My Gatlinburg

This Week's Song - In My Tennessee Mountain Home - by Dolly - Who needs her last name. This week my Tennessee Mountain Home emerged from the fire and smoke. You can't burn magic and you can't kill a spirit like ours.

The Smoky Mountains

Pigeon Forge ended at the water slide, the one made of concrete that left cuts and scrapes. Sitting with my siblings in the back seat of the family station wagon in 1978 with the attractions of the gateway to the Smokies in our rearview, the Pryor kids adjusted to focus on the scenery outside of our window. That stretch of 321 into Gatlinburg has always been my favorite part of the ride from Knoxville. As we disappeared into a canopy of trees covering mountain sides, my father playing Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs on the stereo, I felt like I was being transported to my very own Neverland. The path was cut by a river that rolled over rocks seemingly placed by the hand of God. Twists and turns and a final climb opened to a wondrous little town, our East Tennessee Magic Kingdom, where the taste of a candied apples and freshly woven taffy waited to dance on our tongues - A place where pancake breakfasts in front of giant fireplaces started a day filled with believe-it-or-nots, wax museums and putt putt. Chair lifts and alpine slides, a babbling brook and an indoor pool - oh, the indoor pool - transformed every short trip into a vacation. We didn't have money, but we never knew. We had Gatlinburg.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

My parents, like so many East Tennessee couples, honeymooned there. As a family, and with several other families, we rang in many a New Year in Cobbly Nob in the 1980's. Uncle John died there in his little house, his sacred last breath drawn on the mountain air he loved so much. I was too young to understand but old enough to never forget. It was, for me and my siblings, our first encounter with death.  My brother and I stood in the front yard listening to the wails of my sweet Aunt Lucy through the screened porch door, the one that slammed on rusty springs when we would run back and forth to the creek.  I was sad, but even at that age I knew it was a special place to live and a better place to die. I think Uncle John would agree.                  

Taffy and Candied Apples on the Parkway

Gatlinburg is our secret place, a land of magic and mystery unknown to the rest of the world. That's what we thought then and how I feel now. Children of the Valley share it with the world but it is ours. The images of it burning this week would not register, its streets and businesses, hotels and chalets, all a haven of childhood memories that simply cannot be erased. How can you burn that down? As I watched it burn on news coverage and social media, I thought of it all - the wedding chapels, the mom and pop motels, and the handcrafted pocket knife I got as a kid.  I thought of high School dates to The Burning Bush restaurant and the skating rink at Ober Gatlinburg, where grace escaped me, but not the girl. There were fraternity formals at Bent Creek Resort and day trips with my babies, when they were still babies, to see the great aquarium. Then there was a magical day with Nancy and all four kids in the river, skipping rocks and exploring the forest followed by a night in town exploring its beloved streets and sharing our childhood memories in order to carry out our obligation as children of the Valley - to sprinkle the pixie dust of the spirit of the mountain on the next generation. For those of us raised up in East Tennessee, Gatlinburg is both a right of passage and a an accessible bit of Heaven, a piece of our sugar-laden heritage and hickory-smoked birth right as "mountain people." It is, quite simply, happiness - East Tennessee style.

August 2007

This too shall pass, for in the realm of our world tucked firmly in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg's light can no more be suppressed than that of the stars or the memories of a child.