Guest Author Paul Gamble--Storyteller, Documentary Photographer, Historian, Musician and More!

  

 

Guest Author Paul Gamble-- Documentary Photographer, 
Historian, Musician and Storyteller

by Dana Koogler 

May 1, 2023 

with Paul Gamble telling his own stories as a Guest Author. 

Photographs on here are not mine, but those of Paul, Shawn and Amanda Gamble.

  My friend Paul Gamble is what I call " a hoss among men".   He is a leader, not a follower.  

Above is a photo of Paul with wife Shawn and daughter Amanda.  They are a great looking, fun family of fine people!  

      About a decade ago I used Flickr photo a fair amount.   I still do, but not like I did.    One of my contacts on there was Natedawg.  aka Nathan Yarbrough  Once I started using Facebook I found him  there, and that he had a good group for the Cherokee National Forest.    He suggested to me that there was a man and a family Kenny and I needed to get to know.  Paul Gamble.  Nate explained that he had a feeling we'd hit it off really well.   I took him at his word and looked up Paul finding him on Facebook as well.  It is funny how a seemingly minor thing can make such a change in one's life.    Nate turned out to be more than a little right.   Paul and his whole family are great people.   We do have a lot in common. I tell him we are siblings and that one of us got dropped at the wrong house by the stork.   He shares many similarities with me.  

• He was raised country as cornbread
• He values strong family ties
• He loves history and documenting it. 
• He is a little sentimental
• He has a wicked sense of humor and a strong sense of the ridiculous.
• He pisses people off from time to time for no apparent reason aside from the fact he exists.  I have had the dubious distinction to be able to do that for many years.  I see him on a streak of it and I have to laugh cause I know he really doesn't care nor does he understand anymore than I do what sets folks off?
• He has a love for photography and outdoors
• He enjoys the simple pleasures in life
• He has a real zest for life 
• He loves music of all kinds like I do, but he knows, appreciates and plays Honky Tonk music.  

  Paul is a native Tennessean born and raised in The Knobs down around Chestuee Creek. 

He met and married his wife Shawn at a fairly young age.   They have a long, happy marriage and one beautiful, talented daughter Amanda.   They like history, photography, critters, travel and are quiet, intelligent people.   Paul has been among other things:

an EMT, fireman, policeman, documentary photographer, hiking guide,historian and musician. 

His music making days and days as an EMT yielded some particularly dramatic, funny stories. 

He agreed some time back to be a guest author on my blog.   I am just now getting it together to write it up.   I warn you... do NOT have anything in your mouth when you read this or need to go to the bathroom. You will laugh so hard you'll wet your pants or get choked!  I could not stop laughing when I read this. Everyone in my family I've read it to has died laughing over it! 

Below is a photo I took of the outside of Marie's County Line Tavern. It is open to this day and much more refined than in the past.  Marie has persisted in the business world and it paid off!   It is better than ever.  It was closed the time I took this, but I hope to go visit myself and experience it! 

Paul's Story in His Own Words

Ok, some folks wanted to hear some stories about my days in the music business. I'll tell you one or two, both of 'em happened at this place, the County Line Tavern on the Monroe/McMinn County Line. I played at this place off and on for about 20 years I guess and enjoyed every minute of it. I seen a bunch of things that, unless you was a regular in a fine establishment such as this, you wouldn't believe it. But I promise you, these two events really happened and I was standing on the stage with a guitar around my neck when both things happened.

In it's early days, the County Line was one of them places you'd be wise to throw your hat in the door before you went in. Stabbings, fights, and a couple of killings happened down there, but later it quietened down.

Anyways we was up onstage one Saturday night playing and it was just one of them nights that was like that Phil Collins song--"I can feel it coming in the air tonight". The atmosphere was feeling like something was fixin' to break loose, and damn if it didn't.

They was a man and a lady settin' at a table just inside the door, and they'd been a-fussin' all night. Marie, the owner, had called them down a time or two. But the man was lit, and he was feelin' ten feet tall and bulletproof.

Finally the lady had enough and she got up and walked over to the pay phone--you heard me right!--and was fixin' to call and get somebody to come and pick her up. I was fixin' to count off the intro to the next song when we heard a loud crash. We spun around just in time to see this lady go flying across this round table that was next to the phone.

The man had throwed her across the table and he grabbed her by the hair and drug her out into the parking lot. We throwed our guitars down and ran towards the door.

As we got to the door we heard a noise like you wouldn't believe, and seen a sight that I can still after 20 some odd years can still see (and hear).

