A famous resort town was founded purely by luck.

A couple of town builders out in Kansas dreamed it up, but fate picked the site.  The year was 1875, and this was nothing more than a lofty plateau, lonely and isolated, a wilderness of rhododendron, laurel and fir, home only to the owl, the squirrel, the bear and the wild cat.

Out in Kansas, a January wind whistled through the newborn town of Hutchinson, rattling the windows and doors of a house where to men bent over a map spread out on a table.

The two men were Samuel T. Kelsey and Charles Hutchinson.  As they studied the chart – a map of the United States – Kelsey took a pencil and drew a heavy black line from north to south across its face.  The line ran from Chicago to Savannah, and then he drew another, starting at New Orleans and moving northeast to Baltimore.

“We will build our town there”, Kelsey said, pointing to the spot where the lines intersected.  “That’s where it will be”.  As well as the two men could make out, the lines converged at a point where the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia came together, but wholly in North Carolina.

With their eyes on the main chance.  Kelsey and Hutchinson figured the point of intersection would become the exact center of population between the great population centers of the east.

“It will be like the hub of a wheel,” Kelsey said.  “We build a town there and people eventually will come through it to reach every point in that part of North Carolina, in northwestern South Carolina, and points in Georgia.”

They put away their map, and then started making their plans, for they were in a hurry.

Leaving homes and families behind, they set out for Western North Carolina to find the site fate had picked for their town.  They arrived in Atlanta late in January.  From there they headed northeast by mule-back into the rugged hill country.  After wandering around through the region for days they finally climbed out of the Georgia hills and came to an elevated mountain plateau in North Carolina.

By the calendar it was February, 1875.  They were deep in great wilderness.  But they decided that this was the spot where their town should be built.

They did some scouting around and discovered a trail.  They followed it off the plateau and down into a cover where they found their first sign of life.  They came to a house and learned they were in Horse Cove and that a sizable settlement called Cashiers was nearby.

The two men from Kansas proceeded to find out who owned the land they wanted for their town site.  They were told it belonged to a man named Dobson.  They found a made a deal for 800 acres on the west plateau of Satulah Mountain. 

About this time they ran into Charles N. Jenks, a noted explorer and miner, who happened to be in the area on a hunting and fishing expedition.

Jenks had a pocket compass.  So they persuaded him to help them lay out the town.  Once the survey was made, they cut a street through the center of the town to be, running east to west.

Hutchinson was given the choice of a 42 acre tract on either side of Main Street.  He picked the south side.  Kelsey took the north side.  Both knew a trick or so about speculation and promotion.  First they erected their own homes.  They used massive, hand squared pine logs.  They placed them upright, taking a cue from the western stockades.  They were weather-boarded on the inside and clapboarded on the outside.  With their homes up, they could boast that they had a town started.

It was then that they began to send circulars and advertisements to the ague-shaken folks of Kansas and adjacent states, as well as bombarding the New England states.  They called their town Highlands.  The response was enough to make Kelsey and Hutchinson realize they hadn’t been wrong in the gamble.

Within two years more than a dozen families had moved in and built homes.   Among the first settlers was T. Baxter White.  He came down from Massachusetts.  He was Highland’s first postmaster.  Judson M. Cobb came with his family from Wisconsin and brought the first Jersey cattle to Highlands. 

All these early settlers made the journey to Highlands over the Walhalla road, then the only exit from Highlands.  It ran through Horse Cove and Franklin, a full day’s journey.  So Kelsey and Hutchinson began a campaign for roads, and they got the folks to chip in and build them themselves.

Meanwhile, Kelsey and Hutchinson realized they had to have a school and a church if the town was to prosper and grown.  So they build a schoolhouse in 1878.  And while it was under construction, a log cabin known as the “Law House” was used for church, Sunday school, magistrate’s court and school.

