Christmas In North Carolina 2002

Unable to sleep any longer, we started out about 4AM our time and headed east on I10. Turning north at Cottondale onto 331 we scurried through the darkness toward Dothan AL where we took 441 to Eufaula AL. The sun was barely up when we stopped for a bathroom and another cup of coffee at MacDonald’s. Everyone but Daddy was sleeping. 441 is a divided Hwy now for most of its way, however there is a twenty mile stretch south of Columbus GA that remains as it has since the early 30s when it was paved. Daddy calls it the Hwy of crosses. Every few miles are scatted white crosses to mark the place where someone lost their lies. The crosses stand in solitary and others in groups of two or three. Daddy suggests that someone is trying to dramatize the need for 4 lanes. Sections of the widened road are under construction. We imagine that the timetable is already in place to make this “memorial” highway like all the rest.
Our planned Itinerary

We arrived at the Turkey’s nest about 6:30 PM. After unloading the car, everyone looked around. We were very pleased with the cabin. It was much more than we had expected. Dad kept patting himself on the back all evening for his good luck in choosing Turkey’s Nest.

Sunday
The proximity of Turkey Hill to the Blue Ridge Parkway made the getting on it very simple. Our destination was Mount Airy, Andy Griffith hometown and archetype for Mayberry. Stopping several times to take a picture and document the remnants of last months blizzard that cut power to the homes in these mountains We drove along the parkway for miles until Roaring Gap where we ambled onto Hwy 21. The vestiges of the past are everywhere. Ancient fences and barns dressed in a hallow gray patina of their age. Abandoned gas stations, pump less seems to beckon with a lonesome sigh for travelers from a past time to stop again. Only the wind of the streamlined SUVs as they pass and the sidelong glances of their occupants respond to the old now faded signs rusting.

Monday
“I want to snowboard,” said Andrew. Dad returned to the cabin while the rest of us fought Beech mountains slopes. Off we started toward The long day ended with homemade hamburgers and French fries and an apple pie.

Christmas Eve, Tuesday, December 24, 2002
First snow. Enough to cover the ground. We went into Boone to watch Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. What a wonderful spectacle. Our ride back to the cabin after dark was treachous. Fog with light rain made visibility very limited. We crept cautiously up the two-lane highway. The climb up to Turkey Hill was done at about 5 miles per hour. We all sighed with relief when the turtle’s headlights illuminated the cabin.

Mom prepared a supper of bean soup and ham. A few biscuits and a slice of fresh onion made the simplest of meals a grand one. More unusual was the four of us sitting around the dinner table together, an event that happens seldom at home.



Laurel and Andrew

Wednesday, Christmas Day. December 25, 2002

The mountain wakes up gradually. The sun filters in indirectly without a spectacle revealing the ground and trees possess a slight dusting of snow. Like a landscape of tiny cookies and cakes set out upon a kitchen table all covered with thin almost transparent coating of powdered sugar. The wind howls and the thin wisps of trees move as if they were an ocean all bound into one gigantic brush with the universes greater force. The double rocker on the porch outside my bedroom door rocks on its own without a person, perhaps a ghostly passerby pausing in the future to take his breath before he resumes his sojourn from a time now past here in this same geography.

The weather was blustery and filled with snow. The wind howled and the heater worked to keep us snug as a bug in a rug. Daddy got up early and went down to the ponds and made some photographs, the wind mixed with snow made staying out too long impossible.

Daddy: I managed to delete most of the pictures I’d made during the trip. I was disappointed and a little disgusted. I got over my mistake, going outside again and down the hill to reshoot the pictures I’d made earlier of the cabin’s exteriors.

We called our mothers. Nana described the shrimp feast and reminded us that everybody missed us. Sue Ellen spoke with her mother and brother. All is well. They are planning on going to Nancy’s for Christmas dinner.

Most of the day was spent reading and watching too many channels of TV. The winds continued throughout the day and into the night. We all went outside to explore the nearby mountains and trails. Andrew and Laurel kept the snowballs a sailing at one another.

