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A Lantern With Stories to Tell

I know that I’ve had at least one person who always looked forward to my stories. Every time I posted a new essay, he made a point to thank me when I ran into him at Andy’s or Walmart. Then he’d look at me and tell me that I needed to start telling the good ones. He meant the stories about the liquor men. He knew I had collected hundreds of them through the years. Sadly, he didn’t live to see this one. It’s time to start telling them while there are still some folks out there who can appreciate them. Godspeed, Richard Bleckley. This one is for you.

The liquor business in Rabun County had become tough by the early 1960s. Daddy had tried a stint at the carpet mill, but ninety cents an hour wasn’t a great living, so he continued to make liquor. Every still Daddy and his brothers set up was cut down by the revenuers before they could run enough moonshine to turn a profit. Daddy was so broke that he had to “leave the country” as he phrased it. When he told this story to me when I was a little boy, I asked him if he went to England or Canada. His reply: “Hell no, Boy. I went to Blue Ridge.” He was going to work for my Uncle Frank Sisson logging and sawmilling in Fannin County.

At the time Daddy made his decision to head to Fannin he had no cash money. He sold his last liquor car for some travel money and left hitchhiking from Uncle Delo’s and Aunt Dorothy’s house on Persimmon.

Uncle Frank started working Daddy like a dog as soon as he arrived. At least Daddy was making an honest living. That didn’t last long. Frank loved to make money. He and Daddy decided that the area where he was logging was a perfect still site. There was good water. The logging operation would hide the trails into the woods where materials were transported to the liquor still while the noise from the skidders and saws would mask any sounds from the liquor operation. The only downside was that Daddy couldn’t hear the revenuers coming if they learned of the operation and raided him.

Frank took Daddy into Blue Ridge and outfitted him for a long stay in the woods. Mr. Claude Call, an old buddy of Frank’s, bankrolled part of the operation. Sugar and steel were expensive and Mr. Call was as tight as Frank. They decided to not hire any still hands. Daddy would do everything by himself. A Lovell man who was kin to Jim Lovell from Rabun County had a store in Blue Ridge. Daddy bought a fancy sleeping bag, a skillet, coffee pot, and a red Coleman lantern for his stay at the still. That stay turned into eighteen months staying at the still around the clock. Either Frank or Mr. Call would bring Daddy supplies and groceries. Daddy cooked his food on the furnace for the still and always said that he spent eighteen months sleeping behind a chestnut log.

The still wasn’t a traditional copper pot set up. It was a fairly sophisticated steamer capable of turning out a lot of moonshine. Frank and Mr. Call made all the money. Daddy was paid a percentage. After eighteen months of getting by without detection, the site was raided by Federal agents. Frank had paid off the local sheriff and was warned that the revenuers were on the way to the still. Daddy barely escaped, leaving the lantern and other gear behind.

The Blue Ridge operation was done. Daddy had Frank drive him into town where he bought a brand-new Chrysler to drive back to Rabun County. As soon as he returned, Daddy spent a few days paying off all the debts he had left behind when he “went west.” He would continue to make liquor for several years, but the era was ending.

Years later Daddy went to Blue Ridge to visit Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary Ann. Frank told him he had something for him. They walked out to an old shed behind the house and Frank handed Daddy the old red lantern. When the revenuers destroyed the operation, they had thrown the lantern into a barrel of mash where it stayed until Frank went to salvage the valves from the steamer. It was none the worse for wear other than a dent and broken globe.

The old red lantern went on every camping trip of my youth. It was with us from my first trip as a toddler up Wildcat Creek where we fled from a skunk, on deer hunting trips with my Uncle Rip, Jack Prince, Mike Cannon and my cousins, and on my trip a few weeks ago in Daddy’s refurbished camping rig. The lantern went on all of them. The stories it could tell…

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Motorcycle Heroes: My Life in Motorcycles Part 2

During my childhood, many of the people who became icons to me were athletes. A few were, of course, ballplayers in various sports. Most of them, however, were motorcycle racers. I loved playing sports but had almost no ability to excel in any team sport involving a ball. I did have a fanatical love of motorcycles.

