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 Colleyville neighborhood of Centerville.
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 "Grinders 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.
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 sign to "Hickman Springs Road."
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