Memories of Watts Bar Resort

It’s snowing again. I am not a fan of snow. It hinders one’s mobility in a car or on foot, and then there’s the cold. It makes these old joints ache and, well, it’s just too freaking cold. So what did I start doing? I’m remembering summer days from my youth. Specifically, vacations at Pete Smith’s Watts Bar Resort, in eastern Tennessee.

Thomas Wolfe wrote the novel You Can’t Go Home Again, and perhaps there are many things in this world that are best left to our memories, and not updated with current realities. My family’s favorite vacation spot from the 1960’s and early-‘70’s is probably one of those things. Several years ago I was on my way back from visiting my daughter and her new family in Cleveland, Tennessee. I was heading north on Interstate-75, and had seen the sign on my way down pointing to Watts Bar Dam, a few miles to the west on Highway 68. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day, and I had plenty of time. I decided to make a small detour, exited the freeway, and headed west.

Watts Bar Dam is one of a series of hydroelectric dams built on the Tennessee River by the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, during the ‘30’s and ‘40’s as a means of flood control and to provide electric power to an underdeveloped portion of the country. It also provided much needed construction jobs during the Great Depression. A small village of cabins were built for use by the workers, and were unused in 1950, when an entrepreneur named Pete Smith entered into a long-term lease with the TVA, and renovated the cabins for use as Pete Smith’s Watts Bar Dam Resort.

Pete and his wife Sally operated the place from April through October each year, then spent the off season traveling around the world. Must have been a pretty nice life. The Game Room in the Gift Shop/Restaurant building featured mounted skulls with horns from Antelopes and Thomson’s Gazelles that Pete (or someone) had shot on safari in Africa, with little brass plaques to identify the origins. My brothers and I found them fascinating. The gift shop was full of unusual little keepsakes from around the world. I’m sure there are a few items purchased there that are still around the house someplace.

From a modern entertainment perspective, the place was pretty boring when you think about it. Originally, they offered horseback riding, and Rick, Gary and I took several rides through the woods in the hot June air, swatting mosquitoes and horseflies. Once or twice was all it took before the luster wore off of that activity. In the later years, the stables closed, a victim of apathy and rising liability insurance.  The lake was a much better choice for recreation. Dad would rent a little aluminum fishing boat with a small outboard motor for the week, and we boys would use it for fishing or just cruising around (without parental supervision). For kids too young for a driver’s license, anything with a motor is cool. The entire family also usually rented a pontoon boat for a day, and took a picnic lunch prepared by the restaurant, cruising all over Watts Bar Lake, and occasionally stopping to fish or just lie in the sun.

Much of our time was spent by the pool, which was located beside the restaurant. You could get lunch, a sundae, or lemonade served by waitresses poolside in the afternoons. It was thrill for us kids to be able to sign for our own food, just like an adult. I remember a cute little lifeguard that worked there one year. Rick was running beside the pool, and she called out: “Don’t run. Don’t run around the pool.” Her melodious voice with a thick southern accent extended the simple seven-word warning into a much longer and sweeter sounding request. We began running around the pool just to hear her voice. For weeks afterwards that summer, and even years later, we would mimic her to each other, warning: “Don’t ruuunnn around the ppoooll!” I can still hear her in my head.

Pete and his wife Sally kept the grounds immaculate. Sally and Pete’s sister looked after the flowers, which were everywhere, while Pete drove around in the mornings directing the large crew of migrant workers in their mowing and trimming, which was a non-stop chore. Fresh-cut flowers graced the dining room tables, and huge areas of plantings were visible from every window.  The workers were Mexican, and mostly the same crew came up every year and lived on-site beside the guests. The term “illegal alien” had not yet come into vogue, and we never thought much about the workers, but we always waved and smiled at them, and they did the same. Katy oversaw the kitchen. She had a prosthetic leg, and a sarcastic wit. She liked to tease me, since I was the youngest, but she made up for it when we would make a late evening run up to the snack bar for a tin roof sundae or a banana split. If Katy made it, I could count on extra whip cream.

The restaurant was one of the reasons that kept my family coming back year after year. There was a mural on the wall leading into the dining room that had a map showing the resort in relation to major population centers around the country. It also showed travel times, based on an average speed of 35 MPH. Even in the mid-'60's I couldn't imagine travelling at an average speed of 35. The food was always good, and the service was excellent. Breakfast included fresh squeezed orange juice, and typical fare like eggs, French toast, and old fashioned buckwheat cakes. Grits were available but they didn’t expect us Yankees to order them (Pete and Sally were both from Michigan originally, I think), although I seem to remember Gary taking a liking to grits at some point (Years later, I remember him ordering them on a drive we took to Florida).  Fresh biscuits were made twice daily, and the old ones were torn up and put in the bird feeders just outside the dining room windows. We would watch the procession of blue jays, cardinals and mockingbirds fly in and out, leaving each time with a big piece of biscuit clenched in their beaks. Lunch was big burgers, club sandwiches or chef salads, usually eaten poolside. Alternatively you could get a box lunch to take out on the boat with you. The menu changed nightly, rotating among various dishes of southern specialties. Each dinner included soup, and a salad chosen from a tray containing various Jell-O salads, fruit cups and cole slaw. The entrée and sides came next, and then a large tray of pies, cakes and cobblers was circulated at the end of each meal. Although we were never that big on eating desserts in restaurants as a family, that convention usually gave way to tempting choices, like my favorite coconut cream pie, every evening at Watts Bar.

