Michael came over Friday afternoon to spend a few days. He's going to be on vacation next week. It was nice to have some time with him.

Saturday after lunch, we drove up to Greeneville and spent the afternoon with Ray, Sharon, and Laura. It was great to see Laura and she was able to give us more information about what had happened with Stephen. That was helpful.

The next morning, we visited the Gray Fossil Museum. In about 2001, a road crew working on a highway started finding fossils in the earth they were moving. When they called in a paleontologist, it was determined that the fossils were of scientific interest. Governor Don Sundquist got involved, the highway route was shifted so the fossil site could be excavated, and the museum was built to tell the story of the site, from 7 million years ago when a cave collapsed and formed a sinkhole pond that attracted a diversity of wildlife (alligators, camels, rhinoeri, tapirs, saber-toothed cats, bears, ground sloths, etc.), some of whom died near the sinkhole and wound up getting buried and fossilized to be dug up later.

I took a couple of pictures:

Karen liked the turtles.

After the museum, we went to Mr. K's (the used bookstore) and found some interesting books. One I got is called "Let the Record Show," by Patty Smithdeal Fulton. It's the story of Hackett Smithdeal, a man who grew up in East Tennessee between 1900 and 1960. In the late 50's, he was running the taxi company in Johnson City when Roy Faircloth moved from Florida to Johnson City and bought the Chevrolet dealership. The author is Hackett's daughter.

She describes how Roy refused to honor a verbal price agreement when Hackett bought a fleet of new taxis, insisting on a higher price than what they had agreed on verbally ahead of time. The next time he had to buy cars, Hackett dealt with the Plymouth dealership and Roy got mad at him.

After harassing Hackett and his family for several years, Roy eventually attacked Hackett on the street. When he reached into his pocket, apparently for a gun, Hackett got to his first and shot and killed Roy.

Hackett was tried for first degree murder and acquitted. It's an interesting story. I think I find it particularly interesting because it's local to the area.