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In Nashville we had settled into Hope Baptist Church, a small church that shared space with a Seventh Day Adventist Church (they met on Saturdays, we met on Sundays.) I was involved with the worship bands. Amy had many new mothers to get to know. We had great home groups and a lot of aspiring musicians. The preacher was chill and liked to play basketball (so did I at the time.) It was a great place of stability and growth.
It was a hard decision to move an hour south, but we needed to, both professionally and personally. I worked in one community. Amy essentially worked in another. We lived in one community and went to church in another community. I felt so…stretched. I talked to Amy about the need to live, work, and go to church in the same community. That ended up being Columbia.
Columbia is about 50 miles from Nashville, but only 25 miles from Franklin, which is the start of the Davidson County Metro area. However, Columbia is its own community. The population is around 35k. There is a community college and a lot of light industry. It is famous for being “The Mule Capitol of the World” because of the gianormous mules that are bred in the county.
General Motors built a state-of-the-art automobile manufacturing facility in the county between Columbia and Spring Hill. They built the “Saturn” line from 1990 to 2009. It was quite an “interesting” time for the traditional southern area to be flooded with hundreds of “Yankees” from Michigan.
Nashville and Davidson County in general were used to an influx of people from all over the country and the world. Nashville surrendered to “The North” early in the Civil War. The citizens of Nashville had seen what could happen to cities like Richmond. Not wanting their city burned to the ground, they surrendered quickly to the Northern troops, and Fort Nashboro was a Northern occupation for the entire Civil War. Columbia and Maury County were a bit less “Metropolitan” and more “Old South” in their ways.
The story is that the day before the “Battle of Franklin” in 1864, Southern General Nathan Bedford Forest and his cohorts “made vows” that were precursors to the Ku Klux Klan as they camped between Columbia and Spring Hill in Maury County countryside. The next day fourteen Confederate generals (six killed or mortally wounded, seven wounded, and one captured) and 55 regimental commanders were casualties.
In the late 40’s there was the “Columbia Race Riots” incident where the Tennessee Highway patrol was called in to sweep through the “College Hill” neighborhood. There was gunfire from both African Americans and White Americans. Officers were shot and two African Americans in police custody were killed. It was ugly.
I lived in Middle Tennessee for 13 years and I heard exactly 1 racial slur come from a white individual about African Americans. I did not live an insulated life. I worked with a variety of people from a variety of social and financial strata. My perception was that “white folk” were in a delicate position. Historically, our race was responsible for slavery and discrimination, yet none of us were individually responsible for slavery and we were damn-sure we weren’t going to perpetuate the discrimination. Actually, I have felt more “racial tension” here in Kansas City than I ever felt in Columbia.
Columbia also had such a wide variety of what I can only call “stereotypical” housing. On one end of the spectrum, there were giant Antebellum plantation-sized homes. Some were tourist attractions, but others were simply private residences. Some were in the middle of town. Others were in the middle of fields with long tree-lined driveways leading up to column-ed front porches with rocking chairs. Other parts of town had rickety tarpaper shanties on dirt plots.
We moved to a great neighborhood on “Wahella Way.” It was a unique area. Our house was plain, and one-story. But our lot was huge (over 300 feet deep) and perfect for our boys. The back yard was like a park. The front yard had a magnolia tree (as did everyone else in our neighborhood.) Instead of living 39 miles from work I now lived 1.5 miles from work. It was a great place of growth for our family for the next 5 years.
chris
For more information about the Battle of Franklin:
For more information about the “Columbia Race Riots”:
For more information about the “Saturn Corporation”:
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