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. […]

Because, for decades he always seemed to be the same age, perhaps 43, lanky, energetic, youthful Bruce Wheeler never seemed likely to leave us any time soon, but we regret that he has. He was really 84, and this past […]

THE MYSTERIES OF A KNOXVILLE THANKSGIVING It’s supposedly a simple holiday, dating back to 1621, and the Pilgrims, who sought simplicity. But most sources claim that despite Tennessee’s plenitude of wild turkeys and pumpkins for pie, we didn’t celebrate the […]

OPERA’S DEBUT IN KNOXVILLE Both locals and newcomers tend to jump to the same conclusion: that Knoxville, whose founders were surely country-music or gospel fans if they knew anything about music at all, decided at some point—in recent years, of […]