NEWS

Regardless of what the calendar says, summer has arrived in North Carolina, bringing with it memories of exhilarating freedom – whole light-filled summer days of play, unconstrained by adult supervision. While we had plenty of free outdoor play in Charleston all year-round, in summer the place to be was Montreat. My grandmother often reminded us that Montreat was the closest to heaven you can get and still be on earth. And I believed her.

For several weeks every summer we left the heat, humidity, and mosquitos of the coast and headed for the mountains. Everything about Montreat was different. The feel of the cool air in my lungs… the distinctive damp, skunky odor of the woods… the continuous rushing sound of Flat Creek as it tumbled from high up Greybeard Trail and sliced through the middle of Montreat on its way down to Black Mountain… and above all, the sensuous taste of summer in every bite of cantaloupe, watermelon, heirloom tomatoes, and corn on the cob from Max Twitty’s roadside stand.

Flat Creek

Montreat, founded in 1897 as a non-denominational religious retreat, soon became the conference center for Presbyterians, sort of a combination of a pilgrimage destination and a summer vacation Borscht Belt for Blue Stockings, but without the fancy resorts or plush accommodations. The first retreaters attempted to create a version of the first century community of faith by having everyone worship together and share meals in the community center. It’s not surprising, then, that the first homes were built without kitchens (as well as without electricity or indoor plumbing). My family has owned one of those original homes since the 1930s.

While the adults in my extended family enjoyed the cool, refreshing mountain air, we kids loved the freedom. We could go anywhere in Montreat. We would walk down from our house high up on Appalachian Way down to the playground and the lake. While there was no law enforcement in those days (Montreat wasn’t a Town until 1967), the community was safe. We were in a cove surrounded by high mountains on all sides with the road leading to Black Mountain the only entrance. At this narrow entrance to the cove, Presbyterians erected a stone gate that was manned 24/7 by fit young college students, the “gate boys.”

To this day there are still no commercial facilities there – no gas station, no grocery store, no restaurants.  Thus even young children were allowed to wander Montreat’s unpaved roads and walking trails, and to spend hours at the playground or the lake, gloriously free of adult oversight.

I’ve spent part of every summer of my life in Montreat. Part of the charm of being there was how primitive everything was. Our house was up a steep, rocky path from the parking area, so everything – furniture, appliances, groceries, luggage – had to be hauled up the path to the house. Before electricity came to Montreat, we kept perishables in the icy waters of the creek that flowed just below the house, a great solution until heavy rains every summer swelled the creek, and the force of the water always broke the bottles of milk. On dark summer evenings, my cousins and I wrote and performed plays, using oil lamps as footlights, to the applause of our parents. Sometime before I can remember, one of the upstairs bedrooms had been claimed for an indoor bathroom and fitted with a claw-foot tub and a toilet with the water tank up near the ceiling with a pull string for flushing.

Freedom in Montreat extended to my adolescent and teen years as well. The Conference Center offered (and still offers) kids’ activities led by college students. Like day camp, these “clubs” have provided arts and crafts, games, athletics, drama, and daily devotions to generations of kids and youth, from kindergarteners through college students. To me it was a teenager’s heaven – a place to “hang out” with other teens, away from adults, every single day and most nights in a healthy, safe environment.

Over those summers I learned to “clog”  (the Appalachian square dance), to skate to music, to make a “gee-haw whimmy diddle” out of rhododendron branches, to slide down the tall sliding board into the icy water of Lake Susan without having a heart attack from the shock, and to walk backwards down the mountain in high heels to lessen the strain on my calves.

Emmie rehearsing for "Montreat Madness"

When I stayed in Montreat by myself with my grandmother, I often joined a group of college and high school students on a trek to Mount Mitchell, where we spent the entire night in the stone tower at the top, laughing, telling ghost stories, and singing. Our favorite songs were bluegrass oldies like “That Ol’ Mountain Dew,” classic gospel songs like “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” and club songs like “Montreat, How I Love You” (sung to the tune of “Swanee.”) My grandmother would never have approved of my staying out all night in Charleston, but somehow, being so close to heaven and all, in Montreat it was okay.

As another sign of how parents felt nothing bad could possibly happen in Montreat, in the summer after I graduated from high school, my parents left me there with my grandmother and with a car. And not just any car. My brother Pete, who had just left for the seminary, decided that his yellow ’49 Ford convertible was not appropriate for a young seminarian. It was eye-catching and gorgeous. And my brother, in his pre-seminary days, had installed chrome letters on the driver’s door spelling out “Woo Wagon.” That’s the car my parents decided to let me drive for the summer. I was ecstatic.

And all went well until one night while I was in Asheville at the movies, my friends, the three Wilde brothers from Texas, came up to my house and thought it would be a good idea to test the law of gravity. One of them got in the convertible, released the brake, took it out of gear, and rolled it down the mountain, through Montreat and out the stone gate, until it finally rolled to a stop on the outskirts of Black Mountain. My father didn’t appreciate being awakened by my panicked phone call, and the N.C. Highway Patrolman who responded to my dad’s call probably didn’t seem too happy either. But no charges were filed since it was Montreat and so close to heaven.

The highlight of every summer season for high school and college students was performing an original musical show in the big stone auditorium in the center of Montreat, the same place where we attended church. A collection of original skits and music (If you’ve seen the movie “Dirty Dancing” you get the idea), “Montreat Madness” drew a full crowd every year for many years, although now it is performed only about every five years and is produced and performed by adults. I performed in the show in 1952 and ’53, and then again in about 2012.

This show also provides a couple of examples of the contradictions that Montreat Presbyterians lived with in those days. In 1952, I was asked to sing a rather steamy version of “The Saint Louis Blues” from the same stage from which evangelist Billy Graham had preached the gospel just a few weeks earlier.

But the biggest incongruity is that for years, until 1953, “Montreat Madness” was performed as a minstrel show – in blackface makeup. And we thought nothing of it. Until 1953. One might be tempted to think that had this group of teenagers been supervised by an adult, things would have been different. Yet the audiences for those shows were almost exclusively adults, and no one spoke up until 1953. Even in that place so close to heaven.

My children and grandchildren have enjoyed summers of free play in Montreat all their lives. I used to drive up with my four children, plus four others – a friend for each – for a week of largely unsupervised free play. On one of these trips in the 1970s (the timing is important to this story), I described to my kids that when I was a teenager, the week we found most annoying was the week of the Presbyterian Women’s conference. It was the largest conference of the summer, and the roads were clogged with conference participants walking to and from meetings, the parking lots were all full, and the constant chatter echoed in the cove like a flock of birds.

The best place to take a Montreat picture.

One evening my eight children went out for after-dinner free play. The younger kids all returned home as it began to get dark around 9:00. Then a few minutes later, my oldest son (13) and his friend ran up the front steps and announced with excitement and pride, “Mom! Guess what! We did something tonight just for you!” I waited with anticipation. “We streaked the Women’s Conference!” So much for healthy unsupervised play. And being so close to heaven.

I still get nostalgic for free summertime days and evenings whenever I hear my grandchildren singing:

Montreat, how I love you, how I love you,

My dear old Montreat.

I’d give the world to be among the folks in M-O-N-T-R-E-A-T

Friends are waiting for me, praying for me, down by lake Susan.

The folks at home will just have to wait ‘til I get through that Montreat gate!