72: UPHILL BATTLE TO VISIT ANDREW JOHNSON

The alarm clock in our Lebanon, Virginia motel room went off at 7:00am, which was about an hour later than normal. I laughed to myself when I watched my photographer and his wife struggle to get out of bed. There was no doubt that the NASCAR race from the night before, with the heat and the crowd and the hills, had taken a toll on them. But for me, it was Sunday August 20, 2017 and I was excited to hit the road – I knew we were finally headed to some Presidential sites, and I couldn’t wait to get there. Even though Tom and Vicki loved their three-day NASCAR experience, I was glad it was over. It was time to move on do what I love the most – visit Presidential and historical sites. So long Jimmie Johnson and hello Andrew Johnson!

I had to admit that leaving Virginia made me sad. Not only was that state filled with beauty and history, it’s where Thomas Jefferson was born, had lived, and died – and Virginia will always be special to me. That Sunday morning drive was gorgeous as sporadic ground fog blanketed the hills and valleys of the countryside. I knew my photographer was anxious to get to Greeneville, Tennessee because he had talked a lot about meeting up with his friend Russell Emmette during most of the 90-mile drive. Like my camera man, Russell is a safety guy who works at Jarden Zinc Products outside of Greeneville. The two of them met for the first time in 2016 when Emmette came to Tom’s salt plant in St. Clair. As it turned out, Russell and his wife Amber were friends with a woman who lived in a house once owned by Andrew Johnson’s daughter, Martha Patterson. The couple had made arrangements for the three of us to visit the farmhouse and to meet the owner Chrystal Price.

We arrived at the Emmette family home that was located northeast of downtown Greeneville at 10:45am and after meeting his family, Russell and Amber led us to their friend’s historic farmhouse. During the two-mile journey, we drove past the Jarden Zinc plant where Tom saw where his friend worked; a mile later we pulled into the driveway of what was known as the historic Patterson farmhouse. In the 1850’s, Andrew Johnson purchased that home from a slave owner and he gave it to his eldest daughter Martha after she married David Patterson in December 1855. During Andrew Johnson’s Presidency, his wife Eliza was always ill and had little interest in social functions; which meant Martha Johnson Patterson served as White House hostess during her father’s term in office. Once the family returned to Greeneville after Johnson’s single term, the former President visited his daughter’s home occasionally for the remainder of his life. Six months after Andrew Johnson’s death on July 31, 1875; his wife Eliza died in the Patterson farmhouse. Chrystal’s home was also where Martha and her husband both died; David Patterson in 1891 and Martha in 1901. As I was carried around the front yard of the historic house, I overheard my photographer ask Chrystal several questions about her place – especially whether or not she had experienced any paranormal activity there. Although Chrystal said she hadn’t, I wasn’t convinced – I think she simply tried not to scare me.

We spent roughly 30 minutes at the Patterson farmhouse; some of the time I was posing with the historic home and the rest of our visit was listening to my photographer and his wife as they talked with Russell, Amber and Chrystal. I think at one time my photographer had planned on visiting the Andrew Johnson sites in Greeneville along with the Emmette’s, but their daughter had a softball game later in the day and that put the kiboshes to those plans.

Around noon, the three of us arrived at the Andrew Johnson National Historic Site Visitor Center that was located one block off Main Street in downtown Greeneville, Tennessee. The first thing my photographer did was try to obtain the free tickets for the next tour of Andrew Johnson’s homestead, which was scheduled to begin at 1:30pm. Unfortunately that tour was full as only 12 people were allowed on a single tour, so we had to settle for the 2:30pm tour. I had to laugh to myself when Vicki said to my photographer: “I can’t believe there are twelve people all wanting to go into that house at the same time. I actually thought we would be the only ones there.” We were also told that there was no air conditioning in Johnson’s house and if the temperature rose to 95 degrees or more inside the home, the tours would be cancelled. Since we were on a tight time schedule, and with the thermometer already hitting the low 90s, my photographer didn’t want to roll the dice and wait until 2:30 for nothing. In the meantime, we spent some time at the Visitor Center museum where we saw a handful of cool Andrew Johnson artifacts – including Johnson’s tailor shop that was housed inside a section of the museum that was built to protect the historic shop from the elements. Across the small side street from the center was Andrew Johnson’s early house that he and Eliza moved into shortly after their marriage. They lived there until 1851 when he bought a larger house a few blocks away.

Even though my photographer cancelled our 2:30pm reservations for a tour of Andrew Johnson’s homestead, he wanted to walk to the historic house and have me pose for photos with the building’s exterior. But on our quarter-mile uphill walk to Johnson’s house, two very interesting an unexpected events happened to the three of us. The first event occurred across East Depot Street from the Visitor Center as my photographer was capturing an image of an Andrew Johnson statue. As he snapped a handful of pictures, my cameraman noticed what he originally thought was a hummingbird. But as he got closer and focused in on the elusive ‘bird’, Tom noticed it had six legs, antennae, and a proboscis – similar to a butterfly. It turned out, after an investigation, that the beautiful creature was a hummingbird clearwing moth and with a body that’s covered in a coat of fur, it is often mistaken as a hummingbird.

