Legacy I

5/24/11

For many people, one of the most important tasks of their lives is to put down roots. “We are all just searching for some harmony in this otherwise transient life”, said Gabriel Marcel, the twentieth century existentialist. We look for that one place on earth that is permanent, a place to make our stand. In the past century, there was such a place in my family’s history. And after my own life had been shaken by so many loved-ones’ deaths, I felt a need to seek out this place of permanence. For several generations it had been my fraternal ancestors’ home. It was the place where they had settled after coming to America from Ireland in the early 1800s. I wanted to look upon it, and maybe derive some solace, perhaps some comfort from this place I had only heard about when I was a child.

The Loyston Sea

I had been traveling north since early morning. It is my custom to depart on long trips well before sunrise so that I can put a good portion of the day’s traveling behind me before the traffic builds. I was cruising just above the speed limit in the 350Z along I40 heading eastbound out of Asheville, NC. This is a fine all-weather road most of the time, but is prone to heavy fog. As you climb higher into the mountains, the road narrows and a solid concrete barrier runs between the eastbound and westbound lanes. I had encountered no fog so far, but I knew that there were also falling rocks to be concerned about, so I kept my eyes glued to the road and used cautionary speed. Mountain passages are always the most interesting to me, and early in the morning, there are very few cars, mostly 18 wheelers, and a few campers moving. The 350 is very much at home in these conditions, and her supple, powerful engine and handling characteristics made the curves slide by like silk on a baby’s behind. I was soon crossing the state line and began the downside run into Tennessee. Passing the I40/I81 connector just as the sun came up over the mountain crest in my mirrors, I gave the Z her head and proceeded westbound.

Interstate 40 soon leveled out and made a straight 30 mile run into Knoxville. As I cruised in, the rush hour traffic began to build, and I had to hang out in the inside lane with the jacked up pickup trucks and the people who were evidently late for work. It seemed the State Police were busy having breakfast or had some other place to be as we inside-laners were smartly cruising along at about 90mph in some stretches. At least it made the crossing go very quickly. After skirting the Knoxville on the bypass, I started north up I75. About thirty miles up along the spine of the Cumberland mountains, you come to the Lake City exit. Then you make a short run on US441 to the entrance to the Norris Dam Recreation Area. (Fill in the trip to the Loyston Sea here.)

Norris Dam was built in the early days of the TVA, and was the first major project completed. Located 79 miles upstream from the mouth of the Clinch River as it feeds into the Tennessee river basin near Kingston, TN. Building the dam required the government to purchase 152000 acres of land, relocate 2841 families, and 5226 gravesites. The town of Loyston TN was completely submerged. My father’s kin folk had lived in this area for over 100 years. Nobody knew exactly when they had settled in Anderson County, only that they had come from eastern Virginia in the early part of the 19^th century and that they had been among the first permanent white settlers into the region.

Roots

“I want to stay here”, Ethyl asserted. She was seated at the kitchen table with the men folk, something that was not often permitted.

“Hush woman, you need to go outside”, snapped Caleb. “We don’t need none of your mouth.”

“I don’t ke’er. It just ain’t right that we’re gittin’ run off of our own land.” Ethyl was quiet then. She knew she was pressing things a bit far. But it was as much her land as it was theirs.

“You heard the government man. This whole valley is goin’ to be under water in a couple of months. We ain’t got no choice.” Ethyl bowed her head. She knew it was true. She knew that the house she had been born and grew up in as a girl was about to be demolished. Her own house, the one that Wylie had gotten for them when they were married and those houses that had seen her four kids birthed by her sister’s and mid-wives. Her church house where she had been baptized. They would all be gone. She cried about the graveyards. Her momma and daddy would have to be moved, and how many of her kin folk. It was a sin. The agents had said that they were goin’ to move those affected to over by Maynardville. She tried to hold back the tears. Her whole world, the one she had known since she was a baby, would slowly drown in the water behind the new Norris Dam.

“Well”, John Sr. piped in to fill the silence, “them yahoos ain’t givin’ me enough money. My house was built by my granddaddy. I cain’t build me another one with that paltry sum. And even if I could, there ain’t no good land left over there by Maynardville where they want us to go. All the good farm ground is already bein’ plowed.”

Claude stood up, as the eldest brother, he had taken on the role of senior spokesman for the clan after pappy Wendell had died two years before. It was spring of 1934 and the twelve clan members that crowded into the kitchen of his home had come together to get some ideas, anything that might allow them to keep their lives intact.

