Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I have come to Gatlinburg with my husband to an optometric meeting. I've been coming to such meetings with him for years, armed with a book to read and/or papers to grade. The weather has turned cold and the traffic is unbelieveable, but we're here in the beautiful Smokies. From inside the hotel on the mountain top, it's beautiful.
We first came to Gatlinburg in the 1950s, when Bill was still a graduate student working on his dissertation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Just out of college, I was in my first year of teaching at Clinton, Tennessee. That's a story I want to tell, but just now, I'm concerned about Gatlinburg. It was a picturesque tourist town then, with lots of souvenires. Cheap black bear statues, mostly. We learned something weird about those later. The supplier was Japan, all right, but northern Japan, where the black bear was sacred to local inhabitants. We learned that from my cousin, whose husband was stationed in Japan in the 1960s.
Gatlinburg now is anything but cheap. But it has been eclipsed by Pigeon Forge and Dollywood.
We're glad to be here in this beautiful place.
We first came to Gatlinburg in the 1950s, when Bill was still a graduate student working on his dissertation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Just out of college, I was in my first year of teaching at Clinton, Tennessee. That's a story I want to tell, but just now, I'm concerned about Gatlinburg. It was a picturesque tourist town then, with lots of souvenires. Cheap black bear statues, mostly. We learned something weird about those later. The supplier was Japan, all right, but northern Japan, where the black bear was sacred to local inhabitants. We learned that from my cousin, whose husband was stationed in Japan in the 1960s.
Gatlinburg now is anything but cheap. But it has been eclipsed by Pigeon Forge and Dollywood.
We're glad to be here in this beautiful place.
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