Bluegrass Night

We are halfway through our roadtrip through parts of Appalachian North Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. We spent the night in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and had dinner at the very "eclectic" (or is it "eccentric") Cranberry Thistle cafe last night, one of only two places to eat within walking distance of our hotel, the Eureka Inn. The cafe greets you with a sign suggesting you "Relax, You're on Jonesborough Time." We took the sign at its word and so sat for about 20-30 minutes without anyone acknowledging our presence before I went to the register and asked the woman there if we were supposed to order at the counter or what? She got up and hobbled on her cane to the back and produced the one-and-only server who came to our table and cheerfully asked "You here for coffee and dessert?" "No, we came for dinner." "I'm sorry but the kitchen closes at 7 " (it was 10 past, we had arrived about quarter till. Then ensued a discussion about how she had just been over in our area and "hadn't seen us" but I later surmised that since we were the only non-locals in the place, we were probably invisible to us for she had passed by us not once but several times. Anyway, she said they would be glad to reopen the kitchen and serve us dinner and proceeded to take our orders etc. All the while, in the background, from a back room of the restaurant came the soothing strains of bluegrass tunes, most of which I had never heard before, and occasionally some fellow in jeans would amble by, instrument in hand, and join the group. For the next 45 minutes or so we sat and enjoyed the concert coming from the back room. Turns out it was local musicians who get together every Wednesday night to jam. It was a real treat and worth the wait.

Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee and home to a major Storytelling Festival every summer. The town features lots of old, historic buildings and a Storytelling Center. In the summer they close off the main street downtown on certain days for music events. It was also home to some of the first pro-abolition, anti-slavery newspapers in the U.S. Andrew Jackson was once a lawyer here and Washington County was the first in the U.S. named after President George Washington. It and two other counties were originally part of North Carolina but seceded and formed the State of Franklin, which was eventually absorbed into the territory that became Tennessee.