On Monday we drove down from Dayton, OH, to Chattanooga, TN. My brother teaches music (low brass) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, so we wanted to swing by to visit him for a couple of days. After all, Chattanooga is on the way from Iowa to Massachusetts.
We spent Tuesday afternoon at Rock City on Lookout Mountain. For those who don’t know, Rock City is an attraction centered on the rock formations on top of the mountain (the picture at the right is my brother with the kids). The trails wind through crevasses, over dizzying heights, under overhanging boulders, and through caves. The woman who purchased the land and set it up as a huge rock garden went a bit overboard with gnomes as a decorative motif, but it is still a lot of fun. From the vantage point on top of the mountain you can supposedly see seven states. The park is just over the line into Georgia, so Tennessee is only a half mile away. Alabama is only eight miles to the west, while North and South Carolina are 50 and 80 miles respectively to the east. Mt. Pinnacle on the border between Kentucky and Virginia is supposedly visible on a clear day. Since the earth doesn’t actually have lines drawn on it indicating where each state begins, I will have to take their word that I saw seven states.
My brother and I went to Rock City for the first time on July 3, 1986. It was the first big trip the two of us had ever taken alone (we grew up 3.5 hours away). I had just graduated from high school and our parents allowed us to spend the weekend in Chattanooga. We didn’t come just for Rock City, however. We came to attend our first ever Star Trek convention. Yes, I have a long history of being a geek.
As a bit of trivia, the Rock City area claims to be the place where miniature golf was invented.1 The husband of the woman who started Rock City had bought land to build a housing community centered on a golf course. Those are a dime a dozen these days, but back then it was a novel idea. It took longer than planned to build the golf course, however, so to keep the residents happy the man put together a small putting course, which he called Tom Thumb Golf. The idea took off from there.
Tuesday evening was spent at a Chattanooga Lookouts game. My brother’s tuba/ euphonium ensemble was scheduled to play the National Anthem. Because I also play tuba, my brother invited me to play with them. The girlfriends of one of my brother’s students was supposed to take pictures of the event, but her camera batteries ran out. So, I loaned her my camera. She took the pictures standing directly behind my brother, which allowed her to get a panoramic view of the entire ensemble, with the exception of the person standing directly in front of my brother. Unfortunately, that person happened to be me. So, even though my camera took pictures of the event, the only part of me that shows up in the pictures of the performance is my right leg. The picture above was taken while we were waiting to go out onto the field. I am the handsome gent at the right of the picture in the red shirt. I am apparently the only one who doesn’t know the correct way to hold a tuba.
The game went well. As opposed to the previous two games we saw on this trip, the home team won this game. The got out to an early lead, but their opponents - the Mobile Bay Bears - kept coming back. Chattanooga took a two point lead into the 9th inning, but Mobile tied it up. With two outs in the bottom of the 9th, Shaun Cumberland of the Lookouts hit a double into right field that scored the winning run. Cumberland had also hit a two run homer back in the 7th inning to give the Lookouts the lead then. It was a very exciting ending.
The Lookouts have an nice field which is fairly new (2000). Unfortunately, it follows the new trend of being named after a corporate sponsor. I prefer parks that are named after people (Jacob’s Field), groups of people (Veterans Stadium), or the team (Oriole Park at Camden Yards) or anything else that represents the spirit of the community. Chattanooga’s AT&T Field sits in the heart of downtown, just up the bank from the Tennessee River. For some reason, however, it faces the wrong way. Home plate is in the southeast corner of the park instead of in the southwest corner. This means the sun shines in the eyes of the fans down the right field line. I am told that the old Engel Stadium, where the Lookouts played until 1999, is a classic baseball venue.
- Whether the claim is true or not is a matter of debate. Tiny putting courses in Europe had been around since the mid-19th century, but the Rock City area may have been the first to introduce whimsical obstacles such as pipes and windmills in place of sand traps and water hazards. [back]