Grinder's Switch, Tennessee
Grinder's Switch is a location just outside Centerville, Tennessee, which consists of little more than the railroad switch for which it is named.
Significance to Minnie Pearl
Grinder's Switch was also the fictional hometown of the comic character Minnie Pearl, created and portrayed at the Grand Ole Opry by comedian Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, who grew up in the nearby Colley Town neighborhood of Centerville, Tennessee.
Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon's father was a lumberman who shipped logs from the Grinders depot on the Centerville branch of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. There was a team track at the depot, necessitating the installation of a switch. Long after the depot disappeared, the team track and its switch remained, thus the name "Grinder's Switch". Grinders was still listed in the railroad tariff book called "Official List of Open & Prepay Stations No. 82" dated November 15, 1967.
Sarah Colley sometimes accompanied her father to the Grinders depot, where the local characters would hang out. This was part of her inspiration for her "Cousin Minnie Pearl" routine.
Minnie Pearl closes her autobiography:
People always ask me, "Where is Grinder's Switch?"
As I grow older, the place is no longer a little, abandoned landing switch on a railroad in Hickman County. Grinder's Switch is a state of mind – a place where there is no illness, no war, no unhappiness, no political unrest, no tears. It's a place where there's only happiness – where all you worry about is what you are going to wear to the church social, and if your feller is going to kiss you in the moonlight on the way home.
I wish for all you a Grinder's Switch.[1]
So much unwarranted traffic to Grinder's Switch, looking for the hometown Pearl described, was generated by tourists following the road sign, that the Hickman County Highway Department was finally motivated to change the designation on the "Grinder's Switch" road sign to "Hickman Springs Road".
Tourism initiatives and special events
A "Grinder's Switch" theme park was proposed for the area, with promoters going so far as to move the former railroad depot of Slayden, Tennessee to the area to serve as one of its buildings, but little more seems to have been done in regard to developing the park to this point. The park failed and all investors lost their money. The railroad depot remains, though. Hickman County bought the land and now operates the Hickman County Agriculture Pavilion there. The Hickman County Fair is located at the Ag Pavilion.
The annual Grinder's Switch Music & Arts Festival is held on the square in Centerville in September. There are crafts booths, a booth for the local theatre, and music lasting throughout the day and into the night.
The National Banana Pudding Festival is held at the Hickman County Ag Pavilion and Fairgrounds, featuring live music concerts, many attractions, and many kinds of banana puddings.[2]
In popular culture
Charlie Daniels mentions Grinder's Switch in his 1975 song "The South's Gonna Do It (Again)", with the lyric, "Well, the train to Grinder's Switch is runnin' right on time and them Tucker Boys are cookin' down in Caroline". This is an error. It's a common mistake. In "The South's Gonna Do It (Again)" Charlie Daniels is referring to the band Grinderswitch.
Tyler Farr mentions Grinder's Switch in his 2015 song "C.O.U.N.T.R.Y", written by Chris Tompkins, Craig Wiseman, and Rodney Clawson: "We come from Eastabuchie Booger Hooker Possum Knuckle Bug and Grinder's Switch, We hoop and holler when old Charlie Daniels calls that devil son of a bitch".
References
- Minnie Pearl with Joan Dew, Minnie Pearl: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), p. 256
- National Banana Pudding Festival. Retrieved 21 Feb 2012.