Marshall Ramsey

A few of my recent stories that have been getting lots of hits…

The Adventures of Moses the Terrier: A dog exodus and one of my favorite tales.

The Bluesman: A cocky young musician learns a valuable lesson in a smokey bar.

Jasper the Demon Elf: The true story about the kindest of the nasty creatures who hide our keys.

A Smoky Mountain Lesson: A man learns an important lesson from his grandfather.

Smoky Mountain Sunrise: A man takes a hike on the path of life.

The trail had been blasted out of the mountainside during the Great Depression by the Civilian Conversation Corps.  Hanging off ropes and by a prayer, those brave men had left an amazing and  lasting legacy for their children and grandchildren to enjoy.  The Great Smoky Mountains Park was just logged-over mountains back then.  Sixty-eight years later, it was a lush international biosphere —  A true monument to nature’s ability to heal whatever wounds man inflicted upon her.

But that didn’t make the trail any less steep.  The man took a break, unscrewed his canteen and sat down on the downed tree.  He looked toward Eye of the Needle. Nothing but inky blackness. His last trip he had spotted a mother Peregrine falcon sitting on her nest. But today is was too dark to see that far.  He clicked on his headlamp and pulled out his journal.  A quick sketch and a few notes and he was on his way.  He looked at his watch — he had left at 1:45 a.m. to get to the top by sunrise.

He was on Alum Cave trail. Not the highest trail in the park, not the most difficult.  But it featured some of the most spectacular geographic features in the whole park. And some of the most amazing views. At 6,593 ft, Mount LeConte is the third highest peak in the national park, behind Clingmans Dome (6,643 ft) and Mount Guyot (6,621 ft).  The burning in his lungs told him that was 100% correct.

He tripped over a rock and stumbled forward.  His curse was all that was heard for miles.

His grandfather had helped blast out this trail. And the love of his grandfather’s life, his grandmother, had been one of the first visitors to the LeConte Lodge.  One of his most cherished possessions was the picture of them on a date nearby taken in 1927. Behind them hauntingly stood the Chimney Tops.  The Chimney’s were still there. His grandparents were gone.

He continued to walk along in the darkness. And was very thankful for his hiking partner, the Moon.

Alum Cave Trail was named for Alum Cave, a natural feature halfway up the trail.   He opened up his notebook and read what he had jotted down from Wikipedia about Alum Cave:

“Alum Cave goes back to 1837 when three farmers (Ephraim Mingus, Robert Collins, and George W. Hayes) from Oconaluftee, North Carolina applied at the Sevier County (Tennessee) Land Office for a grant of a 50-acre tract of land that would include Alum Cave and its salt deposits. Tennessee sold the tract of land to the three men on December 6, 1838. The Epsom Salts Manufacturing Company was formed to mine the deposit. The minerals mined were alum, Epsom salt, saltpeter, magnesia, and copperas. The easily accessible salts were depleted by the mid-1840s, but mining resumed during the Civil War. There is no report on any mining after the Civil War.^[2]”

The hiker tried to imagine what it must have been like in the 1860’s carving out the side of this huge hill.  The world had gotten considerably smaller in the following 150 years. But in 1864, this must have felt like the other end of the world.  But it would have been preferable to Gettysburg, Shiloh or Vicksburg.  He smiled: It was preferable to his normal life, too.

The hiker looked at his watch one more time. The faint rays of pink peeking over the horizon confirmed what his watch said:  It was just about time for dawn.  He hiked faster and his lungs burned more.  He was almost to the peak.

He made it to Myrtle Point right as the show began.  Nearby peaks and mist were illuminated by the sun’s magnificent first act.  A deer scurried in the brush behind him.  The Smokies came to life for another day.

His hike up Alum Cave Trail was a perfect metaphor for life. Steep. Difficult. Rocky at times. Spectacular views if you bothered to look.   Take a hard turn one way and you plunged to your death. Turn the other and you hit solid rock. You just made the journey no matter how hard. One. Step. At. A. Time.

“But at the end,” he said out loud, “you’re rewarded by God’s glorious light.”

He jotted that down in his sketchbook and went to the Lodge for a cup of hot coffee.

