Illustration by Harry Tennant
Until the mid ’60s, before First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson decided to beautify highways, the barns in my native Ohio were embellished with advertisements—itinerant painters roamed the countryside on behalf of companies like Mail Pouch Tobacco that would offer large amounts of free product to farmers. There were also barns painted with vacation commands: See Seven States; Visit Natural Bridge; See Rock City. These talking barns fascinated me, and I longed to take their advice.
Finally, in the June before my 12th birthday, an opportunity presented itself. My father proposed a trip to Tennessee and North Carolina, the Great Smoky Mountains. To me, a mountain was a myth. In southeastern Ohio, we lived on and among hills that—though lovely, especially in spring with its hillside chorus of white dogwood—were only hints of the faraway majesty that awaited us.
The group also included my older sister, Mary Kay, and my father’s sister, Angie (the first adult woman I had seen wearing shorts). Our travel took place entirely on two-lane highways whose curves enticingly hid what lay ahead. All was dressed in June’s vivid green. If we had stopped to look for wild blackberries, we would have found many. And even, perhaps, black bears.
Our first stop, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, was a much smaller place in 1962—no Dollywood and few of the now-ubiquitous pancake houses. Then, attractions included a gravity-defying house with a stream that ran upward through it and an outdoor show featuring cowboys attacked by rustlers. (Who knew the Old West extended this far east?) Tourism in Gatlinburg was in its mixed-up youth. But in nearby Cherokee, North Carolina, it had hardly been born.
The town was harnessed together from a string of old buildings, and I found it utterly charming. One store boasted a wooden effigy of an Indian chief, his countenance radiating sorrow and disgust. I didn’t know much but knew that Indians couldn’t survive the mundanity inflicted by European settlers. I mourned their glorious past and envied the survivors who lived a mountain life that I imagined consisted of hunting, fishing from tumbling streams, stitching moccasins, chopping wood, and building fires—maybe sending a smoke signal or two to friends living in the next hollow.
Then my father took us to the outdoor drama Unto These Hills (it had debuted in 1950), and I learned of the Trail of Tears. The mountains that once had been fascinating but inhuman were now populated by stories of betrayal and heroism and the bitterness of forced exile.
The best moment of the trip took place east of the Smokies atop Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. Somehow, I had confused it with Lookout Mountain (quite a distance south, in Georgia), which I had seen advertised on barns. I gazed at the sweep of sky and tent-shaped peaks and asked my father if we could really see seven states from up there. I didn’t wonder whether we could see all seven states completely or just pieces of them; nor did I wonder how it was possible for anyone to tell. “I imagine so,” he answered, and I had officially accomplished a character-building feat. Just in time, before we headed home, I had followed the barns’ advice.
Angela Ball’s poems, translations, and essays have appeared widely. Her most recent book of poetry is Steeplechase, which was published earlier this year, as was her anthology of poems plus commentary, Afterlives of the New York School of Poets. She teaches in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, where she lives with her dogs, Ruth and Boy.
This article appears in the Summer 2026 issue of Southbound.
