Blog 3369 – 01.23.2025

Fentress County, Tennessee

In the early Spring of 2011, I was on a week long out of town work assignment in Birmingham, Alabama that consisted of third party surveillance of some gas pipe being coated at a pipe mill there. On Friday when the assignment ended I called my brother who at the time lived in Atlanta, Georgia and told him I was nearby by and would like to see him that weekend. He said that he would be at his weekend place that he had purchased some years before near Jamestown, Tennessee in Fentress County. I got directions from him and headed that way after work that afternoon. I figured to drive straight through, take a nap in my Jeep outside his door and be there when he woke up Saturday morning.

While there Saturday, with Robert and his companion Edwin, whom he later married, he told me that he had recently purchased a “cabin” nearby and that I could spend Saturday night in the cabin and meet him and Ed at their place again for breakfast before I headed back to Houston. He also intimated that I could stay in the cabin rent free anytime I was working in the area.

I took pictures of the place to visualize myself living there in Fentress County. First let me say a picture of shed on his new property (pictured first below) is what I think of as a cabin. The place looked more like a Swiss Chalet to me. I named it Brothers Cabin.

I got to live in Brothers Cabin later that same year for a couple of months while I worked about fifty miles away in Livingston, Tennessee. The daily commute to work was beautiful.

When my work there ended a friend that I had met gave me the covering pictured above on my bed. It features Fentress County’s most famous person Sergeant Alvin York who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism and bravery in World War One. If you have not seen it, watch the movie, Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper.

Tomorrow I will write about the place I am today, where have been trying to spend at least one day a week: Newton County, Texas near Bon Wier where my son Jay and I own property. It is about to get daylight. Time to get to work helping to make Jay’s Hundred Acre Wood dream come true.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White