Frank Cagle, a local political pundit, recently made drastic prognostications about the future of Knox County. His predictions were made tongue-in-cheek, but I took some of them seriously, because they seemed plausible. He posits that in 2012 Knoxville city and county governments will merge, seamlessly, for the most part, into a metro government. This is an issue that’s been kicked about in Knox County for several years, and so far, the resistance to change has prevailed. However, our local political makeup will not always be the way it is now, and we should start planning accordingly. Forewarned is forearmed.
Cagle foresees that the only two voices of dissent against metro government will be the county representatives from Powell and South Knoxville. He predicts that Lumpy Lambert will lead an unsuccessful insurrection in an effort to lead Powell in secession from Knox County. He imagines that Lumpy will be tarred and feathered, and mailed to Clinton. Not a bad idea, you say? Well, what are we going to do for entertainment and comic relief when Lumpy no longer passes out firearms and makes a regular fool of himself on the local evening news?
The political pundit also predicts that the only person not unduly disturbed by the specter of metro government will be Paul Pinkston, who will calmly lead a South Knoxville-Seymour secession movement, with the citizens on this side of the river meeting at Shoney’s on Chapman Highway to vote on articles of secession and have a really nice breakfast buffet.
There will be no metro government objection to the secession of South Knoxville, with the exception of the new Baptist Riverside Hospital, the Cherokee Bluff condos, the South Riverfront development, and the King Tut Restaurant, areas metro Knoxville will probably wish to retain. That won’t happen without a fight, and that’s where the forearmed part comes in. More about that, later.
His light-hearted look into the future is not as far fetched as many people on the north side of the river might think. Unbeknownst to the rest of Knox County, South Knoxville has been wishing for this very thing to come to pass for many years. Since the separation did not exist in fact, we pretended that it did. Now’s the time to make our dreams come true.
I, personally, would be glad to divest myself of Knoxville citizenship, and cleave unto the new proposed, “Free State of Greater Seymour”. South Knoxville, of course, would be the capitol.
Allow me to list some of our natural resources and remarkable cultural bonds and historically significant landmarks in South Knoxville. Look at the way we have assimilated the people who “ain’t from around here”. We let them in, we didn’t hurt them too badly, and after a few generations we accepted them. Imagine the ways we can gather as a true community, “The Free State of Greater Seymour”!
I think the name should be shortened, for simplicity’s sake, to “South Knox Seymour”. People will figure out pretty quickly that we’re a different town, and the politics of the matter will be public record. Let’s keep it low-key. No need to rub their noses in our independence.
We already have our own newspaper, and it’s a good thing, as the big media pays no attention to us. Actually, we’re grateful that big media leaves us alone. We don’t need them. We get our news and opinions and assistance from each other in South Knox Seymour, and pay little attention to the rest of Knoxville. We live in our own little world here. Literally.
Unfortunately, we’ve recently lost our hospital. The one we worked together as a community to build. On the bright side, one or two big health companies plan to build diagnostic centers in Seymour, so that should be good for the SKS citizens.
We would continue to do what we’ve always done, and support SKS businessmen and employers. We might institute a free town barter registry, because barter is the way it’s frequently done here.
Flenniken School would make a wonderful town hall, and the nearby Hotel Parkway and attached spaces would serve admirably as the SKS Convention center.
We would probably lose our library, so I suggest going to the Book Eddy for all our reading needs. If every citizen in South Knoxville went in there one day and bought one book, then we’d soon have our own public library.
We don’t have a theatre in SKS, either, and we need a small one; no more than four screens. And we need a secured, supervised, Saturday morning movie club and activity time for our kids. A drive-in theatre would be nice, too. It could double as a farmer’s market on Saturday mornings.
With the proper local investors, we could turn Montgomery Village into a fine gated community, a place anyone would be proud to call home. We could reclaim the old Witherspoon Superfund site as a wetland and plant sugar cane there, with imported Bufo toads from Florida to populate the cane fields. The sugarcane, of course, would be useful in the manufacturing of ethanol. There’s no shortage of men in SKS who know how to distill spirits of alcohol from agricultural products, and it could be stored in that big blue tank up on Cherokee Trail.
While we’re on Cherokee Trail, we could do the right thing and try to restore what’s left of Fort Higley. After the cane harvest, we could have a celebratory 5K run, the “SKS Toad Lick Dash”. We probably ought to accept and attempt to monitor that free-spirited tendency toward chemical experimentation among certain locals, and give them the toads to work with; putting in place a seasonal bag limit, of course.
We already have our own “old city” in SKS, just waiting to be reclaimed and restored. Old Sevier Avenue use to be a thriving thoroughfare, decorated like Gay Street at Christmas time, and nearly as busy. The former Giffin swimming pool site would make a dandy amusement park by the river. What finer contribution to the South waterfront could SKS make? All other development, especially the sprawling, unattractive type, would, of course, be strongly discouraged.
South Knox Seymour will have its own militia. We might as well recognize it and try to regulate it, because we’re going to have it anyway. We’ve had it for generations. There are plenty of sensible men and women here in SKS who are equipped to bear arms. They are qualified to enforce the way we’ve always done things, and make sure certain valuable assets on this side of the river remain ours.
This dream of secession wouldn’t have been possible years ago. In my days of callow youth, I remember gazing listlessly at Seymour and thinking, “If south Knox County needed an enema, this would be the place to plug it in.”
But I repent! Seymour is wonderful now! Far better than Farragut! Let’s retain control of it so the rest of the county doesn’t swarm through here, acting snooty and throwing empty Evian bottles and Dunhill cigarette butts from the windows of their Hummers, and imposing their ugly architecture on us.
Let us also remember that Seymour and Farragut looked very similar forty years ago, and ask ourselves which of them has aged more gracefully? I thought so. And we ought to try to keep it that way.
Let’s face it. This is South Knoxville, and the western mindset isn’t going to work here. Nor is the big corporate development model going to work here. And yes, we can definitely tell if you’re not from around here. We only have to ask, “Where did you go to school?” If you don’t give the correct answer, your children will be accepted, but you’d better be on your best behavior.
Who’d have thought twenty years ago that we’d have such mushrooming development at Chapman Highway and John Sevier Highway? Why, we’ve practically got our very own version of “Turkey Creek”, although I heard recently that it’s known as “Chicken Creek” among the younger and in-the-know set. I like that. We South Knoxvillians have always poked gentle fun at ourselves, secretly rejoicing that we were still backward and undeveloped, and therefore blessedly quiet. South Knoxville is radically different, and we like it that way.
Those who really wanted to escape from the south side have never been prevented from doing so. Many of those who escaped returned as soon as they regained their senses. I’m one of them. I served my time in Cedar Bluff and I learned my lesson, believe me.
Most of us are in this community by choice, and with great gratitude, and by way of inheritance and family ties, which is frequently the emotional and economic glue that holds us together and in one place. Our history is here. We went to school here and we are raising third and fourth and more generations here. What more do we need?
Let’s admit what we are: a community vastly and voluntarily different from the rest of Knox County. The foreseen secession of South Knoxville is good, my friends. If we don’t draw the line now, we’ll be sorry. I don’t want to be swallowed up in the metro mindset, do you? We’ve been waiting for this for more than a hundred years, and it’s time to cut the apron strings.
South Knoxville might finally be left the hell alone, which is all we’ve ever wanted, anyway.
