Speaking of Water Wheels

My Uncle Doyle Loveday is shown here with his wonderful water wheel he built on his property off Kodak Road. (He is also shown below as a little boy.) His daughter Lois (Loveday) Chesney told me that her dad was a mechanical engineer, "partially educated in the military, and just a natural," who was very knowledgeable about mechanical things. Among other things throughout his life, he worked as an auto mechanic and driver with Lewis Bus Lines and with Knoxville Construction Company (now APAC) as supervisor for the heavy equipment that was used on building the local interstate highways.

Building the water wheel was a dream of his, so before he retired, he had a pond dug. He built the wheel all by himself during the summer of 1989 and designed it so that the overflow run off from the pond would allow water to drip onto the wheel to make it turn. He put a swing beside it, and the site became a special place for dreaming and reflection. The family cherishes this monument of his work, and his granddaughter Denise held her wedding at the site this past September.

Uncle Doyle went with me on several "hunting trips" for family information in Sevier County over the years, and I have a precious recording of him telling about family history. I visited his water wheel several days ago and couldn't help but touch it to make it turn. It is so perfectly balanced, that even today I believe you could just blow on it and make it spin!