My introduction to motocross was a product of a Fourth of July celebration in Rabun County. The location of the Covered Bridge Shopping Center in Clayton was a vacant parcel of land during the 1970’s. As part of the (I think) Bicentennial celebration, a temporary motocross track was bulldozed and a day of racing commenced. Mama and Daddy loaded us up with a picnic and went to check it out. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I remember Mike Penland’s amazing ride, and I think Perry Thompson raced as well. I was hooked. I bought my first mini-bike a few weeks later with my own money and started reading Dirt Bike magazine whenever I could beg Mama to buy a copy for me.

In the days before the Internet, and with only three television channels, reading magazines was my only link to the stars of motocross. I spent half of my childhood ripping around the woods at home on my dirt bike, pretending I was racing with Marty Smith, Mike Bell, Bob “Hurricane” Hannah, and Andre Malherbe. They were who I wanted to be when I grew up.

By the early 1980s, the coolest event in the sport for me was known as the Superbowl of Motocross. In later years the format simply became called Supercross. Held in NFL sized football stadiums across the country, the venues made for excellent viewing. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. By 1984 the event had made its way to Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. It was scheduled for the first week of March. It was also the week of my birthday. To this day I can’t believe that I begged and conned Daddy into taking me to Atlanta for the race. We’d been to several Braves games with my grandparents, but Daddy never, ever went down there. Unless he was hauling a load of liquor, but that’s a story for another time. He didn’t want to drive us himself, so he bribed a young guy who worked with him to drive us. Steve Coleman also rode dirt bikes, and being a fun-loving guy himself, agreed to haul us to the big city.

For the week leading up to the race I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was up a daylight on Saturday morning. The races were at night and Steve was to pick us up in late afternoon. By twelve noon I was ready to go. By three o’clock I was pacing the floor. The rotary-dial Bakelite phone on the living room table began ringing. Mama grabbed it. She rolled her eyes as she hung up the phone. It was Steve. He was at Toyota of Easley buying a truck and running late. Really late. He was still signing papers. Back in those days it took two hours at best to get back to Clayton.

Steve finally slid into our driveway around dusk and we piled into his new and tiny regular cab Toyota pickup for the drive south. About 20 miles from the stadium, we hit gridlock. Steve tried out the off-road capabilities of his new truck and drove several miles on the shoulder of the interstate. We parked in the lot with minutes to spare, and the race was amazing.

Even after I achieved the dream of all teenagers by getting a license and a car, I kept up with the sport well into my thirties. I’ve managed to stay into motorcycling since age four, and still ride every chance I get. I moved away from motocross, into enduro bikes, and later began riding dual sport and adventure bikes. I’m constantly amazed by how quickly time slips by. The race seems like yesterday.

I saw awhile back that motorcycling legend Marty Smith was killed in a dune buggy crash at the age of 63 last April. Just days ago Mike Bell died while riding his mountain bike. He was also 63. Their generation of racers is rapidly fading away and some great memories of my childhood along with them

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Remembering Christmas Past

There weren’t many holiday traditions in my family during my childhood. No big holiday dinners or parties. My parents did always see to it that Santa was good to me as a child, and looking back, I can only imagine the financial sacrifices they made to get me the presents I wanted. It was a big event in my childhood when the Sears Wishbook came in the mail. I’d go through it from cover to cover, dog-earing pages with things I wanted. Mama and Daddy almost never spent a dime on themselves throughout the year, no doubt hoarding every penny so I could be spoiled at Christmas. I know they were self-conscious about our lack of money, but they made sure that Christmas morning a huge deal for me. Often Nanny and my cousin Lysa came over to watch me tear open all of my gifts while Mama looked on in her baby blue house coat. Daddy was always running the Super 8 movie camera saving the mornings for posterity. I was well into middle age before I began to appreciate what they did without to provide for me.

