KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Anywhere I go, whether it be down the block from my bedroom or miles far away from home, I usually end up talking about one of the things I love best: professional wrestling.

So when a polite couple invited me to join their patio table last night at Cool Beans Bar & Grill, we ended up talking about on wrestler in particular:

The mayor.

Glenn Jacobs, better known to the wrestling community as the demonic “Kane,” has served as the mayor of Knox County since 2018. While he was not born in the United States, he was born in Torrejón de Ardoz, Spain, to a U.S. Air Force family, and later got an English degree from what is now known as Truman State University. Since first becoming politically active as a libertarian around 2008, Jacobs won the republican bid over Brad Anders by a narrow margin of 17 votes (14,663 to 14,646), and carried the general election over democrat Linda Haney in a landslide (51,804 to 26,224).

Let’s step back a minute though:

I’ve been aware of “Kane” in some form since around 1998, when my parents’ DirecTV subscription meant I got a front-row ticket to anything and everything on TV in the late ’90s — including the pivotal “Attitude Era” of the then-WWF (now WWE). This particular boom time for pro wrestling saw WWF frequently up the ante for its storylines, violence, and sexual content. In particular, I remember Kane feuding with my all-time favorite, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.

Jacobs’ “Kane” character, with his 7-foot-tall stature and hellish persona (as the evil brother of The Undertaker), played a meaningful role in progressing much of what the Attitude Era brought into my bedroom as a kid.

And in the 20 years since I first saw him, I’ve seen Kane do it all: He ripped the door off Hell in a Cell while confronting his supernatural brother in a fiery surprise debut. He pushed injured characters off ledges and down stairs while they were confined to a wheelchair. He lit beloved commentator “JR” Jim Ross on fire during a rampage angle after his mask was ripped off. He once had an illegitimate father angle with female wrestler Lita — which infamously ended in a grotesque man named Gene Snitsky punting a fake baby into the audience during a rather cringe-worthy moment in screenwriting.

All this, I should say, falls under “kayfabe,” which is a fancy insider term for pro wrestling’s veneer of suspended disbelief. It’s all an act. (Well, most of it is an act.) Everyone’s a willing, acting participant, and Glenn Jacobs, as you may have guessed, is not actually a hell-beast set on destroying this planet. That’s just the guy he plays on TV.

So when I was invited to share a few drinks with Knox County locals on Friday night — who I will call “Dick and Jane” for legal reasons we’ll touch on later — I was more than curious to get their take on the man, the myth, the legend, who represents them politically.

Jane, who had invited me to the table while her husband was making the rounds, was more than happy to oblige. I asked her what it’s like to deal with the dynamic that his life path brought to the position.

“Well, first of all, everyone assumes that he’s in charge of all of Knoxville,” Jane said. “That’s your first misconception. He’s not that important. He’s only in charge of Knox County, and he realizes that. He’s not power-hungry, and he genuinely loves living here.”

I asked Jane if she’s met him, and what that was like.

“Don’t even think about what the media or anyone wants to say about him,” she said. “When the cameras are off, and it’s just you and him, he’s the most patient man in the world. He fights for stuff like school funding and arts endowment, and he’s extremely transparent about making that his priority instead of being a Celebrity-in-Chief.”

I took a look at Jacobs’ mayoral page, and I think Jane is right. While it may just be usual political lip service, Jacobs pledges that it his his goal “to continue to make Knox County a place where you want to raise a family; where businesses want to locate and bring jobs for you and your children and grandchildren; where visitors from across our great state and this great country will want to visit and make memories.”

And Jacobs’ celebrity is immediately placed aside, at least upfront: Any requests for autographs or memorabilia that come through the Knox County mayor’s office are dismissed or donated to charity, respectively.

I asked Dick, a man with a long beard in a retro Creedence Clearwater Revival shirt (it got several compliments) what he felt about the mayor, and he insisted on doing a few Hulk Hogan impressions, then a big Ric Flair “woo!”

Dick was a few beers deep, so Jane did most of the hard commentary on Jacobs.

While it’s common for most Americans to have an outside view of the politics of other locations’ representatives (for Hoosiers, consider people like Texas’ Ted Cruz or New Jersey’s Chris Christie), I’m not going to use this post to parse his individual positions and policies. That’s for another post from someone more eloquent and politically wonk-saavy than I am.

But Jane says the people of Knox County generally like Jacobs as a person, and they don’t even think about the pro wrestling persona. Everyone has their own background, glamorous or otherwise, and she says Jacobs is here to work hard and take the job seriously.

I asked Jane how Jacobs stacked up against local representatives, and that’s where the real discussion began.

Dick immediately woke up through his six-beer veneer and got serious. He leaned forward and pointed at me with a whisper.

“Let me tell you something right now,” Dick said. “The main problems you get don’t come from the mayor. Around here, it’s the corrupt cops and judges who only care about keeping this county under their thumb.”

