The Gatlinburg Incident

I was talking about Adventures in Moving yesterday and related a fun encounter we had with highway construction near St. Louis. Today I’d like to tell you about, what we call, The Gatlinburg Incident.

We lived in Colorado Springs for about four months. From there, we decided to move to Toccoa, Georgia. I counted it up one time and I think we have moved 13 times in 34 years. So I’m pretty good at this stuff. I usually get all my ducks in a row before I do anything. When it comes to moving (or even a day trip) I have always relied on maps. Currently, I use the door-to-door computerized map programs; in 1981 we relied on AAA TripTiks.

So I let AAA lay out my route from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Toccoa, Georgia. I always requested the most direct route to get places. Their advice took us through a quaint little town called Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Gatlinburg was a touristy town at the base of a mountain pass that eventually takes you into Georgia. The mountain pass is a narrow, windy road unsuitable for large vehicles. There was a guard shack at the entry to the road that was manned until 6PM. We got there at 6:05 and no one was there to stop us.

Once again, I am driving a 24-foot U-Haul and towing a 1968 Chevy Malibu behind me. I have my wife and a three year old and a one-year-old baby in the front seat and it has been a long-ass trip so far. Everybody is tired, hungry and cranky. I tell them we’ll stop to eat as soon as we get up over this little hill.

The little hill turned out to be a genuine, straight up the side, switch-back, Billy-goat loving, circle back around under itself, mother-f***er of a mountain road. I took the entire trip UP the mountain in first gear and wished I could downshift from there. I don’t think we went over five or ten mph the whole way up. The truck was shaking and rattling; I was grinding the gears and burning out the clutch just to keep moving and my wife (who is terrified of heights) was trying to calm the kids and NOT look out the window at the sheer, hundred foot drops inches from the side of the truck.

It took three hours to get up the mountain.

The trip down went much faster. I didn’t have any brakes.

Well, I sort of had brakes. Just enough to tease me. Just enough to slow me down, but not enough to actually stop. You see the other side of the mountain was just as steep, just as windy, narrow and dangerous as the trip up. But now I’m having trouble slowing down. I’m down shifting, horsing the wheel this way and that, clattering gravel over the edge of the hundred foot drops, telling everyone we’re almost there and knowing I could not stop the truck – period.

Every now and then the road would straighten out and there would be a wide gravel and dirt area off to the left where I could pull over. But I could not come to a complete stop and had to pull out onto the road again. Not being able to stop was bad enough, but we weren’t the only people on the road. So, when I would be forced to pull back out, it was into oncoming traffic. Just to make it interesting.

This, too, went on much longer than sanity would dictate. Eventually the road flattened out enough for me to attempt another pull over and we finally creaked and hissed to a shaky stop.

I sat there for a moment, my arms shaking, fearful the truck would start moving again. After a moment I opened the door and climbed out. My legs were like rubber and my lower back was spasming. I took a few steps away from the cab and saw that the back wheels were glowing orange. As I stood there, fascinated by possibly the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen in my life, it actually burst into flames. So I did the only guy thing left to me – I pissed on it.

Somehow we limped into Toccoa that night. We never did eat (or at least my wife and I didn’t). We were just grateful to be alive. Surviving an ordeal like that helps you to focus on the important things in life. Things like family, and God and seeking Holy and righteous revenge on those idiots at AAA.