Top Hat Tennessee

I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.

Little did I know within a day and a half of leaving laurel digger Richard Gragg’s, I would shiver in my bivy and saunter with a top hat and 2 mules in to Tennessee.

From Richard’s, the mules and I climbed up to the Blue Ridge and spent the night at Jimmy Hughes’ in Linville, NC. Linville is at 3,600 feet, enough to knock spring back a few weeks. The good news was that recent warmish weather was waking Jimmy’s orchard grass and blue grass field.

Deep in the night, I felt chilly. Brick breathed softly beside me. Cracker munched grass at my feet. My toes got cold. Then colder. Then sorta icy. The bivy, ordinarily the texture of soft cloth, felt like hard canvas. In the morning, I discovered I wasn’t going soft. We’d had a stout frost.

By noon were were on the road. I saw a girl with an eye patch stare at me from an old house. I saw a lady with pansies who wouldn’t smile. I ate a hamburger that punched me in the guts after it went down. Or maybe it was the fries.

I passed a broken down Winebaggo that belonged to a guy that lives in the same zip code as me.

That afternoon, Cracker, Brick and I arrived in Tennessee. I donned my top hat and snapped the picture.

Good night from the Volunteer State.

PS: Big thanks to Jimmy Hughes who put us up in Linville. Also Johnny Ledford who’s hosting us tonight at his beautiful farm outside Roan Mountain, TN.
PPS: Thanks, Trent, for showing Brick your ATV.

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