A Visit to Chattanooga

Sometimes you just have to go.

It’s been a long time since we visited my aunt and uncle down in Chattanooga – not since the Christmas before the pandemic, back in 2019, which was a world and a half ago. Worse, Lauren hadn’t seen them in person since 2018, before she was an exchange student, before the pandemic shut everything down, before she ended up with Covid for two consecutive Christmases (and me on the first one as well). After our plans fell through last Christmas we decided that we would indeed go visit, even if it meant going to the south in the summer.

Because that’s the kind of dedicated family members we are. Also, everything is air conditioned in the south.

My cousins Elizabeth and Paula and their families live not too far from Chattanooga as well, depending on how you define “not too far.” Certainly by midwestern standards, anyway, so we could see them as well. Win!

It ended up just being the three of us going – me, Kim, and Lauren – since on Thursday Oliver came down with a bad summer cold. You forget about colds in a pandemic age. But rather than export this cold down to my aunt and uncle he stayed home. The cats and rabbits, at least, were happy. We’ll all go down again soon, perhaps this Christmas coming.

We left on Friday.

Illinois is a long, long state. Seriously long, and frankly uninteresting from the highway even by highway standards. But we made it through and into Kentucky in time for lunch. Let me tell you, Freddy’s has got you covered when it comes to lunch. It was marvelous. None of us really ate again until the following morning, even though Lauren and I had stocked the van with enough snack food to render a middle school comatose.

Also, what is with Tennessee and traffic? We had to pass directly through Nashville under the baleful stare of the Eye of Sauron Building, a process that took roughly sixteen months.

Then we had to slide carefully by Bonnaroo. And the car fire. And the mysterious blockage on I-24 as it briefly dips into Georgia just before getting to Chattanooga that was bad enough that we actually found an alternative route to avoid it. But even taking all this into account, it was still a trial driving through Tennessee.

I can see why they put the Jack Daniels distillery there.

But we made it and spent a lovely weekend with Uncle Bob and Aunt Linda and my cousins and their families. This is why you make that drive, after all.

We’re pretty low key when you get down to it. We did a lot of hanging around and talking, catching up and telling stories, sharing meals and time together, and that’s a grand thing. My aunt also taught us how to play Quirkle, which was an entertaining way to spend a Sunday evening.

We did get out a bit, though.

On Saturday we walked around the Frazier Avenue area, which includes a nice pedestrian bridge over the river. It’s astonishing how much public art there is in Chattanooga, some of which you are invited to add to. We also found an actual independent bookstore and a nice boba tea place. It was a good day.

On Sunday we met Elizabeth, Brian, Evan and Austin down at the market by the Chattanooga minor league baseball stadium. It’s kind of a cross between a farmer’s market and a craft show and they hold it every Sunday, and we did our best to loot the place. We made good use of the long row of food trucks when we got there, and then we headed into the pavilion for some good old-fashioned American retail therapy. I am now FULLY hot sauced – there were three or four different booths that sold nothing but that and I made sure to patronize each one of them – and we found an artist with a drawing of an opossum cowboy, guns drawn and hat high, that said “We Ride At Dusk!” which was pretty much irresistible. Lauren got some fresh peaches. We did the place proud.

We left on Monday, and after once again bludgeoning our way through the traffic at Bonnaroo we met up with Paula, Randall, Analise, and Ian in Nashville for some Nashville Hot Chicken sandwiches. It’s good to do the thing in the place, and it’s even better to do it with good people.

We made it home late Monday night, another journey safely in the books. And for a change – perhaps for the first time in the several trips we have taken to Chattanooga – we did not need to repair any tires nor did any complete stranger take me aside and try to convince me that the south could have, would have, should have, or actually did win the Civil War, and I will take both of these as good signs for future visits.