Some years ago, around 1980 – 90s, the restaurant at Tallulah Falls was a busy, interesting place to go eat a late breakfast. I was retired from the Air Force and from Milliken Co., so I fished, hunted, and mingled with folks from the local area and tourists from here and there. I met some amazing folks, including a moonshiner who talked of his trade and offered to show me his still.
One middle-aged lady was both interesting and somewhat mysterious. She showed me her cottage where Margaret Mitchell once wrote some of her book, “Gone with the Wind,” at a table sitting on the porch. One day a small, suntanned lady walked into the restaurant and my new friend introduced me to her. This lady was an outdoor type and had spent years out west hiking long miles in mountains and deserts.
My newly made friend told this lady I could be trusted and to show me her hidden hut up on the mountain. I took her in my car and parked on top of the mountain. We walked down the steep side to a little cove with a spring and near it a small plywood hut with porch and a fire ring of rocks out in front. This lady of far trails and her sister had carried in the material and made the hut. It had a cast iron heater, a couple of chairs and a cot inside.
Now I had two friends, one an older lady from Florida and this mystery lady. At the same time, I met a married couple of artists from Florida who had a cottage near Tallulah Falls. I visited their home. The man painted nude women and the lady painted undersea scenes such as reefs and fish. Another new friend was a local moonshiner who offered to show me his still but I never did go see it, since I’d seen some before.
The lady from Florida spent one winter with Indians living in the Everglade swamps. She showed me photos of this hut on stilts above the water with a porch around it. In her cottage where Margaret Mitchell lived in summertime she had a table Margaret wrote on and a bed obtained from a sale in Hollywood that Margaret slept on in the movie, “Gone with the Wind.”
I was truly sad when the lady from Florida became sick and died! She was an amazing, talented and adventurous woman. The other lady of long trails remarried and faded away. The booming era at Tallulah Falls somehow faded away as store owners changed and so did the times. Today, I sometimes open a folder and refresh my memory or ride by the Falls visiting folks in Rabun County.
