KNOXVILLE — Every home game Saturday, Connie Bell, the office manager at an urgent care clinic near Neyland Stadium, puts an orange cone on the gravel beside the building for Ruth Hensley, 74, of Fountain City.
Hensley has parked in that spot on game days since the 1982 World’s Fair, when the lot was a fair shuttle stop. A Hardee’s occupied the property afterward. She kept coming through the Hardee’s years and was there the Saturday the clinic opened.
“There used to be a little dip where you stepped out,” Hensley said. “My sister would get out first and hold my coffee. They filled that in when it was still the Hardee’s.”
She has never been a patient, and nobody has told her she can’t park there. Bell learned about the arrangement from the outgoing office manager, who had written “Ruth’s cone” on the Saturday opening checklist.
Hensley moves the cone to her passenger floorboard when she arrives and puts it back before she leaves.
“She’s particular about getting it back where I had it,” Bell said. “I told her she could just leave it by the door, but she says then I’d have to come out again.”
When there is no home game the cone is kept in the supply closet.