Yesterday afternoon, while Jack Huff and I were sitting in front of the
fireplace at the top of Mt. Le Conte, a couple of weary strangers came
around the corner of the lodge.
They asked for succor—for a night’s lodging and a spot of food and a
touch of bandage for sore heels—and they got it, in good Smoky Mountain
fashion.
They turned out to be two of the nicest strangers who ever came to a
mountaintop. They were Cleveland business men, out on a vacation trip.
One was John F. Wilson, white-haired general manager of the Equity
Savings & Loan Co. The other was Carr Liggett, who has his own
advertising agency.
A man who has just climbed a mountain feels a wonderful sense of
accomplishment. He takes off his shoes and sprawls out with a feeling of
honestly earned repose. The thin air and the great height and the
unbridgeable gap in character between us and all those soft souls down
below gives you a puffy pride, and you expand and expound at great
length. We all did that.
The afternoon wore on into early mountain darkness, and after supper we
felt like purring. Then Jack Huff came with more great logs. And we sat
warm before the fireplace and under the hanging gasoline lantern and we
all waxed, you might say, a little philosophic.
We finished the war (England won); we finished the election (we’re
keeping the result secret); we wrapped up and shipped off the WPA; we
scouted the Andes and climbed a bit around the Alps; we discussed the
proper way to drive an automobile; we went through the entire curriculum
of sectional dialects in America; we achieved a new definition of
civilization as meaning the advance of human kindness, and decided
civilization is going ahead despite everything; we told stories of bears
and prodigious feats of walking; we decided how a fireplace should be
built; we took up the Negro question and we talked of bank loans; we
poured some steel and we figured out the best way to build an air force.
It’s astounding what a half-dozen people can talk about in one evening
on a mountaintop.
And then, as sort of dessert for our ruminations, Mr. Wilson carried us
back to pioneer days, when our hardy ancestors first came to this
country.
And so soothing were the bandages on Mr. Wilson’s feet, and so heady the
wine of warmth upon Mr. Wilson’s brow, that he condemned all modern
conveniences as a lot of nonsense. As for him, he’d take the pioneer way
of cold bedrooms and candlelight and straw ticks. Those were the days,
and those were the men, said Mr. Wilson.
And in climactic conclusion, Mr. Wilson declaimed that of all the
abominations upon this earth the most despicable in his life was steam
heat.
Whereupon we all retired to our cold bedrooms. If Mr. Wilson had got up
this morning swearing he had slept like a baby, I think I would have
kicked his sore heel. But he didn’t. He damn near froze to death, just
as I did. Pioneers—Bah.