He was found in a box down by the great river.

The local neighborhood kids were playing by the river’s bank and noticed the cardboard box hidden in the reeds and mud. “Look over there!” one of the boys yelled as they ran over to look at it.  A little girl pushed through the group and carefully opened the cardboard flaps and found a scared, shivering little brown puppy inside.  She held the whimpering dog in her arms and made this promise: “I’ll make sure you have a good life little guy.  And I’m going to name you Moses.” So that’s how Moses the terrier got his name. And this is his story.

The little girl took Moses home to her parents.  Both looked at her and the puppy with crossed arms and stern looks and said, “We can’t afford a dog!”  The mother loaded Moses into the family van and they headed downtown to the City Animal Shelter.  Moses quickly learned about the pain of broken promises.

The City Animal Shelter was the most frightening place that Moses had ever seen. Mournful howling of dogs and cats masked the mechanical sound of gates slamming.  It was a dark, dank and depressing place.  The little girl was crying when the mother handed Moses over to the tall man behind the desk.  The car door slammed and Moses watched the taillights disappear into the distance.  He looked around and realized his life was about to seriously change.

The guard carried Moses down the rows of cages.  Big cages. Little cages. Medium cages.  All filled with every shape and size of dog and cat.  The big cage had a Great Dane named Bleu.  Bleu boomed out, “Dead dog walking.”  Moses shivered at the words.  He noticed the room at the end of the hall: The sign on the door said, “Incinerator.” Moses began to howl as he was put into his cage.

Weeks passed and Moses fell into a routine. And life genuinely got better. His tail-wagging friendly way helped him make several friends.  And one of those friends was the warden.  Warden Ramsey was a stern man with a scar on his face. “He got that from a beagle,” said Bleu. “What happened to the beagle?” Moses asked in reply.  Bleu just looked down the hall at the door with “incinerator” on the sign.  Unless you were adopted by the rare family who came in, the door with the “incinerator” on the sign was the only way out.

But Warden Ramsey took a liking to Moses and let him out of his cage every afternoon. They played ball. He scratched him behind his ears.  It was a good life, all things considered. But Moses knew that he had to find a way out. He had to lead his people to freedom.

That opportunity came a cold night in December.  The night guard had finished walking through the cages.  Moses had been plotting this night for months.  It was as Elvis said, now or never.

All the dogs had been in communication with their fleas.  When the guard opened the door to the waiting room, all the fleas jumped off the dogs at once and onto the guard.  “ARRGH!” the man screamed as he was being bitten thousands of fleas.  Moses whistled with his paws and the cats (always sneaky creatures) broke out of their cages and walked down the row of dogs.  The fat, striped tabby cat opened Bleu’s cage.  “I’d eat you, but…” The cat smiled and said, “You owe me one.”

All the animals quietly slinked past the security camera. The other guard, sitting next to the monitor, was asleep.  Moses walked into the lobby and jumped up on the chair and then onto the counter.  He pressed the red button and the door to the outside unlocked.

The cold air told them they had reached freedom.

But they weren’t safe yet.  The guard with thousands of itchy, red welts woke up the sleeping guard. “CALL THE WARDEN! They’re escaping!”  Moses and the other animals were running as fast as they could away from the shelter to the river.

Since it was December, the river was frozen. The ice was solid, but thin.  Moses pressed it with his paw.  Crackling noises made him hesitate. But the moving flashlights off in the distance and the muffled yelling meant they had to move.  And move now.

“I’m afraid of water, ” the Tabby said. Bleu looked down at his new friend, knelt down and said, “Climb on. It’s payback time”  And with that eight cats climbed on the back of the giant Great Dane.  Moses and the animals slowly made their way across the ice.  Moses turned around and saw the guards and the Warden at the river bank. The flea-bitten guard ran out on the ice. And fell through. The other two men rescued him.

Moses and the animals were free.

Now came the hard part — Finding a home. The pack of 20 animals roamed through the streets of the city looking for scraps of food.  “I’m hungry,” Bleu moaned.  The Tabby got away from him just in case.  No sense being a cat appetizer for a hungry Great Dane.  Moses was very frustrated and shook his paw at the sky.

