MountainHeritage08Page5

At 5:15pm we were treated by our rally hosts to a good meal at the House of Ribs. Aside from almost getting lost on the way because everyone in the car forgot to bring directions, it was a good evening. We made the drive with Butch and Dollie Kulbacki.

October 3, 2008 - Jonesborough, the oldest city in Tennessee, is the county seat of Washington County and the home of the National Storytelling Festival which is why the caravan was here. This was the 36th consecutive year of the festival, growing from just a handful of people to this year's crowd of some 10,000. This was the first of three days of storytelling in the historic old town. There were some thirty-eight Airstreams camped at the Appalachian Fairgrounds in the neighboring town of Gray, all attending a WBCCI rally in Gray to take advantage of the Jonesborough’s festival. Our caravan makes up half of those units.

Our day started with a rally breakfast in fairgrounds Building No.1. Chicken biscuits, glazed croissants, fruit cups, and juice added the good fellowship. Then, we drove to Jonesborough and parked for $5 in a school yard with hundreds of other cars. The city provided shuttle service on school buses to the historic district where the storytelling festival was being held.

Six huge circus-like tents had been erected in various parking lots within a four or five block area where the streets had been blocked off. Tickets for the three-day affair, costing $150 each, were included in our caravan kitty fee. The tickets consists of a calico swatch pinned to our shirts. It seemed to be customary for folks who return each year to display all their old swatches on hats or jackets.

Some two dozen “tellers” were scheduled to perform in one-hour segments. We all had copies of the schedules and had the option of choosing which performers to watch. It all started at 10:00am and continued until midnight. Ann and I watched Don Davis twice, Tim Tingle, Michael Reno Harrell, Elizabeth Ellis, Pete Cook, Bil Lepp, and Onawumi Jean Moss, each with a different approach to storytelling.

Don Davis told funny stories based on true life experiences growing up in rural North Carolina. Tim Tingle was extremely animated as he told a story based about Choctaw Indians and American slaves. Michael Reno Harrell had long white hair and accompanying his tales with his guitar. Elizabeth Ellis was a portly grandmother who told about her travails with an insurance adjuster who loved poetry. Pete Cook was a deaf comedian who reversed the role of his sign language interpreter, communicating as much with his facial expressions and body language as with sign language. Bil Lepp spouted nonsense at a mile a minute pace describing a dream about a candy monster and a polar bear. Onawumi Jean Moss spun her tales around the theme of doing the best you can with what you’ve got, constantly repeating that in a song which the audience took up.

It was a beautiful day with solid blue sky - perfect weather for the festival. The day was filled with a lot of walking from tent to tent and a lot of sitting on hard folding chairs. It was an enjoyable day, but we gave up in exhaustion at 5:00pm and caught the shuttle back to the school parking lot, then drove back to camp.

October 4, 2008 - After breakfast we again drove in to Jonesborough for more storytelling. We arrived early enough to get pretty good seats in the College Street tent for the John McCutcheon show. This was probably the best all round showman of the bunch, although not strict story telleing. He had five or six different musical instruments on the stage, picking up whichever one seemed to fit as background for the story he was telling. People were standing around the perimeter of the tent and seated on a little hill on one side. His stories, while humorous, all had moral themes. One story spoke of the need to forgive, ending with a compelling version of the Lord's Prayer in song emphasizing forgiveness. Another spoke of the need to come together in harmony and to take responsibility instead of blaming others for what goes wrong.

We just stayed in our seats for the half hour between tellers so had a pretty good seat for another hour of Don Davis. He was probably the only true storyteller in the bunch with no musical accompaniment, no singing, no poetry - just plain verbal comedy. Today his story was about his first true love - in the 8th grade. For three years he dreamed of this cute little blonde girl without getting up the nerve to approach her. Finally, as an 11th grader he called to ask her for a date. When she opened the door it was not the girl he'd dreamed of, but her black haired friend. All turned out well and the audience was spellbound with the tale. His style is humor at its best.

Watching the people in attendance was amazing - all ages from children and teens to both young and old adults. There were more folks in attendance on this Saturday than the day before. After the hour with Don Davis we gave up our seats and ventured to another tent only to find it already packed with only standing room on the edge. In the one tent with seats the teller was not so good so we called it a day. Others had made the same choice as we boarded the shuttle back to the parking lot.

We next drove to a nearby Panera Bread for lunch and use of their Wi-Fi to send this out.

October 5, 2008 - A rally brunch was scheduled on this Sunday after devotions, so we proceeded by carpool to nearby Greeneville to the General Morgan Hotel for the meal. And what a meal it turned out to be - first class elegance! Chefs were making omelets to order. Another was carving turkey. Champaign was served at every table. Pork loin and fried chicken were on the entree table along with potatoes, mixed vegetables, dressing and gravy. Then came an array of desserts, all served buffet style.

Greeneville was the home of President Andrew Johnson, so a visit to his old homeplace, tailor shop, and burial site was in order for most of the folks. We elected to skip that, having done it before, to return to the festival for the last events there. They were showcasing the tellers. Each of ten tellers displayed their style for about ten minutes for a great finale. The last teller was Kathryn Windham, a 90 year old lady from Alabama. She held the audience spellbound with her wisdom, ending with an emphasis on the art of listening. There wasn't a sound in the house. Six hundred people were listening in awe when all of a sudden Ann's cell phone went off drawing the teller's notice and a laugh. It was an embarassing moment, but one to build another story around.

The storytelling festival had been an interesting, fun filled experience.

October 6, 2008 - Our next caravan event was a visit to a Gray Fossil Site discovered in 2000 during a road building project. Just three miles from our campsite at Appalachian Fairgrounds, this site is said to be the largest such find in the country. When bulldozers were preparing for widening the highway, they discovered an unusual soil conformation. That led to the discovery of bones. It was such a remarkable find that the governor of the state directed that the highway be diverted around the site. Paleontologists came and declared this the most important Miocene Epoch fossil site find in the world.

About five million years ago this was a deep watering hole that attracted many animals from near and far. For some reason hundreds of them fell into the water, drowned, and fell to the bottom. At least twelve distinct species have been identified - short-faced bears, shovel-tusked elephants, tapirs, saber-toothed tigers, red pandas, pot-bellied rhinos, along with camels, gators, badgers, turtles, peccaries, badgers, and a few birds.

The digging project is now led by paleontologists from the East Tennessee State University. A large building has just been completed that houses exhibits of reconstructed skeletons, a large laboratory, a refrigerated storage area for the fossils, offices for the researchers, and more - a state-of-the-art facility. Excavation and reconstruction is a painstakingly slow process, but it's remarkable that so much has been done in less than ten years.

Our guide stated that portion of the site they have access to is about five and a half acres wide and 170 feet deep, and that only one percent has been explored. No one knows how large the full site is. They only have access to that part within the old highway easement. Much more is on private property.

Following the tour of the fossil site the Creightons and the Bergs drove over to Kingsport to meet four of our cousins - Burns and Cathy Creighton and Phil and Sandra Farrow - for a picnic at the Eastman Kodak Park, a facility created for the enjoyment of employees and retirees of Eastman Kodak Co. Next to this park was the Bays Mountain Park, a 3,300 acre nature preserve owned by the City of Kingsport. A dam built in 1917 created a 44 acre lake and reservoir which supplied Kingsport its water until 1944. We walked along a forest path, seeing raccoons, bobcats, otters, and a wolf pack. The wolves were huge animals in a large enclosed area surrounded by a barbed-wire topped chain-link fence. It was a lovely place to spend an evening.