A few years after the town was built, Hutchinson moved his family back to Kansas and the town he had built that bore his name.  But Kelsey stayed around for quite a number of years and went on to build another town in Western North Carolina – one called Linville.

When you come into Hayesville from the East over U.S. 64, you cross Chunky Gal Mountain and pass through Shooting Creek.  To the north rise the Tusquittees, aloof and mysterious and unapproachable.  To the southeast looms the legendary Standing Indian.  And to the west, beyond the lush valley of the Hiawassee stands Brasstown Bald.

All of which is by way of an introduction to place-names and the little known stories behind them.  Let’s start with Chunky Gal.  She’s a favorite among mountain place names.  Maybe it’s because the name suggests a rollicking, foot-tapping fiddle tune.  The facts, however, call for a lonesome tune, a ballad of young love nipped in the bud.

It all began when this was brooding wilderness and the land was home to the Cherokees.

There was an Indian maiden living on Shooting Creek.  She was dark-eyed and buxom, the envy of her more skinny tribal sisters.  And she had a handsome brave from the Wayahs for a beau.

After months of steady courting, the young lovers announced they were going to get married.  But, for some unexplained reason, the girl’s father opposed the marriage.

So they ran away.  They headed for the young brave’s home beyond the high mountains to the east.  But the way was steep and long, the going slow.  Time and again, in their climb to the sky, they had to stop and rest.

Meanwhile, the girl’s father discovered she had fled the village.  He organized a party of fleet-footed warriors and took out in pursuit.  He caught the fleeing lovers at the big spring in the gap of the mountain where they had paused to drink and catch their breath.

The irate father grabbed his daughter and warned the young brave he would be skinned alive if he ever showed up in the Shooting Creek again.  And then he took his daughter back home.

And when the white settlers moved in and asked the Indians the name of the mountain they had crossed to get to Shooting Creek, the Indians said: “It’s Chunky Gal”.

Nobody knows what the Indians called the Shooting Creek section.  It may have been Hiawassee, which is to say “savannah” or “meadow”.

It the early days, the pioneers met on the creek to hold shooting matches with their muzzle loading rifles, shooting for beef, deer or bear, turkey or whiskey.  So they called it Shooting Creek.

Brasstown, now renowned as the home of the John C. Campbell Folk School, came by its name when some Indians turned up a rich load of gold.  They thought it was brass and called the site of their strike “Brasstown” and built a village there.

Fires Creek, long an Eden of place for trout, was named for a man who first lived there by the name of Fires.

Peckerwood was named for an Indian known to the whites as Jim Peckerwood who lived about the fork of the branch.

Compass Creek got its name from Robert Henry, a surveyor and Revolutionary War veteran, who dropped his compass in the stream as he was crossing it.

Cherry Mill Creek was named for John Tucker Cherry who settled on a little stream just outside of what is now Hayesville in 1844 and built himself a gristmill.

Tusquittee is the name of a mountain range, a stream and a community.  It is pure Cherokee, meaning “place of the rafters”.

Butcher Knife Ridge came by its name because a man named Tom Lance found a butcher knife there.

Couch Gap was so named because during the American Civil War its cliffs were a hiding place for dodgers and slackers who lived on wild hog meat.

Hurricane Creek got its name from a gif blow that blew down all the trees along the creek.

Nobody remembers his name, but he was a chair maker.  So folks called the branch he lived on Chairmaker Branch.

Licklog came from the Davis family who felled trees not far from the church in that vicinity and cut.

Chonooga, which is say “groundhog” in Cherokee, got its name because folks caught so many groundhogs there.

Some folks say that the creek called Sweetwater was named by the Cherokee.  Others say the settlers gave it that name because everybody on the creek raised sorghum cane and made molasses.

Medlock Creek was named for Medlock, Quals Creek for slave owned Robert Henry who set her free and built her a house at the foot of the mountain.

Stamey Cove is really Sunday Branch, named for a man named Sunday.  Boon Gap was named for Bill Boon and Steve Gap for Stephen Kitchens.

