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  1. Chattanooga Stories: Huskies and Trains. Naturally. Tuesday, September 29, 2009

    Today marked the beginning of the 28th Independent Specialty of the Siberian Husky Club of America, hosted at the Choo Choo through October 3.

    It wasn’t on my radar either, I assure you, if only because I do not and more than likely never will have any longstanding interest in Siberian Huskies.

    Don’t get me wrong, dog lovers: they’re beautiful animals. But we could, friendly readers, very easily say the same for llamas. Or jaguars. Or bald eagles. Let’s not forget rare varieties of sapphire colored butterflies. Lovely, all of them.

    But on any given day, I spend less than three minutes thinking about these bold fauna, just as I spend a negligible modicum of time worrying about the fate of Siberian Huskies in my community. It’s a natural non-interest. Sorry, Huskies. Nothing personal.

    However, good weather makes believers out of skeptics, optimists out of nihilists, and most notably, walkers out of writers. Taking to the streets in a winter hat (happy overkill), a friend and I stumbled upon the Siberian Specialty at the Choo Choo this evening on a lovely, random tour of the town. To call the view before us surreal is perhaps very appropriate. I’d rather call it Just Another Night in Chattanooga.

    Let’s set the scene, though. Imagine if you will the Choo Choo gardens. Man-eating pond fish to your left, silver dining car to your right. Straight ahead, the concourses of rail platform open on to the hotel’s large parking lot, spotted with outlying buildings, train tracks, and green spaces.

    On any given night, you’ll run into the occasional golf cart or lost tourist. I am perhaps the worst of these Choo Choo tourists: always lost, always gaping, always laughing at the derivations of the hotel’s less than consistent signage (CooCoo, CooChoo). Tonight, it took me longer than usual to process the scene. Walking out into the parking lot, there was a buzz and shuffle to my left: a pickup truck that barked. Straight ahead, 15 RVs, warm against the cool sky, each with a maze of fencing and saw dust and grooming tables around it. And across the lot, running along some old tracks: hundreds of little white snowballs.

    The stuff of bizarre childhood dreams, maybe.

    Huskies, actually.

    There are hundreds of them, friends, here to compete and collect and celebrate. They are beautiful, even for those of us who consider hamsters a big commitment. And they are part of the Chattanooga story: the thing that makes this place so intoxicating, so bizarre, so enduring. You come here for a job, perhaps, and you find a cityscape impossible to ignore. You go for a walk, and you find hundreds of snowy dogs on their evening ambles.

    A night with simple Chatty pleasures, it makes me wonder, what kinds of other stories are out there? I know you’ve got ‘em. Interested in sharing? Send me a little email, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

    Go forth, storytellers, and collect inspiration!

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