Tennessee Gothic

Less than two miles from my childhood home is an enormous, unused section of land. It was a munitions factory during WWII. After the war it was quarantined and became a local mystery (What goes on behind that fence?) nicknamed the TNT plant. Now Volkswagen has moved in, and they’re building Passats…on land where we made bombs to drop on Germany. Zee irony.

My grandfather pointed out land that our family used to own. Most tracts remain as they have for 100 years—no condos or strip malls. Some land is still being farmed. Some land is underwater. A few structures still stand, like a barn only a bat could love and a homestead that belonged to Joseph Roark, my great-great-great-great grandfather. He and his family lived among the Cherokee. I’d like to think the Roarks were good neighbors, but they acquired an awful lot of land after the Trail of Tears. But if I have an ancestor that was bad to the natives (not pointing fingers), I have another who abandoned his white wife to accompany his Cherokee wife to Oklahoma. That’s the kind of decision one has to make when one has a too many wives.

Nov 26, 2010