Knoxify

Photo by: ZenOp­tic

This is a guest post by Chad Huskey.

I’ve lived in Knoxville all my life. I grew up in South Knoxville close to Sey­mour. So as a kid that’s all I knew of our lit­tle town. I went to a small ele­men­tary school, and an even smaller Pen­te­costal church. Need­less to say, my view of Knoxville, and the world in gen­eral, were not exactly “diverse”. I assumed every­one, played with their Papaw’s hunt­ing dogs, and had a creek run­ning through their front yard. My brother and I romped up and down the side of the moun­tain behind our house, rode bikes down the road for miles, and roamed all over our neighbor’s yards with out any­one giv­ing it a sec­ond thought. All my friends all lived pretty much the same way. To me, Knoxville was no big­ger than a few county roads with no lines painted on them, and going to town meant going to the Kmart and Kroger on Chap­man Highway.

Then one day, just out of the blue, I was smacked upside the head with…middle school. The Knox County School Board decided it was time to com­bine South-Young Mid­dle & High with Doyle Mid­dle & High. So now I was being shipped on a bus from my lit­tle world, to a great big huge melt­ing pot of a school. I was amazed by the some of the kids I met. We had kids, in Knoxville, who lived in hous­ing projects? Kids who lived in high dol­lar sub­di­vi­sions? Kids who have only played games on con­crete? Kids who believe in dif­fer­ent reli­gions? My mind was offi­cially blown.

Look­ing back, I was appre­hen­sive, angry, mys­ti­fied, and just upset in gen­eral that I had to learn to deal with all these things. I was sup­posed to be going to “Doyle Mid­dle” another rural coun­try school, not “South-Doyle Mid­dle”. For all its flaws and all the times I got angry with this new place, and new peo­ple, I am glad that I had to have all those new expe­ri­ences. It was an eye opener. My par­ents had always taught me not to judge peo­ple, and that all peo­ple are the same, but up to that point that was pretty easy to accept because every­one I knew, up to that point, really was the same. They had the same life style, skin color, reli­gion, accent, and income. I was able to learn, not just to tol­er­ate, but to accept people’s dif­fer­ences, and to appre­ci­ate them for who they are.

So, you might ask, “What they heck does any of this have to do with Knoxville as a whole, and what is this yahoo ram­bling on about his mid­dle school and hunt­ing dogs for!?”. I’m get­ting there! Jeez…

As I get older I am con­tin­u­ally amazed how much Knoxville, much like my first day at mid­dle school, sur­prises me. Our scruffy lit­tle city has turned into quite the diverse lit­tle town. We have some­thing for every­one. We have our high dol­lar sub divi­sions, his­toric neigh­bor­hoods, log cab­ins way back in the hills, groovy down­town lofts, trailer parks, and pub­lic hous­ing; we’ve got our art dis­tricts, coun­try clubs, muse­ums, his­toric the­aters, and var­i­ous music venues; we’ve got line danc­ing, gay bars, smoke filled pubs, dance clubs, red­neck bars, and gentlemen’s clubs; we’ve got mom and pop delis, five star din­ing, buf­fets, fast food out the wazoo, coun­try kitchens, Mex­i­can, Ital­ian, Indian, Greek, Cuban, and any other eth­nic food you can shake a stick at; also we have designer cloth­ing, giant malls, antiques, col­lectibles, Wal-Marts, and Tar­gets, we’ve got rich folks, poor folks, mid­dle class, and the unfor­tu­nate home­less; there’s blue col­lar, white col­lar, sen­a­tors, states­men, repub­li­cans, democ­rats, lib­er­tar­i­ans, and inde­pen­dents; we’ve got Bap­tist, Catholics, Uni­ver­sal­ists, Jews, Mus­lims, Hin­dus, Bud­dhists, Athe­ists and all points in between; we have pub­lic schools, pri­vate schools, com­mu­nity col­leges, and the gal’ dang Ten­nesse Vols!…Phew!

I drive around Knoxville, and real­ize how truly blessed we are. We have some of the very best of all worlds, and I’m just thank­ful for it. Espe­cially to have it all wrapped up in our cozy lit­tle town. I hope we can all open our eyes and embrace the diver­sity we are so lucky to be a part of.