A Place Called Trust

If I were to pick a spot on this earth to live by using its name alone, not considering any other factors, I'd probably think seriously about a place called Trust. It sounds safe, trustworthy, as if the neighbors have an element of faithfulness to each other.

There is such a place here in North Carolina, and I'm going to be there this Saturday at an Opening Day Celebration at Trust General Store & Cafe. From 11 to 4, fellow author Jasper (JR) Reese and I will be sitting on the front porch, meeting and greeting anyone who stops by.

We have written two books together that we can't wait to share and answer questions about. Both take place in the same valley as this store that's at the corner of scenic NC Highway #209 and even more scenic NC Highway #63. Our first collaboration, Back in the Time, tells the story of the community where Jasper's father practiced medicine in the wilds of the Great Smoky Mountains around the Trust, Hot Springs, and Spring Creek Communities.

Cover picture shows Jasper at fourteen (in the thirties)

driving on the main road in his homemade wagon

Jasper had plenty more stories he collected in his ninety plus years of living, so we wrote a follow-up book, The Way It Was in the Backwoods. Again, the location is in the Trust/Hot Springs/Spring Creek communities, and my bet is we could write a few more books. Yes, there are that many stories to tell. 

Cover picture shows Max Patch in the background,

with inserts of

Jasper and his wife, and Jasper with his great-grandchild

Our goal was to tell "it" like "it" was in the nearly three centuries his ancestors lived off the land there in Madison County. Ancestors can no longer speak for themselves, so we must put them into print before the details of living in the backwoods are lost.

These stories came to him through years of listening to the old folks tell them over and over as they sat on the porch in the heat and humidity of mountain summer evenings, as they worked in the hayfields, as they shucked corn or snapped beans, and as they sat around the wood stoves of general stores of yore. 

Saturday is the next best thing. There at Trust General Store and Cafe, Jasper will swap tales with anyone who sits a spell. 

Come. Join us.

Catch of the day,

 

Gretchen