Blog Archives

How the University of Tennessee Changed Knoxville’s Relationship with Ice Cream Note: Author Patrick Ramey is a doctoral student in U.S. History at the University of Tennessee. My grandfather used to tell me that Neapolitan ice cream took him back […]

Is it always Opposite Day? History is full of bizarre paradoxes, as one era’s complex mixture of values leads to another’s in unpredictable ways. Some changes come so fast that one mortal human might remember whole different contrary eras. Much […]

Big-time Negro League Baseball in a Minor-League City Willie Mays’ death last week at age 93, more than 70 years after he impressed the crowds at Knoxville’s Caswell Park, brings up an interesting if barely remembered period in Knoxville’s sports […]

A sudden disappearance in the Old City I was startled last week, walking down East Jackson Avenue, to perceive a big empty space. It was disorienting at first, and I had to turn around to see where I was. But […]

Bearden’s old Christian Church is not exactly what we thought it was, but maybe more.   The simple old white frame church seems a little overpowered by its ample bell tower. From a distance it could look something like the […]

Knoxville will have a hard time even thinking of itself without Bob Booker, who died last month. I can’t think of anyone of any race who has had a positive effect on my hometown for as long as he has. […]

What legends did we miss just because they weren’t yet famous enough for us? Today, we music fans may pay hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars to buy a ticket to see a major arena performer. They’re expensive even if […]

Has the closing of a drugstore in a suburban strip center ever been the cause of so much grief? From the outside, it looked like nothing special. Sometime in the 1980s, the 1956 shopping center underwent a modernizing facelift, as […]

A nice bowl of goldfish, nogless eggnog, the frantic scramble, a celebrated female impersonator, a live theatrical dramatization of an aeroplane crashing through a Mexican house—and a momentous meeting at the top of the Burwell It was Christmas season again. […]