As an only child without much close family, many of the events I now remember as holiday traditions wouldn’t be important to most people, but I relive them every year. We always used to go visit my Uncle Buck and Aunt Rose on Christmas Eve after they moved back to Rabun County. We always went up to “the store” as we referred to Dickerson Hardware and I would get Daddy a small gift that Charles would help me pick out for him as Daddy pretended to not notice what I was up to. Charles was Daddy’s best friend and the ritual continued until Charles’ untimely passing.

When I was really young we always went to see Daddy’s daddy. Paw Paw, as I always knew him, always had a box of Red Band stick candy for me to take home for the holidays. He didn’t drive, rarely leaving the family farm, so I imagine my Aunt Virginia went to Mason’s for him to pick up the yearly treat.

The Red Band candy ritual continued until Daddy’s death last year. Mason’s became Andy’s, but Andy kept continuity with his stock, with shelves and tables stocked with candy as the holidays approached. This year was different, and without Daddy here to buy my present of Christmas candy, I had to get it for myself.

The memories remain. Yesterday I sat in Mama’s old rocker in front of the fireplace that Daddy built in 1976. I was eating my Christmas candy while wearing a Carhartt coat Daddy bought me for Christmas almost thirty years ago. 

            Merry Christmas, everyone.

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Grindin’ Corn: My Introduction to Moonshining

I recently watched a clip of the TV show Moonshiners online. It made me laugh. Obviously fake, contrived, and completely developed for TV, I thought to myself, if only they could make a “real” moonshining reality show… This thought took me back to my early childhood, when I was involved in the liquor business at around the age of 6 or 7. My family’s involvement with the illicit liquor trade goes back into the 1800’s.

My paternal grandfather, always known to me as “PawPaw”, made liquor his whole life. Unfortunately, he drank about as much as he sold. My great-great uncles and great grandfather were notorious violent criminals who lived in the Warwoman community of Rabun County during the late 1800’s and first years of the twentieth century. While their other exploits will be discussed in a later story, those men also made more than their share of illegal booze. By the time PawPaw came of age, the Hopkins clan had taken their liquor making to a higher level.

Daddy and my uncles began helping PawPaw at the various stills from their earliest years, doing whatever they could to be useful. Still sites were extremely dangerous, especially for kids who were not paying attention. When he was about nine years old, Daddy fell in a box of hot mash and was burned so badly that he missed almost a whole year of school. Despite the dangers of injury and risk of prison, Daddy and a couple of my uncles began making moonshine on a large scale by the mid 1950’s. Many of their stills were near the family farm, which is located in the Bridge Creek community, at the headwaters of Stonewall Creek.

The Stonewall area is still a wild and now largely inaccessible area, but Daddy and I prowled the woods there during his last years looking at the remains of his old stills. I recorded short interviews with him at each old still site and plan to post some essays on this website as time goes on. On one such trip, we found a stash of his Mason jars that had been hidden there since the 1950’s. He had walked up on the still site as the revenuers were destroying, or “cutting” it. They were so noisy and distracted with the destruction of the still that they didn’t hear or see him walking up. He simply sat the case of jars behind a tree and walked away. Fifty years later the unbroken case of jars remained untouched.

Although Daddy pretty much left the moonshining business sometime during the mid-1960’s, for some reason he started dabbling in it again during the mid to late 70’s. We had several years in my rural county when work was slow, so each winter, Daddy ran off a little liquor on an old 28 gallon copper still. We had an old hand-cranked grain mill that had come with their farm when PawPaw bought it back in 1940, and Daddy paid me to grind corn into meal, sprout malt, dry it, and grind it each autumn. To make the malt I would take seed corn, lay each kernel side by side on a wet brown paper towel, fold it over and sit it in front of a south facing window to absorb the sunlight each day. Keeping the towels damp allowed the corn to sprout, and when they got almost an inch long, I removed them from the towels and let them dry out for a while. Then I would come home after school each day, grind the sprouted corn for malt, and grind regular corn for the mash. I had a nice little enterprise going for a couple of years. I had no idea what the corn was being ground for. I can’t remember how much he paid me for each batch I produced, but it kept me in G.I. Joe action figures and Hardy Boys books for some time.

