  Uncle Steve Whaley is probably the most engaging man in Gatlinburg. He has always lived here; always been a farmer and a trader. He raised a big family here on the Little Pigeon River, in good mountain fashion. And then, in his middle years, the irresistible flood of human events rolled through the Great Smoky Mountains and tinged everybody’s life with change and Uncle Steve’s life changed too. Today he is a power in these parts. He owns a big hotel, and lots of other things. He is a business magnate. He is the elder Morgan of his clan. His children are at the steering wheel, but I suspect that Uncle Steve drives relentlessly from the back seat. We are staying in Uncle Steve’s hotel—the Riverside. It is managed by his son Dick. Uncle Steve just wanders around and about. Sometimes tourists stop out front and ask him if this is a good hotel. He’ll say, “Well, I’ve been staying here for quite a spell, and I like it all right.” He never tells them he owns it. When Uncle Steve first was badgered into setting up a tourist camp, he swore to all the family that it would be the end of the Whaleys and all they’d slaved for and saved. But in the first year it made so much money that Uncle Steve built a frame hotel, and this made so much money he built a big modern hotel, and it’s making so much money they’re putting on an addition this winter. It’s hard telling where the thing will stop. UNCLE STEVE DRY AND DROLLUncle Steve is dry and droll. He’s dumb like a fox, and old fashioned like fluid drive. He’s about as skinny as I am, and his nose hangs over at the end like Puck’s. He sort of halfway grins when he talks, and his humor is so left-handed you don’t know half the time whether he’s joking or not. He loves to talk about being an ignorant hillbilly. It gets funnier and funnier as it gradually dawns on you how all-fired smart Uncle Steve really is. “I was educated at Bear Pen Holler University,” he says. That is his name for the School of Experience. “I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’, very much.” If a local townsman asks him the population of Gatlinburg, or the number of tourist cabins here, or who plans to do what, Uncle Steve always says “I don’t know.” And he says it in a tone which implies, “Why you askin’ me, you know I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.” But I’ll bet there isn’t a minor item about anything that is or ever was in Gatlinburg that Uncle Steve doesn’t know. “I don’t know no more about runnin’ a hotel now than when I started, and I didn’t know nothin’ then,” says Uncle Steve. “All I know is you cook and make the beds—and charge ’em a little.” That seems to me a pretty good basis to start on. “I never kept a book in my life,” Uncle Steve says. “I never kept no track of how much I spent or how much I took in.” He apparently has stopped talking. You’re just ready to reply, or change the subject. And then finally, as a small afterthought, Uncle Steve looks over at you slantlike and says in a low voice, “I always come out a little ahead though.” POCKETS TIPSUncle Steve still is known to carry up a tourist’s bag occasionally, and pocket the tip. He doesn’t do it for a joke either. When the tourists later find out who he is, they’re rattled about having tipped him. It doesn’t rattle Uncle Steve though. They tell how he got appendicitis a few years ago and went to Knoxville to be operated on. At the hospital, they took down his financial history before operating. They asked what he did, and he said he worked for an old widow woman over at Gatlinburg who ran a boarding house. Didn’t get nothin’ for it, just worked for his room and board. A price, in accordance, was agreed upon for the operation. But when Uncle Steve began to convalesce, the doctors began to be flabbergasted. For here came a stream of the most astounding visitors to see this old man—Knoxville hotel managers, bank presidents, big politicians, land owners, Government officials. The doctors began to smell a mouse, and then they really investigated. But it was too late. He had already paid his bill. Often older people bore you to death. But when we’re downstairs we kind of keep peeking around hoping Uncle Steve will come and sit with us. And very often he does. WENT TO SEE ANDY HUFFOne night he and I went up to see Andy Huff, who owns the big Mountain View Hotel. They are direct competitors, but they’re old friends too. We sat and gabbed with Andy for an hour or so, and then Andy drove us home. “How you standing the cooking down at the Riverside?” Andy Huff asked me. “Well the cooking’s all right,” I said, “but the owner kind of gets on my nerves.” “I don’t wonder,” said Andy Huff. “When you get all you can stand of it, check out and come down to my hotel.” So I said I guess we’d stick it out this time, but I’d stay with Andy the next trip. But next morning Uncle Steve had another solution figured out. He said: “If you stay at the Mountain View next time, Rel Maples and me will be sore. If you stay at the Gatlinburg Inn, me and Andy Huff will be sore. If you stay here again, the other two will be sore. So I guess I’ll just have to build a fourth hotel before you get back, so you can have a place to stay.” I think it would be nice if Uncle Steve built a hotel and gave it to me to run. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ either, very much. So I’d be bound to make a success. |
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