I Still Wish I Could Have Seen the Transvestite Parade

Sunday was a good day, and not because we did anything spectacular, but because most of the day was thoroughly spontaneous. It started off with going downtown to Market Square around 9 a.m. for breakfast with Mickey's parents, who were in town visiting, and we didn't get back home until almost 6, despite having no prior plans other than to return home and veg on the couch all day.

After breakfast at Trio (which was kind of disappointing, but I still love their lunch and dinner food) we just decided to walk around downtown a bit. We poked around in Mast General Store, which has a bunch of old toys and outdoors stuff and assorted crazy crap, and a couple of other stores. Then we made our way to the First Presbyterian Church one block over and walked around the cemetery for a while. This may sound strange, but I really love old cemeteries. I like thinking about what those people's lives were like and how the scenery around Knoxville has changed since they were alive, which in this case was typically late 1700s through mid-1800s. This one doesn't have any huge tombstones or giant statues or anything, but rather just a bunch of crooked half-oval grave markers that are so old, the etchings in the stone are mostly unreadable. Best of all, there is a giant tree in the middle of the cemetery that has actually grown to envelop some of the grave markers, so they are now a permanent part of the tree.

Then it was on to Downtown Grill & Brewery for lunch, which is where we seem to take all our guests. I know we took Jacob and Kim there, and Brandon, and Rachel and Jim too. But it has good food and good beer and it's close by, so it's an obvious choice. (But if any of you come to visit again, remind us to take you somewhere else.) After lunch we bid adieu to Mickey's parents and made a spontaneous decision to go to the Tennessee Theatre for an afternoon movie. The Tennessee Theatre is a place I'd been wanting to go to ever since I moved to Knoxville, and it is indeed beautiful. It's modeled after the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, with which I am very familiar, and I think it's the exact same floor plan on a smaller scale. (The bathrooms aren't as pretty, though. I could hang out in the Fox's bathrooms all day. They're that nice.)

Anyway, the Tennessee Theatre has a summertime series in which they play old movies, and this weekend's offering was Thunder Road (which, I'll be honest, I had never heard of.) Is it a good movie? Well, I can't really say. The deterioration of the sound quality coupled with the slight echo in the theater made it virtually impossible to understand what anyone was saying. It was like watching a foreign film without the subtitles. Fortunately, there was enough scenery to keep me occupied until Robert Mitchum was done making moonshine. The whole experience was really cool, and it reminded me of when I was 10 and my parents took me to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit at the Fox. We may go back in a couple of weeks when they're playing Vertigo.

So it was a good day. We had a pretty jam-packed weekend, actually. Dinner at Barley's on Friday night, hiking at Max Patch on Saturday morning, baseball game on Saturday night, and said shenanigans on Sunday. (Unfortunately, going to the baseball game meant we missed PrideFest on Market Square. Truth told, I would have much rather watched a drag queen beauty pageant than see the Tennessee Smokies beat the Mobile Bay Bears 8-2. But I find that kind of thing entertaining whereas Mickey's parents are not quite so receptive to it, so oh well.)

There are plenty of things I dislike about Knoxville, but spending a day walking around appreciating the attractions and history of this place really makes me appreciate this little city. I'll miss it when we're gone.