In Casablanca's Dreams

One of our favorite day trip cities is Chattanooga, TN.  I discovered it years ago, spending a weekend with a college friend in her hometown.  It captures all the beauty and history that Atlanta lacks (thanks again, Sherman) while having a recreational feel to it.  It's both attractive and fun.

Chattanooga is the kind of city that I really want Atlanta to be (with a mountain and a river and everything), but it lacks the most important thing- a job for my husband.

Maybe it's for the best.  After all, if we lived there it would take all the magic away from weekends we spend creepily peering through the windows of our dilapidated dream house.

The slate roof!  The root cellar!  The view!  The stone walls and old oaks and magnolias!  The lampposts!   The enormous eagle monument hovering over the yard!  (Ok, so that's a little weird.)

By the way, these are only the views from the back.  The front is stunning.  It sits so close to a drop off on the edge of Lookout Mountain, however, I was getting vertigo trying to take a decent snapshot.

Next door to this old home (which we're yet to know specific historical details about) is a Civil War monument marking the very place that a significant battle took place (The Battle of Lookout Mtn.) that would later prove to be a crossroads in Sherman's fiery march through Atlanta.

While I sound very knowledgeable and text-booky, I only know this because Terry has drug me to this site many times on his tours of Civil War sites through the south.  We later discovered this house, and we both agreed that we need it.  That's right.  NEED.  Unfortunately, the state of Tennessee also wants it.  And owns it.  And truthfully, if the state of Tennessee can't afford to renovate this beauty, the White's probably couldn't either.

Maybe if Terry becomes the Mayor of Lookout Mountain...