Festival

September 22, 2025

The corruption that passes for national leadership didn’t exactly chase us, but we were relieved to leave town. We plodded along U.S. 76 through Georgia places we’ve visited before. We pushed into the southwest corner of North Carolina between Murphy and Wolf Creek, near the Tennessee state line and just past an unincorporated place called Hothouse.

We looked for a destination far from the headlines about the strangling of the First Amendment, although you never escape. We had talked about the Cowan, Tenn., Fall Heritage Festival. It’s been held for years in Sandy’s hometown, which the rest of the year is one main street, an austere network of residential neighborhoods, a few stores. There’s a railroad museum. Freight trains pass through a dozen times each day.

In 90 minutes we crossed the Chattooga River into Georgia and pulled over in Clayton. We wanted breakfast. The Clayton Café wasn’t open, a passerby directed us a mile south to the Rusty Bike, done up floor to ceiling in biker gear, photos of James Dean, other biker heroes. A poster advertises “Harley Country,” another highlights Sturgis, America’s South Dakota biker paradise. The servers were all young women, the patrons all the seventies-plus set.

Staying on 76 we passed through Hiawassee, which abuts Lake Chatuge, and Young Harris, site of Young Harris College, and into North Carolina. Crossing into Tennessee we cruised by the gorgeous Ocoee River. Beyond Cleveland is I-24 through Chattanooga, then 45 miles to Monteagle Mountain and Sewanee, site of the stately Gothic campus of the University of the South.

I recalled then that it had been an even 50 years ago this month since I first visited these parts. I arrived in Nashville in July ’75 for my first post-Marine Corps job. My boss then was renting a house in Sewanee and in September invited me down for a weekend.

We descended six miles down the north side of the mountain to Cowan, passing Sandy’s old neighborhood. There’s always a bit of a pang, although her only family remaining are at peace in the cemetery. Festival traffic already was crawling up Main Street.

The highlight here is the Franklin House, an island of grace amidst the wounded and struggling local businesses. Rachel, the owner, is an artist in multiple media, oil, watercolor, acrylic, others. She bought the old bed and breakfast, renovated it and in time created a piazza, filled with her rich, dreamlike creations, flourishes of color, mood, fantasy. A grand piano stands in the lobby.

The festival, a “celebration of life in the foothills of the Cumberland Plateau” opened Friday evening. Vendors had deployed dozens of booths along the tracks, offering the usual: quilts, scented candles and soaps, hoodies bearing Christian slogans and Bible verses, burnt-wood engravings. We passed racks of preserved fruit and vegetables, knockoff purses.

I noticed a new one, “galvanized creations,” which are engravings of various things, like smiling faces and the Tennessee “Power T,” cut from tin sheets. Among the rows of tees was one bearing the warning, “Sometimes I have to tell myself it’s not worth the jail time.”

As darkness gathered the bands tuned up, including a rock group that played encores of “Stop Dragging My Heart Around.”

The food booths advertised smashburgers and hoagies, funnel cakes, felafels, sandwiches. We pressed on past the “ultimate fudge,” shaved ice, freeze-dried snacks, and frozen chocolate dipped cheesecake, a slice of cheesecake coated in chocolate syrup and impaled on a stick.      

The next morning, Saturday, was warm. We tramped nearly a mile to the cemetery to get photos of the headstone marking the grave of Sandy’s cousin, who was interred there a couple of years ago, although she lived most of her life in Michigan. We searched without luck for the grandparents’ graves, scrutinizing hundreds of headstones.

We were the only visitors, the place was in its normal state, silence. The cemetery’s rich green merged with the cultivated fields that reach miles to the dark silhouette of the Cumberland Plateau, which extends northeast to the Blue Ridge and southwest into Alabama. We gave up on the search and hoofed it slowly back to town.

We seemed to step back in time. Sandy, her eye always sharp for a familiar face and some not so familiar, recognized a former high-school classmate on the sidewalk near the festival. They chatted, replaying the decades. Then she met a former sister-in-law, her older brother’s ex-wife, who now works at the bed and breakfast.

The town seemed to be grinding toward a grim future, like many out-of-the-way Southern places. Some homes along the side streets were well-kept, but sat alongside others overgrown with weeds, their windows cracked, porches piled with broken furniture, lawn tools, bicycles, and other junk. A faded “Trump 2020” sign hung in one ramshackle place. The street asphalt had been patched and instead of getting new paving, was patched again.

It grew unseasonably hot, high 80s. The festival crowd was back, picking over the merchandise but, it appeared, not buying much. In my prejudiced observation, they went through the motions, mentally budgeting some festival spending as they sensed the onset of the Trump Recession. These were small-town and rural folks in an economically hard-hit place.

We drove back up the mountain to Sewanee and across the campus to the iconic 50-foot-high whitewashed cross that overlooks the valley, to the northern reaches of Franklin and Grundy counties. A few others sat on grass, enjoying the view and the late-afternoon cooling. I had been there dozens of times, but still felt the sublime tranquility of the place.

We stopped at Lake Cheston a mile or so from the main campus, where Sandy swam as a teenager. I walked the woodland lake trail, taking in the silence. A few students splashed in the water, a young guy reeled in a small bass and tossed it back.

I looked for the house I stayed at all those 50 years ago, now hidden behind forest canopy and new campus buildings, most likely now owned by some professor. Fifty years. The world is a different place. But then life moves on, peace will return. These rushed days were our retreat. We headed back to Franklin House for one more quiet night.