The day after the election I decided that I needed to focus on a less violent sport, so I decided to attend the University of Tennessee-Kentucky football game that Saturday.
I am a 1971 graduate of U-T and have often told people that you really can’t appreciate the pageantry of college football until you attend a Southeastern Conference game.
I managed to interest my brother, Chuck, and a good friend that I graduated from Syracuse Law School with, Pat Doyle, in traveling to Knoxville, Tennessee with me. I bought tickets over the phone and made hotel reservations on line for that weekend.
Chuck and I decided to take two days and drive to Knoxville and Pat would fly in from his home outside of Washington, D.C. where he is a very successful attorney.
Chuck and I set out on Thursday morning. My plan was to cover as many miles as possible the first day and get as close to Knoxville as possible, so we could spend Friday on campus and pick Pat up when he flew in.
The drive to Knoxville is basically a straight shot down Interstate 81 until you reach I-40 west, which takes you into Knoxville. It is slightly less than eight-hundred miles and takes approximately twelve hours according to google maps.
It is safe to say that google maps has never driven route 81 through Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Construction crews have been working on Interstate 81 in Scranton since I graduated from U-T without any prospect of finishing it. Terri and I drove this portion of 81 in August and I am happy to report that since then, they have completed approximately three feet of the repairs. I never cease to be amazed at the strategy that involves closing one lane of the highway for fifty miles so that they can repair a couple of feet of it.
We drove all day Thursday and made it to Wytheville, Virginia which is approximately six-hundred miles and should take about nine hours. We made it in eleven.
The following day we arrived in Knoxville at noon. We picked Pat up at the airport and I proceeded to give Chuck and Pat a tour of the campus.
One of the great features of the University of Tennessee is that the State of Tennessee will spare no expense in improving it and offering a first rate education. When I was a Political Science major there, almost all of the faculty had their degrees from Ivy League schools and the campus was always being expanded and improved. The same held true as we walked the campus that Friday. There were new dormitories, academic buildings and a state of the art student union was under construction which would double the size of the existing one.
Pat and Chuck wanted to see my old neighborhood but, alas, it had been bulldozed. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that it had been bulldozed because I had lived there. That may have, in some part, been true but the ostensible reason was that it was the location of the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair.
I was amazed at the changes in the Knoxville area.
When I was a student, if you left campus and went downtown you were left with the same sensation that a Peace Corp volunteer must experience when arriving at their duty station.
In the forty-five years that have elapsed since I graduated, Knoxville has changed dramatically. At its center is the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame which sits on Pat Summitt Drive, named after the legendary U-T women’s basketball coach and the winningest Division I basketball coach in history. Downtown also boasts an “Old Town” section filled with shops and restaurants similar to what we have in the Armory. Greater metropolitan Knoxville has expanded to include first class medical facilities, medical practices and other innovative technologies.
That night we had dinner with a couple that I went to U-T with and remained fast friends. We have arrived at that age where we talked of children and grandchildren rather than the volatile issues that had consumed us in the seventies or even the election that had just concluded.
The following day the three of us went to the football game.
Neyland Stadium holds over one-hundred and two thousand fans and was nearly filled to capacity as the temperature rose into the seventies on a sundrenched afternoon.
In this post 9/11 era we all had to pass through metal detectors which I set off because of my artificial knee. When I explained it to the police officer, he replied, “Well you couldn’t have left that at home. Enjoy the game.”
The Tennessee Volunteers didn’t disappoint. They led Kentucky throughout the game, winning 49 to 36. The half-time show was devoted to celebrating the indigenous tribes of Tennessee and North Carolina and honoring the service of Native-American military veterans. It was a truly impressive ceremony that the fans loved.
That night we went to dinner in the “Old Town” section of Knoxville and at nine o’ clock called it a night. Age, not maturity, does that to you.
The following day, we dropped Pat at the airport and started our journey home. We stayed overnight in Winchester, Va. and arrived home on Monday afternoon.
The trip was the perfect respite from the turmoil that culminated in the election last Tuesday.
Thomas Wolfe wrote, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”
He was wrong.
You can.
I’ll have to do it again next year.