Crossing over

We crossed into the Central Time Zone somewhere north of Chattanooga on I-24, which in the low evening sun had become suddenly beautiful, carved as it was into the Cumberland Plateau. It was around this time that we passed our first cornfield. There were other fields, too, golden squares abutting the green ones and making a quilt of the landscape. Every so often there would be a tree standing alone in these fields—the kind under which American boys used to have their first kiss with strawberry-haired country girls with freckles, and maybe still do.

Earlier in the day we had made a brief stop in Chickamauga, Georgia, where Confederate soldiers suffered grave casualties but still managed to hold off Union troops in September 1863. The battle is considered to be one of the Southern States’ greatest victories, although the Union Army won strategic control of the region anyway two months later in Chattanooga. Nevertheless, when walking through the town proper we saw banners advertising the upcoming celebration of the battle’s 145th anniversary. I guess small wins still count for something down here. Chickamauga, incidentally, means “stagnant river.”

Somewhere south of Nashville, we saw another advertisement for a Civil War memorial. This one was on a billboard, and it featured a young man in a red Polo shirt smiling and crossing his arms, flanked by Union and Confederate fighters. “Walk where Civil War soldiers fought and died!” it read in large yellow letters. Less solemn than we had become used to, we noted. But then, Tennessee was a border state.

Posted from Price Circle Road, Nashville, Tennessee.