The second event happened as my photographer and his wife walked up the steep sidewalk on East Summer Street. Both were dehydrated in the scorching heat, and when my photographer saw a woman sitting on a third-story balcony of an apartment building, he shouted up: “Excuse me, you don’t happen to know of a store that’s open on Sunday where we could buy some water. It seems every store in town is closed today and we are literally dying from the heat”. The woman replied: “Stay right there. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right down.” A minute or two later, the woman appeared at street level, and she handed Tom and Vicki two bottles of ice-cold water. It was at that moment that I thought to myself: “Now that’s what I call Southern hospitality. Something like that would likely never happen in the North; and it definitely would never happen in Connecticut.” As it turned out, that water may have saved us from a very tragic event in Greeneville, Tennessee as the uphill walk to Johnson’s house seemed longer than we had anticipated; especially in the extreme heat.

We finally arrived at the homestead of Andrew Johnson. It was a two-story brick house that he bought in 1851, but he didn’t reside there much until after his Presidency in 1869. However, their son Andrew Johnson, Jr. was born in the house before they had moved to Nashville and then to Washington D.C. During the Civil War, soldiers occupied the house and had left it in disrepair; especially when most of the Confederate soldiers considered Johnson a traitor to their cause. After the Johnson’s left the White House in 1869, Andrew and Eliza returned to their home, and they worked hard to restore it to the condition they had left it in. The Andrew Johnson Homestead was the last house that he ever owned. As I posed in front of the home, I had wished that we could tour the interior. But I knew that someday in the near future we would return to Greeneville. Not only did my photographer want to go inside the historic Johnson house, but he also wanted to spend more time with his friend Russell Emmette.

Thankfully for the health of my photographer and his wife, the walk back to the car was downhill; which made the hike tolerable even though it was still scorching hot. The three of us still had one final stop to make in Greeneville – the gravesite of our 17th President Andrew Johnson. Once we were inside the black oven that we called the Avenger, we made the one-mile journey past Johnson’s Homestead that we had just left and arrived at the Andrew Johnson National Cemetery a few minutes later. I knew my photographer was thankful that we drove to the cemetery as it was uphill from the homestead. Once we were inside the iron gates, Johnson’s gravesite was at the top of another hill. I laughed to myself when I heard my photographer say: “My God, we have walked our share of hills in this state. There was nothing but hills at the racetrack in Bristol and the hills are terrible here in Greeneville; I’m just tired of having to walk uphill everywhere we go. Get me back to flat ground!”

Not surprisingly, Vicki stayed in the air conditioned Avenger as my photographer carried me to the final resting place of Andrew Johnson. The cemetery was once part of 23-acres of property owned by Andrew Johnson. During the Civil War it was known as Signal Hill because it overlooked the town of Greeneville and soldiers would signal from there. After his untimely death, Andrew Johnson was laid to rest on August 3, 1875 and three years later his family had the 28-foot tall monument erected over his grave. As I stood outside of the iron fence that surrounded the Johnson plot, I thought about the fact that our 17th President was buried with his body wrapped in the American flag and a copy of the U.S. Constitution was placed beneath his head. That was all done according to his wishes. As I posed for a handful of photos near Johnson’s grave, another geeky-looking guy arrived at the site. I heard my photographer say to him: “It’s good to see someone else who enjoys visiting Presidential graves. I’ve been to the grave of every dead President except Nixon; and I’m going there next year. How about you?” When the guy said that it was the fifth grave of a President that he had visited, I almost laughed out loud for the first time. I also thought to myself: “He’s just a rookie. Heck, I’ve been to 31 Presidential graves out of the 38 myself; and I’ve only been doing this for the past four years.”

At 2:05pm, we left the cemetery and headed out of Greeneville. The three of us had enjoyed our visit – we loved the history; we loved the friendly people; but we hated the hills. However, as Rockstar Meat Loaf once sang: “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad”; and there was no doubt that we would return to Greeneville in the future. At one time, my photographer had planned on driving to Elizabethton, Tennessee in an effort to visit the home where Andrew Johnson had died, but with the heat of the day and the hills that we had walked, he changed the plans at the last minute. Not only did the change in plans save us an 80-mile roundtrip, it also meant that we would be able to get into Pigeon Forge, Tennessee earlier in the afternoon where we could visit the Titanic museum that Tom had wanted to see. Pigeon Forge had been designated as where we would spend the night as it put us in very good position for our drive to Sweetwater, Tennessee on Monday morning. Were there any Presidential sites in Sweetwater? No, but it was one of the towns that was almost directly in the center of the most anticipated celestial event in nearly 40 years – the 2017 total eclipse of the sun. I was one day from ‘blacking out’ for two minutes and thirty-seven seconds; and I couldn’t wait!