Times are tough right now with all the economic upheaval from the pandemic. The old grinder still sits on the workbench in the basement. As for the still… it might or might not be around somewhere, and a man might have to take drastic measures to survive the next depression…

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Cardinals and Memories

I saw a beautiful cardinal this morning while I was looking out the kitchen window at the pasture. It landed on the windowsill and just sat there, looking right at me. Seeing a cardinal is allegedly a sign that a loved one lost is close by watching us. It was serendipitous, as Amy and I were just talking about this a couple of days ago while out for a walk.

Daddy has been gone a little over four months and I still think of him constantly. He’s there in everything I do. It’s gardening season and I’ve been running the BCS walk-behind tractor several times a week. I bought it a few years ago and Daddy was fascinated with it and all the tasks that it could perform. He lamented that he wished we had it when he was younger and still physically able to work around the property. It would’ve been perfect for him, as we only had four acres and most of it was “as steep as a horse’s face” as he phrased it. The BCS not only tills and breaks new ground, but has dozens of other implements, from a log splitter to a bush-hog that will cut hillsides that no traditional tractor can safely mow.

Daddy was supervising me while I tried out a restored Troy Bilt Horse tiller.

We never had fancy stuff like that. What Daddy did have was ingenuity. When I was maybe three or four years old, he made a tractor of sorts. Our farm machinery consisted of some type of worn out Troy Bilt or Bradley tiller and a push plow that came with his daddy’s farm and it is now almost a hundred years old. I still use the push plow to this day. Unfortunately we never had anything to break ground with. We did that with mattocks and shovels. The shovels even usually had homemade handles, as we were too poor (or Daddy was too cheap) to buy store-bought hickory replacement handles. I don’t know where he came up with the scheme to weld up this Franken-tractor, but it was pretty neat. What is left of it still sits off in the woods near the garden. He narrowed some type of rear differential and put two old Model A transmissions in line to act as some means of gear reduction. It had mud-tread truck tires and an old cast-off metal seat from my grandad’s old Ford 8N. He traded some moonshine for an old turning plow and welded up some homemade cultivators. The thing actually sort of worked and we used it sporadically for many years until he bought a second-hand International Cub Cadet from Harrison Waters’ dad.

Daddy’s last time plowing with the Cub.

We planted the first of two gardens today. It went well and the ground looked perfect. We used my BCS for tilling, but it sure would have been more fun riding the old homemade tractor while Daddy stood by supervising us…

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1980 Winter Olympics Came to Rabun County

It seems like I vaguely remember seeing bits of the 1976 Winter Olympic Games on television. I was only three years old, and Mama said there was no way I could have remembered it. At any rate, I was fired up and ready for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid. Not just fired up, but completely obsessed.

            Things were much different then, at least at my house in rural North Georgia. We got all three, yes three, major television channels, plus Superstation, which was a network owned by Ted Turner. Of course, these stations were “streaming” through our black and white 19 inch set, so it definitely was NOT like being there. I’m pretty sure that we were the last family in America to purchase a color television. I think it was around 1988 when my dad, The Biggest Tightwad in America, finally broke down and made the purchase. Thankfully, we at least had cable by 1980 and I wasn’t having to hold the rabbit ears so Daddy could watch wrasslin’ and Star Track (yes, in our house it was never Trek.)

            We had a fair amount of snow during the winter of 1979-80, and in keeping with the Olympic theme, I carved a pair of miniature bobsleds for my three-inch action figures. Once it snowed, I made a mini-scale bobsled run on a small hill in our front yard. I even made a flag for the finish. Daddy later cut me out a goalie mask from cardboard in homage to Jim Craig, the star goalie of the 1980 U.S. Team. I would set up a TV tray in the doorway between the living room and kitchen, put on the mask and let Daddy fire Nerf balls at me while he was sitting in his old brown chair, drinking beer and watching wrasslin’ as I defended the goal.

