October 17, 2022

Last week millions of Ukrainians once again endured the firestorms of Putin’s cruise missiles. Thousands of Floridians and Puerto Ricans still struggle with the cruel cost of the hurricane. Meanwhile millions of Americans, including more than 100 candidates in upcoming elections, support a delusional political movement now attempting to trample the Constitution.

So I can handle another slide into that electronic donut in the hospital radiology department to hold my breath a few times in 30 minutes.

“This is a headscratcher,” Dr. B told us last week. He said my MRI, just a day earlier, didn’t tell him any more than the PET scan a month ago or my mid-August CT scan about new spots on my liver and lung. “They’re suspicious, but haven’t changed since the last CT. They’re not definitized enough for a biopsy. Sticking a needle through a lung is risky. So let’s watch. I’ll order another CT for next month.”

I wondered about “definitized,” but nodded OK. “Thanks, Doc,” I said. We shook hands and I headed for the scheduler’s desk. Four years, 21 CTs.

We decided then to drive to Jonesborough, the oldest town in Tennessee.

We have a funny history with Jonesborough. About 30 years ago we took the kids for a week at a state park in southern Virginia, near Marion. One day we drove to Pikeville, Tenn., to visit Sandy’s aunt and uncle, who had sold their farm and moved into town.

This was before cell phones and GPS—it was a much longer trip than I thought. On the drive back to the park we turned off the interstate and made a quick visit to Jonesborough.

Three years ago I wanted to see the place again. It turned out my memory was a little weak on exactly which town we drove through in 1991. So we went to Greeneville instead (this blog, Oct. 28, 2018), missing Jonesborough by about 25 miles.

Jonesborough was founded in 1779. It served as the seat of Washington County, then part of North Carolina. In 1784 North Carolina tried to cede its five westernmost counties to the brand-new federal government, which wasn’t interested. But in one of the true eccentricities of American history, settlers in the five counties established what they called the State of Franklin. They set up a government, which caused conflict with North Carolina, which had reassumed control of the area.  

In 1790 North Carolina again gave up the five counties to what then was called the Southwest Territory.  When Tennessee joined the Union in 1796 the five counties joined the new state. Ten years earlier, in 1786 American folk and real-life hero Davy Crockett had been born in Washington County in the tiny hamlet of Limestone. As we know from history and a half-dozen movies, he died at the Alamo when it was overrun by the Mexican army in 1836.

Among the many legends that grew around Crockett is one diamond-hard fact: while a member of Congress, he was the only member of the Tennessee delegation to vote against President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. He promptly lost his seat in the 1831 election. The Act, an indelible stain on American history, forced the relocation of some 100,000 Native Americans from rich southeastern farmland to scrub-desert Indian Territory between 1831 and 1841.

Back to Jonesborough. The state’s oldest town is a cute, cozy place, but not an escape from political conflict. East Tennessee was an economic orphan in the pre-Civil War South. Settlers grew subsistence crops in rocky soil and had no need for the slave system that served the wealthy cotton growers in Middle and West Tennessee and in the Deep South Delta low country. East Tennessee gave the Volunteer State its name: its men went both Union and Confederate. The gorgeous Nolichucky River Valley, between Jonesborough and Erwin, was an island of rebel loyalty surrounded by Yankees. Both launched savage guerrilla attacks.

Tenn. Rte. 81, which crosses I-26 a half-dozen miles past the North Carolina state line takes you to Jonesborough. In the 15 miles we saw not one Stars ‘n Bars. Confederate colors, seen all over the rural South, don’t fly there. These folks probably aren’t Democrats, but they’re not traitors.

The early East Tennesseans had backbone. In 1797, after Tennessee became a state, residents of Washington and Greene countries began forming anti-slavery groups. By 1815 East Tennessee abolitionist societies had formed the Manumission Society of Tennessee. It was on Main Street in Jonesborough in 1819 that Elihu Embree published The Manumission Intelligencer and The Emancipator, the first journals in the United States devoted to the abolitionist cause.

Jonesborough knows how to draw tourists.  The town calls itself the “storytelling capital of the world.” Famous storytellers perform at the Mary B. Martin Storytelling Hall on Main Street, across from the Jackson Theatre. Folks were buying tickets for the theatre group’s performances of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”

We looked at the gift shops, the Lollipop Shop, and a place that advertised Amish foods. You can get a “Jonesborough, Oldest Town in Tennessee” tee-shirt for twenty bucks. As we walked about a long freight train roared through the center of town.

It had been many years since our drive-through, my memory was hazy. Now political undertones linger. On the road to Jonesborough we passed a sign advertising the Andrew Johnson National Historical Site in Greeneville. Johnson, the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives, although he survived the Senate, betrayed Lincoln’s legacy and tried to return former slaveowners to political posts.

Greeneville is the site of the Andrew Johnson Visitor Center, Andrew Johnson Homestead, and Andrew Johnson Cemetery. Luckily for the country, he didn’t get a second term.

The Trump Cult, despite all those arrests at the Capitol insurrection and all those dismissed lawsuits, still is assaulting the electoral system. But I looked at the house where Elihu Embree edited his magazines, and thought of the stiff-necked East Tennessee Yankees who stepped up for the Union. Jonesborough gave us heart.