Trading Alligators for Bears

My wife and I did something extraordinary last week. We went on a trip inside the United States.

We went to a bunch of weird countries while we were separated by the State Department, which was busy letting illegals into the US and watching daytime TV because employees were at home waiting for covid to go away. Until this month, however, we never visited another state.

We went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. A place I loved as a child.

For those who don’t know, Gatlinburg is in the Smokies. The physical location is beautiful. It’s in a valley surrounded by mountains. To get to Gatlinburg, you have to travel scenic two-lane roads. The area is very nice. Appalachia isn’t as staggeringly beautiful as places like Switzerland and Utah, but it certainly beats the rest of the Eastern United States.

I don’t know when Gatlinburg became a tourist town. It happened before I was born. By the time my family started traveling between Florida and Kentucky to see relatives, everything was already established.

When I was a kid, it was considerably less tacky. It had a bunch of fun souvenir shops, including one called the Rebel Corner, which was decorated with huge Confederate flags. There was a place that made and sold candy. There were some okay restaurants. There were hotels built over the Little Pigeon River, which is really just a rocky creek. You could sit on your balcony or by your open window and listen to the soothing sound of the water.

There were trails and sights. I remember walking up Clingman’s Dome, a mountain nearly 7,000 feet high. My grandfather, the guy who taught me tact, was with us on the paved tourist path. He saw a man who looked like he checked in at about 350 shambling up the path with his own family, and he said, “It’s a good thing you’re not big and fat!”

Sometimes we saw bears. Back then, tourists did brilliant things like feeding them by hand through open car windows.

In those days, I enjoyed Gatlinburg and the nearby town of Cherokee, North Carolina, because to me, they were part of the experience of visiting Kentucky, which I wrongly thought was heaven on Earth.

Gatlinburg has gotten seedier with time. It’s a little trashy now. They used to have a tiny Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum, and now there is an array of Ripley’s attractions. They have a big saltwater aquarium where you can see sharks and sawfish. They’ve built a big concrete parking garage.

Watch the video below to see what Gatlinburg has turned into.

There are weird little attractions that don’t seem to make sense. One features a robotic horse in a dress, sitting out front to attract customers. We didn’t see the appeal.

Even though Gatlinburg is a somewhat downscale tourist town, we enjoyed ourselves. We walked in the woods. We had big breakfasts.

We didn’t go to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s creepy amusement park. It’s in nearby Pigeon Forge.

I don’t like Dolly Parton. I thought she was perfectly okay when I was a kid, but over the years she and her park have worked hard to promote abomination, and all the time, she has pretended to be a Christian. She’s a complete hypocrite, but lots of stubborn, rebellious Southern women, and I don’t just mean lesbians, think she’s almost a co-savior, like the false Catholic version of Mary. Like a white Oprah.

I don’t know if her attitude has something to do with her unmarried brother who died young from an undisclosed disease or what, but I don’t want any part of her act. I never liked her music, either. She is no Patsy Cline.

The main reason we stayed in a tourist spot was to have a base from which we could look at the area. We have both had thoughts of moving to Eastern Tennessee, and if you stay in Gatlinburg, you can have good food and a nice hotel while you look around. Appalachia is not known for quality food and lodging, so to me, finding these things was a blessing.

We looked around Sevier and Blount counties. The geography and the trees and plants made a big impression, as did the sub-95 temperatures.

When you live in Northern Florida, you get used to living on sand that won’t support anything you really want to grow. You can’t grow apples, real peaches, blackberries, cherries, tomatoes, corn, or anything else without a lot of struggle. The grass is something called bahia. It’s thin, and when you walk across it a few times, you leave obvious damage. It’s full of stinging bugs, and nettles are a problem. Lying down in your own yard is not possible.

Once you get far enough north, you get into real soil. You can have apple trees and grow tomatoes. You can have a lawn.

I have been concerned that if we moved, the people might be backward on racial issues. I’m from Eastern Kentucky, and I’ve also spent a lot of time in Western North Carolina, and I know there are parts of Appalachia where you can have problems if you’re in an interracial marriage or even if you’re just black.