            Yesterday was February 22, 2020. The Game was 40 years ago yesterday. Wow 40 years…  How time flies. The Miracle on Ice. Likely the best sporting moment in our history. The U.S. Hockey team beat the Soviets 4-3 on home ice at Lake Placid. I watched the game on pins and needles as only a seven-year-old boy could, inches away from the 13” black and white television in my room. No one believed it was possible except Coach Herb Brooks and his boys on the ice. The best way to put the matchup into perspective would be to field a D2 college basketball team against the original Dream Team. It was that lopsided. With Mike Eruzione’s goal well into the final period, the American crowd went wild. The college boys had pulled ahead of the Russian juggernaut with only minutes left in the game.

            Of course, every red-blooded American sports fan has Al Michaels’ call during the final seconds committed to memory. I still get chills when I hear it. Now the Miracle on Ice team has AARP cards and I’m getting closer to it myself.  Forty years… wow. But I still have the bobsleds and the mask. I wish Daddy was still here to throw some Nerf balls.

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Fun in the Snow

Daddy always loved a good snow. He was child-like pacing the kitchen floor, constantly flipping on the back porch light during the night to see if it had begun. Of course, boots had been oiled and sat ready to put on for sledding and snowball fights. If the snow came during the night the two of us would be up at first light. Mama was in the kitchen making breakfast for us before the foolishness began. Later in the day she’d always have coffee and hot chocolate ready for us.

I was four years old the first time that I saw snow in real life. I saw it on television, but we didn’t get any snowfall for a few years. I was so excited for that first snow. Daddy took me outside and pitched me into it, pajamas and all.

For some reason Daddy always built up a fire when it snowed in the antique wood stove we had in the basement. It was an antique Home Atlantic parlor stove with a flat top which we could keep water and coffee warm on for when we didn’t want to undress and go back into the house. He made my first sled from scrap lumber in his shop and used roof flashing on the runners to make them slide. It weighed more than I did, but wow, did it haul down the hillside. Later I would get a store-bought wood and metal sled, but that home-made job was always the fastest.

My first store-bought sled

On one occasion we went to the old homeplace on Bridge Creek to sled. Between the orchard and the home of my Uncle Rip was an epic hill for sledding. We spent most of the day over there sledding with my cousins Doug and Ricky.

Every time we got a good snow, we took off riding around in whatever old Jeep we had sitting in the yard at the time. Forget all the “roads are unsafe so stay at home stuff.”  We must have hit every back road in the county just being nosey and taking pictures. Sometimes Mama went, other times she stayed at home to “send out the search party” if we didn’t make it back. Good times indeed.

As the years passed, we spent more time riding and exploring and less time with sledding and having snowball fights. Charles Dickerson, our family’s best friend, was almost always with us. When it snowed Charles always brought out his Browning down jacket, Daddy grabbed his cowboy hat, and we would pile into his old blue Chevy Blazer and headed out. If Daddy was child-like with his love of snow, him and Charles together were a hoot. Charles was one of the most fun-loving people I ever knew, and the two of them were a hoot. We never really had destinations; we just went on whatever roads we could get through. Through all the years and all the adventures, we never were never stranded in the snow.

Charles rocking the vintage Browning puff jacket

It’s dumping snow right now. The last forecast I heard before bedtime last night called for somewhere between a dusting and four inches. We have six inches of the white stuff now and it’s just tapering off.

I wish Daddy and Charles were still here to go play. They’d have a blast today. I’m sure they’re together watching it from Heaven. Maybe they had God send it so I would remember… They don’t need to worry; I’ll never forget. I miss you, Guys.

Daddy’s final Jeep trip in the snow…

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When Camping Became Work

Early Spring 1985… It was supposed to be an unseasonably warm and beautiful weekend. My buddy Alan and I, along with another friend John, decided to go on a camping trip on our dirt bikes. The predicted weather was just too good to pass up. We loaded up our random bikes. I was on my fairly current Suzuki DR125. Alan, owner of a shed full of eclectic bikes picked up by his dad, was on an old Kawasaki 185 Enduro. John showed up with his trusty Suzuki TS185. We strapped our junk onto the bikes as best we could. Our camp site was, as usual, on Popcorn Creek. That time we camped close to the old homeplace of Alan’s family. His Uncle Juke still lived there, but otherwise there wasn’t a neighbor or house for miles in any direction.

            We set up camp after school on Friday evening and spent the evening lying around the biggest campfire imaginable. I’ve seen school pep rally bonfires of less magnitude. We talked away the night, eating Cheetos and guzzling Mountain Dew while solving the word’s problems. That’s what thirteen-year-old boys did back then. I don’t think we’d quite discovered girls yet. The night was warm; the weather stayed tolerable, and we awoke on Saturday morning without frostbite.

            About the time we finished cleaning up from breakfast we heard a vehicle coming down the old logging road to our camp. It was Joe Thompson. Alan’s daddy. I’ve said many times that he was a spectacular hunter and fisherman. Unfortunately, Joe had another extraordinary skill. He had an unbelievable knack for getting men to work. Furman Kilby also had this trait. They could get men to work like absolute dogs for them without the men even realizing it was happening. I mean, seriously, at the end of the day, men would actually thank Joe and Furman for the opportunity. It would always start with a casual comment… “Let’s see how this new axe handle feels on this oak firewood…” Next thing you knew, it was dusk and you’d just split a cord of wood while Joe or Furman sat in a lawn chair with a cold drink.

            Looking back, had us boys been camping under the pretense of hunting or fishing, the Weekend of Blisters would have never happened. But in Joe’s eyes we were just being lazy. He got out of the truck and looked us over. He shook his head at our laziness, cocked his cap back on his head, hiked up his britches and said, “Boys, I have an opportunity for y’all today.”

            He instructed us to mount our dirt bikes and follow him back to their house a few miles away after a short span on the highway. Yep, thirteen-year-olds on the highway on dirt bikes. Things were different then. Once we turned down the driveway we veered right to the home of Mr. Melton, known to everyone as just “Melt.” Melt wasn’t there, but three or four fruit trees with their root balls wrapped in burlap were. After we got our helmets off and walked over to Joe, we noticed a few stakes driven into the ground at precise intervals.

            “Melt’s gone to town. We need to help get these trees planted before he gets back,” Joe said.

            I looked around. My uncle had a commercial apple orchard on our old family homeplace, so I knew a little about setting out fruit trees

            “Who’s gonna run the tractor and auger?” I asked.

            “Y’all are big strapping men. Y’all don’t need no auger to dig ‘em,” Joe countered as he threw three shovels on the ground.

            Alan, John, and I thought it would be nice to surprise Melt when he got home with the trees planted for him and figured if we worked wide open, we could be out riding our dirt bikes within an hour. We dug like crazy and cut the burlap from the root balls with our pocketknives. Every boy always had a pocketknife handy back then. We finished just before Melt turned down the gravel driveway. Pulling a trailer. With a lot of fruit trees bundled on it. Really a lot, like thirty or forty. It was then that us boys noticed that the whole yard and surrounding area was dotted with stakes in the ground.

            We looked around for an escape route.

            “You mean there’s more?” one of us asked.

            “Yeah, I just needed to make sure you could do it without screwing up before we let you do all of them,” Joe responded.

            The word ‘let’ wasn’t lost on me. We spent the entire rest of the weekend under the beautiful blue sky on the warmest weekend of the year digging until our hands actually bled. At some point Melt or Joe dropped us off some Lance crackers, Vienna Sausage and Mountain Dew, but otherwise we worked until Joe decided that we should call it a day so we could get back to camp before dark. We then worked all day Sunday until it was time to head home. I was never so ready for the school week to begin in my life.

            Many of the snowflakes and younger people in general probably think we experienced child cruelty on that perfect weekend back in 1985, but I’m thankful for it, just as I’m thankful for many things our parents subjected us to. We didn’t once think of saying “no” and pitching a big fit like kids now would do. Never once did we think about quitting. We didn’t want Joe or Melt to think bad of us. We did the work because Alan’s daddy told us to. Times like that helped shape the work ethic I grew up to have. Thirty five years have passed and I’m not sure if any of those trees survived, but we planted every single tree on the trailer that weekend.

            Joe, thanks for the opportunity.

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Paying Respects

The high school basketball season is upon us. I’m a huge fan of Lady Cats basketball. I usually start the countdown to the first game around six months ahead of time. I love watching those kids play ball. When the first game of the season rolls around each year I find myself looking around the gym, searching for old faces as well as new fans. There are several diehards. Mr. Tom Richardson, Mrs. Odell Hamby, and too many others to count. When I see their usual seat or spot along the railing empty, I’m always concerned. There are certain folks that are just always there. Unfortunately, they are getting older and it is harder on them to get out as winter progresses. When I see them, I always make a point to go speak to them for a bit. I love talking to the older crowd and hearing their stories.

Over the last decade I’ve become more aware of losses in my own life, and in our community in general. Folks that I’ve always known, enjoyed talking with, and taken for granted that they would always be there, have passed on. I commented to a buddy a few months ago that it’s a sure sign that I’m getting older as I now attend many more funerals than I do weddings. And the funerals themselves, at least in my family, are changing too. Attendance is getting smaller. My family is dying off, and the peers of the older generation are going, too. A vivid memory that I have of my funerals on Daddy’s side of the family is of Mr. Garnett Lovell always being there. He lived just over the mountain from Paw Paw’s farm on Bridge Creek. Mr. Garnett was there every time, always wearing his best overalls. I always made a point to go talk with him and spent a good bit of time with him. I realized without thinking about it that he was the last tie to Paw Paw’s generation. Now Garnett Lovell has passed on and his grandson Jeffrey is the one coming to our funerals.

My Daddy is the last of eight siblings living, and now I’ve lost one cousin from my own generation. At my cousin’s visitation and funeral, I noticed a surreal vibe, for lack of a better way to phrase it. Everyone there went out of his or her way to come talk to Daddy. Not simply to offer condolences; it was clear that they wanted to be around him, to talk to him. I noticed Jeffrey Lovell there with him and it reminded me of his grandpa. It was right then that I realized Daddy had become the last of his generation and the patriarch of his family.

As I sit here editing this short essay, Daddy is in his last weeks or days. After enduring half a dozen successful heart and vascular surgeries in less than four years, he was diagnosed with end stage metastatic cancer two weeks ago. I’m spending every second with him that I can, and trying to get new stories from him while he’s able to tell them. Nevertheless, I know there are many stories that will die with him. I can’t imagine life without him. He has always been tough as nails and is supposed to always be there.

Tomorrow at the first home Lady Cats game I will definitely appreciate seeing the old familiar faces and will not take any of the conversations for granted. Paying respect…

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Riding With the Popcorn Gang

For some reason, the changing of the seasons brings retrospective feelings for me every year. I tell everyone who listens that my favorite time of year is autumn. That’s not true. It’s actually the weeks leading up to autumn. The older I get, the more this time becomes a period for reflection on my life. I have a special fondness for the camping trips and dirt biking during late summer and autumn. I simply love motorcycling during the transition period between summer and autumn.

 My buddy Matt bought a 2009 Suzuki V-Strom a few years ago. Maybe it was a midlife crisis, but for whatever reason, he got a case Motorcycle Fever. I’m sure his wife is pleased… After looking at virtually every bike from Harley 883s to BMW GS 1200s, I finally sold him on the V-Strom. He had it for several months and we ventured out for several day rides. He later sold the Suzuki and replaced it with a Harley, but it was fun while it lasted.

Matt and I grew up in Rabun County, Georgia and rode dirt bikes together sometimes as kids. I believe he had an XR100 and I had a Honda XL75, followed by a DR125, then a couple of ATVs. We rode all over the west end of Rabun County.  Although I was a town kid, Daddy took me to an area called Popcorn almost every weekend, where he spent most of the day panning and sluicing for gold in Dickerson Branch. Later, we would buy a couple of acres just over the mountain at a place called Plum Orchard. We had a tiny camper that we parked on the property and spent weekends there for over ten years before selling the property during the late 1990s. Daddy began spending time over on Dickerson Branch panning for gold in recent years, and with Matt getting back into motorcycling, I find myself thinking of all the weekends I spent on Popcorn and Plum Orchard riding motorcycles, camping and fishing with my friends.

