North Carolina and Tennessee, November 11th

Pinehurst, North Carolina is all golf country, with beautiful courses, and the centerpiece is Pinehurst Country Club where I stayed for two days (site of Payne Stewart's U.S. Open victory in 1999). It's an absolutely beautiful huge white mansion, right out of "Gone With The Wind". However, unlike Carmel, California, there is no shopping village or striking coastline, so it's virtually men only. Good ol' boys and young good ol' boys-in-training play golf, eat big dinners, drink Southern Comfort, then retire to the large verandas where the hovering smoke from fine cigars is punctuated with tall stories and other windy emissions. Bonding for the gentry.

The long drive to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (eastern Tennessee) was detoured by a fire in the Cherokee Forest of the Great Smokey Mountains, but I didn't mind as I was anticipating a relaxing Saturday evening sipping local hooch and enjoying some homegrown cooking and live country music here in Appalachia. But, alas, the most unexpected of grim disappointments was about to greet me.

These twin cities (home to Dolly Parton's Dollywood) are nothing but sprawling family oriented vacation destinations, lined with miles of every chain motel and greasy fast food outlet imaginable. They're interspersed with countless and mundane family pastimes (bumper cars, miniature golf, rides and arcades), and strewn with hundreds, yes hundreds, of schlock gift shops with some advertising in huge letters "as seen on TV items". The only music available is presented in family oriented concert venues (no alcohol) and, horrors, Pigeon Forge is dry! No Tennessee hooch, no JD, no rockgut jug wash, not even a drop of brew.

The place is a nightmare, the incubator for the ordinary, the training ground for Jerry Springer audiences. It's like someone exploded the mindless mediocre consumer bomb and the fallout had infected everyone. And it's jam-packed. Even with three lanes in each direction, it took me 45 minutes (!) to get through the towns and, believe me, I wasn't dawdling. Cross this place off your map and warn your friends.

Happily, on to Knoxville and Cotton-eyed Joe's, one of the bitchinest country establishments east of the Mississippi, filled with music, dancing, dartboards, foosball, pool tables, local brew and even a boot shine lady. Of course, I bought a hat. (What was that I said about Pigeon Forge?)

The next morning, I took my hangover for a ride along the back roads to the Museum of Appalachia, a definite must-see in Tennessee. With original shacks and countless artifacts, one can sense and feel the history and culture of this strong breed of mountain folk who settled and inhabited Southern Appalachia. There's too much to recount here, but I was awed by the creativity, inventiveness and perseverance of these people, who did it all with so very little. Yet, what impressed me most was learning of the myriad, colorful and talented minor characters that helped weave this cultural tapestry. Their contributions were many, but their names will never appear in the history books.

This great museum (one of the highlights of this trip) is the Eastern footing of a pioneering arc which spans the country and settles in the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming; an arc which vibrates to the sounds of country music, born here in Appalachia.

Later, I drove along the serene and deep blue Clinch River, and through low hills dense with pine and deciduous trees displaying muted shades of earth tones, with every nuance and hue imaginable. I fell in love with this 'tender land', its peacefulness, its calmness, and its softness. The choice of music on the CD player: what else, Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring", a simple gift indeed on a beautiful Fall weekend. (It's interesting that Copeland composed with Appalachia in mind, but it is this music which is most identifiable with the West; a harmonic resonating on the arc.)

Soon, I arrived at the American Museum of Science & Energy in Oak Ridge. Quite in contrast, it was here, amidst this bucolic tranquility, that in 1942, in America's effort to build the first atomic bomb, the first controlled fission nuclear reaction took place. And it was here that the first bomb to be dropped on Japan was made.

This entire secretive wartime project was named Manhattan. And, the specific point at which the first atom bomb was ever exploded (in New Mexico) was named Ground Zero. An arc of a more chilling nature.

Ciao