Not Everything is a Theory

We drove 459 miles in 12 hours today. Started in Knoxville and ended in Memphis. Our first destination was the courthouse in Dayton, TN where the Scopes trial took place. The courthouse wasn't hard to find. Dayton's a very typical small town, with a town square and courthouse in the middle. To get inside the courthouse, we had to walk through a metal detector. There was a big "No Guns" sign outside, so when my camera set off the metal detector, the cop on duty asked me, only semi-sarcastically, "Do you have any guns with you?" His drawl was impossibly thick and overwhelmingly cute, and he looked the part, very much like Jackie Gleason in Smokey and the Bandit. I asked about the museum, and he responded with friendly directions to the basement. We went downstairs and at first it didn't look like there was that much, just a glass case with some books in it and a display on the wall. But then we discovered another whole room with the bulk of the exhibit, and as we walked into it the volunteer guide arrived for his shift. He was an enthusiastic older man, and he told us he would tell us about the trial if wanted to hear about it.

He began by saying that since he's been voluteering at the museum, everything he thought about the trial has changed. He said he now thinks very differently of Clarence Darrow, for instance. When I asked what he thought of Darrow before, he said he used to think only bad things, but he's now learned that Darrow did a lot of good as a lawyer before being involved in the Scopes trial. This was the first of many interactions between myself and our guide. Our second exchange concerned whether there have ever been unjust laws that called for outside intervention by someone like the ACLU. And our third exchange concerned what it means to call evolution a "theory not a fact". Although these exchanges made my Mom so uncomfortable that she left the museum, I thought they went wonderfully well. All three were genuine conversations, in which we listened patiently and responded to each other.

That said, his views were very predictable. To focus on the last exchange: according to our guide, a theory is something that is "possible but not practical" and something that "there's no proof for". The only evidence that he was aware of for evolutionary theory was some sort of tooth that someone claimed was from the "missing link" between monkees and people (like Oliver the Humanzee, I guess). And since they have since shown that this tooth was not from the "missing link", we can only conclude that there's no evidence of evolution.

I thought that we were able to have a civil conversation about such a contention issue was rather heart-warming, even though our conversation didn't really make any progress. I flatter myself to think that I gave him something to think about, at least.

Another big theme of our guide's account of the trial was that it wasn't really the result of the ACLU meddling in local affairs. Rather, it was the result of ingenious entrepreneurship on the part of some of Dayton's businessmen. This seems to be a theme of recent accounts of the trial and although I don't doubt that local businessmen saw in the possibility of a trial the possibility of bringing a lot of business and attention to a small town that had fallen on hard times, one has to wonder why people find this sort of revisionary history so compelling. I mean, it's not like the trial solved Dayton's economic woes.

One other thing I found out by talking to our guide and looking at the exhibit: anti-evolution people are obsessed with monkeys.

After Dayton, we went to lunch in Chattanooga, at a Jane and Michael Stern place called Zarzour's. My mom had the meatloaf and actually liked it, which partly redeemed the Sterns in her eyes. She's long been a skeptic.

From Chattanooga, we drove across northern Alabama to Muscle Shoals. On the way, we stopped by the Unclaimed Baggage Center, where they sell stuff from lost airplane luggage. I had heard about this place before, and imagined it would be an enormous hangar-like space full of random bags, and you would just buy a bag without knowing what was inside it. Sadly, it's not like that at all. All the stuff is processed and priced, and the inside looks like a combination department store/thrift store. Unlike a thrift store, however, a lot of the stuff for sale is in really good condition. And that's understandable, because it's not like anyone chose to get rid of the stuff for sale at the Unclaimed Baggage Center. I got a very nice navy blue blazer that fits perfectly. It was $25.

We got to Muscle Shoals at 4pm, which was when I wanted to get there, but it was all in vain. I wanted to take a tour of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, which has only recently been restored to the appearance of its glory days and opened for tours, but when we got there, no one was there. The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio is close to my heart, because a lot of my favorite records were made there, including the first half of Aretha Franklin's first Atlantic record and some classic Rolling Stones sides.

It turns out Helen Keller was born right outside Muscle Shoals, so we drove by her birthplace.

After Muscle Shoals, we drove across northern Mississippi to Holly Springs, but this too was in vain. Our destinations in Holly Springs were supposed to be Phillip's Grocery (for dinner) and Graceland Too, but Phillip's Grocery is only open for lunch and my mom wasn't in the mood for Graceland Too. So we went to dinner at the only restaurant we could find in all of Holly Springs: Annie's Restaurant. Annie's Restaurant was slightly other-worldy, in that it couldn't possibly exist in any more populated area. Not everything on the menu was actually available, and the waiter had to return to the table at least three times after taking our order, just to ask us questions about what we ordered that he had neglected to ask the first time around.

Post-dinner, we drove the remaining 35 miles to Memphis.

On the listening side of things, we started listening to Stephen Ambrose's account of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Undaunted Courage. So far, it's pretty engaging. He really thinks a lot of Lewis's journals, and it's making me want to check them out. What'll probably happen, however, is that I'll buy them and then never actually look at them. We'll see.