My wife, Kathy, and I made our annual November trip to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area to Christmas shop a few weeks ago. After over four decades of marriage, I suppose most couples settle into some kind of routine. Our mornings play out like this. She sleeps late, and I do breakfast on my own.
I am now convinced 90% of the people who travel to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge never enjoy pancakes at home. That’s the reason they all show up at pancake houses to stand in line for hours waiting to wade into the sticky, culinary delight. I, for one, do not enjoy standing in line in sub-freezing temperatures, so I get out early and beat the on-foot traffic.
The early morning usually finds me at the Log Cabin Pancake House on Airport Road in Gatlinburg. Not only do they know me there, but they also serve a great breakfast at a reasonable price. I say a reasonable price because I now limit myself, most of the time, to the “child’s/senior plate” – one egg, two strips of bacon and four mini-pancakes, with drink included.
The giant poplar wood beams that support the rafters, the large, gas fireplaces, (They once burned real wood) and the many relics of the past scattered throughout the restaurant have a way of taking me back to The Brim Hollow. Horse drawn plows, their plow handles made smooth by time and age, cry out to me from the outside shed of the restaurant each time I walk by. As I drink in those things which stir old memories, I experience the warmest feelings.
Once more, I see my Granny Lena sitting in a cane-bottomed chair, its back as straight as hers, as she worked the butter churn – up-and-down – with a resolve that yielded the fineness butter and callused hands.
The sight of a hand-cranked corn sheller sent me back to the feed barn where I learned to love the smell of mules; and up the ladder where I found safety when the hallway became too busy. In the corn crib, I recalled a pyramid of red corn cobs that reached almost to the ceiling; and a mountain of corn shucks that finished filling the crib where a boy could dive in and lose himself to the world outside.
As I sat and studied the flickering flames in the fireplace, I found myself in front of another fireplace, many miles and many years ago. And I felt the warmth of the fire on my face, and I smelled a thousand smells - the smoke from the fire, a chicken pot pie just removed from the oven of the wood stove, my grandfather’s flannel shirts, the inside of the smokehouse, and the intoxicating air in my grandmother’s flower garden.
And once again I stood beside the branch (My grandmother’s word for creek) and watched the refreshing flow from up the hollow, fed by a-half-dozen springs which drew up water, crystal-clear and cold, and sweet to the taste, from deep within the earth.
In the winters of my youth, I often laid in the safety and warmth of a feather bed at night and listened to the haunting whistle of the wind as it swept through the hollow. The high ridges that framed the hollow and the trees laid bare for winter made for a sound unlike any other I have ever known. I heard that sound again.
I have often wished every person had a “Brim Hollow” in their life – a place to which you could return, if only in your mind, from time to time; and find peace and solitude – a place where you could find a “grounding” - a place where life seemed to make more sense. If you have such a place, you are richly blessed.
Copyright 2022 by Jack McCall
