Smokey Mountain Breakdown

...on Dew on the Kudzu.

"The Ghosts are Dancing" is a story I wrote some time ago loosely based on the flood of 1972 that struck the Hartford/Grassy Fork area. It's a long one, so Idgie has been running it through the month of February. Would of let you know sooner, but I forgot it was out there and scheduled to run.

It runs each Monday. Here are the links to the past three installments:

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part One

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Two

The Ghosts are Dancing: Part Three

There should be another one tomorrow.

This flood weighs heavily in the minds of everyone who lives here and lived through it. Everyone has vivid memories of it and I collected many of the stories from local residents to get a feeling for what it must have been like. The flood wiped out every single bridge in the area. Livestock washed away ten miles from where it lived. They say it was a freak rainstorm that hit "The Gulf" and washed everything away down Big Creek.

The title comes from the Cherokee myth of their great flood story. It's one of the more haunting stories from their mythology--with one of the most evocative images. I chose to begin the tale with it:

This was what the old women told me when I was a girl. The dog came to the man and said, “Build a boat for a great deluge is coming.” So the man built the boat for his family to ride out the great storm. The water rose until it covered the tops of the mountains. When the waters receded, the man and his family built a fire in celebration. They heard in the night, drums beating in the distance. They went to look, happy others survived the great flood. But all they found was a great pile of human bones and they realized--the ghosts were dancing.