Agee Crash Bash 2009

Preparations for the Agee Crash Bash are always, without fail, unavoidedly, last-minute and seat-of-the-pants. The annual commemoration of the death of Hugh James Agee, father of  Knoxville-born novelist/journalist/movie critic James Agee, takes place at the Checker Flag, a NASCAR-themed bar that just happens to stand right on Clinton Highway, about 100 feet from the site of the car crash that killed Agee. A fictionalized version of the event was the key plot point of Agee's novel A Death in the Family. This year's will be held Monday, May 18, at 7 p.m.

According to Knox Blab:

All you drinkers of the "night one long blue dew" are invited to attend the 10th anniversary of the Agee Crash Bash Monday at the Clinton Highway bar that sits almost astride the very spot where James Agee's father had his legendary fatal accident. We are talking now of car wrecks disguised as childhood grief that succeeded into the Pulitzer Prize winning autobiographical novel, "A Death in the Family."

Eh. Best I can do on short notice.

The Checker Flag is a modest, local NASCAR-themed sports bar, prop. being the wonderfully hospitable "Earlene."

Neely and I have discussed this only in the most rudimentary form but we usually have readings and a few times, local music stars to serenade us. The mythic "Cotter Pin of Destiny" will once again change hands for a year's keeping by some thus blessed individual. It is currently in the hands of an actual second cousin of James Agee. This being the centennial of Agee's birth lends some additional psychic heft to the event, don't you think?

This is where we'll be--the Checker Flag Sports Bar, 7428 Clinton Hwy, 947-8667. The bar is in a shabby little commercial strip in the southeast quadrant of the intersection of Clinton Highway and Emory Road in Powell. The most visible landmark to help guide you is a Weigel's that is in the actual southeast corner of that intersection. It's a good place to turn around and come back if you miss it the first time. There used to be (maybe still is) a bar on North Broadway near 640 with a very similar name. You may have a good time if you go there, but, you won't be having it with us.

Here's my recap of last year's Crash Bash.