Marie had a blond barmaid working there and she was about 6 feet tall and big boned and really pretty--I guess you could call her a Amazon woman. She had run outside and grabbed that man--and I'm a-tellin' the truth if I ever told it--and picked him up nearly over her head.

She slammed him down in that gravel parking lot and I mean to tell you, she like to beat that sucker half to death. And she wasn't slapping him, she was using her fists. He was screaming: "Somebody help me! She's trying to kill me!"

We just propped up on the side of the building and watched.

As for the lady, Marie got her back in the building and it blowed our mind because she was wearing a white outfit, and after all that they wasn't a speck of dirt nowheres on her!

The old boy spent the night with the jailer.

Ok, number 2--We was onstage playing a number called "John Law Burned the Liquor Store" and they was this ole gal and I mean brother she was lit up like a Roman candle!

She jumped out of her chair and screamed "Hell yeah" at the top of her lungs--she was right in front of the stage--and all the sudden her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell backwards.

Her head hit that concrete floor and her feet went up to where she almost looked like she was standing on her head for a minute before she fell back down, out like a light.

Her boyfriend or whatever he was looked like he was about to melt with embarrassment, but he grabbed her up like a sack of taters and slung her over his shoulder and headed towards the door, while the crowd was roaring with laughter.

Our bass player leaned into his microphone and hollered: "Y'all come back now!"

That's just an example of what I witnessed in the bars over the years. Hope you liked it

Paul shown above in full regalia... a Nudi shirt and cowboy hat. Wow! What a handsome guy! 

Above are some of the best images I collected of Paul in his music making mode!  Good looking as well as talented. He's taken ladies. Been off the menu for a long time thanks to Shawn. She is movie star pretty, but modest as they come! 

Above: Paul in outdoor mode.. Action Jackson on rope! 

Below: one of Paul's artistic photos. Amanda in a plague doctor mask at the old Doc Rogers Hospital ruins in Coker Creek.   Sepia tone!  

Above: a photo of Paul, Shawn, (center) and Amanda -- far right.. with a selfie stick 

Amanda is a talented documentary photographer, writer, historian, videographer, in her own right.

She's pretty like her mama, tough like her daddy as well as outdoorsy and creative!   An irresistible combination. 

Below is Paul's photo of the old homestead at Ballplay.  I loved this spot so much and his photo of it I am painting a picture using this as inspiration. This done with his approval.  

Below is the painting, but I have done more on it since this was taken. 

Above: Paul decked out and playing music much like he must have been the night the bar maid saved the damsel in distress!  

I will forever appreciate these crazy stories, honky tonk music, bluegrass, and country.   I watched Ken Burn's History of Country Music documentary.  The episode about Hank Williams was fascinating.  By the end of it something unexpected happened.   I was crying.  Watching it unlocked memories buried inside me of various things that went on as a kid.   I will forever appreciate Miss Audrey and Hank Williams with their loving, fighting and struggles.  My family lived that life.   My grandfather and grandmother .. my mom's parents were just like that.   Music, dance  halls, drinking, fighting, falling out, making up...

Unless you've lived it or been affected by it close to home you can't understand it.

Edited to Add: I wanted to go visit Marie's County line Tavern before I wrote this blog entry.  I hit up my friend John Quillen on the Instagram messenger. I  wanted to aggravate him a little bit. I asked him if he wanted to go to a dive bar with me. (He is a drug and alcohol counselor, and Marie's is not really a dive bar). He told me "No, but I will save you an appointment for when you end up in JAIL!" 

Now that's a good friend right there, but Paul would be a better friend cause he'd be a settin in the cell right next to me. 

Finally I leave you with a video of one of the musical numbers Paul and his musician friends were playing when this stuff took place.   John Law Burned Down the Liquor Store!

Daffodils blooming along LeQuire Road in Townsend, TN at the site of
what was once a home.  

Abandoned Houses & Related Prose 
by Guest Author Wade Peebles

Photography and blog entry by Dana Koogler

Thoughts on Houses versus Homes by Wade Peebles

Wednesday March 10, 2021

Photo Gallery of Abandoned Houses here 

   You don't have to read my blog for too long to figure out that I really like history and abandoned places.   I've long been intrigued by the story behind who was there to start with. Where did they go? Why did they leave?  What will become of a place once it stands empty?   I remember my first abandoned house.  It was the Driver homeplace just up from my grandparents house in Barren Ridge.   I'd go hiking with Granddaddy to some of his childhood haunts.  We'd have to walk right past that house which was a sturdy looking, stout place though very weather worn.

I asked him about it and he explained to me that the Driver's kids had grown up and moved out and started their own families.  The elderly couple continued to live there and eventually grew old and passed on.  The house had fallen into disrepair. 