The dam itself was an attraction. You could take guided tours that started in the art deco styled lobby and then led down via elevator to the generator area of the dam. Facts and figures were reeled off while wide-eyed boys like my brothers and I stared at the huge dynamos. Another attraction for boys like us was the cars around the resort. Pete drove an older Mercedes sedan when we first started going there, or one of several Checker sedans that he kept on site. He liked the bulletproof reliability of the Checkers, which were once the standard taxicab in the U.S., but he really liked Mercedes-Benz autos. His wife drove a black 190SL roadster with red leather interior, with its convertible top usually down. Pete told us several stories of his wife’s 100-MPH speeding tickets once we got to know him.

In 1968 or 1969, Pete got a Mercedes 300SEL, with the 4.5 liter V-8, Mercedes’ top-of-the-line sedan at the time (other than their limos). He stopped to talk with us while we were walking back to our cabin from dinner, and he was heading up to check up on things after one of his frequent Scotch breaks back at his house at the end of the lane. He was much more talkative in the evenings, and you could almost read from the red glow coming off of his nose. He had picked the car up at the factory in Germany, then drove it around Europe with Sally, before ending the trip in Portugal, where he planned to have it shipped back to the States. He was watching a big Mercedes (he thought it was his) being loaded by crane onto the ship. Just then a horn sounded. A general dock strike had been called, and the crane operator simply abandoned his job, allowing the car to slip into the harbor with a huge splash. Pete was crazed as he raced to over to where the cars were stored, and was relieved to find his car was still on the ground, and in one piece. He loaded his wife and luggage back into the car, and headed for Spain and a safe return for both the big Mercedes and the Smiths.

Pete was usually dressed the same every day. He wore loose, loudly patterned Hawaiian shirts, cotton shorts, and the most unusual shoes. They were called “Happy Toes” and consisted of a flat rubber sole, squared at the back and round at toes, with canvas wrapping your foot. There was no tongue, and the shoe had thick laces that cut into the top of your foot if you wore them all day. We usually picked up a new pair every year in the gift shop. I’ve searched on-line, but can’t find them anywhere, as if they’ve vanished from human consciousness. They didn’t offer much arch support, but they were comfortable and carefree, much like Watt’s Bar Resort. I once saw Pete wearing long pants when he was coming back from a trip into town and couldn't figure what was wrong until someone mentioned that it was the first time they had seen him without his trademark shorts.

Over time, we became friends with the Smiths and their crew, learning their history, and sharing stories. They cried with us when we returned the summer after Rick died. When Gary drove down in his Mercedes roadster, a powder blue 280SL in 1971, I thought Pete would be more interested in it, but it was Sally who really checked out the car when he arrived a few days after Mom, Dad and I had already checked in. Maybe Pete was worried that Sally wanted to upgrade, but he was happy to provide a hose and water so that Gary could wash it as soon as he got there.          

We used the resort as a starting or stopping point from other trips, too. In 1967, Mom took my brothers and I sightseeing in Washington, DC, before meeting Dad at the Knoxville Airport for our trip to Watt’s Bar. The Arab-Israeli War had just broken out, and we were in a traffic jam on Pennsylvania Avenue, caught between protesting Arabs on one side of the street, and pro-Israeli demonstrators on the other side. Our Ford LTD had an after-market A/C unit that caused the car to overheat in traffic, and as Mom reached down to shut it off, she tail-ended a Corvair driven by a Capitol Guard on his way to work. He was a nice guy who took pity on my diminutive mother and her brood of three boys trapped in the middle of an international dispute. He was also glad to find out that we were well insured. One year we stopped to see Cumberland Falls, and another year, the entire family finally succumbed to the “See Rock City” ads painted on barns that grew more frequent the closer you got to the resort. Rock City was a tourist trap located atop Lookout Mountain outside of Chattanooga. Dad and I toured the Jack Daniels Distillery in central Tennessee once, when the rest of the family just wanted to go home.
   
Perhaps I should have left it at the memories, but I’m a curious sort sometimes, so I headed back toward our old favorite vacation spot after my visit with Andrea. The road toward the dam was vaguely familiar, although I think we only came in that way once or twice. The Interstate hadn’t been completed when we first starting going there, and we approached from the west, through the little town of Spring City. The first major change that I noticed were the cooling towers for the nuclear plant that had been added down river from the dam. That was new to me, and looking much like Three Mile Island’s cooling towers, they didn’t inspire a glad-to-be-here feeling. Crossing the bridge over the dam, I came to the entry to the facility, where our tours used to start. It was now enclosed with high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Signs were posted telling one in no uncertain terms that visitors were not welcome. I suppose in this age of terrorism the last thing you want is a group of strangers roaming around the bowels of your hydroelectric dam, next to your nuclear power facility. I drove on, and was almost past the old Gift Shop/Restaurant when I realized that it was there. The landscaping, once a well-tended lush delight was now overgrown, with huge bushes nearly hiding the building. Turning down the lanes toward the cabins, it appeared that the pool was either filled-in, or at least abandoned. The place now catered to hard-core fishermen, who apparently prefer to stay on top of the water, in a boat. The cabins, once painted bright white, were now a sickly looking light brown. Moss grew on roofs. Bushes were too big, lawns were patchy and brown. I took a few pictures with my phone’s camera, turned around, and headed home.

Memories are sometimes best left undisturbed. Doing further research for this post, I learned that this entire section of the waterway had been polluted by a fly ash spill from a coal-fired power plant up river in 2008. The resort had closed, been abandoned, and eventually bulldozed. A sad ending to place that generated such happy experiences. The world was a better place with people like Pete and Sally Smith running a first class business that allowed families to find a way to unwind and enjoy spending time with each other. A world where youngsters could learn firsthand about amazing technologies that they were only vaguely aware of before is a better place than one that hides behind razor wire and keeps everyone away. Things are bound to change, and not always for the better. I am, however, happy to have had the experience. As Bob Hope always sang at the end of each performance: “Thanks for the memories.”