Surprise!

Brother Dave and I knew the bridge over Juanite Creek had collapsed.  We would have to park our pickup truck there and carry our gear the last couple of miles, which was not something my brother wanted to do. So before we left Charlotte he built a bridge, loaded it on an orange, U-Haul straight-bed truck he had rented, and off we went.

We were headed for Snowbird, a remote area in Southwest North Carolina adjoining the 531,148-acre Nantahala National Forest. And when we got there, sure enough, the bridge over Juanite Creek was impassable unless you had a four-wheel drive. Or a bridge.  We slid our bridge out of the truck and laid it across the gap –three bolted 2×8’s on one side, three bolted 2×8’s on the other.

Most people would not have attempted to drive a straight-bed truck across a creek on wobbly 2×8’s, but my brother is not most people. I held my breath, so to speak, and he did it. And then we put the  bridge back in the truck, drove on up the mountain, parked the truck, and camped nearby.

A couple of days later, early in the morning, we had company — three hunters in a Jeep, pulling a trailer with a dog cage. They were able to cross the saggy bridge because they had four-wheel drive.   You know they were wondering how we got across.  Anyway, they parked a little ways from us, unloaded their dogs, loaded their rifles, and walked into the woods.

I don’t know where those fellows were from but I’ve always imagined –hoped– that one of them was a local and other two were from some big city up North.

I imagined the local boy telling them:

This is the way Snowbird looks today. Forty years ago it was more remote.
This is the way Snowbird looks today, from the top of a tower on our land.   Forty years ago it was even more remote.

“You come down here and go hunting with me and I’ll take you to a place in the mountains no white man and few Indians have ever seen.”

They came.

He loaded up his dogs, told those fellas to get in, and drove his Jeep to Snowbird, across the broken bridge laying in the creek, to the top of the mountain.  And there, waiting for them in the wilderness, was a big, orange, U-Haul truck.

Coming Monday: Two Sets Of Rules

The Bribe

I used to be a newspaperman and early on, back in the 1960’s, I decided there were three things I wanted to accomplish:  I wanted to be put in jail for refusing to reveal the name of a confidential source; I wanted to be offered a bribe; and I wanted to win a Pulitzer Prize.

I finally won a Pulitzer but the other two goals seemed unattainable.  My newspaper, The News & Observer, stopped using anonymous sources in investigative stories in the late 1970’s so, after that, I wasn’t going to be put in jail for failing to name one. And I had no control over the bribe situation.

When I was a young reporter, just starting out, I saw a story about a reporter at some big paper up North who had taken a bribe from a company to not come around asking questions. They didn’t bribe him to change a story, or kill a story. They bribed him not to look for a story in their neighborhood.

I thought to myself, that guy has no morals but he must be one hell of a reporter.

I didn’t want a bribe, I wanted to be offered a bribe, an acknowledgement of sorts that I was a pretty good reporter, too.  I told myself that people I dealt with knew I wouldn’t take one and that’s why they didn’t offer. But I was still disappointed.

And then, one fine day, it happened.

This guy called me about a dispute he had with the Catholic Church and when I went to his office to interview him he offered me $10,000 to twist the story.

I said no, and walked away.

But I should have said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, you creep!”

CHECK!!

Coming Friday: Surprise!