My hometown: It was the cathead biscuits that won me back

My senior prom was at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. This piece of personal trivia never ceases to amuse people who haven't been to Chattanooga-a town of 160,000 in the hilly southeast corner of Tennessee. After asking me what it was like to have a prom at a train station (it was like any other prom circa 1988, where the girls wore taffeta in terrible colors-plus trains), they'll usually activate their jazz hands and launch into the Glenn Miller tune inspired by our famous locomotive: "Pardon me boys..."

I actually grew up about 30 miles north of Chattanooga, in a small town called Cleveland. Both sides of my parents' families have been there for more than a century. Even today, the tallest building in Cleveland is only eight stories, so Chattanooga was our downtown. At night, driving over Missionary Ridge, I was entranced by the brightly ...