By Shirley Uphouse
I have never considered myself a feminist. I've not burned my bra nor carried a sign in the rain, but I do believe in equal rights and recognition for women. That's why, when on a recent trip from Florida, north to the Shenandoah Valley, I encountered a gender mystery, what I considered a slight to the women of that area. Women who nurtured and lived with their husbands. Women who served as politicians, doctors and pioneers contributing to the good life for their communities.
A few miles north of Asheville, just over the Tennessee border, a twenty-four mile stretch of new, smooth, multi-lane highway slithers over the rugged peaks and hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains, welcoming travelers to this remote and beautiful mountain country. Before completion of this super highway, travel over the old, narrow roads was slow as they wound through the valleys, climbed steep mountains and plunged down the other side.
Riding along this silky highway, I looked way down to spaghetti-like dirt roads and miniature farm houses. Across the narrow slices of valleys, cows leaned against the shadowed mountainside, grazing their tilted pastures.
Builders of the new route 181, in an attempt to tame the old gnarled road, draped the new highway from ridge to ridge like a string of lights on a Christmas tree. At lower levels the grander church steeples pierce the space alongside the smooth flowing highway, but most of route 181 slides along high above life below.
To accomplish this awesome task, twenty bridges were erected within the twenty-four mile span, and every one is named for a man: Ralph Edwards, Parley F. Rice, Robert Love, Shell Masters, Guy Erwin. This niggled at my sense of fairness, and as I read name after name, bridge by bridge, I tried to make sense of it. Why only men? I know it's not against the law to name a bridge after a woman. I know of two in Cherokee County, North Carolina.
Who had the right to decide which names would be used, and were women not allowed a vote? Was it by vote at the local Elk Lodge, Men Only Night? Were counts tallied on the wall of the mens' room at the Black Dog Cafe in nearby Erwin, Tennessee?
"Maybe," I told Warren, my husband, who shared none of my curiosity, "maybe these men donated land for the project." No, that didn't work. The state could take any land they needed for any highway. They wouldn't count on donations.
I recalled the legend of the Brooklyn Bridge. Of the man who, while working on the tall framework, fell to his death, entombed forever in concrete. Yes, that's how these men earned a bridge: as workers on this highway who fell off a mountain to their death. Even in my freewheeling frame of mind I wondered about the three Wilson men, each with his own bridge. Quite a coincidence, three deaths in one family. Perhaps faulty Wilson genes caused clumsiness, a lack of coordination. Poor boys, they were doomed from the start.
"Solomon Hendrix Jones," I read the sign on one of the longer bridges. "What a great bridge name. Someone may have given him a little push," I said in jest.
"Uh huh," Warren replied.
Twenty deaths in twenty-four miles seemed excessive even for this lofty highway. "Perhaps," I continued thinking out loud, " while driving the old, steep road, these men miscalculated and crashed to their deaths in the pit of the valley, thereby marking a place for a bridge in their name." I acknowledged those men had earned their own bridge, but I did take some pleasure in noting that the women of the area were evidently better drivers.
Settling back to reality and bereft of plausible theories, I promised to research this phenomenon. Back home I wrote the Tennessee Department of Transportation, who referred me to the Legislative Services Office of the Tennessee General Assembly, who referred me to Senator Herron, who referred me to the Tennessee Library of Archives, who referred me to the Tennessee General Assembly. My quest had brought me full circle with no answer. Along the highway to truth, I learned that the Tennessee Department of Transportation has no set criteria for selecting memorial names for bridges or highways.
And it was suggested that possibly these men had done something important in that locale. That seemed logical. The Guy Erwin bridge was not far from the town of Erwin, Tennessee. But, for me, the mystery remains. Why only men? Surely there were women who've made major contributions to the area.
I had expected a clear and finite answer to this mystery. Surely something as visual as these signs, bearing these names, on a heavily traveled highway would have come about through a precise procedure. Instead I fallen into the abyss of uncharted political stew. The half-answers, the hot potato shuffle, had left me with more questions than ever. I am sorry I abandoned my fanciful theories to search for facts. I wish I had stayed with my playful scenario tallying votes on the wall in the mens room at the Black Dog Cafe.