Tenting Tonight

The storytelling starts in bright cool sunshine in all the big white tents simultaneously.  The first two hour session samples short stories from a number of tellers. Subsequent sessions feature two tellers for longer sessions and each evening another showcase with short presentations from several – a good chance to see  most of the participants and choose where to go tomorrow.   We were prepared for world class tellers and we laughed till our sides split at Bill Lepp discussing things that started out as compliments in his head, but weren’t received that well by his wife. Waddy Mitchell told cowboy poems or Buckaroo poetry as they call it on the “ranges of the West.”  Bill Harley, who has told stories in 2600 schools, took us back to when we knew our job “was to explore the zone between Yes and No.”  and sang the most touching ballad about a quiet young schoolteacher who  always tried to do the right thing and not cause any trouble “but I will not give this test.”
There were lots more, but surprising to me –I don’t know why – was the music.  Spencer Bohren, 45 years as a guitar picker from Wyoming, via New Orleans and the Delta “didn’t know I was a storyteller until Friday.”  But he was a natural, telling about how he acquired his steel guitar and nearly missed playing Henry Townsend’s 93rd birthday, then playing the Cairo Blues , a song that has deep personal meaning for me…

Women in Cairo will treat you nice and sweet
Women in Cairo will treat you kind and sweet
Get your hand and knock you off your feet
Kick you and knife you, beat you and cut you too
Kick you and knife you, beat you and cut you too
Henry told Spencer that when his band got to the edge of Cairo, the Sherriff pulled them over and searched their car for guns and knives.  Finding none, he gave them each one before he let them enter town.
 Not  a big surprise was David Holt, who has mastered everything with strings, learned from and played with the best mountain musicians in history. (He now tours with Doc Watson and does the PBS show.)   What was cool was hearing him play with Josh Goforth who first approached Bill in a middle school auditorium and now records with him.
Willie Claflin sang a Scottish ballad A cappella for twelve minutes interpreting with asides and hand gestures. Then he brought his son Brian on stage (the only time they sing together all year). Brian discussed his new support group for Adult Children of Storytellers and brought his  concert partner, ”spawn of two storytellers”  to conduct a “meeting”.  It was hilarious, and then they slid right into a song for three perfectly matched voices. 
There were so many many high points…Everyone should see this again and again and we plan to.
BUT, You Ask, What about the FOOD?   Just the highpoints….

• Three Bean chili
• Cuban sandwiches
• pulled pork, beans and potato salad
• cheesecake to die for
• Southern Peach Cobbler with ice cream 

Mr. Henley’s Porch

   
Gerald Henley’s Porch almost overhangs the Main Street sidewalk in Jonesborough. If one of his flowering plants were to be upset, it would roll four feet to the gutter. Nearly everyone who passes is eye level to Mr. Henley as he sits.  Patty was dragging behind, so I stopped to speak. A few compliments on his “catbird seat”, a little of his history,  a little of ours…
“Trailer, huh?  You out at the campground?  … I got one of them camping in the back yard….Had cancellations this year.”
 “Couple rooms in the house,” he pointed toward the door behind him and swung it open to the breeze, “cancelled too.”
“I’ll show ya.”
 The Parkinson's has slowed him and smiling at jokes has become extra effort best conserved. He was all business just keeping a steady pace down the long narrow passage between the row houses and along the wooden fence. I had photographed the entry to the passage yesterday, but hadn’t intruded further.


Beyond the fence, a couple of closed barn wood sheds and a huge tree sat a lovely old Airstream with Alabama plates.
“We have dinner out here during the storytelling,” waving toward the huge College Street Tent which stood on the green verge of his backyard.
 “You can just walk.”

We walked to the back edge of the property, surveying the entrance to our future camping spot. The approach was down steeply on a single lane road at a pitch of 1 to 2, requiring a tight uphill backing ninety between the permanent utility pole and the temporary power pole serving the tent.

