'New' book by Horace Kephart of GSMNP

[Crockett]

I appreciate AKSkim's honesty with his thoughts but I for one appreciated the from the heart folksey style and as you can tell from this forum most of us did love it Jim. Some might think it is an act or something but I think it's just who you are and you can't change that. It's good to have diversity as some others might call it. I say keep up the good work and thank you. Thats the fun part about life in that you can't please everyone but you can always keep trying.

[Jim Casada]

Crockett--Thank you, and I hope to meet you (and AKSkim, along with many others) at Troutfest. I think you will find that I am just a simple son of the Smokies with a deep and abiding love for the region, its people, and its history.
Jim Casada
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com

[Crockett]

I will be there! I will bring my "well worn" copy of your book and hopefully get you to sign it.

[stevee71]

Hey Jim
I for one am looking forward to troutfest to get my copy of your book. I would also like to thank you for your unbiased opion and for all the help you are to beginners like myself.
Steve

[Speck Lover]

Originally Posted by Jim Casada

Crockett--Thank you, and I hope to meet you (and AKSkim, along with many others) at Troutfest.

Jim,

I am really hoping that I can make it to Troutfest to talk with you once again. While I'm certain that you don't remember me, I met you a few years back at the Charlotte Fly Fishing Show and bought a book from you at your booth. I found you to be a very interesting and informative man, and a great person to talk to. If my memory serves me correctly, your booth at the Charlotte Fly Fishing Show was one of the busiest booth's that year, which I believe was 2005.

[Jim Casada]

Steve--Glad I can be of help occasionally and I'll see you in Townsend come May.
Jim Casada
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com

[Jim Casada]

Originally Posted by Speck Lover

Jim,

I am really hoping that I can make it to Troutfest to talk with you once again. While I'm certain that you don't remember me, I met you a few years back at the Charlotte Fly Fishing Show and bought a book from you at your booth. I found you to be a very interesting and informative man, and a great person to talk to. If my memory serves me correctly, your booth at the Charlotte Fly Fishing Show was one of the busiest booth's that year, which I believe was 2005.

Speck Lover--I certainly hope you can make it. I haven't been before although several people have told me it's an exciting time and I'm certainly excited about being involved this year.
As for meeting you in Charlotte, I must confess I don't remember, but then my memory isn't one which would have ever been conducive to a career in politics. I shake and howdy with lots of people at shows and talks, and about the best I can do is try to be unfailingly polite, share whatever knowledge or information I can, and enjoy such events (which I do).
It sounds like this year's Troutfest will be a dandy.
Jim Casada
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com

[Owl]

I've read Highlanders and put it right up there with some of the best of the five or six books I've read.

Seriously though, is there somewhere that a person might find a list of things that Kephart stretched or distorted? Now, I'm curious as to just which parts of the book are reality and which are ....what? Fabrications? Exaggerations? Outright lies?

Also, there was a book I read( one of the six, mind you.) that was about a fellow contracting some sort of food poisioning from some potato salad and getting sick on the way to Cherokee. Anyone know the name of that book? Seems to me it was fairly comical all the way through.


I also enjoyed the AT story " A Walk in the Woods." Hopefully, it wasn't full of truth-stretching as well. If it was, don't tell me. I can only take one revelation at a time here, people.


Thanks,
owl


PS - They aren't about the Smokies, but if you enjoy comical or semi-comical fishing books, pick up almost anything by Nick Lyons. I have laughed so hard that I've cried reading about his misadventures in life and fishing.

[tennswede]

Owl,

"On the Spine of Time by Harry Middleton.

[Jim Casada]

Owl--As someone who has spent his life reading and ruminating on the literature of the Smokies, I'll offer several comments.
(1) Kephart's book does not in many sense accurately depict the mountain folk of the time his was writing. If you want to see the other side of the picture, and a telling critique of Our Southern Highlanders, read a copy of Judge Felix Alley's book, Random Thoughts and Musings of a Mountaineer. He offers a scathing critique of both Kephart and Margaret Morley. Michael Frome, in Strangers in High Places,has a good chapter on Kephart which is quite nicely balanced. Incidentally, if you haven't read From, you owe yourself that treat.
I see that Tenn Swede has already identified Harry Middleton's On the Spine of Time. I knew Harry quite well and he was a dear friend. I don't think there's any truth to the characters he depicts, and being from the area he is writing about I should know. Perhaps mroe to the point, my 100-year-old father, who has lived in Bryson City all but the first five years of his life, assures me none of Middleton's characters are real people. Still, it is a wonderfully written, totally charming book.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on Nick Lyons. He too is a good friend and did me the great honor of writing a Foreword to my book on fly fishing in the Park. He's a rare talent and for all his self-deprecation, he's a much better fisherman than he would lead readers to belive.
I'll mention one other book which I think truly first-rate, although it is out of print and devilishly difficult to find. This is Ken Wise's Hiking Trails of the Smokies. It is more, much more, than just another trail guidebook. Filled with history and charming notes on places in the Park, it is wonderfully well researched. He is working on a completely update version.
Hope this helps a bit.
Jim Casada
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com