This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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It’s the lost heritage the patriot craves today: the traditional kind of small-town, Southern charm marked by porch swings, county fairs, and main streets. A place where the children are welcome in nearly every setting. Where stores close on Sundays. Where it is the norm to run into a familiar face. This America isn’t gone; it’s alive and well in Franklin, Tennessee.
At the town square, a teenage girl sings to an ambling crowd as they window shop for homegrown goods, and a young boy with a violin reminds the older generations of simpler times. There are Victorian-era storefronts, a nearly century-old theater, stylish boutiques, and a local “book lovers’ paradise” filled with Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, and the like. A few miles down the road, the Amish sell yogurt and raw milk at the farmers market. A barbecue food truck sends the sweet, tangy smell of smoking brisket through the air into the lungs of suburban families attending their Saturday morning ritual.
When summer nears, humidity plagues every night and day — a characteristic of life in the South. Around the same time, mosquitoes, cicadas, and lightning bugs emerge, reminding the townsfolk of the blossoming garden among them. August may be the most oppressive month, as the blazing sun, steamy air, and perpetual use of anti-itch cream hinder any kind of outside enjoyment. Then suddenly, a random September weekend alleviates the muggy blanket, and what begins is a near-perfect, brisk autumn day.
Life is slow in Franklin, Tennessee. People linger. They smile and open the door and talk to strangers. Middle school boys ride their bikes to the Circle K down the street to cool down with Slurpees. Local coffee shops teem with first dates, older couples pay a visit while on their daily walks, remote workers escape the isolation of home, and mothers with young children revel in the sunshine with an iced drink, hoping the children entertain each other. One staple spot just south of the square is an old gas station-turned café trademarked with the logo, “Your Daily Pit Stop.”
This town is a perpetual return to its storied past. From the 19th-century Carnton plantation to a historic stove factory converted to a shopping mall, a tribute to its heritage is embedded into the groundwork of everyday life.
Even the darkest chapters.
In 1864, a German immigrant named Johann Albert Lotz found himself in the middle of one of the deadliest battles in the Civil War. When the Battle of Franklin broke out, the Lotz family fled across the street to the Carter House, where the Carter family cowered in their basement as gunfire and artillery exploded all around them. The family’s son, Tod Carter, was just outside in the heart of the war, fighting that very day when he was fatally wounded in battle. He was carried home, just up the road, where he died surrounded by his family.
The homes are now treasured today as local museums known as the Lotz House and the Carter House. The history of what once took place serves as an ongoing reminder of the bloodshed spilled 160 years ago. A legacy not meant to be solely decorative, but to be remembered.
Patches of cemeteries and gravesites and memorials are scattered around town. Small American flags line the streets for the Fourth of July. Red, white, and blue tablecloths appear on front lawns. Fathers stand at the grill cooking burgers while children run through the heat with sunglasses, face paint, and firecrackers.
This is where nostalgic, old-fashioned, and classic Americana values have stopped to rest. Elsewhere, spectators scrutinize the American mindset, the notion that one could possibly be proud of their country and the freedoms preserved for it. Those freedoms safeguard their places of worship, guarantee their defense, reprimand the corrupt, protect the motherland, and solicit dignity and honor for those grateful enough to inhabit it. It is a mindset now nearly foreign to this country.
Maybe this is why people are moving in droves to places like Franklin, Tennessee. Americans sense something fragile is at risk: not merely a political affiliation, but a shared affection for the place itself. The most devastating aspect of the collapse of a nation is the one that comes from within, when people forget what’s most important. In the words of Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of government the founders had created, he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
The search for Americana is more than a remembrance of the past. It is preserved in the small rituals: meeting and knowing the neighbors, strolling through a park and fishing at a local pond, spending more time outside in nature than on screens, inviting new friends over for a homemade dinner, and enjoying the God-given freedoms unique to this nation, and this nation alone. Perhaps Americans are starting to return to this. Perhaps we are starting to remember.
