Gatlinburg and the Great Smokies

GATLINBURG, Tenn., Nov. 4, 1940—

Reading edition

A GOOD BEAR STORY

Special permission to re-print this bear story was granted by Wm. Sloane Associates, Inc., of New York City, Publishers of “Home Country”, by Ernie Pyle, which book contains this story.

Uncle Steve Cole lives on at his old home place, right in the park. He is a typical mountain man of the old school—a good mountain man, the kind who lives right and does right.

I dropped in one afternoon to talk to him. Uncle Steve lit a fire, and sat down beside it and began spitting in the fireplace. He wasn’t chewing tobacco, but he spit in the fireplace all the time anyhow.

Uncle Steve had killed more bears than any man in these mountains. He says so himself, and others say so too. He hasn’t the remotest idea how many he has killed. But he has killed bears with muzzle-loaders, modern rifles, deadfalls, clubs, axes, and he even choked one to death with his bare hands.

I got him to tell me that story. He and a neighbor went out one night. The dogs treed a bear. The way Uncle Steve tells it would take half an hour, and that’s too long for us. But the essence of it was that they built a fire, the bear finally came down the tree. Uncle Steve stood there until the bear’s body was pressing on the muzzle of the gun, and then he pulled the trigger. “I figured I couldn’t miss that way,” Uncle Steve laughs.

He didn’t miss, but the shot didn’t kill the bear. He ran 50 yards or so, and then the dogs were on him. And the first thing Uncle Steve knew the bear had clenched his great jaws right down on a dog’s snoot, and was just crushing it to pieces.

Now Uncle Steve’s gun was an old-fashioned, sawed-off muzzle-loading hog rifle, and he didn’t have time to reload it. So to save the dog, he just rushed up to the bear from behind, put his legs around the bear, and started prying the dog’s snoot out of the bear’s mouth.

“And before I knew what happened,” says Uncle Steve, “the bear let go of the dog, and got my right hand in his mouth, and began a-crunchin’ and a-growlin’ and a-eating on my hand.

“One long tooth went right through the palm of my hand, and another went through the back of my hand. There wasn’t nothin’ for me to do but reach around with my left hand for the bear’s throat. I got him by the goozle and started clampin’ down. Pretty soon he let go. Then I just choked him till he was deader’n 4 o’clock.” Uncle Steve spit in the fireplace.

Mrs. Cole was sitting on the bed, listening. Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Mrs. Cole chuckled and said, “Four o’clock ain’t dead.”

Uncle Steve didn’t dignify her quibble with an answer. He just spit in the fireplace again.

WILEY OAKLEY

The most famous man in the Smokies, as far as visitors are concerned, is Wiley Oakley. He is called “The Roamin’ Man of the Mountains.” He is 55, and all his life he has just wandered around through the Smokies.

He is a natural woodsman, with a soul that sings in harmony with the birds and the trees and the trees and the clouds. His English is spectacular, and on many things he is as naive as a baby. But on other things he almost shocks you with his meticulous knowledge.

He has a house in the hills, and a rustic-craft shop in Gatlinburg. Most of his life he has made a living as guide to hunters, and later to tourists. There are industrialists by the score in America who worship at Wiley Oakley’s feet after a few days in the mountains with him.

He is a famous teller of tall tales (but he won’t tell one on Sunday). He has been on the radio, and on one trip to New York was offered a contract. It scared him so badly he took the train home without saying goodbye.

Throughout his wandering, Wiley has dropped past home often enough to raise a dozen children. They are all grown now, except one.

Wiley himself has run the same cycle as his beloved mountains. In the beginning they were virginal, untouched, natural. But now they have become public characters—both the mountains and Wiley—before the curious eyes of a million people a year.

Maybe they have both been changed a little by it; a little professionalism has come to them both. But that’s all right. For what good would the Smokies be, or Wiley Oakley either, if they remained under a bushel?

SEES MUSEUM

One of the places a visitor to Gatlinburg must see is the Mountaineer Museum. This is a collection of some 2000 old-fashioned mountain articles, gathered by Edna Lynn Simms.

Mrs. Simms came from Knoxville 24 years ago. She herself roamed the mountains long before the tourists came. She picked up articles, and lore, and the language of the hills. She has a bubbling enthusiasm for everything she sees or hears, an enthusiasm that has not begun to simmer down even after 24 years of mountain discovery.

Mrs. Simms’ museum is the best collection of mountain stuff in the Smokies. And in her own head is one of the finest collections of mountain speech and legend. Why, she has quoted so long that she talks like a mountain woman herself.