Webmaster's note: I'm afraid I didn't get this up in time: I was out of town. I apologise!
I have written in my last two issues that we can expect to see a lot of folks coming in and out of Jellico this weekend. But I still did not realize what a turnout we may have! As I understand it, the UROC competition that will combine groups from both the eastern part of the United States with those from the western states will in effect, be a national championship series. Competitors are expected to come into Jellico on Thursday but others may arrive even earlier. (Tourism Director Jake reports that one competitor from California will be accompanied by over thirty individual from that state and he expects that those folks may possibly be here for several days.)
Over thirty states are expected to be represented including at least twelve western states and the usual representation from twenty or so eastern states. The participants will of course bring other folks such as support and maintenance personnel along with relatives and friends. And all of the publicity that the event is receiving should certainly insure a large crowd including a very large contingent of locals. (A couple of ladies in Caryville recently informed Jenny and I that they had seen stories and photos in local papers depicting the rock crawling at White Oak and are determined to be there this year to see it for themselves.)
(Remember that for this weekend’s huge competition only, that there will be no technical inspection in Veterans Park on Friday. Normally the actual rock crawling involves only Saturday and Sunday but three days of actual competition at White Oak will be required for this event starting Friday and running through Sunday.)
Jerome Smith who does much of the organizational planning, and who along with Jake and members of the Tourism Commission, perform much of the physical labor that is required to conduct such an activity, informs me that he anticipates reaching our goal this year of having at least one-hundred vehicles to enter our Annual Classic Car Show on Saturday. The idea is to keep the show growing each year and reaching that plateau would be a significant accomplishment. As I have previously reported, I have personally been contacted by two out-of-town owners of classic cars to inform me that they will enter those vehicles in our show this year for the first time. The more who enter, the more they are subject to help us in spreading the word to others about our show and hopefully enable the annual activity to continue to increase in interest.
Not previously mentioned in these articles is the fact that in addition to what has already been announced, the very popular alumni reunion of the old Pleasant View High School will be held only five miles away this Saturday night. That reunion – like our Jellico High School reunions – draws the old grads home from all over the country. (Jenny graduated from PVHS and I had a lot of friends at that school during my days at JHS including one fellow who comes all the way from Nevada for that activity. Others travel very great distances to be here as well.)
This will sure be a good weekend to see a lot of our old time friends and acquaintances as well as meeting a lot of new folks from all around the country.
Following the loss of our local radio station due to a fire, some of our senior citizens expressed to me how much they missed the station and its gospel music, preaching, local news and other programs, etc. And I committed to them at that time to try to assist in getting the station back on the air as quickly as possible for their benefit plus the fact that I strongly believe that Jellico needs a radio station. And I have always felt – and publicly expressed – that the closer we can locate as many businesses as possible near the downtown, the sooner the area will be revitalized.
I have several times expressed my support for placing the station on the unused city property near the city baseball park if all safety concerns can be met. And we have been assured by the engineer employed by the owners of the station that there would be absolutely no danger from the electrical power utilized by the station and that the tower would not be high enough to reach the field should it fall due to wind or other causes. However parents, grandparents and others are not convinced of that fact and are expressing their concerns to me and to some members of council.
And at our special call meeting of the Planning Commission, we were informed that our city’s zoning ordinances are very restrictive in what uses can be made of the proposed property since it is located in the flood plain, that it may not be legal to place the station there and that we could threaten our city’s flood insurance coverage. According to maps, the proposed site for the tower and studio is at – or near – the lowest elevation point in the flood zone and probably even lower than the original location of the station. We understand that when the property was purchased years ago with federal funding, the city of Jellico was required to establish such stringent restrictions as a part of the contract. The construction of new structures since that time has required building up their sites until they are above the established flood level. And all have been located on the “town side” of the tracks with no adverse effects upon the flow of water in the Elk Creek basin. (An exception was made by federal and state agencies for the waste-water disposal plant location due to its necessity for public health and most optimal placement.)
(We were also reminded that before we could even place dirt collected from cleaning out ditches on the property, that we had to have U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approval.)
We want to make the decision that is in the best interest of our town in this matter. But we do not want to rush to judgment because as one member of Council correctly pointed out, “once the decision is made and the facilities are in place, we cannot go back and correct any mistakes!
