Gordon & I got up early to meet Gary Nelson, a reporter for the Chronicle at The Donut Shop in Crossville. Gary had warned me about the joint.

"The funny thing about the Donut Shop," Gary noted, "is that they don't sell any donuts."

Nope. Study the sign carefully. The only thing you'll find at the Donut Shop is "healthy cooking." Take time to read the small print and you'll see that includes deli sandwiches (served on white bread, naturally) burgers (served at 10 a.m.) and fries.

The Donut Shop does have a sign on the door welcoming all Vietnam veterans, but the help ain't all that friendly. When Gary arrived the waitress asked what he wanted and he said a cup of coffee and a donut. She turned to him and said, "We don't sell donuts." Gary said, "I know. It was a joke." She snarled back, "Very funny." And then failed to bring Gary coffee until he made another request for it ten minutes later.

But the coffee, served in mugs adverstising all sorts of oddities around town, was hot and actually good.

Not so much the oatmeal. It was the kind prison guards make, I think.

After a visit with Gary, Gordon and I headed over to see Mr. & Mrs. Campbell. When I stepped out of the truck the first thing I saw was this:

At first glance I thought it was a cockroach sunbathing. But since there were a couple of more nearby, I began to suspect a Jim Jones incident. I searched around for drops of Raid-tainted Kool-Aid but never found any. I turned the roach over but decided it actually looked more comfortable on its back.

Poor Mrs. Campbell, she didn't look much better than the roach. She'd passed out in the kitchen earlier this week and the entire left-side of her face was black, blue & purple, all the way down to her collarbone. It was pitiful. She's so frail.

"Honey, you look so good. I wish I felt as good as you look," she said, greeting me with a kiss. I love Mrs. Campbell. She & Mr. Campbell just celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary. I remember when she told me she bought her wedding dress at the rag store for a quarter. "We've had a happy life. A good life," she said today. "It'd be okay with me to go on home."

Then, she recounted for me the story of how her daughter died of colon cancer at age 60, despite spending $10,000 on experimental treatments in Mexico. When Mrs. Campbell fell this week she didn't even go to the doctors. "No point to it," she said. "Ain't nothing they could do for me."

Her neighbor has cancer that's spread to his swallowing tube. "His wife calls me crying every day," Mrs. Campbell said. "Makes me get to crying. They've tried everything to get him to eat. He said he wanted some pudding, so she made him some but then he couldn't eat it. I told her well when you've done all you can for somebody, there ain't nothing more can be done."

Mrs. Campbell is proof that wisdom is learned, not taught. I could listen to her tell her stories all day long.

But Gordon had speech therapy, so we took our leave. I traded Gordon for Shelby and went back to town to finish errands. One of which has been on my agenda all week long -- to stop by the new store in town -- the Thrift Store for Jesus.

I ain't a kidding. That's really the name of it. Shelby took a picture and I'll post it to the blog when I get it transferred.

Crossville has a Donut Shop that doesn't sell donuts. A Thrift Store for Jesus that raises money for Native Americans, although there ain't any of those within hundreds of miles from here and a fellow who built a highrise for God in the trees. I'm gonna miss this town...

Stairway to heaven rises from Cumberland County countryside
Robertson County Times - TN,USA
By KEN BECK CROSSVILLE, Tenn. -- Horace Burgess's treehouse may be as close to http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article AID=/20070722/FEATURES01/707220315/1004/MTCN0303

While sitting at a local lunch counter in Crossville, Shelby and I overheard the teenage girls behind the counter talking:

"I told him last night, do you think you are honoring God when you wear clothes like that, when you listen to music like that, when you hang with people like that?"

"Yeah, what'd he say?"

"That I couldn't understand because we were raised differently."

"Yeah."

"I told him that Satan tempts us with things we like, not with things we don't like. Satan is after us."

"Yeah."

I looked past Shelby, who was intently taking in the whole conversation and noticed that over the in the corner, wearing a red t-shirt, blue jeans and sandals sat a lanky fellow with rock-spike hair and sideburns, reading a bible, taking notes. I nodded toward him. 

"You ought to go introduce yourself," I said. Shelby said, "What do you want me to do? Write my number on a napkin?" I handed her the napkin.

Last night, while we were walking the track at the high school, Shelby and I talked about the discussion at lunch. "I wanted to turn around and tell that girl to just break up with the fellow," Shelby said. "What did you think?"

"That it sounded like a 1,000 conversations I had when I was a teenager," I said.

"Well," Shelby said, "the other thing I thought is that there are some places in this country where you would never ever hear a conversation like that."

"Yeah," I said. "I was thinking the same thing."

The joke around our house is that I always know when I'm not in the south anymore by the frequency of usage of the f-word, compared to the Jesus word.

Speaking of words, I spent some time at the Archives for Applachian Studies at East Tennessee State University this week, researching. Came across this story:

"My daddy owned this big stallion. I can remember when I was a kid mamas from all over the mountain would bring their babies to Daddy. He'd go get the stallion and he'd hold the mouth of that big ol' stallion open while mamas held their babies up to the stallion's mouth, almost sticking their heads into the stallion's mouth."

"How come they to do that?"

"If the baby breathed in the breath from the stallion it would cure the thrush. You know it had to be scary for those babies to be up next to that horse's mouth, but I seen a lot of mamas bringing their babies."

And this story from a veteran in East Tennessee about another veteran:

"He ain't been right in the head since that his buddy was found dead in the shower with his throat sliced. Sheriff ruled it a suicide but that ole boy insinuated that it was his wife's cousin who done it. She wanted his money, see? I don't think she done it, but she had two able boys who might've. He got fixated on that and ain't been able to let it go. But people don't kill themselves by slicing their throats in the shower."

Satan afoot again, it seems.