“He tried it from the uphill side last year and ended down there…”
The ground guide blanched; the pilot continued to analyze, but slipped into future thought, imagining a shiny Airstream parked in the sun, visible to adoring masses in the tent.
“Twenty a night, but call me as soon as you know.”

“We will!   ….err…we might.”

Endorphins….

If Endorphins are released when we are laughing, we are in Endorphin Overload and loving it. Three days with the best storytellers in the country, perfect weather, historic town and quality shops, FAIR FOOD –- what could top this?
Thursday  We were up early  to get our tickets.  The registration crew was just getting set up and in high spirits.  Everyone was so friendly and interested in each other.
 “Where are you from?”
“Have you been here before?”
 Stories –- our own and theirs –- started there and continued.  We learned that one of the parking guides was an AT section hiker, his partner played college baseball with Michael Dukakis… The stories continued….On the street, and in lines at the port-o-lets, with seat mates in the tents and along the main street, the endorphins were flowing and there was more sharing than a twelve step meeting (and more laughing.) 
Hanging out in the entrance to the visitor center, we had our parking solved.
“We are not the Methodist church from Jonesborough. (They’re  our  friends, but our church is in Johnson City.) We offer parking at half their price and it’s right up there…”
Three folks in period costumes approached us separately;  One was the former director of the Birmingham Symphony. Each told us different things about I Am Home, a play woven of stories told by the people of Jonesborough, about Jonesborough and presented by an amateur cast of people from Jonesborough ages 4- 70.  We wavered, but went back later and got our tickets.  IT WAS THE BEST DECISION WE MADE ALL WEEK!
A school bus whisked us a few blocks to a long closed school with limited parking.  Each of those cast members spotted us in the crowd filing in and thanked us for coming. The cast mingled, kids politely welcomed us and scurried around the bare brick room and behind the tiered folding chairs. The only props were painted wooden crates, rearranged artfully for every scene. The lighting was professional but secured to bare rafters. No real sound system was needed.  We were close and the actors well directed – we didn’t miss a word.

“We laughed, we cried…”  (you know there is no way to recreate this night for you here, but here is a little vignette..) As the lights dimmed, the author,  huddled near the corner of the seating, was sobbing and, on stage, the huge brawny guy who played frontiersman Daniel Boone was weeping openly and so was everybody else.

The cast mingled with us as we filed out and we congratulated a black man who had carried one of the most intense scenes. (turns out he was born in Clanton, Alabama.)

“ I wanted to do this well…. because that story is from a man who is a deacon in my church…He’s 95 this week … and two others (who were part of the scene) are in my church as well.”

Storytelling–The Preview

The pull to Jonesborough Tennessee (THE Oldest Town in the State, we are regularly reminded) was smooth and  short.  We found the Persimmon Ridge CG (city), and, after a little prospecting, found a level site with all the facilities in working order.  We lunched and walked the Oldest Town until dinner time, getting familiar with the location of the big tents where the stories would be told and other venues.
 
We acquired the highly recommended tickets to hear Donald Davis tonight as a preview.  What a treat! Davis is a retired Methodist Minister, a favorite of everyone we talked to.  He told four stories of his growing to adulthood with the theme “I didn’t know it would turn out like THAT!”   We enjoyed it immensely and were given a thorough orientation on how to navigate the festival from some kind locals we sat with.

Our Montgomery connection to the late Kathryn Tucker Windham garner us a lot of heavy sighs.  Ms. Windham was a great favorite here and as often as we crossed paths at craft shows and such in our area and as much as we loved her, I guess we felt she would always be with us. People here have heard hundreds of her stories over the 40+ years and surely are closer in spirit and feel the loss quite deeply and sincerely. 

