Smoky Mountain Breakdown

© Celine Sparks, 2023

It’s happening again. Each year we go to a church-related workshop in Sevierville, Tennessee, and it’s almost time. This has been going on for us since 2003 or so, and it’s the first time we haven’t had the kids in the mix at all. Even when they hit the college years, some of them would find a way to pop in and out like whack-a-moles.

So through the years, we’ve always tried to pull away from the program long enough to do one fun thing in Gatlinburg as a family. Which brings to my mind the year 2018. It’s not the only time an adventure came looking for us. There was the time Enoch had so many silly bands on his arm he developed an allergic reaction which manifested all symptoms immediately after we had paid the admission to the Titanic for six people. (The Titanic curse was already starting.) There was the year I caused a six car pile-up at the go-cart track. But still, 2018 kind of stands out as a great exercise in high-frenzy futility, even for us.

We had a pretty good break Saturday afternoon that year, so we headed with all the kids plus one to Tourism Central, where as you know, the traffic into that tunnel slows to the point you can listen to last year's thumb drive in full (700 45-minute sessions from the workshop) between tire rolls. We finally got there, and were pretty sure the dad, who'd been driving, was going to need to go to one of those afternoon counseling sessions the workshop offers now. We couldn't find a parking place anywhere that didn't cost an arm, leg, and most of a spleen. And we are notoriously cheap. Finally, there was a Bible museum with $4.00 parking, and Mattianne said, "See? Jesus is always the answer." Plus it was only a couple of lightyears from the attraction we were trying to go to which, we thought, was a museum of Guinness world records. It turns out it was a place, not where you look at world records other people have conquered, but where you try to earn a world record yourself.

What are the categories? Most famished person to ever exist? Whiniest combined back seat? Most steps taken from the Bible museum to arrive at this place? We had some good contenders here.

We took another look at the tract rack of fun, and we decided we would go to Hillbilly Golf World instead. We plugged the directions into the phone. I mean, two miles is not that far. On foot. Uphill. In sweltering temperatures.

When we finally got there, we realized there would not be enough time to get back to the Bible museum parking lot, without a true post-Bible miracle, and make it back to the kids' program, which I was coordinating, by the start of evening sessions. We were also starting to realize we might get into that Guinness thing after all if they had a record for group dehydration. We bought soft drinks at the Texaco – drinks none of us even like in regular 80-degree temps, but these were Vesuvius temps, the drinks were wet, and so were we.

Scotty said he'd walk back to get the car while we played a round of golf. Now there's one good for at least a decade. "Don't forget that time in Gatlinburg when I walked two miles in the blazing August sun to get the car while y'all were putt-putting." You can get away with a lot with that under your belt.

So the rest of us laughed and sent golf balls into the fountain and lost our score cards as if we were having as much fun as the people in the pictures until I lost my balance on the Smoky Mountain terrain. I got a hole in one, but it wasn't the one I was aiming for, and it turned out I was the ball. I did all this with all of the grace of course of an ape at high tea, and you'd think -- You would THINK -- one of the children I had nursed through high fevers and taxied to long distance tournaments would have had the decency to act worried and extend an arm of assistance, but in unison they grabbed their phones to record it for posterity.

And speaking of posterity, that posterior part was a souvenir reminder for the rest of the night in the children's program of all the great family time we had narrowly survived.