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‘Cliff Barnes’ Annual Holiday Bike Ride’

The first impression of a person is often visual. If you see Clifton “Cliff” Barnes with his beard tied with a hair band to keep it from blowing and his well-loggoed black vest riding along on his large motorcycle, it might be easy to assume that he’s a happy biker guy, and if your first sight of him in a suit and tie with a packet of papers, you could then assume that he’s a professional guy going about his work.

You’d be right on both observations. Cliff Barnes is an attorney who seriously goes about his lifelong dream of being a good civil and public defender, as well as enjoying his off-time enjoying his freedom on one of his large motorcycles.

Even after his formal retirement, the now 74 year-old still enjoys going about his courtroom work.

Born 40 miles west of Memphis in Mariana, Arkansas, Cliff was one of eight children of sharecropper Crafton and his wife Dot Wafford Barnes.

Mr. Barnes would run the farm while the family would live in one of the landowner’s houses, where young Clif would take a school bus to school.

As Cliff was entering the seventh grade the family would move to Memphis where Cliff would attend the Humes High School, then locally known as Elvis Pressley High School because of the rock and roll entertainer that had also attended the school.

Graduating from Humes High in 1966, young Cliff would work for a local box company which made customized boxes for shipping various size objects.

As was common at the time, he would soon be drafted into the Army and sent to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, for basic training. Having designed boxes at his previous job, Cliff was then sent to Ft. Meade, Maryland, to train as an Army draftsman and after finishing his training was posted at Ft. Meade. After 5 months and with a couple other soldiers already there doing the same job, Cliff would get orders for Vietnam in 1969.

“They put 200 of us on a plane and closed the doors”, he recalled. “We stopped one time for fuel and they kept the doors closed to keep us from getting off. The plane would get hot and stuffy and after nearly 24 hours, the plane landed and they opened the doors. When we got off, it was like stepping into a sauna, and it took 2 or 3 days to adjust to it.

“I was assigned to the 24th Corps of the 101st Airborne Division as a draftsman. “Some guy had a Thompson sub machine gun that I got from him and carried,” he continued. “ I wanted to figure a way to get it home, so I shellacked it and put it on a frame, but then I sold it to a Marine general and figured that he didn’t have any problem of getting it back home for himself.

“When we were in base camp, they’d fire rockets into us. When I was on guard duty, I could hear sounds and fire at them with a M-60 machine gun. We had a bunker for the gun, but we slept away from it because it made a good target. A lot of people had it much worse than me.

“After I’d been there for 11 months they sent me home. I had about 5 months left and they let me go on home. Some guys had it tough coming back home, but I grew my hair and beard and started college and didn’t have any problem.

“The G.I. Bill had given me the chance. When I came home I used some of my Vietnam money and bought a big Honda motor bike and had a ’53 station wagon. When the car wouldn’t start, I’d take the Honda to school. I’d wanted to be a lawyer since I was a kid and went on to law school and passed the bar. I had started law school with a friend and we had decided to go into business together and had looked at Knoxville and Chattanooga, but he failed the bar and went into the insurance business, while I went to Chattanooga.

“I had always wanted to be a public defender and after a little girl had been abused, they hired some more attorneys in the Cleveland area and I went to work with the Department of Human Services.

“In 1989 I was living in Jonesboro and was married to an attorney. She wanted to move to Kingsport and I didn’t like it there, so that led us to splitting up. I’d known Ethel Rhodes in Morristown. She liked me and told me to get my hair and beard cut and to behave like a lawyer.

“In 1989, I went to work here with Greg Eichelman for the State of Tennessee and bought a little house in Morristown. In 2020 I had some health problems and had been with the State fo r 30 years and retired.”

Retirement didn’t sit well with Cliff, so he went back to work full time in private practice. Now 74, he plans to cut down when he turns 75 and leave off Civil cases because they’re “more emotional,” and stay with the criminal cases.

Around 2005, Clif and his son Matthew, would move to Talbott. Matthew is a longtime Brazilian Jiujitsu practicioner who now holds a brown belt, soon to become a black belt.

He had earlier been recognized as coming in first place in the state and since has been ranked in the 12 and 13th places in the nation by the North American Grappling Association.

Cliff’s love for motorcycles has continued to where he now owns a 2004 Harley Road King, a 2012 Street Glide, a 1980 Shovelhead and a 2018 Indian Bobber.

For the last dozen or more years, he’s made it a tradition to take a bike ride during the Christmas and New Year holidays, and recently continued that tradition.

If you do happen to see Cliff go by on his bike with a muscular young man riding alongside him, that will be his son. Matthew is following in his dad’s love for motorcycles and has even started growing a beard, but his beard is still a long way from rivaling his dad’s.

“The coldest holiday ride I took was when it was 32 degrees and I didn’t ride very far,” Cliff ended. “I rode with the Copper Heads for a while in the 90’s, but don’t ride with any group now. I’m going to ride as long as I can hold a motorcycle up.”