Chapter 14

CROSS JORDAN INTO CANAAN AND I WANT TO GO

REMNANTS OF A TOWNSHIP

OCONALUFTEE was the home of many mountain families, Cherokee, white, and Black. But after clearing the land for fields, after building a home, after keeping a farm going and a family fed, after years of war and hardship and growth and change, with the exception of the Cherokees and the few in Tow String, the valley was no longer theirs. Logging had changed it. Railroads had changed it. Fire had changed it. Roads had changed it. The park movement and the twentieth century had changed it. It had been their home, but the township was defunct. A good number of the longtime white families in the township still had folks on or near their homesteads. By the 1930s, some families had been on the land for over a century. Multiple generations had lived in the valley. They had scraped by and adapted.

When the state bought them out and the park came, the effort was over. They had to go as well. Some hung on with lifetime leases, limited no doubt by the Depression and its many bank closures in the early 1930s. Folks deposited the money they got from the state into banks that closed shortly afterward. Some of these banks never reopened and they lost everything. Some men worked for the CCC. Some found work with the park. Some made agreements to provide park visitors with amenities, for a while. But the era of independent farms in Oconaluftee had ended. Only the few families who bought land up Tow String were secure; only their land was safe because it was deeded land and it was encircled by Cherokee holdings. One could say that it is ironic that the descendants of families who moved on to Cherokee land at the beginning of the nineteenth century were now removed by both state and federal government policy that favored yet another approach to land use, one fashioned for the twentieth century rather than the nineteenth. Like the Lufty Cherokees who would not leave, could not imagine abandoning their centuries-old homelands, the white mountain farming families were rooted and resisted removal, too.

Excluding the Civil War years and despite the fundamental and constant challenges of subsistence farming, Oconalufty Township in the nineteenth century represents an idyllic concept in United States history: the tight-knit farming community in the wilderness. There must have been evenings when fathers and mothers and children enjoyed moments of calm, satisfaction, and security. The day’s work done, the supper over, folks would settle into the evening tasks of sewing, mending, and preparing for the next day without haste. There must have been times when there was enough good but simple food, when clothes were adequate if not fashionable, when most everything was made or grown at home and the items that had to be bought were affordable and accessible. There must have been months when sickness and death were at bay. Life would have been basic but rich. These are the times that a township descendant or a visitor can romanticize. Surely they existed—even if only fleetingly.

The yearly Smokemont Baptist Church reunion reenacts those times. It has occurred since 1940, the year the park was dedicated and a year after regular church services ended. Emma Conner Fisher is credited with creating the reunion. As the church clerk, she kept forwarding addresses of former members and sent out penny postcards to announce the event that first year. Now the pastor of Tow String Church, currently Raymond Matthews, organizes the event.¹

For a full week each August, once again Oconaluftee seems like a community. On the week nights, the church bell rings at 7:00 P.M. By then, some folks are already seated in the pews; others make their way up the sloping, somewhat steep path to the church door. Relatives hug, friends shake hands and pat backs, and old timers and visitors smile warmly, nodding welcome and hello. People are happy, convivial, and bighearted.

Except for some children dressed overtly country-style—ringlets and checked dresses for girls or overalls with a short-sleeved shirt and bow tie for boys—attire is casual yet traditional. Women mostly wear skirts or dresses, and men have on clean jeans and short-sleeved shirts. Not many wear T-shirts. Only the preachers wear a suit and tie, but most of them remove their jackets as they warm up during their sermons. Not many people are decked out in high-tech hiking gear. Everyone is dressed to manage the warmth and humidity of the evening at the end of a hot day. They wear the everyday clothes of churchgoing people.

Evening services begin, continue, and end by singing favorite hymns and Sunday school songs, mostly of the Baptist church. Family duos and groups, child soloists, small choirs of children—accompanied (or not) with a guitar, rehearsed and impromptu, with and without a songbook or hymnal—take turns and come to the pulpit on a step-up platform to sing or lead a song. Often the performers start and the congregation joins in after a verse or two. “Greatest Friend,” “Victory in Jesus,” “My Name Is Written There,” “Have a Little Walk with Jesus,” “How Great Thou Art”—all these are sung in turn. Anyone who wishes can walk up to the pulpit and sing. Some have strong voices, but many sing not because they are talented or trained but to participate, to be fully present and back in Oconaluftee. Excellent acoustics make each voice, no matter how soft, audible to the entire room.

As the crowd sits and sings, breaths condense on the window glass, even though the windows along the long walls are all open. The air is still inside and out. The doorways stand open. No ceiling fan provides relief, but some women use paper paddle fans. Early on it is brighter outside than in; the sun reflects off of select leaves, defining a spectrum of green, from black-green to deep midtone greens to bright chartreuse. The close feeling of a shaded church dates only to more recent decades. When the church was built, the hillside was without trees. The land had long been cleared. Now, as darkness comes over the course of the evening, the room brightens, comparatively, and the bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling provide curiously flattering incandescent light.

Kids as young as four or five sing “The Wise Man Built His House upon a Rock,” “Do Lord,” and “Jesus Loves Me.” The children are poised, unhurried, self-confident. They receive the rapt attention of the adults as well as enthusiastic applause. One girl, probably about nine years old, comes to stand behind the pulpit and brings a big ringed binder full of songs, which she places on the lectern. With complete composure, she pages through the book for at least a minute looking for the song she wants. Everyone waits. When she finds it, she begins to sing, “Glory, Glory, Glory Somebody Touched Me,” a song with verses for each day of the week. The verses for Monday through Wednesday give her a solo, but at Thursday, members of the congregation stand, clap, and join in. By the Sunday verse, everyone is up and sings through the final refrain. Then comes applause and joy.