Jane nodded and chirped back: You go ahead and look up Judge Brewer of Blount County — that son of a bitch comes into the courtroom with a vengeance every day, and if he’s hungover, which he usually is, you can expect that you’re not getting a fair trail. Not at all.”

I asked if there was a particular interaction that inspired this among them.

Oh, was there ever — and thus, the onus for me using “Dick and Jane” as this couple’s names in this entry.

Long story short, Dick said one of their sons “got busted on something minor,” but the cops consequently followed his every move for days and weeks and months, keeping his son’s car under a microscope in hopes that he would fuck up again soon — and that any human being being held social hostage under such unreasonable parameters would surely be caught doing something, anything, that a police force with elastic power could hurt him for, severely, on a whim of their choosing.

In short: Once you’re on the list, you never get off the list, even if you’re an honest, hard-working local boy.

So one day, after a frustrating period of being followed everywhere — work, cookouts, the bar — Dick’s son went and turned himself in to the police. He said that was no way to live.

Whether there was actually a charge waiting for him at the police station is beyond my knowledge (Jane was polite enough to buy me two Miller Lites and a lemon drop cocktail shot), the fact of the matter is this: Not too long after, Dick and Jane’s son fled to another state. They don’t know exactly where he is. He’s off hiding in the woods somewhere near North Carolina, they suspect.

“And that’s more than fine by me,” Dick said. “That’s a much better way of living than whatever the county police was prepared to offer him for the rest of their lives.”

And this, more than anything, was painfully spoken by a successful couple — they told me their family business, started long ago, makes more than $500,000 a year. They go out to eat every night, and are sometimes on the road for 42 of 45 days, boating on Georgia’s coastline or seeing live music across the mid-South region.

Tomorrow night (tonight), in fact, would be Dick’s birthday, and the family would be coming into town to celebrate. The bar was making a special exception to allow his underage grandkids to be part of a brief celebration at Cool Beans, which further demonstrates Dick and Jane’s reputation as beloved citizens.

The only person who wouldn’t be joining them of course, is the son on the lam.

I had bargained for a simple conversation about the concept of celebrity and politics, with a pro wrestling theme, but Dick and Jane gave me a more powerful truth:

Don’t be worried about which celebrity is taking one seat in the county. Be worried about the everyday people who abuse their power like tyrants because they’re simply that inconspicuous.

Instead, be like Dick and Jane, who are willing to share an honest, complex story about “justice” and what that really means — I raise my glass to their hospitality and candid takes on life in Knoxville/Knox County.

###

-moose

PS: Here’s a few other notebook items from my time in Knoxville, which ends Sunday at noon.

SHERIFF’S SALOON: The Graduate Knoxville is home to Saloon 16, a cute western-themed watering hole devoted to Tennessee’s proudest adopted son, Peyton Manning. “The Sheriff” earned his nickname as the prolific Volunteer quarterback who, of course, went on to be a legend in the NFL, winning Super Bowls for the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, respectively. While I abstained from bringing up Manning’s sexual assault allegations while at UT, at the tourist bar themed for him — the servers were getting paid to pour beers and mix cocktails, not speak as legal or cultural authorities — the thought has been on my mind during my entire stay here in Volunteer land.

SMOKEY: While the Volunteers’ beloved dog mascot is named Smokey, I was reminded of another kind of smoke — the kind that comes from cigarettes and vape pens and Swisher Sweets. As I vividly remember during my time working as a reporter in Chattanooga in 2013, it’s still legal to smoke (tobacco and nicotine-based products) indoors, including at local bars, such as Cool Beans. In particular, I remember shooting pool at this place called the “CBC” (Chattanooga Billiard Club), which had a cigar shop downstairs and frequently let tobacco representatives hand out free sample packs upstairs. During a few spirit games of solids-and-stripes or 9-ball, I vividly remember how it was common to see the green felt cushions give a little [poof] of smoke and ash every time you caromed a shot into the rail.

THERE’S A McDONALD’S IN THE HOTEL PARKING LOT: Pretty self-explanatory there. That’s been a great way to grab breakfast (and late-night bites) here in the land of orange. I don’t eat a lot of McDonald’s at home, so it’s nice to get an emergency pair of burgers and a large Coke for $4.25, especially after paying Nashville prices ($6 for a ramekin side of mac and cheese).

KANE AND ABLE: Before spending 20+ years as Kane, Jacobs had at least two lesser-successful characters in the WWF, including “Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS,” an evil dentist, and “Fake Diesel,” where he stood in as an impostor Kevin Nash while the real man/character had fled to WCW in the early days of the Monday Night Wars. Both characters were largely panned, with the latter one being acknowledged by the commentators as “the names we were given” and by the crowd as “fake,” via immediate reaction chants. Having an audience chanting “fake” is pretty much the last thing any pro wrestling organization wants, so it’s perhaps a miracle that Kane was able to stick around for one more character attempt — which ended up being one of the more prolific runs in WWE history.