Dead trees and dying trees draped in vine come into view on both sides of the road. They are victims of the creeping kudzu, Pueraria lobata, a parasitic vine imported from the Orient back in the late 1920s. Entire trees are enmeshed in the smothering stuff, trapped and wrapped like flies in a spider-web. A gift, like karate and kamikaze, from Japan, this fast-growing exotic has spread over much of the Smoky Mountain area, creating expensive eradication problems both for home owners and for the National Park Service.

More trees and different trees, a bewildering variety of trees, display themselves and we’re not even in the mountains yet. Hemlock, white pine, pitch pine and other conifers, and rows of planted Scotch pine for the Christmas tree market.

Here’s an ancient country church, painted white but faded to gray, with a high cupola on the roof and the bell missing. The New Era Baptist Church—like the store we had passed a mile before, this church looks derelict. Christ Was Here. Religion and the failure of capitalism. Soul food for thought. Who stole the bell? Some Baptist, probably. May he be totally immersed in Hell, that’ll learn him.

Into the hills we roll on joyous wheels, into the past. Way up yonder on the mountainside hangs a real log cabin with real blue smoke coming from the chimney. Near the road we pass an old barn made of squared-off logs. But it has a sheet-metal roof, not shakes. Close by, underneath a handy pine, is a Farmall tractor, a 1940s model, rusting away. The barn is covered with vinery, but not kudzu; looks more like Wisteria frutescens, an attractive plant even when not in flower.

Into a little valley. Here we find farms that appear to be actually inhabited and worked. Some of the houses are painted. Some of the Chevies are new. Some of the barns, while not nearly so grand as Pennsylvania barns, look fairly well kept up; they have gambrel roofs and overhanging eaves at one end to shield the open gable from rain; through that opening under the end of the roof hay is carried by hayfork and pulley from outside up, and into the mow.

Prosperity. High on a graded, grassy hill stands another red-brick chateau: Ole Massa’s house; it makes a lovely picture from the road below with its white fluted pillars two stories high, the classic pediment, the tall windows flanked by shutters. It must be good to live in a home like that, watching the peasants toiling in the fields, junkyards and gas stations down there in the bottoms. It’s got to be good living up there, otherwise what’s the point of all the rest of us dying down here? If only passing through on our way to the park. (We are all merely tourists in this world. Just poor wayfaring tourists. Sextons out of work, seeking new graveyards.)

Beyond the happy valley, we enter the foothills again. More hillbilly shacks appear, with smoking chimneys and staring children. Why aren’t those children in school? I ask, scenting something sociological. Because it’s Saturday, says Judy. A stickler for objective fact, she’ll come in handy here.