Recently an article appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that ushered me back to September 1965. I was driving from Lebanon, New Jersey to Knoxville, Tennessee to enter the University of Tennessee. I had come to the realization that I couldn’t make it as a baseball player and figured I had best decide what to do with my future profession.
I loved construction–especially road construction. The short-term satisfaction of working on the Interstate Highway system was fulfilling. I liked it. I had worked on Interstate 78 and 287-pretty cool. In the midst of my second year at East Stroudsburg State Teachers college, I realized I didn’t want to teach. I had been pursuing a Physical Education curriculum but didn’t see that as satisfying for my future. If I couldn’t play professional sports I didn’t want to be constantly reminded of it. Chalk it up to ignorant youth.
Besides the realization that professional sports were not in my future, there was another factor–I was in the midst of a tumultuous love relationship. I did love the girl and figured if I stayed at Stroudsburg I would end up married pretty quickly. Hell, I wasn’t mature enough to take care of myself, let alone a family. Thankfully I did realize that and acted on it. Marriage and Bob at the age of 20 would have been a disaster.
With that in mind, I wanted to see if any university, with a Civil Engineering program, would allow me to transfer. I had always been fascinated by Tennessee and its History. Maybe Davey Crockett had something to do with it. I had originally been accepted at Memphis State, but my parents and guidance counselor agreed that Bobby might go astray that far from home. To them, I was only interested in sports, girls, and trouble. Well, the Big Orange, UT, accepted me for their Engineering program and I would start there in the fall of 65.
It would be my first solo drive over a 100 miles from New Jersey. Back then I81 was under construction and traversing through Virginia took hours jumping back and forth between Rt.#11 and I81. After getting through Harrisburg and the maize called Rt.#22 I picked up a couple of hitch-hikers(you could do that then). They rode with me for hours until somewhere around Roanoke. I dropped them off and continued on to the tri-cities of Virginia and Tennessee, (Bristol, Kingsport, Johnson City), where I was introduced to the death road known as Rt.#11, West. There was no I#40 then.
Upon arriving in Knoxville and getting to UT anxiety set in. I was put up overnight as there was no student housing available. The next day they sent me to a rental house and I moved in. While I had some reservations, I was still 20 years old, cocky, confident, and probably a little full of myself. With that in mind, I went to the mixer for incoming students and there was confronted head-on with the lingering effects of the Civil War.
I had been raised naively it would turn out to believe there was only 1 United States. I was to find out that wasn’t the case. Upon asking a great looking woman to dance and entering a conversation, I found out I was a GD Yankee. I made the mistake of saying I thought that war was over and she bluntly told me–not here. Whoa, was I taken back. Raised in New Jersey, you may have studied Gettysburg, but nothing in-depth about the war accept slavery. Was I in for a rude awakening? That is a whole other story.
I labored under the fact that I was a Yankee in Tennessee until 30 years later, upon visiting UT, I happened on a historic marker stating that “The Hill” was protected by Federal Troops during General Longstreet’s siege of Knoxville in November of 1863. Are you kidding me? UT had sided with the North. I couldn’t believe it.
Today, August 12th, 2018 I learned that East Tennesse was totally pro-Union and had tried to split off from Western Tennessee and stay in the union. It was eerily similar to how West Virginia became a state. The Tennessee government wouldn’t approve of it. To say this made for contentious relationships during the Civil War would be an understatement. Underscored by the inclusion of one of the worst Presidents this country ever had, as the Vice Presidential choice of Abraham Lincoln-Andrew Johnson.
This was my introduction to the issue that still confronts this nation today–North-South, Black and White. A topic for other journeys.
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