My grandfather was a circuit judge over Breathitt County, Kentucky, and during his time, a black woman moved there and tried to practice law. I never thought of him as an enlightened person with regard to race, but he supported her. The people of Jackson, Kentucky eventually burned her house down. And it wasn’t that long ago. He died in the mid-90’s.

On this visit, I was shocked. In Gatlinburg, we saw one interracial family after another. What a relief. And they were definitely Southerners. I also saw many clones of myself. Men in cargo or work shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps. It was like they were pumping us out of a factory.

We saw two black families in rented Rzrs. A Rzr is a factory dune buggy made by Polaris. It has no windows. Apparently renting them is popular in Gatlinburg.

Maybe things have improved.

Southerners are very, very big on powersports and unnecessary vehicles. If you’re a Southerner, and you don’t have a golf cart, an ATV, a dune buggy, a dirt bike, or a Jeep, there must be something wrong with you. I use a gas-powered EZGO to get my mail.

The people were very nice. I was concerned that if we left our area, the people would not be as pleasant. There are a lot of childish, rude, stingy people in Eastern Kentucky. In Tennessee, just about everyone was great. And there were signs of Christianity everywhere. There were signs advertising help for women who were considering abortions. There were signs telling people Jesus was coming back. I loved it.

I have had the feeling God wanted me to move to Tennessee, as have many other Christians. I don’t know if we’ll do it, but now I am less concerned about the possibility of making a bad decision.

During our trip, we applied for a Schengen visa so we could finally visit Europe. The real Europe, not Ireland or Turkey. Incredibly, they granted our request, so now we have to decide whether we should go. My wife is going through some medical treatment right now–nothing bad or permanent–so we’re thinking it over.

We only saw one bear in Tennessee, but it was a whopper. We were walking down the main drag of Gatlinburg, and we saw a bunch of people staring at the area behind a hotel. I looked and saw a black shape not much smaller than a cow. This thing was enormous. It must have been checking out the bear-resistant dumpsters.

When I think of black bears, I think of animals about the size of a hog. Maybe 150-200 pounds. They sometimes hit 600 however, making them as big as medium-sized grizzlies. The record is over 900. I don’t know what this bear weighed, but it looked a lot more like 600 than 200.

It took my wife a while to spot it, which is bizarre. She finally saw it walking up some stairs.

I knew we might see some bears. I expected typical disappointing bears about my own size. Not this time. This baby could have fed a small town for a day. It would make a beautiful rug.

I enjoyed seeing real trees instead of one water oak after another. We saw hickories, walnuts, sycamores, maples, black oaks, chestnut oaks…serious trees that have practical uses other than fueling smokers. They made me think of the times I had spent with my grandparents in the woods. They seemed to know every plant’s name and purpose.

We saw a lot of people who were obese or had leg problems. Diabetes, maybe. We saw people who clearly weren’t on top of the financial ladder. We saw a lot of tattoos and cigarettes.

I thought about Gatlinburg’s status as a second-tier tourist town, and I felt like God showed me some things. We were there as people who did not have to work. We were able to stay at a very nice hotel. We weren’t going into debt to do anything. Both of us knew God very well and never felt that we were alone or that we might have to handle life’s problems on our own. Our health was good. We were surrounded by unhealthy people who were loading themselves with debt.

Many of the others would have to go home shortly and work at jobs they didn’t like, in order to pay for things they had already received. When you borrow, you get your reward up front, and then while you’re working to pay for it later on, you have no reward to look forward to, and you can’t quit.

It reminded me to keep humility, gratitude, and fear of God in mind. We earned very little of what we have. God gave it to us in spite of our evil natures and deeds. Every good thing we have is part of an inheritance from God. We should never feel superior to anyone. What is uglier than an arrogant heir who has no empathy? I have been that person.

We aren’t sure what we’ll do. Sometimes I think we should go to Utah instead of Europe. It’s a lot less complicated, and it’s a shame for Americans not to see their own enormous country.

In any case, my wife is now in the Schengen visa system, so if we decide to travel in the future, it should be easier.