'Wife and I just returned from four days in lower eastern Tennessee, visiting Oak Ridge, Great Smoky Montains National Forest, and Museum of Appalachia. Great trip; wonderful weather, thoroughly enjoyable. Museum of Appalacia is to be recommended just above Knoxville; very interesting. Almost five hours was barely enough.
And the trip furnished a good deal of irony, too. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, I'll lay claim to having saved that many keystrokes.
Oak Ridge, of course, was built from the ground up in the early 1940s, for the sole purpose of supplying the correct uranium in ample supply for the atomic bomb, necessary to conclude World War II. Hundreds of people were shoveled out of the valley with only a month's notice to relocate so the Secret City could be built.
We spent a lot of time at The Musum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, looking at hundreds of photographs taken during the facility's construction. Many late '30s and early '40s cars in the photos. I strained, but didn't see a single Studebaker. 'Not to say there weren't any, because I'm sure there were. Most all were Chevrolets, which must have been unusually popular in the area. Many Fords and a surprising number of Pontiacs, too.
We expected Oak Ridge to be kind of a has-been area, but we couldn't have been more wrong! Everything in the area, including enormous new buildings devoted to all manner of high-tech stuff, suggests that Oak Ridge is sort of a Silicone Valley in the mountains. Population peaked at 75,000 during WWII, but has been just under a steady 30,000 for several years now, per the tour guide.
Given the demographics of the area, it would seem like a good place to have a Chevrolet dealership, and we did find [the remains of] same. The Impala out front was not left behind; it is ours:
Meanwhile, on the same side of the main thoroughfare a few miles down the road, a huge-stand-alone Nissan dealership was prospering. The distant building is also part of the Nissan dealership, as is every structure visible in this photograph!
Anyone else appreciate the irony here? Here we have an entire community built with the sole purpose of developing a nuclear weapon to [appropriately] avenge Pearl Harbor...yet, today....
hmmmm....
Perhaps General McArthur should have read the fine print before co-signing the surrender treaty aboard the USS Missouri 66 years ago this month! <GGG> BP
And the trip furnished a good deal of irony, too. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, I'll lay claim to having saved that many keystrokes.
Oak Ridge, of course, was built from the ground up in the early 1940s, for the sole purpose of supplying the correct uranium in ample supply for the atomic bomb, necessary to conclude World War II. Hundreds of people were shoveled out of the valley with only a month's notice to relocate so the Secret City could be built.
We spent a lot of time at The Musum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge, looking at hundreds of photographs taken during the facility's construction. Many late '30s and early '40s cars in the photos. I strained, but didn't see a single Studebaker. 'Not to say there weren't any, because I'm sure there were. Most all were Chevrolets, which must have been unusually popular in the area. Many Fords and a surprising number of Pontiacs, too.
We expected Oak Ridge to be kind of a has-been area, but we couldn't have been more wrong! Everything in the area, including enormous new buildings devoted to all manner of high-tech stuff, suggests that Oak Ridge is sort of a Silicone Valley in the mountains. Population peaked at 75,000 during WWII, but has been just under a steady 30,000 for several years now, per the tour guide.
Given the demographics of the area, it would seem like a good place to have a Chevrolet dealership, and we did find [the remains of] same. The Impala out front was not left behind; it is ours:
Meanwhile, on the same side of the main thoroughfare a few miles down the road, a huge-stand-alone Nissan dealership was prospering. The distant building is also part of the Nissan dealership, as is every structure visible in this photograph!
Anyone else appreciate the irony here? Here we have an entire community built with the sole purpose of developing a nuclear weapon to [appropriately] avenge Pearl Harbor...yet, today....
hmmmm....
Perhaps General McArthur should have read the fine print before co-signing the surrender treaty aboard the USS Missouri 66 years ago this month! <GGG> BP
We've got to quit saying, 
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