We stopped by beautiful Lake Junaluska on our way home from Jonesborough yesterday. As a double Methodist PK (preacher’s kid) I have fond memories of trips to LJ as a kid. We have been back for family trips and our kids have visited with our church youth group.
There are certain sixties rock songs that, to this day, immediately call up the feel of the concrete of the Junaluska sidewalk under my feet and the background sounds of the folks in the pool, and the freshness of the mountain air, to my mind.
Our scenic route back from Jonesborough was engineered to take us through Helen, Georgia, to Pine Tree Cottage, the home of our dear friend Mildred Greear, still animated and interesting despite a few weeks of ill-health as she approaches her 97th birthday in a few days. She still protests that she DID NOT drop our daughter! We reminisced about that butterfly that rode down the Etowah on Sheila’s shoulder in 1978, and when Paul and Mary Swinford’s canoe capsized dousing sleeping bags and their cigarettes on the first day of an overnight trip, and our weekend trip to the Greear cabin in Helen with Sue Frazier and Joanne Weeks in the late seventies, and a later trip there with Mike Bock and Bill & Cathy Whittle. and our visit in 2015 to the Stovall House B&B of “Lanky” Summer to visit with his mother Virginia Summer and record Mildred’s songs. And more for two hours that seemed more like two minutes.
