"THE EVOLUTION OF
DAYTON, TENNESSEE"

Published in the Johnson County (Ind.) Daily Journal, Dec. 4, 1997 ©

         I was given all the fair warning I needed from the highway sign stretched high above the three lanes of interstate: "Entering Heavy Fog Zone."

         And shortly thereafter I drove steeply into the heavy fog of history as the side road from Interstate 75 waggled down the side of a mountain into Dayton, Tenn., like Evelyn Wood's finger down the page of a history book. By the time I reached the courthouse square of the hamlet, now home to 5,671 Homo sapiens, the history was so thick it was hard to see through it all.

         But there it was, the famed Rhea County Courthouse where, 72 years ago, in the unbearable summer of 1925, John Scopes went on trial for teaching evolution to students at the local high school. A historical plaque stood like a sentinel in front of the antique courthouse, which still featured a bell tower on one side.

         The bell rang out at 1 p.m. the best it could that Saturday afternoon in southeastern Tennessee, its tone tinny and faint as an old player piano hauled out of some distant relative's basement. The only other people to hear it were the two pickup-truckloads of people heading for the automatic bank machine across the street.

         Otherwise, the courthouse stood there just as it had when it held the "monkey trial" that fascinated America more, in relative terms, than the more recent one of O. J. Simpson. The 1925 trial wasn't merely about guilt vs. innocence; it was good vs. evil, God vs. the Devil (a.k.a. Charles Darwin), the old set ways vs. dangerous new ideas, William Jennings Bryan, his days in the spotlight fading, vs. Clarence Darrow, his legal star on the rise.

         And it was H. L. Mencken, the Baltimore journalist with a wit as sharp as a straight razor, vs. his favorite target, Puritanism, which he once described as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Mencken had led the rest of the nation's newspapermen and the new medium of national curiosity, radio, to that town of then 1,800 souls planted in among the Cumberland Mountains.

         They came to watch the fate of Scopes, the young science teacher charged with breaking Tennessee's new law against teaching evolution, decided by 12 citizens, good and true, of Rhea County that July. Arrested while sipping a Coke at the local drug store, Scopes had the Chicago lawyer, Darrow, on his side. The good, Darwin-fearing people of Dayton had "The Great Commoner," Bryan, who had failed thrice to become president, on theirs.

         The history of it all was stashed away in the "Scopes Trial Museum," hidden away like a family secret beneath the courthouse's front steps. The wooden door was cracked and ragged at the bottom, leaving almost enough room for any primate to crawl under, but, being Saturday, it wasn't open.

         Maybe that small warehouse of history wasn't really ever open, only when some stranger to town asked if he could take a look inside.

         The last statement on the marker in front really didn't tell the whole truth, either: "Scopes was convicted." Dayton probably would like to leave it at that, relying on the same kind of technicality that threw out the guilty verdict against young Scopes in 1927.

         For the good folks of Dayton, whom Mencken had characterized as "gaping primates" and members of "the species Homo Neandertalensis," it was the final outrage. They had been aghast when, at the end of the trial itself, Judge John Raulston, flashbulbs exploding in his face and his voice carrying far beyond Rhea County through those new-fangled microphones, levied only the minimum fine of $100.

         Darrow and Scopes both got out of Dayton alive -- Darrow to become America's most famous lawyer, Scopes to become a geologist for oil and gas companies. The silver-tongued Bryan never made it, dying in his sleep five days after the verdict. They all eventually turned into characters in a play, "Inherit the Wind."

         On my side trip off the interstate on the way home from Atlanta, I found a few signs of Dayton's own "evolution." Besides tripling in size, the historic little town had added a strip mall at its eastern edge, with a supermarket and a video rental store.

         And there were a few package liquor stores and a bar -- Rhea County was "dry" in 1925 -- although there were still more churches than that.

         At the top of the steep hill that overlooks Dayton I found the main legacy of the old, pre-Scopes ways. First came the welcoming sign to Bryan College, with its credo: "Christ Above All." Then, in pristine white stone, rose the college chapel with its large, gold-colored panes of glass.

         In front of the administration building of the college that opened in 1930 and took its name from the vigorous defender of the ways of this neck of the woods, posted beside a yellow stretch of curb, was a sign: "Thou Shalt Not Park Here." Even Mencken probably would have appreciated the fact that some "Puritans" had the semblance of a sense of humor.

         I at least did, and it gave some small assurance as I drove the winding, rolling 18 miles back to I-75, that perhaps some of the fog truly had lifted down there in the most notoriously fogged-in county seat in American history.

----------

 Copyright 1997 by Jerry Miller ©

 Color photo by Jerry Miller ©

 Return to Writings page