Dear Unicoi County

Photo taken by WJHL.

I grew up a baseball throw from the county line heading towards Washington County, and I feel like I’ve been moving further away ever since. We moved to Johnson City in 4th grade, I went down to Knoxville for college, and I moved out to Kansas City at 24.

Kansas City turned into Ohio for grad school, and in October of my grad school year, the Unicoi County Blue Devils were playing the Johnson County Longhorns for a district championship. It’d be the first for your Blue Devils in 29 years. My cousin, you know him, Drew Rice, was coaching the team (just between you and me, he’s an Alabama fan. Let’s not talk about it. We’re not over it).

I wasn’t doing well in Ohio. I felt a gap in me. I don’t like gaps. I brood on them, make more of them than I should, can’t function, and I spiral. Every day starts to feel cloudy; the sun sets earlier than it should.

But on October 26, with the Blue Devils playing the Longhorns, I don’t know, I just wanted to be a part of it, to make a movie about it. I wanted to come home.

I had a professor ask me, “What are you thinking?” when I told him I was going home for the weekend. I didn’t care. I was late for U.S. Route 23 down through Pikeville, the Big Stone Gap, Gate City (which, by the way, the furthest north you can get Pal’s up that way is Gate City, just so you’re aware).

I passed through Johnson City and around Buffalo Mountain. It took longer, but I got off at the Okolona exit. There at the county line, a baseball throw away from where I grew up, I took Unicoi Road until it turned into 107, at the turnoff that led up to my grandparents’ farm (yes, Scott’s Farm. I’m kin to the strawberry people. We’ve had this conversation many times).

I drove past the animal hospital where we took our St. Bernard when he almost died, and I felt the world fall apart for the first time in my life.

And then there was the turnoff for the Fishery Loop. I couldn’t see my mom’s parents’ old house up the hill in the woods. But I could see the tree I tattooed with my 4Runner, still bent at an angle and somehow still growing. The tree won that fight; I can still see the man’s face when he found me in the driver’s seat, knocked out by the airbag.

Along the way, I passed Erwin Dental where my Aunt Leah still works, what used to be Erwin Motors where Todd sold my dad vehicles for decades, and Rock Creek Road, which leads up to Becky’s house (gosh, I miss her).

I don’t have the space to talk about Rock Creek Park up there, but rain falling on rhododendron leaves is still the calmest image I can bring to my mind.

I followed the lights up the hill to Gentry Stadium, home of the Blue Devils since FDR’s first term.

Aunt Leah was there to give me a Blue Devils sweatshirt so I wouldn’t have to wear the one I stole from my dad.

I know, I played for those danged Hilltoppers over there in Johnson City. But stepping onto the field there and watching the Blue Devils warm up, I realized: I played on this field. Both my brothers played on this field. Just about every cousin I’ve got played here or cheered on the sidelines. My uncle played here before going to play ball up at Tech. My dad played here—the legendary “Molasses Hands Scott” (a name he has given himself that no one in Unicoi remembers calling him). My mom’s dad played here in the 50s. Thanks to some old scrapbooks, we found out my mom’s mom’s dad played for the Blue Devils in the 20s before the CCC even built the stadium.

I stood there and watched the evening light fade up to the Pinnacle. I thought about that little gap in me. I wouldn’t dare put the pressure on a place on the map to fill the gap in a human soul. But maybe for a few hours, a place like home can remind you of the way you oughta be headed.

The next August, I moved back to Tennessee.

Now, I live in Knoxville. But I’m a short drive up 81, off at Exit 23 through Greeneville and up 107 from you. Yeah, it’s the long way. But crossing the Nolichucky down there past Tusculum, hanging a right at the Crossroads, and going through Embreville past the Devil’s Looking Glass is, in my mind, the most beautiful place on Earth.

Plus, you get to Pal’s quicker going through Greeneville.

The Blue Devils lost that game, but won their first home playoff game in over 30 years the next week. And for a lost kid with a camera, you won back a memory:

Home.

We love y’all.