Our First Mountain Trip By James E. Boyd B. J. and I are working toward fifty-four wonderful years of marriage and ministry together. We have had our ups and downs and thicks and thins but in and through it all God blesses us and our love for each other grows stronger each day. I had traveled a good bit before we were married. One of my trips took me across the U. S. for three weeks with a fun group while I was a high school sophomore. I won this trip by being a state winner in a 4-H Club essay contest. I have been writing a long time. B. J. showed an interest in traveling, so, before we were married we had sort of an unwritten agreement that when time and circumstances permitted we would travel. Almost fifty-four years later, we are still keeping that pledge. We fell in love with two places early on. Of course, St. Simons Island, the place of our honeymoon, ranked high on our list of favorite places. Needless to say, St. Simons looked a lot different in 1960 than it does now. The next places we were smitten with were the mountains. Since our marriage, we have been blessed with the opportunities to travel in mountains around the world. However, there are no mountains more beautiful or majestic than Georgia’s Blue Ridge or the Great Smokey Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Our son Richard was born in 1962 and brought a lot of glee to our lives. He was the “apple of our eyes” and we spent a great deal of happy time together. Father, mother and son, we were all wound up together in love and happiness—and still are. We had a black and white TV in those early years that we spent a lot of time watching. B. J., Richard in my lap, and I huddled happily on the couch watching the tube. Several times a day, there would come on the TV, a commercial advertising “Ghost Town in Maggie Valley, NC”; it finally got to us and we set a time to go to Ghost Town atop Ghost Mountain in Maggie Valley, NC. Ghost Town was an exact replica of an old western town replete with shootouts and all. We thought it would be a good trip for young Richard, and us. Elated, we planned our trip for the 4th of July week. We were jumping for joy as we made plans. We had a gleaming white 1965 Ford Falcon. The Falcons were the predecessors of the Mustangs. We left early on Monday. We turned off U. S. 1 at Wrens, Ga. and onto Georgia Highway 17, the scenic route (sometimes we still travel that route to the mountains). Richard was beside himself. He could hardly wait to get to the mountains. He kept asking, “When are we going to see the mountains?” B. J. and I were anxious, too. We accessed U. S. 441 south of Clayton, Ga. and headed north into the Smokies. Richard was goggle-eyed as he beheld the mountains. We had no motel reservations (we traveled a lot that way in the early years before the days of timeshares and condominiums) so when we saw a sign at a motel in Franklin, NC that said “Vacancy”, although there was still a lot of daylight, we decided to stop and bunk up for the night. It was the 4th of July and we had been told that lodging was scarce in the mountains. There was a 4th of July celebration that night in downtown Franklin. B. J. and I thought it would be fun so we went to the party. It seemed that everyone in Franklin was there. They had closed the main street and were having a street dance; it was mountain hoedown to be sure. The sheriff was “calling the set”. We stayed with them for a while, munched on some goodies, then headed back to our motel and sacked out. The next day was the 4th of July. We got ready and went in search of breakfast. To our amazement, Franklin was dead. Not a Tarheel was stirring. They had partied all night and were sleeping it off. We were hungry but no eatery was open. We combed the area hunting for a place to eat. Finally, in a little crossroads community, we came across a hole-in-the-wall diner that was open. Famished, we got down and went in the quaint little mountain bistro. I ordered a stack of pancakes, mountain sausage, maple syrup and lots of coffee. B. J. ordered Richard and herself a big stack of pancakes, a double order of bacon, maple syrup, coffee, and milk for Richard. They didn’t know about Georgia cane syrup. It was then and there in Franklin, NC that B. J. discovered that she didn’t like maple syrup. To this day, B. J. won’t touch maple syrup. On that bright sunshiny 4th of July morning we had our first breakfast in the Great Smokey Mountains. To be continued.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 10:20:41 +0000
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