NYT on K-Town
The NYT: KNOXVILLE is often called “the couch” by the people who live there.
Err, I’ve been in and around Knoxville since 1983. I’ve never once heard it called the couch.
And I know you have one Knoxville ex-pat at work there. Couldn’t you ask him? Other than that, cool piece.
BTW, the reporter has a cool last name.
Via Insty.
Update: BTW, other people having never heard of the couch, MKS and KAG.
Glad others hadn’t heard of it too else I would have questioned my K-Town hipster cred.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Lived here my whole life and have never heard that.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Oh yeah. The real old timers call it “The Couch”, or more specifically, phonetically, the “cow-ouch”. The next town up the rail line North is called, “Little Couch”, or Little Couch Switch”. Down the rail South is South Couch.
I can’t believe you guys don’t know this. Everyone knows it. Heck, you can read it in the papers!
June 6th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Yeah, I thought that yankees called us the scruffy little city.
June 6th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Rapidly approaching thirty years here, and I’ve never heard the allusion to furniture.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I’ve been here since ’83 and never heard the term
June 6th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Since I only lived there from ’00 to ’08, maybe everyone stopped using it for eight years…
June 6th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I guess you natives are going off half-couched then. I think it’s an indian word “kaitch” gone bad from way back. You’re lucky there isn’t an East and West Couch, plus the bedroom communities. Check the phonebook for the last names “Couch” and “Kaitch”.
June 6th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
All this time Tam was doing “View from the Kaitch” and didn’t even know it!
June 6th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
The Amerinds, not knowing Knoxville was Knoxville, since the bars weren’t open and the street signs weren’t up in 6000 BC or whenever the Mammoth ran out, referred the the bend in the river: Kaitch. Or at least that was as close as the first white settlers could translate.
The Amerinds couldn’t tell what the Pioneers were saying either. It was just one of those deals. Lots of figures and arrows drawn in the dust, probably. Grunting, pointing. Gesturing. Like talking to a cabbie at Newark.
Katich is probably the least of it. The Spanish came near there in 1550, through Georgia, looking for gold. God only knows what the indians told THEM.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Actually, what the Amerinds told the Spanish when they showed up looking for gold was the same thing you or I would tell any heavily armed, mounted and war-dogged group, (First Georgia Bulldogs), that showed up un-announced on our homestead:
Spanish: Yo Quiero El Oro! El Oro!
Amerind: Oro? You mean Gold? Here? Naw. No Oro down here. Not us. We poor and the women, they ugly and sick. But five river valleys over thattaway they got LOTS of Oro. Heap big. They make their HOUSES out of it. HELL yeah. Just follow that trail and don’t get discouraged crossing the swamp or if the snow comes. Better hurry. Lotta Oro! Heap Oro! Shiney Oro! All you want.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Y’know, this is what we get for listening to &^*#ing Yankees for factual information about anything south of Baltimore…
June 7th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Well, Tam gets the award! When you read lies and made-up bullshit, (SOUTH Couch Switch?) you read it first in the New York Times!