Vineyards Mountain on Shooting Creek honors an abandoned enterprise started by an unremembered Englishman who covered the mountain with grape vines.  But the grapes failed to prosper and he returned to England.

Woman Gap was named by the Indians who stole a settler’s woman and held her captive there for a spell.

Potrock Bald was named for a large rock on top of the mountain that was hollowed out by an Indian medicine man and used to steep his medicinal herbs.

Weatherman Bluffs wasn’t coined to honor a local meteorologist, but was named for Juckerson Weatherman who lived at the base of the bluff.

Cullakanee is a corruption of the Cherokee word Kalanu meaning the “the raven”.

The list of original place names is endless.  And if you take the time to inquire you will come up with the how and why of them.  But for us…Chunky Gal tops them all!

The past dies slowly back in the hills.  Old ways and old customs still prevail.  And there are folks with old memories and old tales. 

There are hand-hewn cabins and slow ticking clocks, quilting bars and battlin’ blocks.  There are split rail fences and log barns.  And mules and horses, wagons and sleds.  There are men who still know how to use an axe and a froe and crosscut saw.

Old timers who can notch and mortise and tenon, join and rive.  There are places where the water supply still comes from a spring out back of the house.

Places in the dark wrinkles of the hills where the axe and the chopping block, the woodshed and the woodpile feed the fireplace and the wood burning cook stove.

To see and know these things, you have got to get off the beaten path.  You have got to take the winding, twisting little dirt tracks that lead into the hidden valleys and into the high coves.  Sometimes you have to do a spell of walking, cross a foot log, squeeze through a fence.

It is then and only then, that you come upon an older way of life.  It is only then that the eye and ear behold something that was supposed to have died a long, long time ago.

Come to the wilds of the Snowbird Mountains, where there are streams to ford and footlogs to walk, where the country is high and peaceful and wind blows fresh and damp.

Old Christmas will start this week.  There will be no minstrels singing, no bells will be ringing.  In another age, back when a changing world walked ever so slowly in the hidden hills – many a mountain family celebrated January 6^th as the day of Jesus’ birth.

These were frontiersmen and the sons and daughters of frontiersmen who remained in the high coves and the secluded valleys after the frontier had passed by.  They came of English or Pennsylvania Dutch stock and they passed on to their children some of the ballads and folklore their forebears fetched over from the Old Country.

Among their customs was that of celebrating Christmas on the Sixth of January.  Unlike “new” Christmas with its gaiety and feasting, Old Christmas was celebrated with prayer and choral singing.  When Old Christmas arrived, the folks assumed quiet, prayerful calm, putting aside the fiddle and banjo.  They gathered around the hearth fire and sang the Cherry Tree Carol which foretold the birth of Jesus in these words “On the Sixth Day of January, His birthday shall be, When the stars and the mountains, Shall tremble with glee, As Joseph was a walking, Thus did the angels sin; And Mary’s son at midnight, Was born to be our king.

To the folks of that long ago era there were 12 days of Christmas, beginning December 25 and ending January 6.  And throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, or until Old Christmas Eve, there were frolics and lay games, maybe a quilting bee.

During this period they sang an ancient culminative carol enumerating the gifts sent by a lover to his lady on each of the 12 days.

The voices would ring out:  Twelve days of Christmas, My true love sent to me, A partridge in a pear tree, Two turtle doves, Three French hens, Four calling birds, Five gold rings, Six geese a laying, Seven swans a swimming, Eight maids a milking, Nine ladies dancing, Ten lords a leaping, Eleven pipers piping, Twelve drummers drumming.

On Old Christmas Eve, just before the clock scratched for midnight, the family gathered about the hearth.  There was the telling of The Story and talk of the night when miracles come closest to earth.  With the arrival of Old Christmas, many a family brought out a jug of sweet cider and sang:  Love and joy come to you, And to your wassail too, And God bless you and send you, A happy New Year, And God send you a Happy New Year.  And then they would burn a piece of cedar or other fir in the fireplace. 

