Ms. Briceville (Page 1 of 1)

Toasted white bread, mayonnaise, two tomato slices, iceberg lettuce, American cheese, four sausage patties: I bite into the sandwich and a pallid tear of grease falls into my palm, runs down my forearm and is nearly on the countertop before I can dab it with a napkin. My buddy, Clark, sitting on a stool beside me, seems to be enjoying his sandwich as well: Our conversation has paused as we crunch through our breakfast from Briceville's Evans Grocery.

The store — now owned and operated by Nettie Braden, who cracks eggs over the fry plate as if she were at home — appears to be as much community center as it is commissary. Everyone who approaches the counter says hello to "Mrs. Nettie," and she, in turn, asks about family members.

Soon, Clark and I will be leaving to visit Anna Mae Evans — the store's previous owner and daughter of the 1939 founder of Evans Grocery — but for now, we're content to sit with our elbows on the counter and our noses over steaming cups of coffee.

Two men in work boots and ball caps come inside and saddle up beside us.

"No gravy this mornin'?"

"Didn't get in early enough," Nettie explains, and then she runs through the available breakfast menu.

Clark sits up straight when she mentions fried bologna. "Man," he says, wiping the last drop of mayonnaise from his BLT off his chin. "I should've gotten a fried bologna sandwich."

The two newcomers agree: It's what they both order.

"Been a while since I had a fried bologna sandwich," I say.

"It beats a jam sandwich," the guy beside Clark replies.

"You mean," I ask, "take one piece of bread in this hand, one piece of bread in that hand, and then jam them together?"

For the next few minutes, while Nettie flips thick slabs of sizzling bologna, we discuss our experiences with the numerous varieties of the low-rent sandwich: mayonnaise, butter, onion, pinto bean, potato chip. "I used to take me a pork and bean sandwich to school about every day."  The conversation ends, though, when I mention a favorite combination by my father: peanut butter, mayonnaise and onion.

"I like peanut butter… I like me a good onion… and I like a little mayonnaise," says one of the guys.  "But not all three together."

With that, Clark and I pay our bill, toss a couple of ones on the counter, and step outside, rubbing our bellies and blinking against the sunlight. It takes less than a minute for us to drive to Anna Mae's house.

She sits in a chair under the yellow ring of light thrown from a table lamp, her walker standing in front of her. She waves us inside, and her eyes are quick and bright and clear: They draw down on Clark, glowing, and a wide smile breaks her face. He bends to hug her, and then we sit on the covered couch across from her.

Scoliosis has her frame bent like a question mark, but her memories are not ambiguous: Anna Mae is Briceville's cultural historian, the keeper of commonplace recollections that stretch back and yawn to pre-TVA Tennessee.  And she's happy to share them.

"Do you remember Ott James?" she asks Clark.

He laughs.  "Oh yeah."

Ott James was a notorious eater. Everyone knew that if he were at your table for dinner — which was highly likely — you had better take all you want on the first pass: When the dish came to Ott, he simply turned it upside down over his plate.  And he ate it all, endless amounts of country-cooked food, regardless of his thin frame. One night, Anna Mae tells us, after vacuuming an abnormal amount of food at Clark's grandmother's house, Ott then stumbled home to bed. Clark's grandmother, Charlotte Ruth Wormsley, unable to sleep because she was worried, woke Clark's grandfather, Charles, at 2 a.m. She was afraid that Ott had eaten himself to death, so in the dark of the early morning air, Charles walked down the street to check on the health of the man who'd just run through his wife's cuisine.

Anna Mae is one of two trustees of the Briceville Community Church, built in 1888, a now locked two-steeple building that sits high on a hill, overlooking the little town.  The two steeples are a result of a feuding Welsh congregation — they built an entrance for each faction. In 1896, the Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing Company gave the land to the Methodist Church.  More than 100 years later, the coalmine's railway long-rusted over, the Methodists backed out due to declining membership. "That was the saddest Sunday," says Anna Mae. "I never got to say what I wanted to.  I just sat there and watched him close that big old Bible."

Once the town's provider of food — she sold the store with many open tabs left unpaid — she now holds the keys to its spiritual roots: The church is on the national registry of historical places. And more than that, even, she carries a collection of Briceville memories that catalogues the community's families. She knows where the grandchildren of Briceville have moved; she knows their names and for whom they were named, and she knows the stories of their lineage.

There was once a time when Evans Grocery operated on orders. You handed a list to the clerk — maybe a young Anna Mae or her sister — and she pulled down from the shelves behind the counter what you needed to sustain your family. Now, from the shelves of her memory, Anna Mae pulls down histories like boxes of cereal. The anecdotes — like the story of Ott James — that she remembers are innumerable and invaluable. All the days when she sat behind the counter, where Nettie sits today, and served food and sold groceries and listened to the people elbows-down on her counter …

"Mr. Carol came in once and asked for a cone of cream," she tells us.  "He came back in, a few minutes later.  'Mrs. Evans,' he said. 'Can you fill this horn up again?'"

* The views expressed in Commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Knoxville Voice.