By Mike Steely Ever visit a beautiful waterfall located inside a city? Noccalula Falls Park is in Gadsden, Alabama, just a few minutes off Interstate 59 and about an hour and a half south of Chattanooga. The city park’s 250 acres features a 90-foot waterfall, an aboriginal fort, an abandoned dam, a pioneer homestead, carvings […]
By Mike Steely In a recent story in The Focus I mentioned that my wife and I collect political and promotional buttons and cups from places we’ve visited, and other things like postcards and business cards. The article drew some response when it appeared. Kathy Turpin wrote, “I read your column in The Focus. Related […]
By Mike Steely Sometimes when you visit a place you’ve been before you can still find some real surprises. When my wife and I decided to take a day away from our home in Knoxville and make a safe drive to David Crockett Birthplace State Park, just east of Greeneville, we knew the place must […]
By Mike Steely The highway runs from Rocky Top (Lake City) to Halls Crossroads and, among other landmarks, crosses TVA’s Norris Dam, the agency’s first hydro-electric producer. But Norris Freeway is more than just a road that did not exist before the 1930s and much more than just an access way to the dam. Bet […]
By Mike Steely For more than 50 years my wife and I have been collecting things. As a reporter and an advertising representative we’ve moved around a lot, visited every state except Alaska, and we’ve collected mementos of places such as cups, photos, postcards and buttons. Not sewing buttons but buttons from places, events, slogans […]
By Mike Steely We’ve been doing a lot of home repairing and upgrading while cocooning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve ventured out to get groceries and to buy items like paint, tile, etc. During these days some hardware stores have shown a big profit from fixer-uppers like us. While shopping for home items recently I […]
By Mike Steely We’re fortunate in Knox County to have three veteran cemeteries. On Saturday, December 19, all three hallowed burial grounds should be totally decorated with wreaths from the local “Wreaths Across America” but there’s a problem. Donations to purchase the wreaths is lagging behind. Chris Albrecht, Wreath Program Ambassador, is urgently asking for […]
By Mike Steely The Sgt. Alvin C. York State Historic Park is about a two-hour drive from Knoxville, depending on what route you take, and is well worth a visit. There are lots of interesting sites to see along the way if you wish, like Brushy Mountain Prison, Frozen Head State Park and Wartburg […]
By Mike Steely I was going through my photo files recently and ran across several photos of unusual places in our region. With the COVID-19 pandemic clustering many families inside except for needed food shopping I thought I’d share some of the places with you You can easily drive to most of the strange places […]
By Mike Steely Appalachia is a curious place to many people with its own language of sorts. Being somewhat isolated from the rest of the nation mostly because of topography the region’s dialect developed somewhat unchanged among the Scotch-Irish settlers. You don’t have to travel very far out of Knoxville to hear words that “harking […]
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