Back when the Celtic Lassie was in elementary school, she attended the Morrison School in Bristol, Virginia. Every day, the drive to school was an adventure. It took us past the Bristol Motor Speedway, the site of the original ‘Birthplace of Country Music’ in 1927, and on across the state line into Virginia. One cool morning, we topped a hill (there are a LOT of hills) and a vista of mountains stretching to a distant horizon. She had a faraway look in her eyes, almost like a trance.
I asked, “You love your mountains, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
“What if someday you meet a nice young man, fall in love, marry, and then he wants to move back to Mississippi?”
“I guess he will have to go by himself.”
And that, as they say, was that. There was no room for discussion. People who live in the mountains have a sense of place that I have never seen anywhere else. Even as a young girl, the mountains spoke to her. John Muir was right.
Whenever she saw a crew clearing a place for a new home or business, she became indignant, “They are tearing up my mountains again!”
We live in the center of some of the greatest bluegrass and country musicians in the world. Doc Watson lived only a few miles from us. He often appeared at The Down Home, in Johnson City. One of Doc Watson’s greatest songs was Blue Ridge Mountain Blues.
The Osborne Brothers are a well-known bluegrass band. Their recording of Blue Ridge Mountain Home is one of their well known tunes. Even if one does not care for bluegrass music, the slide show on this video is worth watching. This, dear MOTleys, is where I live. I recognize many of the photos. One of the cemetery photos was taken on the hill above my house. The cover photo is of Newfound Gap in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Great High Mountain was in the soundtrack of the movie Cold Mountain. The music for the movie was produced by T Bone Burnett. It shows. This version is by Jack White. Again, the slides are worth the time it takes to watch them. A different time and place, but in many respects, not so much different than now, especially when you go back into the hills and coves.
This is where I live. This is where I will be buried. And the Lassie will never go back to the flatland of Mississippi.
Drag up a chair and sit a spell. The coffee is hot, we have water for tea, and some hair of the dog for those with a hangover. What’s your story today?