During the singing, a visitor notices how visible everyone is. Pews are arranged to create an in-the-round experience. The raised platform for the pulpit is situated in the center of the long uphill side of the rectangular church sanctuary, rather than at a narrow end. Short pews flank the pulpit; then longer pews face the pulpit on the downhill side, with some open space for passage in front. In the corners adjacent to these front pews, additional short pews are set at angles to create an encircling effect. Even if you sit in a back pew or a corner, you see many faces throughout the church, not just the backs of others’ heads. Longtime reunion preacher and Tow String resident Dan Lambert has explained that the arrangement was changed when he was a child to be “more centralized.” At that time, the church was heated by a pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room, so that might also have been a reason for the unusual arrangement.²

Other physical features of the church are worth noting. The outside is covered in white painted clapboard. The interior walls and ceiling are continuous, horizontally oriented lengths of beadboard stained a dark walnut. Knots in the boards tell that the paneling is pine. According to Matthews, the wood for the church was milled at Smokemont and likely donated by Champion Fibre, the company that ran the mill. About twelve feet up, two hefty wires divide the sanctuary into three equal parts; these wires look structural but were simply used to hang curtains that would divide the space for Sunday school classes.

As the revival group warms to the singing and coalesces, a man or woman punctuates the end of a song with “Amen,” “Praise the Lord,” or “That’s right.” Others occasionally echo the exclamation. Eventually, singing gives way to testifying. Returning kin stand and talk about their happiness at being present as well as their troubles, losses, and worries over the past year. One evening, a man stands to say that his great-grandmother had belonged to the church and that “when I come here it feels like coming home. You’re at home when you’re saved. This family is God’s family.”

And so the balance between sung and spoken words tips, and a preacher rises to deliver an evangelical message about the urgency of being saved and believing in Jesus.

Often the preacher is a descendant of past preachers. Dan Lambert, now in his late eighties, is the son of Jesse Lambert, the last preacher of the church when it met regularly. He preaches several evenings of the revival week and at the Sunday service. Other Lambert relatives, including members of the Matthews family from Tow String, preach as well. Some come to the reunion from Tennessee or other North Carolina counties. One evening, the theme of the sermon is “keeping the fire alive” for your faith. Later in the week, the preacher asks, “How is it with you?” The question encourages listeners to prepare for death and commit their souls to Jesus. Some congregants are impulsively moved to testify in agreement with this theme, and late in the week several people approach the pulpit and kneel, declaring themselves—by action if not spoken expression—saved. The deacons of Tow String Church quickly join those kneeling and join in prayer with them. Their words are impassioned but softly uttered.

After the sermon concludes, there comes a prayer. Then singing resumes. Many of the songs are nostalgic and describe the peace one gains remembering loved ones and days gone by. The lyrics anticipate a meeting of family and friends in heaven. “Precious Memories,” “Little Mountain Church House,” “What a Day That Will Be,” and “Glad Reunion Day” have multiple meanings in the context of the reunion, suggesting both the lost Oconaluftee community and the importance of faith and belief. “Cross Jordan” is especially evocative in this way. It is sung near the end of every service. The hymn memorializes deceased family members (“Some have fathers now in glory and I want to go”), and the chorus looks forward to heavenly reunion:

Cross Jordan into glory and I want to go.

Cross Jordan into glory and I want to go.

Been a long time of suffering,

And now I want to go

To that meeting in New Jerusalem.

As each service ends, about two and a half hours later, everyone forms two circles that move in opposite directions throughout the crowded room. People greet, and hug or shake hands, often still singing. The crowd grows each night of the week as more people arrive and plan to stay for the Sunday service and picnic lunch on the grounds.

At that culmination to the week, all ages come for service and stay for lunch. Even though a fair number have traveled to attend, some from as far away as Ohio, the food is homemade. The potato salads, sliced tomatoes, fresh cucumbers and pickles, beans, casseroles, rolls, fried and baked chicken, barbecue, pies, cookies, cakes, and tea come from the gardens and kitchens of local folks. They are fresh and delicious—and ample. There’s enough for all attendees as well as for the park crew who have helped with traffic and parking alongside Newfound Gap Road throughout the week. Then, it ends. The makeshift tables are folded and the chairs go back into car trunks. Folks hug and depart, smiling and waving. Promises are made to return next year.

Most days now the church is empty, dark, serenely quiet. One day I stopped by to linger for a bit. I found all in order, windows closed and doors open. A heavy white cardigan lay in a mound on one pew near the main door. I sat down by it, then folded it. I wondered whose it might be and whether I should take it to the ranger’s station. I left it in hope that its owner would miss it and return to claim it. I got an ambivalent, bittersweet feeling to be in this vestige of a once resilient and vibrant community. All the sad times and the happy ones. The meetings, the marriages, the two funeral services for Edd Conner decked out in his custom-made, all-white burial suit. All the talk and stories, songs and prayers. All life’s urgency gone. The park preserves the land now, a clear good, even if the overseer is an official and somewhat impersonal one. The woods keep growing back up around the church, the cleared fields and homesteads, the mills and towns, and the cemeteries. Oconaluftee, that sibilant evocation of the river’s flow and continuity, that river from the crest of the Smokies—it remains. Visitors can rest “by the river,” as the word “Oconaluftee” signifies, that long-ago mistaken translation of the Cherokee adjective for a village name. It is still possible to be in and near the valley township, but no longer of or from it. Visitors hold a legacy from the Cherokees, the few enslaved people, and hundreds of mountain folk and loggers who lived on this land. It is a blessing both sober and rich, with a complex origin and meaning, befitting our time.