On The Road Again: From Smoky Mountains To Sweet Home Alabama

It’s with a real sense of occasion that we set off from Gatlinburg through the greenery which is this morning made even more intense by the glorious bright sunshine brightening the leafage and dappling the roadway. We’re on the road again on the final leg of our southern states road trip. Ahead of us lies an 850-mile journey from the Smoky Mountains back to New Orleans where we will return the rental car and catch a flight to Los Angeles; splitting the trip into three sections means two more small town one night stands on the way. Anticipation is buzzing inside the Chevy.

With more time between check out and check in than the first day of the journey needs, we take the back roads for the first hour, ignoring the interstate and instead taking narrow, curvy roads through anonymous villages where the only sign of life is an occasional sit-on grass cutter ridden by some country guy separated from the world by his ear protectors. Silent houses sit in large plots with indistinguishable boundaries, each one occupying just a tiny percentage of the available space. The rest is grass. Neatly cut grass in dead straight stripes.

Clustered at one end of the village might be half a dozen prefabricated homes of corrugated sheeting, huddled together as if ostracised by the larger homes which look across with disdain. Some of these houses are smaller than the RVs which are parked just a few hundred yards away. Places of worship are a constant; even in places where houses are sparse churches are plentiful. We count five in a row, all next door to each other, at one point. 

Finally joining the interstate near Knoxville, lack of any breakfast starts to call and we pull in to an edge of town complex where only the CVS pharmacy, the Subway and Starbucks are open, this being Sunday morning. In this land of great American service, we’ve picked the Subway which is manned by Mr Misery, who evidently hates working on Sundays and is sure as hell going to let everyone know it. When three golfing types come in and jauntily tell him his “OPEN” sign isn’t switched on, Mr Misery blanks them completely, not a single word nor a hint of eye contact. Rude.

From Knoxville there is no perceptible drop in the quality of the scenery despite being on the bigger roads. Lush greenery rolls up and down gentle hills while tall trees trace the interstate route in sentry-like lines, on each side of the road and down the central reserve which is sometimes a couple of hundred yards wide. Place names pass by, some unusual and some downright bizarre, until we near Chattanooga and my mind drifts to railroad trains and the thought of my late Mum humming along to Glenn Miller. I wonder briefly what she’d make of our chosen lifestyle in retirement. 

The interstate takes us out of Tennessee and into Georgia for just a few miles as we cut across its top left hand corner, and then across another state line as the big “Welcome To Sweet Home Alabama” sign muscles into view. This state line is also a time line and the clock on the Chevy dashboard obediently leaps backwards one hour, meaning it’s now 1pm for the second time today – time changes on road trips are a novelty for us Brits.

A detour just a few miles short of our destination brings us to Mentone, a cute but curious little town where a collection of rickety wooden huts on sloping ground forms a kind of redneck olde worlde shopping mall. A shopping mall in sheds, effectively. Scents of vanilla and coffee issue from one such hut, we grab a milk shake and a Moon Pie each and sit in the sun, surrounded by conversations in that drawn out southern drawl which to our ears is as strangulated and distorted a form of English as you could ever hear. Somehow here, vowel sounds have developed a different character which forces the mouth to move in new directions. We smile as we listen to this oh so different dialect.

From Mentone, the Lookout Mountain Parkway runs along the top of the ridge past the Desoto State Park, through Little River Canyon and on to the next town, passing sumptuously positioned houses which must surely be the homes of the wealthy. Large ranch houses sit in the middle of even larger plots of manicured lawn – where the houses are concealed by trees the only clue to their existence is the monogrammed mailbox standing proudly at the roadside. Or maybe the Stars and Stripes flag rippling in the breeze.

At Little River Canyon, families play in the cold river water surprisingly close to the crest of the waterfall which drops attractively and with force into the valley below. A cantilevered boardwalk affords excellent views of the falls. This canyon hides a secret, one which reveals itself when we pull into town for tonight’s overnight stay. Welcome to Fort Payne.

The canyon, prior to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the enforced mass exodus of eight years later, was at the centre of land occupied by Cherokee Indians who were, as a result of the Act, about to be forcibly removed from their homeland and moved nearly 900 miles to land where the US Government had decided they should be. Fort Payne was precisely that – a fort where the rounded-up Cherokees were held against their will while waiting to be taken away.

The terrible, arduous journey along the route which has become known as The Trail Of Tears began right here in this little town. Some of the facts are truly shocking: in total, 60,000 were displaced, more than 1190 of them in one single collective expulsion starting at this very spot in Fort Payne. For those 1190, the entourage comprised 57 stagecoaches (that’s 21 people per carriage, each carriage 6ft x 9ft) and only 83 tents for overnight stops (14 per tent)- this for people who were already emaciated, poverty stricken and largely in poor health even before the journey started.

Where the Trail of Tears starts

Around a quarter of those expelled did not complete the journey, dying from malnutrition or disease along the way. The rest suffered the torture and sorrow of being placed in unfamiliar territory at the far end of the dreadful “Trail Of Tears”. A piece of history which doesn’t make pleasant reading, especially for Europeans, because, let’s face it, these were the acts of European settlers.

Sunday night in Fort Payne is the antipathy of places like Memphis and Nashville. Many of the shops are boarded up, permanently closed; the main street’s only bar has Sunday opening hours displayed on the door but is locked up and in darkness, the Vintage Restaurant where we are sent by a helpful guy cleaning out another empty joint who says it’s the best place to eat tonight, is equally deserted and the doors are firmly closed. Just one place is open, an Italian restaurant with Voodoo Ranger IPA among its draught beers. It’s OK, as it happens. So it’s pasta or pizza versus a drive out of town which would mean no beer. Italian it is, then.

Monday morning is cold and damp, the miserable drizzle adding a poignancy to the moment as we stand and read the memorials at the place where the fort stood, the start point for The Trail Of Tears. I grab a haircut, the first since Lee at Crystal Springs, we take breakfast at the strangely named Huddle In The House out by the interstate, and we’re on the road again, on the longest of the three drives.

Miles of interstate, miles of rolling green and several billion trees later, and after more than five hours on the road, we roll in to Bay Minette, another odd town name on the long list which now includes Athens, Palestine and, of all things, Nymph. Who the hell names a town Nymph? And why? We’re passed Birmingham and Montgomery now and we’re within twenty miles or so of the coast. 

New Orleans is less than three hours away tomorrow and our southern states road trip is almost over. Our Chevy has accompanied us through Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, from crazy city streets to mountain getaways, through torrential rainstorms and under clear blue skies, from tomato museums to tales of gangsters and mob rule. We have learned the atrocities of the Jim Crow laws and visited the birthplaces of jazz, the blues and rock and roll, seen the spot where Martin Luther King fell and the place where thousands of American Indians were evicted from their land. We’ve stood within a few feet of black bears.

There will be time to reflect in detail soon. For now, thunder is again rumbling and the rain is falling on our tin roof in Bay Minette, so heavy that a few drops seep through the roof and land on one of the pillows. If possible this little town is even quieter than Fort Payne, this time the silent town and the pouring rain do force us to drive out to a diner for a meal: a seafood diner where every sentence uttered by other customers seems to contain the word “church”. 

Tomorrow we head back to The Big Easy, say goodbye to the faithful Chevy and prepare to spend a few days at my daughter’s house in California.

Brazil already seems a long time ago.