So here on Lake Santeetlah, January 6th will be the time when we take down our tree and feed it piece by piece into the fire.  And we will sit and listen to the balsam pieces crackle and watch the flames turn blue and smell the unforgettable fragrance.

To many an old timer who grew up here in the mountains, oranges were as much a part of Christmas tradition as holly and mistletoe, eggnog and boiled custard.  Whenever they whiff the pungent smell of an orange being peeled, no matter the season, they think of Christmas.  For as children in a world where the commonplace things of today were rarities, they never saw oranges except at Christmastime.  And they believed that oranges could be bought only then because merchants never displayed them at any other season.

Nobody knows just when they became an inseparable part of Christmas here in the hills, but by the 1870’s the account books kept by the country storekeepers showed that oranges were bought generally.  For the next forty years, except in Asheville, oranges seldom if ever showed up in the stores except Christmastime.

Back when they were a real luxury for mountain folks, families bought a dozen oranges and felt that they were well supplied.  Folks scrimpted and saved, hoarding up their eggs for trade at the country store, to be able to have oranges at Christmas.  To the children of that era it was not Christmas without getting an orange.

Many an old timer remembers with heartwarming nostalgia the joy of waking up on Christmas morning to find a golden ball in their stocking and to discover that Santa Claus, in a generous mood, had left an additional six or seven oranges by the fireside.

The children hung on to those left in their stockings as long as possible and shared with the whole family the other which were peeled one at a time and eaten one at a time with their mother passing the fruit around in segments.

Many an old timer, looking back to his youth, is haunted yet by the smell and taste of those oranges of his sprouting years.

Just as oranges became a part of Christmas tradition with mountain folks, so did raisins and coconuts.  And like oranges, they showed up only at Christmastime.  Raisins had a special appeal for children.  They were unlike the packaged moist raisins carried in the stores nowadays.  They came in big wooden boxes.  They were dried on the stem and were bought by the bunch.  They too found their way into many a child’s Christmas stocking and they created almost as much excitement as an orange.

During this same era, coconuts found their way into the mountains through enterprising drummers who induced storekeepers to hand a few at Christmastime.  As they caught on fast and became a vital part of Christmas.  Out of them came the coconut cakes as a Christmas tradition in most mountain households.  Opening coconuts was a real adventure back then.  First the soft eyes were punched out in order to drain off the richly flavored milk, which proposed the problem when there was more than one child in the family and not enough coconuts to produce more than a sip for each.  Then there was the business of crack the hull and extracting the crust of meat.  The best way was to saw open the nut, thus retaining the lower half of the shell which made an excellent bowl for a dipper or for storing soft soap.  Once the meat was extracted, long hours went into grating it over coarse homemade graters into bits and slivers that eventually found their way into a thick coconut cake.

Coconuts still show up at Christmastime in the stores and many a mountain woman turns to them for her cake making.  Like oranges and raisins, they have become commonplace nowadays.  Yet to many an old timer, all three are a part of Christmas tradition in the mountains.

For folks who cling lovingly to the traditions, this is the season of the punch bowl, the steaming cup and the syllabub churn.  Like snow, mistletoe and holly, the festive bowl and the hot grogs and chilled nogs are inseparable from the tradition of Christmas.

Though somewhat neglected in these streamlined days of quick mixes, the traditional festive potables still hold an honored place among hosts and celebrants to whom hospitality is almost an ancient rite.  There is nothing complicated about making eggnog.  To make approximately six glasses, you will need six eggs, a pint of milk, nutmeg, six teaspoons of sugar and twelve teaspoons of brandy or whiskey (brandy is preferable, either peach or apple).

