Historic Union County

Spreading the good news of Union County

Not only is Union County known for its country music legends, but also for having a stretch of the famous Thunder Road. Thunder Road was definitely on Faye Hardin's mind when she created the painting that won Best Heritage in the 2022 Union County Heritage Festival Art Show. This was Faye's second year to receive the Best Heritage Award.

After the Plainview Planning Commission and the Plainview Board of Aldermen adjourned their respective meetings, attendees celebrated Betty Satterfield's birthday. Betty was the city recorder for many years from the founding of Plainview until her retirement. Betty is 89 years young.

As harvest season wraps up among most farmers in East Tennessee, locally we had some generous volunteers to host some hands-on educational exhibits at one of our local elementary schools on October 20.
Luttrell Elementary welcomed the 42 volunteers to teach the students about a variety of agricultural practices.

Thirty-five quilts from hand stitched to machine designed adorned the Union County Museum upper floor for the 2022 Union County Heritage Festival Quilt Show on October 1. Coordinating the event were Ellen Perry, Patricia Campbell, and Cleta Nelson Garner. The judges awarded hand stitched, quilted ribbons for a variety of categories.
Mitzi Talley took Best of Show and Best Patriotic Quilt awards. Patricia Walker received an award for the Best Heritage Quilt, Best Small Holiday Quilt, and the Best Small Quilted Item.

It was a cold, windy October day, but nearly 1,000 warm-hearted folks came to visit the 18th Annual Union County Heritage Festival last month. The festival was packed with experienced musicians who performed live music throughout the event. On the Gazebo Stage sponsored by Jaxx, Southern Spirit performed Back to Tennessee, Old Stuff, and sneaked in a preview of a tune from their new album that debuts in January.

Chiropractic services are an important first line of defense against pain and, in some cases, chiropractic can lessen a patient’s reliance on addictive painkillers or prevent their use altogether. It makes sense to exhaust conservative forms of treatment such as chiropractic care before moving on to riskier, potentially addictive pain medications. Statistics show that as many as one in four patients who receive prescription opioids long-term for non-cancer pain in primary care settings struggle with addiction.

For some families, a busy lifestyle makes homecooked turkey dinners a thing of the past. More and more families look to restaurants, grocery stores and caterers to prepare their holiday meals. Precooked dinners can be great time-savers, but they must be handled safely to prevent foodborne illness. The same food safety rules you follow when preparing foods at home apply to precooked dinners.
For foods you pick up hot:

A friend of mine came by the central office one day last week. He asked where Dr. Effler was. I told him I believed she was “Zooming.” He asked, “Oh, is she sick?” Possibly she might have been, depending with whom and about what her Zoom meeting was concerned.

When a cold west wind is swirling snow around the yard, I think of "Chicken Soup". You may think of skiing at Gatlinburg; I think of soup. There is no way I am leaving the house unless it’s going to church or I need groceries. If it can wait, I’ll get my groceries after church. I'll open the door only to feed the birds. Anne will drive down to the mailbox to get the mail rather than walk. That is more than I will do on a cold snowy day; but I will make soup. I have lots of soup recipes. Some take a while to make. Some are quick.

I remember my Grandma’s chicken noodle soup. It was delicious. I have made noodles all my married life. I think I’m pretty good at it, but Grandma had me beat by a country mile. Let me tell you about her noodles.
As a child, I would watch in awe as she performed her magic with the rolling pin and dough. I never saw her stir a batch together, just the rolling out and cutting process.

“Squash it, Mamaw! Squash it!”
Right outside of Mamaw Girdle/Myrtle’s bedroom window was the biggest spider I had seen in the five years of my life. It had a colorful, bulbous body with long black hinged legs. In my child’s mind, it was a hideous monster.
“I’m not going to squash it. It’s a writing spider,” she answered. I was amazed because the only other creature that I knew who could write was Snoopy. I wondered if this was a skill some creatures really had.

I love to drive our roads here in Union County and check out the old barns visible to the road. When I get a chance to investigate an old barn I dive on the opportunity. What I have noticed is that most old barns still standing in East Tennessee were built and used mostly to dry and store tobacco. If the barn was built for something else like livestock, it was usually converted later on to dry tobacco. It is very easy to tell that a barn was used for tobacco.

Sittin’ on my front porch with a strong hangry (new woke terminology) to roll out my Suzuki Burgman and head north to Harrogate, turn south on highway 63. Then ride slowly south through the beautiful (hasn’t been spoiled by so-called development) Powell Valley to I-75 south to exit 122, turn north onto highway 61 and back to my front porch. This fall has been one of the prettiest color displays since the 1960s.

Some time ago a longtime pastor friend from another church was confiding in me about both the highs and lows of leading a congregation. Because of his genuine sadness over the lows, I joked with him that I was going to do a Bible study entitled How to Kill Your Pastor.
My friend, seeing the veiled humor in the concept, shared that thought with another fellow pastor, who quickly responded; “When can he come teach this at my church?”

A popular pastime when my mom was growing up on a Tennessee hillside farm was to go out and find some rabbit tobacco, crush it and roll it up in some brown paper from a poke (that’s a bag to you young folk), and smoke it. I don’t know how the tobacco tasted, but that paper must have been strong!

Have you ever driven to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg and stared in awe at the big orange funnel attached to the Wilderness in The Smokies? I sure have! Every time we see that monstrosity of a waterslide, my children ask when we will visit the resort. I kindly remind them that a place like that is not in our budget, but one day we might go.

As the holiday season approaches, bringing with it delicious fall flavors and promises of snowcapped mountain views, many of us are drawing up our gift lists or wish lists. Some of us with little ones have already received our Christmas catalogues from Amazon and Target in the mail, whether we wanted them or not. My children eagerly flipped through the pages of cheaply made toys, circling their favorites and chatting amongst themselves. As I ease dropped on their conversation, I imagined all the money these catalogues bring in for the big box stores.

Dr Matthew Hartsburg’s Olympic dream finally became a reality when he was invited, after waiting several years, to join the medical team caring for Team USA athletes in the recent Beijing winter games.

A licensed chiropractor with a practice in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2017 he began treating athletes at the United States Olympic Training Centers in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Lake Placid, New York.

If you read, “Crying at the Canyon Part 1,” you know my friend was traumatized by her trip to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately for her, she would be facing another terrifying canyon a few days later.
When my friend and her husband reached their destination in Arizona, she was so excited by the scenery. That evening she called me and told me all about the breathtaking beauty of the desert. Over the years, I have heard other people describe the desert that way. Being an East Tennessee girl who’s used to lush green fields and forested ridgelines, that sounded strange to me.

I grew up poor during the Great Depression. Other than the Bible, I don’t remember seeing a book at our house, not even a newspaper. Yes, Dad did have his pulp Westerns. They would have a glossy bright colored cover. The actual pages were the same as newspaper. They called them pulp fiction books. I couldn’t read them. The words were too big.