It’s no small feat to stumble across the space capsule in Coble, Tennessee.
You’d need a pretty good reason to be rolling down one particular dead end dirt road. For example: Trying to buy some sheep.
That’s what led Ginny Youmans past Coble’s old general store, around the bend from the honeybee breeders and over the creeks.
“We had two sheep and a cage full of chickens in the back of the pickup truck,” she said, “and we saw this thing as we went by and I told my husband, ‘Wait a minute, we have to go back and look at that.'”
Ginny did the right thing: took a couple pictures, went on her way and then asked Curious Nashville:
In Coble, Tennessee, we saw what appeared to be a ‘space capsule’ with a NASA logo on the end. What is it?
Once you know what the space capsule really is, it can feel like a no-brainer. And there’s no way to unsee it.
But right up until the moment you find out, the fun is in the guessing.
It couldn’t be …
For starters, we had a street name: Sulphur Creek Road. Though in the end, even that wasn’t quite right.
We had a grainy cellphone photo, too, taken at night no less.
Online? Nothing from Roadside America or Atlas Obscura.
There was a Reddit thread — there’s always one — with a similar photo and query.
The first breakthrough came in finding two other pretend NASA capsules, which had become viral hits in Arizona and in Oklahoma.
In those cases, artists applied their imagination to roadside wreckage that is certainly not fit for space flight. They embellished with rocket boosters and metallic silver paint.
But were they kin to the one in Coble?
We went back to the map in search of contact information for any of the named farms in the area and sent some hopeful messages in search of information. Not about the harvest, but: Had they seen a space capsule nearby?
Eventually, the folks at Beaverdam Creek Farm said yes.
A dirt road rendezvous
Before long, we were bound for Coble to meet a man named Bruce.
About an hour west of Nashville, we took the Minnie Pearl Memorial Highway along the Duck River and through the hollows of Hickman County.
When the asphalt gave way to hard-packed dirt and gravel, we sensed we were close.
Past a grove of bamboo and around one more bend, the capsule came into view. The word ‘magnificent’ came to mind as beams of late afternoon sunlight streamed through the trees and dappled the capsule.
It’s about the size of a car and looks like an tapered barrel on its side — like a bowling pin but not quite so curvaceous. The only marking, these days, is NASA lettering.
We squished into its marshy grounds, tapped on its rusty remains and peeked inside to see some discarded cans.
Then an SUV rolled up.
“Hi,” we heard, “I’m Bruce!”
‘The patina of realism’
We would soon learn that this phony space capsule isn’t merely a one-off prank. There’s a story of family bonds and of community here.
But first, how did it come to be?
Bruce Howard knows. His family had just moved to Coble in 2010 when the crash happened.
Only … it wasn’t from the sky.
Bruce said a speeding driver nearly collided with an oncoming cement truck on the winding, one-lane road.
“The driver of the cement truck kind of swerved and tried to avoid an impact. And they did,” Bruce said. “But the truck ended up tipping over and falling on its side into this marshy land.”
And just they learned in Oklahoma and Arizona, a tipped concrete mixer tends to be a lost cause.
“This cement hardens within hours. There’s no way for a tow truck or anything to get rid of that,” Bruce said.
For the Howard family — with six kids — the would-be blight instead became an opportunity.
They printed and attached an American flag and markings for a (nonexistent) Apollo 17 mission.
The elements soon stripped much of that off. They used paint on their second go-around, though rain has taken a toll on that, too.
“And it was great because it was like instant age,” Bruce said. “The patina of realism.”
The community’s capsule
Coble’s capsule looks real enough to fool some people. Not to be mean-spirited — but to get them wondering.
Bruce has seen some double takes, like what Ginny did when carting those sheep.
“We’ve actually had people believe it’s a real spacecraft,” he said.
“We do have the repairmen who come to the house, or we’ve had quite a few folks come up, who ask about it,” said second-eldest daughter Emma.
Even within the family, the space capsule’s origin story can be elusive.
Take the youngest son, Josiah. He was just an infant at the time it appeared.
It was only when Curious Nashville came knocking that the family realized his blind spot. They’d heard the boy mention “when it fell from the sky.”
“We think that he thinks it’s an actual spacecraft,” Bruce said that afternoon.
Sure enough, Josiah said he thought it had crashed down.
“Basically my whole life,” he said. “Until today.”
But whatever their role in the idea, the kids lovingly refer to it as ‘our space capsule.’ And they said it fits in with other family shenanigans. They’ve made parody street signs to post along the roads, for example.
If there’s a thing they take seriously, it’s working to build these neighborly bonds, often through games or humor.
In such a rural area — 45 minutes from the nearest Walmart — Bruce said these activities make a difference.
“We are not isolated at the end of this dirt road that we live on. We’re very much tied into our community and especially into our church,” he said.
And for Bruce, the meaning runs even deeper. He was 3 when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.
“I have a picture in my baby book of me sitting in front of the television,” he said. “Space travel was just assumed for my generation.”
About 30 years later, he even ended up working for NASA. Actual NASA.
Bruce was part of the agency’s Classroom of the Future initiative. He spent about a decade working to inspire the next generation of explorers and engineers, often using methods that made learning fun.
With his own space capsule, he’s been able to stoke a few more big thoughts for passers-by.
“One of my favorite things to do is to do scavenger hunts where you get in the car and you go,” he said. “So I’m very proud now to have been the author of an oddity that people can drive to and see here in Hickman County, if they ever tour this county.”
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM