DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240258

SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER      PAGE: 02   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: RANDOM RAMBLES 

SOURCE: Tony Stein 

                                            LENGTH:   77 lines

TRIP TO AND FROM SMOKY MOUNTAINS A LOVELY ADVENTURE

Notes on our annual trek to the Great Smoky Mountains . . .

First leg of the trip was Route 58 to South Hill. Stretches of 58 use to be so dangerous that the label ``Suicide Strip'' was pinned on them. Much better now. Four lanes, straight run through some handsome farm country.

Many fields white with cotton crop. History buff that I am, I ponder the twist of fate that led a Yankee to turn cotton into the crop that personified the pre-Civil War South. He was Eli Whitney and what he did was invent the cotton gin, ``gin'' short for ``engine.''

Whitney was from Connecticut, but looking for a job as a tutor in Georgia. Along the way, he met a lady planter complaining that there was no cheap method of separating seeds from cotton. Ten days later, Whitney created his gin. Before, it took one laborer 10 hours to de-seed a pound. After, the gin could clean up to 1,000 pounds a day.

Pick up Interstate 85 at South Hill. Find out that North Carolina's program of planting wild flowers along the highway is light years ahead of Virginia's. Frequent beautiful clusters of flowers along 85 in Carolina please the eye and soothe the spirit. Red, white, blue, orange, magenta. A roadside rainbow.

Stop overnight in Hickory, N.C. Starts raining 30 seconds after we're in motel. Stops raining just as we go to supper. Starts raining again just as we get back to the motel. Controller of celestial faucet done good.

Mountains loom as we near Ashville. Moment after moment of awe. Magnificent. Eternal. No way to describe them that does justice to their grandeur. We wallow in that grandeur as we swing past Ashville and head toward Franklin near the Tennessee border.

Franklin is where our friends Niya and Bobby Jones live. Ex-Chesapeakers, warm and wonderful people. She makes lovely mountain crafts, and he's a carpenter with the old-time skills that a carpenter had to have before pre-fab.

Both are well. So are Luke, Cody, Angus and Duncan. They're the pooch platoon that shares space with Bobby and Niya and two cats. Quite a story behind Angus and Duncan. They are collies that Bobby and Niya literally rescued from death on a mountain.

They were puppies left in a mountaintop cabin. The person taking care of them had a family emergency and then car trouble. That meant they would be uncared for during a violent snowstorm with bitter cold temperatures.

Bobby and Niya heard about it because the dogs' owner was a friend. They drove up the mountain as far as they could, then slipped, slid and plodded a mile more to the cabin. The pups' coats were matted with ice and they were hungry, but people and pups made it back down the mountain to safety. The owner left the dogs with Bobby and Niya and now they're frisky, frolicking youngsters in blooming good spirits.

Happy visit with whole Jones household. Next day, started looking for leaf color. Really too early when we went, but Niya guided us higher into the Smoky range and there they were. Clusters of red and yellow and peach. Mountain sides well on their way to becoming blazes of beauty.

Love looking at fall leaf color in the Virginia and North Carolina high country. Not only is it magnificent scenery but I can relax and figure all those leaves will eventually shower down and I won't have to rake a single one of them.

Headed home on an overcast morning. All aroung us were towering peaks capped by the swirling mists that led the Indians to call them the Smokys because they seemed to be on fire. Now and then the sun would break through and the play of light and shadow was as breath-taking as ever.

I was raised in the flatlands of suburban New York. I live in Chesapeake, where there's nothing much higher than a backpack on a bug. That's why I love the mountains. Miz Phyllis, my ever-loving (ever-tolerant, anyway) was raised in the hill city of Lynchburg, so she comes naturally to a fondness for elevation. Thus, when we head down the highway, and the peaks loom on the horizon, we feel a joy and an excitement that never fades.

Back along the roads home, there is another kind of excitement. Lots of people seem to consider highway driving a competitive sport. And I lay some of the blame on the car makers' TV ads. Look at them. They almost always show cars driven aggressively with dashboard dials spinning upward and scenery flashing by. They talk about power and performance. Hey, they suggest, your car's a toy. Play with it on the road.

Loved going to the mountains, though. Loved coming home. Now, who knows a magic incantation that will make my backyard leaves disappear?

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