No one was currently interested in living in the house.  I was three or four years old which means it was 52 or 53 years ago that it stood in this condition.  When I was a kid in grade school or middle school someone moved into the area, bought the house, and began fixing it up.  It was fun watching the house come back to life.   It made my heart glad to look across and see the house painted again and activity going on there. I loved these people's son Tommy who was my age. 

We played together and rode horses and explored the woods.  We went swimming.

It was like a happy ending story for me to know the house did not die out.

It is occupied to this day far as I know.   Thus began my fascination which continues to this very day.  I'll probably always like old places.

     Months ago I read a piece of prose by an author, Mr. Wade Peebles of Georgia.

I expressed my admiration for his work and asked him if he'd be interested in allowing me to include it on a piece about abandoned houses in the future? He agreed readily.  He is a very talented man and wrote a piece that is particularly poignant.  It caused me to think about it in a different way.   Some houses are just houses.  Some are true homes and never destined for any other family to occupy them.  It is like putting a period at the end of a sentence when there is nothing left to say.  I thank you, Wade for graciously agreeing to allow your work to be featured.  It is beyond beautiful to me.  It is very thought provoking.   

  I hope anyone reading this will enjoy it as much as I did. 

 CLOSING ON A HOME ..... Some houses are that, houses --and change hands with ease, without regret, and invite strangers to become intimates. There are some houses that are truly homes, and are not meant to become the property of another, like a widow who was loved, lived and ended with that one man, one family, one place, with an end time, for all time.

Those homes are not suited for newer things and people, they were not built for modern life, never destined to be peopled with strange faces, not fated for a face-lift, not made for new fixtures, plumbing, fittings, roof, or the nicer things in the life of a home. When time and our Heavenly Father take the last life from those homes, they are closed, not sealed, just closed, the windows shut, the things cleared away, the keepsakes given to new but familiar hands, the pieces of the lives that abided there are awarded as needed or wanted, handed over to be handed down.

When it is finished, a sad hand turns that old familiar knob, and with profound emotion, pulls the door shut on the many volumes that were written in the minds of those who made that house a home. Those homes live on, often for a long time, all alone, as a testament...grieve not for them, do not cry as they too go slowly to their graves, the grave of the soil beneath their foundation, as they too are mortal ..... wade

by Wade Peebles--

 

Abandoned house in Monroe County, Tennessee on a sunny Saturday.   I caught it when the daffodils were dressing it up. 

Above:  The Alonzo and Clearsa Akins homeplace sits at the top of Barum Creek Falls.  the old Mudhole Community 

Above: The Evans Homeplace in June with all the lovely daylilies in bloom. I added an appropriate Oswald Chambers quote that seemed to fit.  This gorgeous old house is across the road from my friends Sharon McGee and John Ungerer's home.   The neighbors up the road are the descendants of this family! 

Above and below: Old home place of whom Paul Gamble says belonged to Wanda McCarter Bivens once upon a time. A friend of his.  

Below: across the barn I photographed the old barn which logically would belong with this house being right across the road.  

There is a spring house or shed that is consumed by ivy sitting next to the house. I might go try to photograph it someday, but I'd do it when it is bitter cold.  It is a good place for snakes and bees! 

Above: old Dugan Smith homeplace now restored and owned by Kelly Paul and his family!  Alpine, TN

Above: an abandoned house in Cumberland County, TN along the Old Mail Road

I found the Edna St. Vincent Millay verse to be quite apt.  

The Vaughn-Webb house in Reliance appears abandoned and may have been briefly, but is now an air b n b rental!  It is one of those victorian era gingerbread houses!

Above: side view of the Vaughn-Webb house front porch. It is charming in every possible way. 

Above:  front steps of the Vaughn-Webb house. I had the best time photographing this.  I never got close enough before. Once I knew it was ok. I wore it out!

Above: One reason I love old abandoned places is how the flowers planted there persist long after the human inhabitants are gone.  Above is a flower at the Vaughn-Webb house that is an heirloom cultivar.. Phlox paniculata.. "Bright Eyes". one of my grandmother's favorites!

Above:  The Hiwassee River bridge in July 2020.  This is just down the road from the Vaughn-Webb house.  

Above: Officer Farm-- main residence as it stands today.  

(click the link above for the full blog entry about the farm and cemetery and its story)

Monterey, Tennessee.  Private property: visited with the blessing of Mr. Walt Officer who is a descendant who lives nearby.  

