Cousin Hanley Gives Advice On How To Travel

COUSIN HANLEY GIVES ADVICE ON HOW TO TRAVEL by Lee Howard Believe you me I wouldn't live anywhere in God's Creation except right here in these mountains But it does a body good to travel Just to get out in the world and see how the rest of them live Now it don't have to take a whole lot of money You don't have to stay in all them motels and eat in them restaurants No siree, all you need is a little station wagon Take you a pallet and spread it out in the back and then you can go and have your bed made up in the car all the time Next get you one of them little barbecue grills and when you're hungry why, get some food from the store and cook it up That's all you need to travel Now the place you ought to go is down there in the Smoky Mountains There's a strip of road near that town called Pigeon Forge that's got ever' kind of thing you'd ever want to do set up on either side of the highway There's big ol' slides with water running down them and there's fellers acting like gunslingers in front of oV timey looking stores and just a whole world of carnival-like stuff But the best thing they got there is a flying saucer It's a great big circle of a thing 'bout the size of a house Well, you buy a ticket and walk inside that saucer thing and they close the door and it's right dark Then all of a sudden there's lights a blinking and you hear them engines whirling and voices giving flying instructions to one another about taking off Then the floor under your feet starts moving a little and you're leaning to the left and you're leaning to the right and the next thing you know you can see the whole Smoky Mountains out the winders of that thing just like you was looking down out of an airplane Why you don't need to go to another place in the Smoky Mountains but right there to that flying saucer Me and the wife liked it so much that when the trip was over we bought us another ticket and rode it again Now after you've seen the Smokies the next place you ought to travel is down to Florida Me and the wife went until we just about run out of land to drive on You don't ever have to pay to stay in one of them campgrounds Why, they got acres and acres of orange groves down there You just drive your car into one of them groves and park it under one of them orange trees and you can stay there for free Then you just get out your little grill and cook up something from the store You can use the hood of your car for a table For dessert, you just pull you one of them oranges off the tree branch hanging above you Boy, that's the life Why they got more oranges than they know what to do with down there We filled up six paper sacks of them and brought them home and I'm satisfied not one of them oranges 97 was ever missed down there in Florida You never saw such an awful lot of fruit in all your life Now that's all been some time ago The wife's been dead now ten years But I'm getting the notion to travel again I was thinking about going to see that World's Fair down in Knoxville but you know I don't believe it's all it's made out to be I reckon it's just a carnival-like affair I know they don't have no flying saucer or I'd of heard folks talk of it That's just not the type of thing people forget I got me a new station wagon now bigger than the old one I think I'll just make...