First you beat the yolks well, then add gradually the sugar until creamy.  Next comes the milk, pouring it in slowly, beating all the time.  Next the brandy and lastly the well beaten whites (a fork or wire whisk should be used instead of an egg beater).  When it is completed, fill the glasses, grating a little fresh nutmeg on top and serve at once. 

Back in the day, the mountain folk sometimes made syllabub right at the table.  They had little churns.  Some of them were attractive hand-painted china containers.  Others were handmade affairs of tin with a small wooden dasher.

A modern syllabub is little more than whipped cream, flavored with wine and sweetened to the taste.  But the early way is to whip the cream and, as the foam rises, it was skimmed off, making a foamy light drink.

The ingredients for syllabub is one quart of cream, a cup of fresh milk, a cup of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla, a half cup of grape juice or a fourth cup of orange juice and a fourth cup of wine or brandy.  Once you have all the ingredients cold, place them in a large bowl and beat until frothy.  It should be served just as soon as it is made.

Cheers!

There is a pot of gold and cask of brandy hidden somewhere in the laurel crowned hills hereabouts.  For over a hundred and fifty years folks have been trying to unearth this golden cache, but it has proved to be just as elusive as the proverbial treasure and the end of the rainbow.

Phillip Gillespie, a rifle making man from a rifle making clan, buried the gold and brandy in an underground vault back in 1862 and then went off to fight in a war that swallowed him up.

The spot he picked to hide his fortune was a secret he held unto himself and the secret died with him on some unknown battlefield far from the hills of home.  It is locked in the ancient earth of Forge Mountain which stands like a grim prophecy.

The land has not changed much since Phillip Gillespie buried his gold and his brandy.  It is essentially the same.  And a soil that cannot be plowed under keeps it secrets.  Be that as it may, folks keep on searching because there is something a treasure that fastens upon a man’s mind.  But, then, these are folks who never knew Phillip Gillespie or his intentions.

When he decided to offer his rifle gun and his trigger finger to the Confederacy, he told a bunch of mountain men gathered at his gun shop.  “I aim to make certain no man ever spends my money or any red-legged revenuer ever lays eyes on my brandy.”  And then proceeded to do just that.

The Gillespies had come out of Pennsylvania, out of Lancaster, where the patriarch of the clan had established a reputation as a famous gunsmith.  A pioneering son named Matthew followed Daniel Boone down into the wilds of the Blue Ridge and then came to the Smoky Mountains where he set up a gunshop near Phillip Sitton’s iron works under the dark shadow of Forge Mountain.

He married one of Sitton’s daughters.  She gave him three sons.  They became gunsmiths, too, and shaped the guns kelps hammered out by their grandfather.  They added luster to the Gillespie name which already was synonymous with rifle gun wherever frontiersmen gambled their lives on the trigger finds.

One of the sons was Phillip.  By the time he was 20; his gun-craft had earned himself a right smart fortune and made him a man of property.  Between his gunshop, which produced prime rifles, and his apple orchard which produced a right peart brandy by way of a homemade distillery, the gold coins literally poured in and Phillip Gillespie stashed them away in a leather poke.

Taking a cue from his Scotch-Irish ancestors, he believed that any man had the inherent right to make and sell brandy, law or no law, and the fruits of a man’s labors should not be taxed.  He never had paid out any of his gold coins in tax on the brandy he made and he didn’t ever aim to as long as he lived.  By the time the Civil War came on, Phillip Gillespie had succeeded in keeping to his aim without too much trouble with revenuers.

He was still a young man when old Edmund Ruffin hauled off and fired the shot that started the Civil War down at Fort Sumter.  News travelled slowly back in those days and it was some time before folks hereabouts realized what was happening.  And when they did hear, it did not mean much.  But, in time, the war became a real thing to them.

It wasn’t long until every set of powder irons in the entire area had been pressed into use.  Many of the local farms were producing charcoal and saltpeter for gunpowder.  By and by, the summons for enlistment in the Confederate Army reached these parts.  Guns were polished and grease boxes filled.  Powder horns were fitted with new leather straps.  Bullet ladles and bullet molds lay side by side with the stout shot bag of linsey-woolsey. 