One morning, the pack of animals came to a farm.  Moses looked at the sign on the gate.  “Animal sanctuary. No-kill shelter.”  He asked the siamese cat to read the sign to the others an all the animals started to howling with joy.  Moses jumped on Bleu’s back and rang the bell on the gate.  A lady came out in her housecoat and petted each and everyone of them, “I read about you in the paper. Welcome home.”

Moses smiled but he realized he could not enter the promised land.  While everyone else was being taken inside, he quietly walked away.  Bleu turned around and saw his friend on the horizon and howled.  That was the last time they saw each other.

Moses walked into the park and saw kids playing and mothers talking.  He knew it would be a good source of handouts, so he went over to a group of toddlers. “Showtime, ” he thought as he did his cute little brown dog routine.  Yes, he was proud. But he was also hungry.

Just then he heard a little girl yell, “MOSES!”  Moses, who was eating from a bag of chips, quickly turned to see the little girl who had rescued him out of the box.  “MOSES! MOSES! MOSES!” She ran across the park screaming his name. He ran at her barking.

This time the mother couldn’t argue.  “If he escaped the pound and found you again, it’s meant to be.”

That night, bathed and fed, Moses slept at the foot of his new little girl’s bed.  He rolled over, started to snore and dreamed the most pleasant dreams.

© 2011 Marshall Ramsey

Smoke hung low in the old bar. He knew that tumors were being born tonight. But he didn’t care.  He was there to play the Blues. He was the opening act.

He strummed a couple of chords.  A few people stopped talking but most continued on their conversations about whatever it was that alcohol made them talk about.   He began to play his first song.

TWANG! A string broke.  He stopped and the audience stared at him. “Technical difficulties, folks.”

As he worked furiously on his guitar, he began to tell a story:

There once was a cocky young man who lived deep in the Mississippi Delta.  His voice was a gift from the angles but his attitude straight from Hell.  He’d play small juke joints every weekend but his heart was always at the next bigger place: The next big thing.  He never focused on where he was.

One day he was playing in a smoke-filled bar just like this one when an old Bluesman came in carrying a old battered guitar case.  He had a gray beard, tattered shirt and clouded eyes.  His teeth had seen better days as well. And he smelled like sweat.  The old man looked at the boy and said, “Mind if I sit in with you.”

The boy looked at the old man and scoffed, “Sure old man. ”  The old man didn’t look like much to the cocky young kid.  What would it hurt if he shared a stage with him?

The kid was good. Damn good. He played the notes as well as anyone. But experience had not allowed him to feel the notes.  His music was sterile.  His cockiness completely kept him from learning. Something not lost on the mysterious old man.

The old man got up there and started playing the blues.  Blues so blue that even angels cried. A heavy rain started falling all across the Delta when he sang his songs.  Thunder and lightning were his percussion section.  The Bluesman took all the audiences pain in the room and channelled it in his music. It was musical magic that cast its spell on everyone.

The audience sat there stunned.  The boy got up and thought, “I can top that.”

He got up on the chair and started playing.  Like I said before, his music was technically perfect. But it was sterile. It was music that was dry and barren.  The rain outside stopped and the audience got restless.

The young man finished playing and looked over at the Bluesman. He grinned a grin back and handed the young boy his guitar.

“This is yours. But first you must learn a few things. Never be afraid to learn from those who you think are lesser than you.  Everyone knows something you don’t.  Cherish where you are in the moment.  And go live your life to the fullest. Don’t be a water bug just skittering across the surface.  All your life’s experiences will flow through your music. Be sure of yourself but never be cocky. It’s a cancer on your soul.”

The Bluesman put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and the boy felt a warmth that he couldn’t explain.  The Bluesman then took the boy’s guitar and walked out of the juke joint.  The boy ran over to the window but he had faded into the inky night. It began to rain again.

The opening act finished both his story and restringing his prized guitar. It was the old battered guitar that had once belonged to the Bluesman. He looked out at the audience and smiled. He soaked in the moment. He felt the peoples’ pain. And then, the once cocky young man sang the bluest of the Blues.

And outside, it began to rain all across the Mississippi Delta.