Then, they wrapped up and sounded excited as they said they were off to the Andrew Johnson Hotel—which, at 8:00 on a summer night, is a closed office building. "What's it like?" one woman asked, as one might ask about the Taj Mahal. I told her it wasn't a hotel anymore.

Like a lot of stuff that has happened and continues to happen in this town, it just goes to show. But what, I'm still not exactly sure.