Everything was ready for an early morning start.  But Phillip Gillespie had one more task to perform before he left for the fighting.  It concerned his poke of gold coins, which now held a fortune of some $1600 and 50 gallons of brandy.  The gold mostly was Bechler coins, minted down at Rutherfordton.  The brandy was in a stout barrel which a neighboring cooper had fashioned of oak staves and tied with hoops of tough young hickory saplings.  It was built to endure.

“No, sir” Phillip Gillespie mused.  “They’ll never find my brandy and collect any part of my hard earned gold for tax.”

So when night came on, he slipped out of the house with his poke of gold coins tightly packed in an earthen crock he had taken from his mother’s spring house.

He moved off to the barn and hitched one of the oxen to a sled.  He rolled his cask of brandy from its hiding place under some straw and loaded in on the sled.  Then he set out for grim Forge Mountain.  He had a pick and shovel with him, and he carried a rifle gun.

Somewhere in a cove up there, Phillip Gillespie halted his ox and sled and dug an underground safety vault.  He lined it with rock and built it to last and preserve his treasure.  Finally he placed the gold and the brandy in the vault.  He sealed the cache with more stones and then packed earth over it.  And over the newly turned earth he spread leaves and brush to hide all trace of the thing he had done.  Satisfied with his handiwork, he turned toward home.

“I’ve hid it good” he told his folks.  “Won’t nobody find it.  It’ll be there when I get back.”

The following morning, Phillip Gillespie said goodbye to his folks and marched off to war with his long rifle in the crook of his arm, a rifle gun he had made with his own hands in his own gunshop.

News of the war’s progress trickled into the isolated settlements of the Smoky Mountains and the news was not good, for the new was not of battles lost but of men of the settlements killed.

It came stark and terse…Killed at Seven Pines…Missing at Malvern Hills…Died of wounds received at Chancellorsville…a roll call of home boys dwindling.

Stragglers and deserters roamed the country, plundering and pilfering.  Old man Phillip Sitton was shot by a renegade as he stood in the doorway of his home. 

The war went on and there was no word of Phillip Gillespie.  Then the war was over and those who had survived began straggling back.  They waited for Phillip Gillespie, but he never did come back.

Folks remembered his talking of hiding his gold and his brandy.  So they started searching for the golden cache.  They’ve been looking for it a long time now.  It’s become a legend and a tale to tell around the fire.  But the gold and brandy are still there.  For Phillip Gillespie said he aimed to make certain that no man ever spent his gold or any revenuer ever eyes on his brandy!

The pumpkin, truly a symbol of autumn is deep-rooted in American life.  In the early days, it was used stewed in soups, in stews, in pie and pudding.  The flesh was dried for winter and early spring.  The seeds were used as a delicacy.

The early settlers here in the hills learned to grow them in their fields of corn.  It was common practice 75 years ago to plan seed of pumpkin in a hill of corn.

To the pioneers, the pumpkin was one of the most versatile of vegetables.  Pumpkin could be stored in the fall, down under the fodder bundles and then served as a vegetable – peeled and boiled, and it was then fried – through most of the winter.

Pumpkin butter is a gourmet’s delight, is still a favorite in many a mountain home.  So is pumpkin bread and pumpkin molasses.

To make pumpkin bread, according to the recipe handed down, you must stew the pumpkin until it is done, then put in the corn meal and salt it and work it up into a dough shape it into a pone or small cakes, bake until it golden brown.

Some mountain women make a pudding of boiled pumpkin.  And some still make pumpkin molasses, which provided sweetening to cook other delicacies.  Back then the word molasses was used in the same sense we use syrup today.  When cooked for a long time in a large quantity of water, strained and the water further reduced by boiling, you have pumpkin molasses.