    Below is a video of some very old timey music from the movie Songcatcher...

sung by the talented Iris Dement.  She plays Rose Gentry while her fiddle playing husband .. Parley Gentry is played by Muse Watson.. of Harriman, Tennessee. 

I have learned to sing this ballad which is very old and in the drone singing style of ancient times from the Old World. I sing it for my family.  My grandchildren have come to expect it.   It seems appropriate for the tone of this blog entry.  Old ways and old times and remnants of those times that are vanishing.

Guest Author Robin Daniels -- The Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap

 

Guest Author Blog by Robin Daniels

  Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap

Thursday September 24, 2020

by Robin Daniels with intro by Dana Koogler

  I am going on vacation for a short while.  I spoke to Robin Daniels some weeks back about ways we could help one another.  I've helped a tad bit on her FB group Tennessee Footprints and Beyond.    It is a fun and interesting group which she created.  It is four thousand members strong and growing.

She is a mom, wife, and grandmother if you can believe that. She is so youthful its hard to believe.  She has written some of the funniest, sweetest, most moving stories about her father, Marion Laws.  He grew up in Cumberland Gap.   He was a wild child.   She has written these stories down so they will not be forgotten.  It is also a way to memorialize and honor her father.    I'd like to have known him after reading her stories about him.

    I have included three of my favorites thus far.   If you like these you should join Tennessee Footprints group where you can read more of them.  Thanks Robin for your willingness to help.

                Trapping gone wrong

(Adventures of the Little Rebel of the Gap)

Dad would try to find little odd jobs everywhere he could as a young boy in Cumberland Gap. Things like cutting wood or bringing in coal for the elderly. He also would trap muskrats and sell their hide. The traps where set late in the evening and every morning before school he would go to check them. There was one spot he usually got lucky at trapping and in order to get to it he had to crawl through a thicket of briar and over grown brush. So like every morning he set out to check his traps. As he got closer he could hear the rustling around of the animal caught in his trap. So with his little hammer he used to put the rat out of it’s misery he began to crawl into the thicket only to discover it was not a muskrat but a big skunk! It was caught in the trap and he knew he had to finish the job, so as slowly as he could he drew back the hammer to help the poor thing only for it to whip around and spray him at very close range in his face. He then said he went completely blind and immediately started throwing up all while crawling around to find the nearby creek to wash his eyes out. He then went back home and my grandmother had to burn his clothes. Needless to say I think he found a new spot to trap where he could see far ahead of time what was in it.

A Walking Juke Box

(Adventures of The Little Rebel of the Gap)

One evening dad was heading home from a day in Middlesboro, Ky and was walking up Cumberland Mountain. In the 40’s there was a pretty rough beer joint called ‘Indian Rock‘. He saw his fathers truck there and decided to hitch a ride with him home. Indian Rock was known for shootings, fights, murders, etc... Dad walked in and immediately started searching the place for his father. After finding him his dad told him to wait for a few minutes then they would leave. While waiting around a fight broke out between some of the locals and shots began firing. There was a tall jukebox that was blaring close to him so he jump under it and started walking it towards the door in order to get out of the chaos. Whew! That must had been a scary moment for him! Can you imagine seeing the juke box walking across the floor? . (Below is a photo of the original tavern and the kind of jukebox I would imagine that was used. )

Above: Robin's photo and description of the bar 

above: Robin's photo of the sort of juke box that was likely used at the time.

and later... as an adult her father worked in a coal mine.

The Day the Mountain Fell

(Adventures of The Little Rebel of the Gap)

This particular work day at the mines started out like every other day. Dad worked on the belts and kept them going. He would tell us he would see rats down there big enough to carry off your dinner bucket! He also told of strange lights he would see in the old works part of the mines when he was the only one in the area. One day he even heard odd voices down in there when again no one else was around. One day really stuck in his head tho , the day they had a rockfall. There was someone trapped and they called for dad because it looked really bad and the man was probably not going to survive. Dad told them to call a man that Could get to him faster that also worked there and was a pastor of a local Church of Christ, but he was on his way as quick as possible. When he arrived he asked the pastor did he witness to him and the man said it wouldn’t do any good because according to his denomination he would have to be baptized. Oh, how this upset my Daddy, knowing that biblically that was important but not necessary to led him to Christ. So he crawled back in there and talked to the man and calmed him down, made jokes and told him that he was talking to the biggest groundhog digger in the tri-state area! Eventually he did get to him and held his hand while the other men pulled him out. During this time, Dad led him to the Lord! I’m not telling this story to cause division of the church but as a Baptist we believe it is extremely important to follow Christ in baptism but not necessary to get to heaven. Think about the thief on the cross. Btw the man did survive .

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