The ring of my
cell phone jars me back to 90 degree, late afternoon Main Street Floyd. It is
my ex-wife informing me that our daughter Caroline is stranded on the Cherokee
Indian Reservation, Cherokee, North Carolina. Uh….could you run that by me again? I look at the map,
and it appears I am about half way from Asheville and the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park. My tent and stuff are set up at Rocky Knob, six miles away in the
mountains, so it won’t be tonight, but I promised to head out first thing….well
maybe not first thing, sleep of kings and all, in the morning.
When I get back to
the campground, I notice that the woman in the Class A Motorhome is in the
exact position at the picnic table as when I left 5 hours ago. It is near the bathhouse
so I mosey on over to do some snooping. We make eye contact and I ask
permission to come aboard. She is completing a jigsaw puzzle, the biggest, in square footage, with the tiniest pieces that I have
ever seen in a cardboard puzzle, which is not many. Turns out they live 10
months of the year in the Class A, and return “home” to somewhere in South
Carolina to regroup. They have been on the road, in a tent or a pop up or a fifth
wheel or a Class A for almost 35 years. Folks, these are people who are not in a hurry, ‘cause
there is no where to go, they are already there…..and I thought working in
Floyd might become simplistic.
Daytime, Caroline and Sam
Onward to save my
daughter from the savages. Eventually,
it becomes apparent that it is not four hours to Cherokee, but more like seven. I
call for directions from Caroline, who puts her friend Sam’s mom on the phone.
Sam’s mom lives in a camper on the reservation, and as I mention the small
towns I am passing through, she recognizes very few to none. Uh, ok. I head
down the twisting route 19 west that is lined with 1950’s mom and pop motels
and private campgrounds that seem to have large percentages of families
permanently living in broken down trailers. Most of the other cars, campers and
rvs on the road, seem full of families from other places headed for great fun and great
memory making in the great outdoors of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or nearby Pisgah
National Forest. The beauty of driving along Soco Creek and the Tuckasegee
River in these green mountainous hollers is breathtaking. However, lurking
behind this rugged beauty is the grim reality of life on an Indian Reservation
in Appalachia. Like Floyd, I am only there a short time, so who is to say…but
it seems if you don’t work in one of these motels, fast food restaurants, cheesy
third rate amusement attractions or “Indian” novelty shops, it is a meth lab in
a trailer park. I am also struck by apparent income gap between the tourists,
like me in one kind of camper, and at least some of the locals in another kind
of camper (ratty).
Santa's World, Cherokee, NC
I already knew
this from Boy Scout trips in my youth, but Indian reservations are slightly
grim, depressing and underwhelming if you are expecting teepees and noble, shirtless warriors on
horseback. If you aren’t really paying attention, you might not even know you
are on an Indian Reservation. So, as I pulled into Cherokee, I met Caroline,
Daytime, Sam and Sam’s mom in the parking lot of Santa’s World. In summary, Caroline and
Daytime had driven from Charlottesville to visit Sam, whose mom who was living
in the camper on the reservation. Daytime’s car broke, and the threesome were
destitute in the camper. Caroline’s mom, wired her $100 and Caroline’s dad drove to pick her up.
Daytime’s car evidently was not broken and he headed somewhere, I heard Tennessee. Sam and her
Mom headed back to the camper. Ted and Caroline headed to the Mile High
Campground still on the reservation but at 5400 feet, where I went over fire skills
with Caroline. She might have thought it cold, but I had the sleep of kings. I
guess I learned that if an rv adventure goes bad for real, you really can end
up living in a van down by a beautiful river. I don’t know what, but there must
be something for Caroline to learn from this adventure. It was all kind of
spooky.
Caroline at Mile High Campground
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