Then, of course, there is pumpkin whiskey.  As knowledgeable old timers will tell, pumpkin whiskey is a lot easier to make than corn whiskey, and not as risky!  All you need is sugar and a good sized pumpkin.  You cut a plug out of the top of the pumpkin, clean out the seeds and the pulpy mass to the meat.  Then you pack the hollowed out pumpkin full of sugar, replace the plug, seal it with wax, and set the pumpkin under the bed or in a dark place.  In a week or so the sugar has turned to liquid and you’ve got a quart or so of whiskey!

It could be dried, or freshly cooked and put into the cornbread batter.

Most of us think of pumpkin pies when we see a wagonload of pumpkins or pumpkins sitting on the back porch.  But pumpkin is more than just pie.  It is a bread and a pudding, a butter and a molasses.  Many a mountain family right now is savoring one or all of them.

There is nothing like a smell to stir old memories.  Smells are surer than sounds or sights to make the heart strings twang.  They have that achingly familiar power to evoke the past.  And a good strong whiff can stab you in the heart with pain, longing and remembrance.  For the old timers, most of the once familiar smells have become elusive and rare, to be sought out or stumbled upon.

Like the smell of warm foaming milk or the poignant and wordless odor of dandelions.  Or the acrid fumes of potash and lye of steaming kettles.  Like the smell of an oil lamp or the crisp, blue smell of hickory smoke. 

For many mountain folk, the smells of an old fashioned, non-deodorized barn are part of their heritage – the acid fragrance of manure, mingling with the sweetness of hay, the clean sharp odor of leather, a horse’s pared hoof, oats and bran.  Fertilizers now are non-organic and hence the farmlands odorless.

The wonderful aroma and scents and smells of a grandma’s kitchen have been snatched up by ventilation hoods and either absorbed chemically or shot high into the air.  Today’s pantry is no long the haunting and nostalgic fusion of delicious smells that pervaded the atmosphere of grandma’s pantry.  There is nothing about it to whip the senses – nothing heady or pungent or sharp.  Gone are the odors of cinnamon, pepper, smoked ham and cloves.

There are no longer the old time kitchen smells – of baking bread, buckwheat batter and black sorghum molasses, kerosene and linoleum, the clean ground strength of fresh ground coffee, of vanilla in cake dough, of fresh cut stove-wood and pine kindling in the wood box by the stove.

Something has gone too from the house that whetted a body’s appetite.  There was a time that Rip Van Winkle could have told by the smells whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Somehow the smell of breakfast has lost its pungency.  The smells of country sausage frying, ham and eggs and wheat cakes are gone.

Something has gone too from the living room.  There are no longer the good male smells…pipe tobacco and pine and leather and starched curtains.

And with the loss of the country store, the most exciting confusion of odors that ever prevailed anywhere.  The scent was of nothing in particular and everything in general.  It was in reality an odoriferous inventory of the entire stock – a mixture of hardware and groceries, dry goods and notions, onions, kerosene and soap.  It was the glaze on the calicos and the starch in the checks, rooting cabbages and potatoes, spring onion sets, leather polish on new shoes, oil and wax on saddles, horse collars and buggy harness, the stove, peppermint and wintergreen candy.  It was a blend of salt meats, paint on plow tools, cottonseed oil, honey and un-ground coffee.  It was the smell of whittled wood and sawdust and shavings. 

If you are a country man or luck enough to roam these rural byways, there are still smells that pleasure the nose and the soul.  Like the smell of dew wet mornings, the cherry scent, the cool earth, damp moss, the wet loaming of the garden.  Like the smell of burning leaves, the cidery smell of early apples on the ground, the wild tang of wild grapes, pressed cider pulp, the mint and goldenrod smell of tall weeds recently mowed.  The smell of rain bearing winds, frosts sharp and quick as driven nails, the cool fern smell near springs, the elusive vast seductive and exciting smell of the hills blooming in the dusk.

Ah, those wonderful smells!