“I ain’t got no better ideas. I hear they need people up in Virginia in the coal mines. Anybody know a soul up that way that might help us out?” There was no answer. “And one of them agents told me that some senator was plannin’ to build a road all the way along the Blue Ridge. Maybe we could get some work there.”

‘But where do the women and kids stay? Wylie questioned. “Sure we can go over there and maybe stand in a line long enough and get some kind of work. But where does Ethyl go? He rested his hand on her shoulder as she sat by his side. “We ain’t got much kin over in Carolina, and they don’t exactly have much room for us neither.” The room fell silent again.

Caleb shook his head slowly, and then he bowed it reverently. “The Lord will provide”, he admonished. “We need to go to God on this, Brothers and Sisters.”

It had been over a year since the first federal agent had showed up in their world. The first time they had come, they were nice enough. They didn’t really ask about too much, just told the town folk that the government had big plans for their land. The agent had told them that they were among the poorest of the poor in these United States, and that the government would bring jobs and opportunity to them with the New Deal. Rural electrification and indoor plumbing would make their lives so much better. Funny thing was that these folk didn’t really realize that they were poor. They thought they had a pretty good life. Oh, there were times when the crops failed, or the winter was especially cold. But people helped each other. Your kin folk were always there, and you knew you could count on them.

After a couple of months, the federal agents returned, and this time they were accompanied by US Marshals. They called town meetings and had everyone show up at the churches, telling them that they would have to clear out of the valley during the coming year. The agents told them that the government would help them move and find homes for them in the next county. The government would find some work for them in a new agency called the WPA. Then in the summer of 1934, the machines started to come in. The Marshals began to post signs on houses and buildings. People had to move their livestock, and get their possessions out, or else. The agents worked their way through each street in town and then out the country roads into the ravines and all the way back up the creeks to make sure there weren’t any of the hill people who were hiding out up there. If someone protested, they were served with papers by the Marshals, and many had to be carted off in trucks when they refused to go or had threatened the agents with their hunting rifles.

Ethyl remembered the first time she heard the sound of the bulldozers. Like a line of yellow destruction, they could tear a house apart in just a few minutes. Then the backhoes would come in and load the debris which had been someone’s home into a dump truck and it was sent to the landfill. They had begun on the east side of Loyston, and quickly demolished 38 houses. Ethyl had been in town shopping at the general store. She heard the commotion and when she realized what was happening, she fled town quickly in their car and sped up the little county road to Cory’s creek, then back in the ravine where her home was perched on a hill, just three miles from town. Wylie was in the barn when she got home. He walked to the house when he heard the car approaching.

“They’re here and it’s awful. They took Mary Jane’s house and sister Eileen’s. I couldn’t watch no more.” She was shaking uncontrollably.

“Shush now, Tiny”, he whispered. He called her “Tiny” in their most personal moments. “You knew they was comin’. Now we got to go,” Wylie said softly.

“I think we had best get our things ready. I got a letter from my uncle Carlton from up in Indiana. He says he can get me a job drivin’ a truck up there and that we’re welcome to stay with him for a while. What do you think, Tiny?”

“I know that what you say is best. But I want to stay”, she cried uncontrollably, as if she were a tree whose roots were being torn from the soil.

The federals knew that they had to handle the churches and graveyards with care to at least maintain a semblance of dignity for the locals. They had planned to move the graves after all of the buildings had been cleared, but they were getting short on time. While most people had gone peacefully, there were a few who had resisted, and it had taken extra time to get them out. It was the fall of 1935 and the dozers had finished off what had been Loyston TN and were now working their way up and down each county road, destroying homes, barns, shacks, outhouses, any man-made structure that they encountered. It was an early morning in November when they showed up at the home of Wylie and Ethyl. It wasn’t a big house so it took only about 15 minutes for the dozers to level it. Mercifully, Wylie and Ethyl didn’t have to watch. The week before, they had packed up their 1928 Ford with as many of their belongings as they could, stuffed in their four kids, and headed up thru Kentucky to US Highway 31W, then north to their new home in Indiana. Some of their relation stayed in the area, while some eventually relocated over by Johnson City. Other kin folk moved to Knoxville to look for work in the TVA. In the end, the tightly knit clan was dispersed.

On March 4th, 1936 the flood gates of the newly completed Norris Dam were closed and began to back up the Clinch River. After only six months, all of Loyston TN and its surrounding countryside, the place that my father’s ancestors had called home for six generations was lost to the world.