Travel to Cities

I-75 and the 401: A Traveler's Guide Between Toronto and Miami

Format: Paperback
Author: Christine Marks
ReleaseDate: 01 September, 2001
Publisher: Boston Mills Press
Rating:

Mabry-Hazen is a Curiosity Right Now Due to Notoriety.
' A bit includes:
Evelyn Montgomery Hazen was born on November 8, 1899, to Alice Elizabeth and Joe Hazen. This guide will give you information about the Mabry-Hazen antebellum house in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is notorious due to the new book out, 'The Seduction of Miss Evelyn Hazen. Alice's mother was from a wealthy family of good heritage. Her father, Joe II, had great dignity and was in the grocery business with R. S. Hazen. The Mabrys were well respected citizens, while the father was publisher of the 'Knoxville Whig' newspaper, and president of the Knoxville and Kentucky Railroad before the Civil War.

There was much resentment between Southerners and the Carpetbaggers after the War, and still is to this day. Mrs Ryan is from Maryland and deliberately set out to sully the reputation of someone she did not knw, had never met, and had important papers from an infamous trial of the 1930s because one of her cousins had worked as a maid in the Hazen family. Joe II was very intelligent and a friend to the Indians, but he trusted the wrong business partners. He and his son were assassinated by a double crossing partner who had doctored the books and stolen money, causing the Hazens to fall on hard times for a time.

"Newcomers" to the South after the War resented the wealthy, aristocratic
local land owners. R. S. Hazen married Alice Mabry, granddaughter of Joe, the parents of Evelyn Montgomery. She had been educated at a private school for girls as befitting their financial status, like Belmont in Nashville, before enrolling at the University of Tennesseee at the age of fifteen in 1914. Like me and most Knoxville young girls, she was timid, shy, naive, and very vulnerable sexually and had not been allowed to have a boy friend during high school.

Evelyn was extremely intelligent like her dad, and became a lady with formal Victorian manners as befitting the wealthy of that era. Her family attended the First Presbyterian Church not far from their mansion on a hill overlooking the Tennessee River as it runs through the town. Evelyn wasn't a beauty and was very flattered when attractive Ralph S. paid attention to her. At UT she took part in plays in 1916 with the UT players at Staub's Theater and acted the part of Ralph's wife in the play. After a few months of courtship, she trusted him as a best friend and protector and felt like she was in love with him. She was eighteen by then and not knowledgeable about unscrupulous men nor their intentions. He proposed to marry her and she mistakenly thought that they were engaged.

Ralph joined the army in 1917 and appeared very handsome in his uniform.
Women always fall for a guy in a uniform. She had a final year ahead of her at UT when they decided to get married. He told her that the bureau was closed for the day and "convinced her that a license and wedding were unnecessary formalities for people who truly loved each other. " He had his way with her which was not pleasurable but revolting. And that was it, he left her and went back to the army. Her reputation was destroyed and to her dying day, she was not able to live it down.

In her later years, she worked as an assistant to Dr. Hodges in the English Department (my husband's favorite professor when he was working on his Master's degree) and they developed the 'Harbrace Handbook' used extensively at high schools and colleges as a guide to better grammar. She was a grand lady and a good person. The reason she is remembered today is the court trial for breach of promise (before I was born) which she won, but her name became a joke on the UT campus. A person I know told me that he and his group always made fun of Evelyn even after her death. Now, this woman from Maryland, has come here to cause hurtful memories and to air the dirty laundry of a prominent person from a good family for financial reasons. The book is dirty and a grand lady I know
whose family knew Evelyn in her elder years and had must respect for her
wanted to burn it. However, she shared it with me and her two daughters. I felt dirty just touching this paperback.

Some years back, Gregory Macdonald wrote 'The Native' and spoke about it to a literary club meeting to which I belonged and he apologized for that
particular chapter which was explict. I always criticized his writing something he had to apologize for, and refused to read it. He did write a lovely story about our town in which he parodied the townspeople (me included). Mrs. Ryan owes an apology to the memory of Evelyn Hazen and to this town for the sacrilege she has brought with this scathing account of the trial and the details she divulged about oral sex back in the Thirties. Who would have thought they did that back then? I thought it was something modern, as my generation would not have stooped that low. That part could have been left out of the trial sequence.

Ok. This book needs definite work, But...
I live in Georgia and use I-75 to go south to Florida and, yes, every exit number in Georgia is incorrect and with a publishing date of May 1999,and a three-year-old state announcement that in February 2000 all the exit numbers would be changed, this is a significant faux pas on the part of the author. You can read the other reviews and they are scathing, but accurate. And, with all the coupons and advertisements in this book, it does feel like one of those motel discount publications that you can pick up at truck stops and gas stations in every state. The print quality, paper and really small font size (pica 6!) are a significant distraction, but this is not all the author's fault, there was a publisher involved in this too, eh?

So what is there about this book that is redeeming. What does Christine Marks have that you can't find in a USA Guide, or State Guide? I was impressed by information on various locations, communities and counties. Christine Marks did a lot of digging to come up with some very interesting and provocative vignettes. County information, cultural insights, historic blurbs that were NOT in my other state travel guides. I am a Bar-B-Que afficionado and I did not know that in October, in Vienna, GA, there is The Georgia Barbecue Championship! Or that Fried Green Tomatoes are found at the Whistle Stop Caf? in Juliette, Ga. I like these tidbits of information and this, and this alone, makes the book valuable to keep. I also like the concept of the guide following a route, providing information with maps that break the journey down in bite size portions. These two aspects, especially the unique information, makes me keep this book. It is my hope that Christine Marks pushes this forward, gets the right exit numbers, larger readable fonts, better paper and printing, and dumps the blatant trashy advertising. With the number of cars that roam up and down this huge stretch of highway there is a market for good guides. Conditionally recommended.

All the Georgia exit numbers are wrong!

I used this book several weeks ago and got into trouble because every I-75 exit number in the book is incorrect. This book should NOT be sold as a new book - its information is obsolete. This is the case on all the Georgia maps and coupons. Georgia changed its exit numbers last February (it announced this change 3 years ago) and removed all the old numbers. This book shows only the old numbers and was therefore no good to us.

I paid good money for this book and didn't expect out of date information.

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