You probably never heard of the others I mentioned just like you never heard of the group I moved to The City with- David, della Rosa & Brooks. Great sound, killer arrangements, worked a lot…

            We used our first three months ‘woodshedding’. 6-8 hours a day rehearsing, writing, arranging, and singing. Jazz, Folk, Pop, Artsy Stuff… and in April our manager figured it was time to take the act on The Road, so we set out for a little town in East Tennessee that was hosting a Southern University Student Government Block Booking Showcase.

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             Now my previous road trips had been few and far between; a gig at Western Michigan University, a side trip to Chicago for some Coffee House guest sets…a folk club called ‘It’s Here’, and another at ‘The Church’ in Des Plaines… in my life I’d never traveled farther from Baltimore than New York City and DC. I’d led a rather geographically sheltered existence.

            It took us two long days of driving from New York City, down The Jersey Turnpike, across the Pennsylvania Turnpike and all the way down I-81 into Virginia to Stanton for the night, then a long day to our destination where we arrived in the dark of the second night.

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            Those of you who are reading this have ridden The Interstates and marveled at the efficiency of high speed travel but when I began my musical road journeys, the Interstates were marginally complete in the northern states. In Dixie they were ‘under construction’.  So the drive from the northern Virginia border to The Tennessee line was ten miles on I-81 followed by twenty-five miles on US 11. And US 11 was a two lane road in those days. So the going was…slow.

            Pretty drive through The Shenandoah Valley, it was Springtime, the weather grew incrementally warmer the farther south we drove. Roanoke went by…Wytheville…. Abingdon….and finally Bristol, the town that straddles the state border so when you say you’re from Bristol, you have to add Virginia or Tennessee.
           

            The great country music singer Tennessee Ernie Ford was born in Bristol, Tennessee. Good thing he wasn’t born in Bristol, Virginia because he’d have had a tough time in 1950’s country music if his name had been Virginia Ernie Ford.

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            I’ll be here all week.

            Driving into East Tennessee was for me something akin to Joseph Conrad’s book – The Heart of Darkness. The roads deteriorated with every mile. We stopped for gas and were confronted with a dialect that was unrecognizable by any of us. I recall a rickety one-and-a-half lane bridge over the Nolichucky River and soon after, another bridge, this time over the French Broad River that was even more rickety, followed by small towns, smaller towns, dilapidated barns, and on it went until we drove into Gatlinburg, Tennessee after dark and checked into The Riverside Hotel.

            We hung out with some of the other acts who’d come in from different parts of the country…The Bitter End Singers came in from The Road, I think The Staples Singers might have been there along with some regional acts I’d never heard of, and a group from Atlanta – The Town Criers. I knew a few of The Bitter End Singers so we drank some beer and Hootened some Nannies, traded songs, drank more beer, stayed up late, drank more beer till way into the night.

            Next morning was rough. I had a King Hell Headache and was desperate for breakfast. Something hot. With sausage, eggs, toast, anything to soak up the previous night’s debaucheries. I walked though the lobby of The Riverside, stumbled to the main Parkway, and turned right up the hill. My head was now ringing like a church bell and my legs were none too steady. My tongue was asleep. My teeth itched.

            Halfway up the hill I stopped for a moment to reorganize myself and happened to turn my head to the left. And then up. And up again…until I was looking at the biggest, tallest mountain I’d ever seen in my life. It was dark green and…what was that word..? Ah yes. It was smoky. That must be why they were called the Smoky Mountains. They were big and smoky and they were definitely Great.

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            It was one of those moments in life the Zen Buddists call ‘Satori’. When you are so deeply into the moment that you are open to Instant Enlightenment. When all the lines of your life … Past, Future, Present, Hopes, Dreams, Karma, and Self …become one. Now. It is only in the moment that we are present and accounted for.

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            As moments go, it was pretty big.

            It took me five years and a lot of miles before The Great Smoky Mountains became a serious part of my life but that’s for other stories. Other tales.

            So why then is the title of this tale White Oak Flats and not Gatlinburg, you might ask? Well…it’s a long story. But I’ll try to pare it down because you’re probably tired of reading this and I’m definitely getting tired of editing it.

            Early 1800s the first Ogle came to settle the little valley of The Little Pigeon River. Soon came more folks – Whaleys and Reagans, McCarters, and later Deloziers and Partons and all the other names you see on signs when you visit Gatlinburg. When enough folks came, they named the settlement White Oak Flats for all the obvious reasons and so it was named.
           

            Before the Civil War one Radford Gatlin came to White Oaks Flats and promptly built a store and post office. While prosperous, Ol’ Radford was not the nicest of men, him having secessionist tendencies and the locals being Union folks, so after some minor skirmishes, Radford Gatlin was asked to leave White Oak Flats. And… he did.

            The name he gave to his post office was of course, Gatlinburg, and the name stuck. Some might think it odd what with the town folk being Union sympathizers and Radford being a southern sympathizer but that’s how it is when you open yourself to The Mountain. You just need to accept its idiosyncrasies.
 

           But for all of its idiosyncrasies, all of its pretty views, all the miles of trails, creeks, hollers and the like, there is something deep and strong that The Mountain touches in some folks, a value in backing yourself up to those walls of limestone and granite and seeking it's heart. It's been with me for over fifty years.

           The writer Jon Kabat-Zinn called it perfectly: The Mountain ~ the place of Wonder and Dread.