The City Council has been meeting in a series of workshops attempting to balance our projected budget for 2004-2005. Revenues have been reduced by the state, the cost of insurance for employees has skyrocketed, etc. so it has been a real problem. Ironically we expect to close out 2003-2004 with approximately $ 400,000.00 in our reserve funds after all obligations have been met. But under new state laws we cannot touch those funds short of a major emergency.
I started this article off by discussing all that will be taking place here during the upcoming weekend. And to top it off, this Sunday, June 20th, is Father’s Day. That too should bring more folks home to honor their fathers.
And I would like to mention my own father, Harvey Clyde Clifton, who passed away in 1980. (He was given the name Harvey in honor of Harvey M. Lafollette, founder of the city of Lafollette, who employed my grandfather, Ethan Allen Clifton, upon his immigration to this country from Ireland in the early 1890’s. However my dad was always known as Clyde.)
The family eventually moved to the city of Chattanooga where my grandfather was killed by an accident while working on a downtown building in that city. My father was only five at the time and his mother had to come back to this area to support him and a large family. With the help of relatives, she was able to open a boarding house on Kentucky Hill, and she and her children old enough to work found jobs to support themselves.)
My father was of course too young to work at that time and one day while he and some other children were playing in another area, a little girl picked up both hands full of sand and playfully tossed them into his face. The sand entered his eyes in such a large amount that he in pain and panic, ran all the way home and that allowed the sand to do extensive damage. Trained specialists in eye care were not available in those days and he became totally blind for an extended period of time and one eye eventually had to be removed and replaced with a prosthesis. Virtually resigned to total blindness for the rest of his life, he was both blessed and shocked after several months with the very slow recovery of partial vision in the other eye.
He made his driver’s license as a very young man in the days when no driver’s exam or vision screening was conducted and that license enabled him to operate a small truck that he used to deliver coal to homes in Jellico that he both loaded and unloaded with a hand shovel. He spent his entire life in constant fear that he might be called in for a vision check and possibly lose his license that would have prevented his working and providing for our family. He seldom if ever mentioned his handicap and I was a good-sized boy before I even realized his highly reduced vision. To my knowledge, he never asked for help from anyone as long as he could work. And he probably would have resented anyone’s offer of help.
Although both he and my mother lost their fathers at a very young age due to occupational accidents (my grandfather John Kasee was killed in a coal mine in Proctor Hollow) and had to go to work to help support their families which prevented their attending school for very long, they were determined to provide their children with as much education as we desired and that they could find ways to finance.
I struggled for years to earn money to add to what financial help they could provide me in an effort to receive a college degree. On one occasion dad had saved money in a fruit jar in his garage where he kept his truck in operating condition. When he gave it to me to use to pay for my last semester of school, it was a collection of coins of all denominations, one dollar bills and a few fives and tens. And every cent of it had been a sacrifice upon his part. Although I could never have repaid him, hopefully when I stood on the stage at Cumberland College being recognized as the top graduate of the class of 1967 it somehow made up for some of that sacrifice. I looked out into the audience where my parents were sitting and the pride on their faces meant everything in the world to me. It appeared that dad’s chest would burst out of the shirt he was wearing. It was one of the proudest moments of my life and one that I will treasure for the rest of my life.
A few years ago, I was interviewed by Fred Brown, reporter for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, concerning a project that I had constructed utilizing recovered brick and lumber from the old Jellico High School building that had been razed to make room for the present building and where I had served as principal for so many years. One of the questions that Brown asked me was, “Who is the greatest man that you personally have ever met?” And without a moment’s hesitation, I answered, “My father!” Greatness comes in a lot of ways and a man who devotes his entire life to his family, no matter how humble the fare, certainly ranks as great in my estimation. It was American humorist and writer Mark Twain who once commented on how much his father had learned from the time he was a boy until he became a man. And the same was true with me. As I matured with age and realized more and more just what he meant to me, I would have been proud to have taken him anywhere at anytime dressed in his work clothes covered with grease and coal dust and introduced him as my father. He was my dad, my best friend, my benefactor and an individual that I admired above all other men.
Although he has been dead for twenty-four years now, he still holds, and will always hold, that very, very special place in my heart. And I thank God for providing us with such a wonderful father for the many years that our family was so richly blessed to have had him!
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