I came over to East Tennessee the other day. I live in Murfreesboro, and my folks live in Athens. Because I didn't feel like rasslin' with the traffic around Manchester associated with Bonnaroo, I took a little bit of a longer way around, and rode over on I-40.

Now when you're coming down 24, and hit Monteagle, you used to lose radio stations for a fifteen or twenty mile stretch. Nowadays, both KZ 106 and US 101 out of Chattanooga have transmitters powerful enough to reach over the mountain, and the same is true of WTN 99.7 and 102 THE BUZZ out of Nashville. So you're pretty cool if you want to listen to one on one side of the mountain, and when you hit the summit you can change over to the other.

Well, the problem I had on the plateau was that I lost all radio stations for a little while. I tried for Nashville stations. I tried for Knoxville stations. Nada. I listened to my Back to the Future soundtrack, but I was patient enough to listen to about three of the songs.

Meanwhile, I'm just kind of letting my mind wander. I don't ride across 40 too often, and I was astounded by all the Hardee's.

Not that I should have been. I think it's in Tennessee's constitution that you can't be incorporated as a Town in this state unless you have either a Waffle House or a Hardee's in your town, somewhere.

And for no reason other than utter boredom, I got to thinking about all the Hardee's in Tennessee that I've eaten in. Because, to me, nothing reminds me more of my home state than Hardee's.

I realize that previous statement was like saying "nothing reminds me more of Georgia than trees" or "nothing reminds me more of Maryland than cars," but if Kentucky can be linked to that bluegrass stuff or Florida with sunshine, then I can say Tennessee reminds me of Hardee's.

So I made a mental exercise driving of trying to think of all the Hardee's I've ever eaten at.

Sad, but true.

Though I should say there's very little like the epiphany of remembering that Hey! Madisonville has a Hardee's!!!!

Actually, I try not to eat in Hardee's very much. On the average, they're probably the most poorly kept line of restaurants. The color scheme has always been weird (even though the outsides are now that shiny red and yellow, the insides are still that weird drab brown and orange).

Let me say, though, that the Hardee's near the courthouse in Athens has always been well-kept. It's the place where the old men in town go to tell their lies. And it's where Dad and I got biscuits yesterday.

On the whole, for a drive-thru steak biscuit, (the operative word being drive-thru), there's not much a better place you can go (assuming you can not think about who's preparing your food and that you don't care much about your cardiovascular health), than Hardee's.

My roommate Bill's big complaint is that they haven't been able to find their focus for a long time now. Whether it's been their advertising or their menu fair. Well, recently they've changed again. But they've taken on a strange focus, one that's very much in line with Bill's thinking. Their recent market campaign holds that "Yeah, we know we've been scatterbrained and, honestly, rather a crappy place to eat....but we know that, and now we're trying better."

I like the commercial with the two old guys who talk about how they used to go to Hardee's and get one of those tiny hamburgers and cup of coffee, and they'd sit there and talk and talk and talk. And now they hate Hardee's, what with their fancy schmancy big Angus Hamburgers what with their tomatoes.

And re-touching on a point I made earlier, about the downtown Athens Hardee's where the old men go to tell their lies....even with the changed menu and stuff, it was perhaps the busiest Hardee's I've ever seen in my life. Every seat was full. Everybody with their biscuits and coffee.

Does anybody remember the Moose cups? I didn't and still don't understand the relationships, except that Hardee's sold these big 44 oz. cups with a Moose on them doing various summer time activities. You ordered a large coke and you got this Moose bucket. I remember them because we only had about a thousand of them running around the house.

And am I wrong? Didn't Hardee's do the Smurf glasses around here?

Maybe Athens is just a Hardee's kind of town. It's a town of about 14,000 and we have three Hardee's. Doing the math, that's one Hardee's for every 4,600 people.

And in McMinn County, there are FIVE! Etowah and Calhoun each has one of its own. We're around 40,000 in population for the county....one Hardee's for every 8,000 people.

I wonder if we have the highest Hardee's per capita ratio in the state.

Now, for your enjoyment, here is a list of all the Hardee's in Tennessee I can recall eating in or from (drive-thru):

Athens (all 3...4 if you count the one where Temptations was).
Calhoun
Cleveland (two, that I can recall)
Crossville, near Fairfield Glade
Dayton
Decatur
Etowah
Jellico
Madisonville
Maryville
Murfreesboro (three of the four or five in town)
Ooltewah
Pigeon Forge
Sweetwater
Smyrna

And there's one more somewhere between Knoxville and the Sevierville exit. I want to say Strawberry Plains, but I'm not for sure.

Let me say that there are a couple out of state

In closing, I'll relate a small event in my life, but won't include on the list, because I didn't eat there. There's a Hardee's on Nolensville Road in Nashville where I stopped at to pee one afternoon, but decided not to eat or drink anything. Not because I wasn't hungry or thirsty. But because I couldn't see anybody at all behind the counter. Nobody in the kitchen or anything. No customers either. Nobody.

It was, for a moment, my own private Hardee's.