The evening found father unsettled. He lay down the book he started, a biography of Maxwell Perkins, the editor of such luminaries as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Earnest Hemingway, and a host of other 20th century writers, by A. Scott Berg. The book daddy purchased from a second hand thrift store in downtown Boone, NC a few blocks from Appalachian State University. “Their books selection was better than many libraries,” daddy remarked.
By nine pm the wind was getting worse rather than better and seem to possess, at least in daddy’s fertile imagination, a demon like presence. He stalked around the cabin checking the doors and windows. He tried reading. He tried writing. But nothing he did allowed him to settle down and do what he needed and wanted to do sleep. He called this state “a waking nightmare”. These visited him on occasion and h spent several hours slugging it out with “ordinary fears’ of a man who has reached his fiftieth birthday. Finally a little after of 12am he decided to take a shower. The streaming hot water seemed to soothe him. He came to bed and despite the winds persistence laps off into sleep.

If that wasn’t enough, he awoke at 4am (as usual no matter when he fell asleep) feeling s strangeness around the cabin.

Thursday, December 26, 2002
The wind has died down and it is cold. The thermometer on the porch reads: 20 degrees. The snow persists on the ground and in the trees.
Today will be a shopping day. She comes nearly 600 miles, but Ross and T. J. Max is what spark her imagination. We head out a little after 11 and find Boone a winter wonderland. The snow covers everything. On the hills and mountains the frosty glow transforms the world into a glistening sun drenched ballet for the eyes. We are learning that snow can be nasty. Tramped and over run with car tires the dirt of the earth mixes and creates gray wash over our cars windows.
First stop Val Crusis and The Mast General Store.
Shopping downtown Boone.
Mountain House Restaurant.

Friday, December 27, 2002
Our last full day. We are undecided about what to do. Daddy takes the car to shoot some pictures of the road in and up to the cabin. He ventures onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, this time in a western direction. He calls Mom to tell her bout the views. Adele has called. We have to be out of the cabin by 11AM. This is not the pan. I return home and give her a call. There has been a mix up, I am correct we live Saturday not today.
The Blue Ridge Parkway over the hill. Sliding on ice. South to Blowing Rock. Griff’s in Lenoir. Statesville and JBs. Winston-Salem and search for Dewey’s. Missing Ross. The

Saturday.
Last morning on the mountain. Continued cold. Twenty-six degrees. Wind blowing. Ours is a protected place in a protected time. I think of those people that came to this place and created something from the hardness of this rocky land. You cannot eat beauty, but if you survive the cold and the make the food your body requires, the beauty can sustain your faith, inspire hope in the future, in easier days.

Ate breakfast Greene’s Grill. Stopped at Ram. McDonald’s. Car washed. Boone 105, then 221, 70, 40, 240, Asheville, 25 to 85 in Greenville. Stopped at 8PM Fairfield Inn. CiCi.

Sunday
“Less than 5 hours from home.” I told this to the children as we pulled out of the Fairfield Inn in Suwannee Georgia. Streaming down interstate 85 entering the environs of Atlanta Ga. Large landscapes of freshly created shopping centers and tracts of family homes. All this did not exist 20 years ago. In the distance an mountain stone faced. Andrew remarks, “That’s Stone Mountain.” Off the Interstate, down in to the countryside. $19.00 to see the rock. We look from the parking lot. The place is filled with minorities unsuspecting that this proud stone emblem carved into the stone was the work of the Ku Klux Klan. Ain't history funny? Athens. Yes a little back tracking but a great downtown.
South to Macon for Nu-Way Hotdogs. They are closed. We get lost. We drive in circles taking in the landscape. Industrial buildings and over passes cut off in mid air. The one thing that is regular is our need to stop and pee. And drink more to insure the next stop. Finally we get free of Macon’s grasp. It is 3 hours later.

Still Sunday-Only minutes left.
Some how we arrive home. The clocks tell us we have made it before tomorrow. Home again and in our own beds