Christmas in Sulpher Springs By Donald Davis
C
hristmas in Sulpher Springs was a strangely fascinating combination of two worlds, old and new. Traditional mountain customs and ancient observations formed the heart and soul of the season. At the same time, the new power of advertising and the proliferation of newspapers and radios had made us part of the “modern” world of commercialized holidays. Generations-old gift-making traditions still lived on all over Nantahala County. But many homemade crafts had to come to town to be sold side-by-side with the Made-in-Japan junk toys so highly prized by children of all ages. Winning and losing took place even at Christmas and even in that idyllic world. Our mother’s family began to gather as soon as school was out. Sulpher Springs was still “home” to more than a dozen aunts and uncles who had left the mountains to seek their fortunes from Chicago to Florida, but who always planned to come home…some day.
Christmas, like summertime, was a brief season of homecoming. The whole extended matriarchal family came pouring in, with more and more new little cousins each year tumbling from cars with strange license tags to push us from our own beds for two weeks and eat everything Mother had put up at the cannery the summer before… On Christmas mornings we loaded up in the blue Dodge and went to Grandmother’s house. Grandmother and Granddaddy lived nearly twenty miles out of Sulpher Springs up on Cedar Fork Mountain. It took almost an hour to get there on the curving roads out through Bowlegged Valley and past Crabtree Creek, even though an eight-foot wide strip of road was paved nearly all the way to their house. It was an excellent ride. In early years Mother had not learned to drive, and Daddy took advantage of that fact by driving fast enough to scare her all the way. Joe-brother and I played in the floor of the back seat, trying to get away from Daddy’s ever-present cigar smoke, which was much worse in winter when the windows were rolled up and the heater was turned on. The last part of the drive was a two-mile climb up and over the gap in Cedar Fork Mountain. Daddy had a special little game he played with himself (and with the Dodge) on this part of the trip. The game was to see how far up Cedar Fork he could get before he had to shift the Dodge down into second gear. As soon as we passed the sawmill below Crabtree Creek, it was time for the game to begin. From here, the road ran straight up and over Sutton Farm Hill, then down through a long dip and right up the mountain toward Cedar Fork Gap. Daddy poured on the gas and puffed the cigar at the same time. Mother always protested, but weakly. “Don’t go too fast,” she would say, which always made him stick the accelerator right to the floor. We topped Sutton Farm Hill at forty-five miles an hour and started down the last dip before climbing the big mountain. Daddy kept it on the floor. Joe-brother and I peeped over the seat so that we could see the speedometer. The needle climbed to fifty…fifty-five… If you should meet another car on the narrow strip of pavement, you had to each put two wheels off in the gravel to pass safely. At this speed, that would have been totally out of the question. But here the road was straight, and Daddy could see that nothing was coming. “Please slow down!” Mother pleaded. Now we were pulling up the mountain, and even with the gas pedal on the floor, the Dodge was slowing down. Up, up, up the steep hill we went. Joe-brother and I could see the speedometer needle dropping. Fifty…forty-five…forty…thirty-five… It was coming — the time we were waiting for. Up ahead was “Second Gear Curve.” That’s where it always happened: continued on page 23
22 DECEMBER 2006 Carolina Country