Uncle Steve is dry and droll. He’s dumb like a fox, and old fashioned
like fluid drive. He’s about as skinny as I am, and his nose hangs over
at the end like Puck’s. He sort of halfway grins when he talks, and his
humor is so left-handed you don’t know half the time whether he’s joking
or not.
He loves to talk about being an ignorant hillbilly. It gets funnier and
funnier as it gradually dawns on you how all-fired smart Uncle Steve
really is.
“I was educated at Bear Pen Holler University,” he says. That is his
name for the School of Experience. “I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’,
very much.”
If a local townsman asks him the population of Gatlinburg, or the number
of tourist cabins here, or who plans to do what, Uncle Steve always says
“I don’t know.” And he says it in a tone which implies, “Why you askin’
me, you know I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”
But I’ll bet there isn’t a minor item about anything that is or ever was
in Gatlinburg that Uncle Steve doesn’t know.
“I don’t know no more about runnin’ a hotel now than when I started, and
I didn’t know nothin’ then,” says Uncle Steve. “All I know is you cook
and make the beds—and charge ’em a little.” That seems to me a pretty
good basis to start on.
“I never kept a book in my life,” Uncle Steve says. “I never kept no
track of how much I spent or how much I took in.” He apparently has
stopped talking. You’re just ready to reply, or change the subject. And
then finally, as a small afterthought, Uncle Steve looks over at you
slantlike and says in a low voice, “I always come out a little ahead
though.”