The Eiffel Tower of Tennessee

           

So, when I take pictures that I really like, I often try and do some things to them, alter them in some ways. This has been particularly the case with the trip to Europe that my son and I went to a couple of years back, as well as during a trip to Québec City, in particular, back in the summer of 2017. Back then, I tried to alter some of the pictures in both Sepia as well as Black and White, for a more dramatic effect. That was what I tried to do also with a number of the pictures form Europe in 2019, as well, and some of them came out quite to my liking.     

And so, with the recent trip down South, it seemed like a good idea to try and do some of those kinds of alterations again.              

Here, in this particular blog entry, I did it with one of the admittedly oddest destinations and landmarks of the trip: the Eiffel Tower of Tennessee.              

As I wrote about already, I had only vaguely heard about Paris, Tennessee, prior to this trip, and knew next to nothing about it. But while doing some research about things to do and places to go in Tennessee, I ran across something about Paris, Tennessee. One of the most surprising things was that they had a small replica Eiffel Tower in a park, but the city itself seemed intriguing. There appeared to be a fairly solid culinary selection, and possibly even some other cool aspects of nightlife and what have you.              

Unfortunately, that was not our experience. It proved to be a very small town, with the downtown district being maybe three blocks by three blocks. And it seemed like very little was open, despite it not being particularly late in the evening. Otherwise, according to the hotel lady who checked us in, that was about all the town offered.              

They did make a big thing of the Paris connection, or rather, the Eiffel Tower connection. There were reminders of the Eiffel Tower throughout the hotel, and I saw the Eiffel Tower image on other things and places within town, although I cannot remember on what and where. Perhaps the water tower, and maybe one or two other places. You would almost think that their Eiffel Tower was the “real” Eiffel Tower.              

Still, the scaled down Eiffel Tower was a nice thing to see. We passed by it on the way into town, and right away, I began to sense that this was a smaller town than the website I had discovered more about the town had let on. The replica of the landmark was perhaps in a park, but there was no downtown to speak of. Later, I would find the downtown not too far away, but again, it was not quite as that website had advertised.              

But we were here now, and the Eiffel Tower had admittedly been the main reason for why we went to this town, specifically. So I took some pictures. It was daylight at first, and I snapped some pictures. The lights came on shortly, because it was nevertheless beginning to get dark, and this added quite dramatically to the effects.              

We went away from the Eiffel Tower for a little while, and got some ice cream at a local shop, mostly to get away from some of the high school kids who were hovering around the Eiffel Tower model. The adjacent parking lot was, apparently, some kind of a local hangout spot for teenage kids, particularly those old enough to drive. They drove with engines deliberately loud, and with music blasting well beyond reason. It was strange to see these mostly white kids from a rural Southern town blasting hip hop music from their suped up cars with chrome wheels. To me, it was depressing, and reminded me a little too much of the worst aspects of living in a surprisingly redneck town in northwestern New Jersey. My son was laughing at one point, but I personally found it not funny in the least, but sad. Depressing as hell.              

When we went back, it was full dark. There was a family who had arrived just before we left the park earlier, and they were having some kind of family picnic. It was a mother with her two young children, and she was clearly struggling a bit, losing her patience with them. Not sure what they were doing, but she was really losing patience with them. Other than them, it was just us and the teenage kids. Again, not what I was expecting, although it also perhaps should have been.              

The night shots of the mini Eiffel Tower actually came out quite nicely. And now, about three weeks after the visit, when I began to experiment with these pictures, especially putting them in black and white, they came out looking great. In fact, in some cases, it almost looked like spectacular shots of the real Eiffel Tower, at least if you did not look too closely.