At the risk of sounding like my parents, things were safer and simpler back then. Daddy was usually busy building houses or boathouses on Lake Burton, and during the summers he would often unload me and my dirt bike with a gas can and I would head off for the day, usually checking in around lunchtime to let him know that I was still in one piece. I would meet up with some of my buddies, Alan or my best friend Billy most of the time, and we would explore the countless miles of dirt roads and trails in the Persimmon and Popcorn areas of Rabun County. We were generally respectful, used good sense while riding, and almost never got hurt while on the bikes. I only ended up at the doctor’s office twice in all of the years that we rode, and one of the ER trips was from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Looking back, we would all have been arrested if we even attempted to ride dirt bikes in those areas today. When I get nostalgic, I either ride some of the old logging roads in the area on my mountain bike or hike them with Daddy. Most of us were not “rich” kids by any stretch of the imagination, and our bikes proved it. Alan probably had the most eclectic batch of bikes through the years. His dad Joe always managed to find some obscure, quirky bike for Alan to ride. Several of his bikes were Honda Trail 90s and 110s. Neat bikes, but even when we were 12 or 13 years old, Alan was like 6’2” and 200 pounds.  He also had an old Kawasaki KE175, but his Trail 110s were great. When a tree had fallen across the trail behind us while we were riding one day, he simply picked up the bike and sat it across the tree on the return trip while the rest of us had to figure a way around the deadfall.

Many summers and weekends were spent on Popcorn and Persimmon on the bikes, and much money was spent on snacks and gas at the two old community stores on Persimmon. When I was growing up and riding over there during the 1980s, there was a store at each end of a straightaway on Persimmon Road. On the left at the turnoff for Plum Orchard Road was Welborn’s Store, or “Mae’s” as us kids referred to it. Mae Welborn was a wonderful old lady who ran the store with her sister, and both women always had kind words for us annoying kids on our loud dirt bikes. One quarter of a mile farther down the road was Carlos Nichols’ store, which by the time I was terrorizing the area was run by Mrs. Etrubia Hooper. She was one of the neatest folks I ever met, often cutting up with us and telling stories about the old days. Daddy has told me stories of Mrs. Hooper buying new Ford cars with alarming frequency down at Duvall Ford and hot-rodding around in them back in the late 1950s and early sixties. She might have even hauled a little liquor in them, according to Daddy. As Persimmon and Popcorn were always notorious for the moonshiners in the communities, there is likely some truth to the allegation.

By the late 1980s, my friends and I had all acquired the dream of every teenager… Drivers Licenses. The ability to go wherever we wanted while pretending to be adults. My dirt bikes quickly gave way to a 1967 Camaro. By that time, local law enforcement officers had finally cracked down on us kids riding around all day on the unpaved county roads and forest service roads on our dirt bikes. We didn’t really notice at the time, as we were busy chasing girls, cruising town and illegally drag racing anyway.

Looking back on a period of time more than half a lifetime ago, my childhood coincided with the end of an era in Rabun County. Although parents nowadays will likely cringe at the thought of having their kid running around all day in the woods completely unsupervised on a dirt bike, none of us was ever seriously injured, and we gained a large sense of trust and responsibility that children of later generations seem to not have.

Both stores on Persimmon from my childhood are long gone now, having closed down about the same time I started driving, and Mae and Etrubia passed away many years ago, their untold stories dying with them. The Popcorn Gang has also suffered tragedies. Alan and Billy died almost exactly a year apart, neither having reached their fortieth birthdays. They won’t be forgotten during my lifetime. Every time I ramble the backroads and trails on Popcorn, I think of the great days we had, the campouts, the hunting and fishing trips with them. Guys, thanks for the memories. You are missed.