By Reece Turrentine
The Urban Chattahoochee is one of the most unspoiled, scenic and historic rivers running through any major metropolitan area of the United States. Exploring the East Palisades, storyteller Reece Turrentine pauses to observe that he is standing between two different worlds.

Not long ago, I was walking upstream along the East Palisades river’s edge trail, looking for a better location to beach canoes. When I’m guiding a group down this “city section,” I always like to stop them along here for a short hike back into the woods and up to the cliffs of the old “Indian Shelter.” It’s a 30-foot deep rock overhang archaeologists determined had been used for shelter for six to seven thousand years by nomadic Indian tribes following the river’s course. The trails along the river were Atlanta’s original interstate highway.

I had just seen the bridge of I-75 in the distance. Where I stopped along the trail, I could no longer see it around the bend, but I could still hear the roaring engines and speeding tires slap the bridge joints of the pavement. So close and yet so far. They couldn’t see me. When you’re bumper to bumper at that speed, nobody has time to look out at a river.

For a moment, my imagination ran away with me and I thought I could hear the traffic of I-285 upstream and around the bend to my right. I was hearing some kind of distant roar from up there. It was giving me kind of a stereo effect from both directions, but I looked under limbs upstream and saw the source of the muffled roar. I was relieved. It was not from the traffic. It was from Thornton Shoals, bubbling over its rocks. It was sounds of wilderness, not the interstates. Although the two worlds are competing for dominance out here, this spot at least looked and sounded like wilderness. It occurred to me, what a strange place I was standing on. To my left, downstream and around the bend, was a mixture of Long Island Shoals and I-75. To my right, upstream and around the bend was Thornton Shoals and I-285. What a mixture similar sounds from different worlds. But that wasn’t the end of it. In front of me was the river, teeming with fish and wildlife.  Just beyond the river and over the hill was Rottonwood Creek and the old flagstone foundations of the Akers gristmill, which operated until the late 1800’s. But almost scraping the mill’s foundation stones was the gouging of giant earth-moving machines, carving out yet another larger and longer multi-lane interchange for the surrounding interstates. The creek and mill foundations were saved by a matter of feet. The worlds are competing in this “city section,” but as of now, the river rolls on.

But there was more. Behind me was yet another contrast. Some of Atlanta’s finest homes are just beyond the river and occupy streets like Mt. Paran, Harris and Northside. But before you can get to them are the cliffs of East Palisades, containing Atlanta’s oldest home: the old Indian shelter. Worlds collide, but as of now, the river rolls on. I was standing on a strange, almost holy place. Just beyond ear and eye a great city was grinding away. But where I was standing was a pocket of pure wilderness.

Links:

• View a map of the area Reece’s reflection is about. Be sure and see it in “satellite” format.
• Learn more about Atlanta’s Chattahoochee National Recreation Area.
• Learn more about the Chattahoochee River, one of Georgia 14 major watersheds.
• Join the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and help protect the Chattahoochee.
• Read storyteller Reece Turrentine’s narrative of a canoe trip on the Flint River in “A River Makes up Its Mind.”

Walt Grindle of Dahlonega, Lumpkin County, Georgia
Recorded by Jean Bieder

Great-uncle of mine, he liked pepper – any form of pepper. He ‘as crazy about pepper. And his name was Hiram, and his wife was named Elizabeth. So she was always grumbling; she ‘as just a chronic grumbler.

Come spring of the year, and he told her one day, he said, “Elizabeth,” said, “it’s time you’s sowing pepper seeds now.”

She said, “Oh, Hiram, it’s no use.” Said, “I won’t live to see no pepper grow this time.”

He didn’t say any more about it.

So after wadn’t no pepper come that fall, when he had something he ’specially wanted pepper with, they set down to the table and he looked around and said, “Elizabeth, here you are still a-living, and no pepper.”

Recorded in 1975 by Jean Bieder from Walt Grindle, then sixty-eight, of Dahlonega, in Lumpkin County, “Fruitless Prophesy” is one of 250 authentic folk tales and stories recorded by the students of Dr. John Burrison at Georgia State University and published in Storytellers, Folktales & Legends from the South. Copyright by the University of Georgia Press and used by permission.

• To buy a copy of Storytellers from the University of Georgia Press, click here
• To buy a copy from Amazon, click here.

Links:
More on John Burrison and his projects at Georgia State University and the Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia at Sautee Nacoochee Center.

Editors Note: Dean Brown grew up in Fayette County, Georgia, when it had only one paved highway and horse drawn wagons mingled with a few automobiles on the roads - quite a contrast to the Fayette County of today, which is often ranked as one of the fastest growing and most affluent counties in the state. Now in his 70s, he has assembled a collection of “Little Stories”  that are entertaining tales and snapshot history lessons about how much the South has changed in one man’s lifetime. Here’s his recollection of riding the train to Atlanta as a small boy. If you enjoy this “Little Story” there are more on his PopSpin website. Mr. Brown would like to hear from you with your Southern Stories and so would Brown’s Guide.

The Southern Railway ran a route passing through Fayetteville to Atlanta in the morning, coming back through Fayetteville in the late afternoon. When I was about four or five I went to Atlanta on this train and remember it very well.

Atlanta’s Terminal Station, the station where Dean Brown disembarked after his train ride from Fayetteville. Terminal station opened in May 1905 and served Southern Railway, Central of Georgia, and Atlanta & West Point railroads. It closed in June 1970 and was demolished in 1972. (more…)