Category: Knoxville

Retired letter carrier Ronnie Hensley gives directions only by businesses that have closed, and his neighbors have started doing it back to him.

The Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Association has added a rule barring developers from saying “walkable” or “vibrant” in presentations. It was tested Thursday by a man with an apartment proposal and a question about “strollable.”

Knox County Animal Control is looking for a raccoon to help pay for a van. Field supervisor Lonnie Beck read about a Virginia department’s T-shirt fundraiser and thinks the county’s budget requests have been going about it the wrong way.

A Baptist church in Halls gave its Sunday coffee urn a standing committee and named the man who makes the coffee as chairman. He kept the key.

A Western saloon moving into the former Mirage space on Gay Street has been approved for a hitching rail. The city sent the request to the bicycle-parking office, which asked for the wheel diameter.

KNOXVILLE — The Sunsphere elevator’s “out of service” sign was made by a maintenance hand who has since retired, and the tower still brings it to his house when the laminate clouds. His wife bought a replacement. He says the lettering is too skinny.

KNOXVILLE — A downtown law firm keeps a partner’s kangaroo in its lobby, and people from nearby offices have been signing in to see her. The receptionist is out an apple a day. A partner calls the foot traffic business development.

KNOXVILLE — Ron Pettigrew, 63, has kept a 20-ounce mug on the wall of a Central Avenue brewery since 2015 and would like it left there when the ten-ounce mugs come in. The brewery sent a coupon good only in the new mug.

Ruth Ann Whitaker, 81, bought a jar of bread-and-butter pickles in 1994 and has moved it through two house moves without opening it. A fresh jar goes on the counter before every family gathering.

Leonard Mercer, 77, has held the 7:40 Tuesday tee time at Knoxville Municipal Golf Course since 1974 and has written the Sports Authority asking to be counted as an existing tenant. The renderings label the seventh green “open space.”

FARRAGUT — A homeowners association newsletter has run the same trash-container notice since 1994. A board motion to review it died without a second, and the original author in Ohio has not been asked.

LENOIR CITY — Ray Dockery, 71, has written TVA a third time asking that his last word be struck from the Norris Dam time capsule. TVA has sealed it and sent another tour coupon.

CEDAR BLUFF — Wayne Hensley, 68, emailed the organizers of Rally US with his Tuesday drive time to a restaurant in Alcoa and asked where it would be posted. The reply thanked him for his interest in attending as a spectator.

FOUNTAIN CITY — Harold Dyer, 82, read his rain gauge Tuesday morning and wrote 0.31 in the notebook, then read it again, because the airport had come in at 0.31 too.

SOUTH KNOXVILLE — Gene Prater, 69, who collects a $2 toll at the midpoint of the Kerbela tunnel, walked the hill above it Tuesday with a carpenter’s level and a flashlight after reading about Nashville’s tunnel.