North Carolina, Part One: Hollywood hills and the other white meat

I'd been to North Carolina and the Smoky Mountains once before, in July of 2005. And I loved the area. So I was glad to have an opportunity to visit it again last month to meet my new friend (see earlier post).

On a beautiful Saturday morning in late May, as I drove north from Atlanta (where I had stopped for the night on Friday), the mountains of northern Georgia came into view. What a beautiful sight! How I miss the mountains. I guess I'm not a flatlander, even though I live in Florida. Mountains feel somehow "right" to me, they call to me.

After a couple of hours, I crossed the border into western North Carolina. Now the Smokies lay ahead, just out of reach. Murphy, where I was headed, is not in the Smokies, but about 60 miles south of the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It's the county seat for Cherokee County, which borders on Tennessee in addition to Georgia (Chattanooga is just 85 miles away). Still, mountains surround you everywhere in this part of the state.

I was surprised at how big Murphy was. I was expecting a hole in the wall, after all, it has a population of about 1,500. I forgot that it was the county seat. I mean, look at their courthouse (left); over 70 years old, it's on the National Register of Historic Places. They have a nice downtown, with an old movie theater where, on Saturday night, teenagers and adults line up outside to buy tickets for the single-screen showing of a first-run film. There are several churches - a gorgeous brick Methodist church, among others. Thriving businesses. A historical museum. On the outskirts of town, every fast food place you might be looking for. Strip malls, chain motels. Ingles, a supercenter supermarket. A Walmart supercenter. A beautiful recreation facility. I was really impressed; this was not the North Carolina that I remember from my last visit to the Smokies - we were east of Murphy then, in Dillsboro, which had a train depot and bed and breakfast for their downtown, and that was about it.

Down the road from Murphy is Brasstown, NC. Now Brasstown is little more than a four corners, which consists of Clay's Corner (a mom and pop-type convenience store) and a small row of artist studios. That's it. But the folks there have a sense of humor. First, there's the "Hollywood"-type sign on the side hill across from Clay's Corner. And then there's Clay's Corner itself.

Clay's Corner seems to be the place for locals (what few there are) to hang out, and it's somewhat of a tourist attraction. The sign over the door proclaims, "Welcome to Clay's Corner, Opossum Capital of the World, located in beautiful downtown Brasstown, N.C." There's a wooden possum hanging from the porch roof. The satellite dish on a telephone pole outside is labeled "Possum Network."

The day J. and I visited, there were three or four men sitting on the old church-style pew out front. In fairness, they didn't stare at us too much or too long. It didn't matter. I mean, when J. told me that Clay had tee shirts for sale that declared possum the "other white meat", I knew we had to stop in. I got a tee shirt for my nephew, and a totebag for me that declared same. I only regret that I never asked Clay, who manned the cash register, why Brasstown was the world's possum capital. I imagine they catch a lot of possum around those parts (and probably DO eat it), but I'll find out on my next visit and let you know the answer.

Juxtapose the ridiculous with the sublime. As I mentioned, directly across the street from tongue-in-cheek southern humor is a small row of artists studios. J. and I visited Morning Song Studio, where he bought me a beautiful print that happened to be done by the artist who was staffing the studio that day. The print is of a beautiful mountain stream done in oil pastels, and it now hangs on the wall in my den to remind me of a beautiful weekend in the mountains.

But Brasstown's actual claim to fame (possum capital of the world notwithstanding) is that it's home to John C. Campbell Folk School. Check out this link to the school; they offer all kinds of classes in crafts, art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography and writing. We visited the gift shop, where I purchase a CD of local music, among other things. I guarantee that if I lived within 100 miles of the school, I'd be saving my money for weekend courses and spending an awful lot of time there.

J. took me over country backroads through small hamlets with rolling hills, horses grazing contentedly, goats dotting the hillside, with the mountains always surrounding us. I really felt at home.

In Part 2, which might not be the next post but coming up shortly, I'll tell you about our visit to Hiawassee Dam and the Ocoee River Gorge (where the 1996 Olympic white water rafting events took place).