OUR WALK AROUND JONESBOROUGH…

Stories–the prelude

So here we are at Natural Tunnel State Park in Virginia marking time.  We think we saw all the “Attractions” yesterday and we aren’t expected at the Jonesborough Storytelling for another day.  What to do?
“Talk to Randy” seemed a great opportunity.  Randy rode in last night on a leg of The Ride East, his cross country Adventure tour on by totally tricked out BMW.
Randy is a natural storyteller and has a wealth of experiences to draw from.  We had a nice chat last night, but Patty was otherwise occupied. We started again this morning as the tent fly was drying and began with,
“Monterey Bay Aquarium!!! How could you leave a place like that?”
Well, I haven’t LEFT it; this is just a 5 week cross country trip I have been promising myself and preparing for since I was eight.”
After this adventure, Randy will return to his post as chief photographer for the best aquarium in the universe.  He has stories of the founding of the place, his ten years as the first dive officer and eventual transition to photographer, as well as stories of the talented people who staff and volunteer there.  They were grand stories, warmly and eloquently told.  He thankfully delayed his departure and we visited all day.  He even included a lot of good advice about photography which might help this blog and a mini tutorial on PhotoShop Elements. It was grand.  

Natural Tunnel State Park, Va.

So William Jennings Bryant said The Natural Tunnel was the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, but you know how he exaggerates….”cross of gold”  yada, yada, yada.  It  Is a bewildering geological feature -- even the visitor’s center has exhibits on two different explanations.  We walked  (sorry no chair lift today) down into this huge stone cirque into which flows a creek out of a huge tunnel.  How huge?  A full size railroad runs thru it on an elevated rail bed; ten coal trains a day, they claim.  We heard a whistle and sprinted into position for the obligatory blog picture, but none materialized.







The drive over from Cumberland Gap was predictably gorgeous, paralleling the long escarpment with the morning sun lighting up the White Rock cliffs.  Lots of prosperous Cattle farms along Highway 58 with that lovely backdrop.
 At Jonesville, surprise,  you have climbed to the head of Powell valley and now go up and over two steep folds — go over in second gear and 40 mph.  Beautiful Views from the tops of the ridges as we let the Yukon  breathe.
The Cove View campground in the park is practically empty.  We are essentially marking time here until we go to Jonesborough Tennessee for the Storytelling on Wednesday, so we took time to wash Lotti inside and out and catch up on laundry.

Barrels of new railroad spikes ready to lay the new continuous rail through the Natural Tunnel.  I’d like to stay around to watch that.

HOMECOMING AT HENSLEY SETTLEMENT

CLICK HERE FOR SLIDESHOW OF HENSLEY HOMECOMING
Around the Cumberland Gap folks wait all year for the Homecoming at Hensley Settlement.  This one day we are allowed to drive up the steep one-way Shillalah Creek road, mix with the Hensley and Gibbons descendants, participate in lots of ole timey activities and hear some stories.  We extended our stay to visit here again.


This being Patty + a National Park, the weather turned freakishly cold. ( A whole sidebar will someday be devoted to cataloguing the climatic calamities associated with our visits to National Parks.)


There were little sprinkles on the windshield at the campground which translated to snow flurries at 3000’ . Many park staff and volunteers spent the night up at the settlement to be ready for our arrival and everyone was  shivering and stamping feet but in fine spirits.
Nearly 300 folks came and walked the settlement, watching basket making, eating apple stack cake, watching the moonshine still, grinding corn, and playing with period toys. By one o’clock, when the road opened back down, many were ready to head for lower altitudes, but we of the multiple layers, stocking caps and gloves had a thermos of hot chocolate. Thus fortified, we forged off to see beekeeping --


“These bees are mad at me;  they've got babies in this glass hive and it’s cold on ‘em” ,


-- blacksmithing, soap making and quilting and an array of the fresh fruits that were eaten and canned in the settlement. A fresh load of Apple stack cakes was being delivered by red lightning flyer wagon. 
“I have to get this wagon back to it’s proper time period,” the wagon master told us with a wink.


We lasted until mid afternoon then slipped down the mountain in four wheel drive, Low range.  We have been kicking around the Airstream for several hours  and are JUST NOW getting our temperature stabilized. No ice cream tonight.