When my wife, Laura, and I moved back to Chattanooga from Knoxville a few days before Memorial Day in 2017, I wrote about the mixed emotions I had.
The reason was that I was coming back to my native city I had always loved after being in a town I had grown to love.
We had been up in Knoxville for 12 years due to her work as a United Methodist pastor/counselor, and I had totally embraced – probably more than Laura -- this city that I had formerly seen as kind of a rival to Chattanooga.
Not only that, but I had grown to appreciate and even work at the University of Tennessee, a university that I once detested as a proud University of Georgia graduate and sports fan.
As I mentioned in previous writings, she had wanted to come back to Chattanooga after retiring.
I finally agreed and, despite the move, I was able to continue getting to teach some adjunct introductory journalism writing classes at UT twice a week during the fall and spring semesters and write for one of the Knoxville News Sentinel publications.
So the sadness over the move certainly had some consolation in getting to stay connected with Knoxville while primarily being back in Chattanooga and enjoying getting reacquainted with this place.
I mentioned those thoughts in my reflections of two years ago, and then I updated my outlook last year around Memorial Day.
Now that the second anniversary has passed, I feel led to look back over the previous 12 months once again.
In summarizing, I would say that it is hard to believe two years have passed, as it still seems just like yesterday we were getting moved into our 1960s-era house in the Cloverdale section of Hixson and the experience was new.
And, believe it or not, my life has not changed a lot. I am still getting to teach at UT and do some freelance writing for the Shopper News up there, so trips to Knoxville are still part of the routine.
I have gotten used to getting in my car for extended drives once or twice a week, depending on if school is in session. There is enough pretty countryside not to get bored or impatient.
And I visit the welcome center at mile marker 45 off Interstate 75 to go to the restroom as often as a trucker.
Of course, I know both my writing and teaching in Knoxville are freelance jobs. So I cherish them for the time being, but know that the long term or even tomorrow is not guaranteed.
My old Knoxville church, Church Street United Methodist Church, also has a Wednesday noon service and lunch, so I get to stop by there as well, since Wednesday is one of the days I am up there. Although a number of people there know my situation of commuting, a couple of members have done double takes when they see me and say, or at least think, “I thought you moved.”
A few others see me so frequently around Knoxville that they don’t realize I have moved.
So my situation with Knoxville a day or two a week has not changed and I am particularly enjoying getting to teach at the big state school. Regarding that, I once again enjoyed having a few athletes – mostly Lady Vols -- in class this past year and getting to watch them on TV with pride. Of course, I enjoyed all my students.
My familiarity with my old hometown of Chattanooga seems to have changed a little bit over the last two years, or even one year, though. I still enjoy writing stories for chattanoogan.com, and realize there are all kinds of topics I would enjoy writing about if I had more time or opportunities.
But Chattanooga, I have concluded over the last couple of years, is not the same city it was when I left the area in 2005. I cannot even keep up with every apartment/condominium building that goes up seemingly every week.
But parts outside the immediate city center don’t seem that different, although I would not have guessed 15 years ago that parts of Red Bank would have gotten so trendy. Of course, with its nearby connection to North Chattanooga and featuring a few pre-World War II era houses and new ones built on vacant land not too far from downtown, that is not hard to explain.
But I wonder if the spirit of preservation is as strong in Chattanooga as it used to be – although it was never perfect. Simply living in North Chattanooga or downtown seems more important now to many people than living in an old house in those areas, so often a historic structure will give way to one not so old.
And I am wondering how much farmland or open space will be around a generation from now within 10 or 15 miles of downtown Chattanooga, unless it is deliberately protected somehow for a park through a grant or donation.
The land grab is definitely on in a lot of ways. And many of the developers seem to be from out of town. (If they are from Knoxville, they are OK!)
The Gunbarrel/East Brainerd road areas really seem to have traffic issues now, and possibly so do areas in Ooltewah I don’t frequent as much.
But, as I am reminded, it is not nearly as bad as Atlanta or Nashville. Knoxville has plenty of traffic, too, in places like Interstate 40 and Kingston Pike.
As far as Chattanooga restaurants, I have gotten to know Mojo Burrito quite well in the last two years, and love eating at the one in Red Bank. My menu item of choice is, well, a Mojo Burrito.
The only aspect I would change about it is to figure out a way to have the line move more quickly. At times it looks like a people version of the Ridge Cut traffic shot they show on TV during afternoon rush hour.
If I am just eating by myself, I will often go to Mojo Burrito shortly after 11 a.m. on days when I can to avoid a line. And perhaps they should make it where a burrito and a soft drink do not cost close to $15, which it does with a $1 tip.
I also love Clumpie’s ice cream and its chocolate chocolate chunk flavor on a waffle cone and Niedlov’s for breakfast. At the latter, I have to have something sweet and savory, so I get both a cinnamon roll and a ham and cheese croissant.
I also still love both Tony’s Pasta and Rembrandt’s coffee shop in the Bluff View Art District, as I did before we moved away.
But as far as all the craft brewery type eateries, I have not found any that I have fallen in love with. Of course, that might be because I no longer drink beer.
And for chain restaurants, I can often be found in the Hixson Panera eating or working on my laptop – or both. I recommend the creamy tomato or broccoli cheddar soup, a Caesar salad and a chocolate chip cookie there.
Panera is another connection I have between Chattanooga and Knoxville. I used to eat at the one on the Strip near the UT campus a lot and they started recognizing me. I still eat there about once a week when I am back up there, and the one or two people who still recognize me don’t realize I have moved.
Two or three employees at the Hixson Panera are also starting to recognize me as well. Needless to say, my Panera card never gets dusty.
As far as where we live, I enjoy being in a well-built 1960s-era house in the Cloverdale subdivision near Northgate Mall. That area is not quite as trendy as some neighborhoods, but I enjoy living next to a variety of people – from those with good-paying blue collar jobs, to young professionals, to retired professionals who have lived there for decades. And we are surrounded on our street by everybody from neighbors as friendly as a politician in campaign mode to hermits.
My wife and I have sometimes wondered, though, why we now live in a tri-level home when we are not in the young professional age range, or still dream about climbing Mt. Everest. And cutting the grass in our steep backyard is like mowing grass in the Alps.
I guess it might be fun to live somewhere like downtown Chattanooga, North Chattanooga or even Red Bank. But I think our Westie named Maisie, and two cats, William and Harry, are having too much fun right now with all the wooded green space.
We also like our location in that there is rarely heavy traffic from Hixson Pike near our home back in the direction of downtown Chattanooga. That helps when we go to our new church of First-Centenary United Methodist off McCallie Avenue.
But if you go north on Hixson Pike or get on the intersecting Highway 153, you will find a few other four-wheeled metal friends. We thankfully live just inside the bubble of congestion.
I have actually thought about living somewhere like North Chattanooga or downtown Chattanooga since the 1980s and I was not long out of college, but never have.
The first few years I worked at the old Chattanooga Free Press on 11th Street. I would sometimes imagine that I lived in one of those older commercial buildings a block or so away. I also thought at the time that it might be fun to open some kind of downtown lunch restaurant if I did not work at the paper.
I thought those ideas were a little crazy back then and I kept them to myself. But looking around parts of downtown Chattanooga today, I was apparently not the only one thinking that.
Nowadays, however, my living and working dreams expand beyond downtown Chattanooga. In fact, they still go all the way up to Knoxville.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net