Curtis attended Western Carolina University on the GI Bill, graduating in three years. He married Janice Monteith from Webster, who also went to Western, and they moved to Charlotte to begin careers in education. After three years they returned to Western where he received the M.S. degree and completed requirements for Secondary School Administrators. For four years Curtis was assistant principal of Sylva-Webster High School, but in 1968 he and Janice left the field of education, taking management positions with the Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
In 1994 they moved to Vienna, Austria, in association with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a major wing of the United Nations. They lived in Vienna for five years and traveled Europe extensively. While in Europe Curtis began reflecting on his growing-up days in the mountains of North Carolina and started scribbling what he jokingly called nozzles, because he remembered that was what his grandfather had called novels. He had no intention of publishing those nozzles, yet family and friends urged him to share them in memory of the tellers of tall tales who so graphically entertained the Western North Carolina boys and girls of yesteryear.
Upon retirement from the United States Department of Energy, Curtis and Janice built a retirement home in the lovely little town of Norris, Tennessee; then he hiked every trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
After seventy years, Curtis is still going to school, taking at least two courses per semester at the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning. He still considers himself a “mountain man” and loves to return to Western North Carolina to “lift up his eyes unto the hills” and feel the sacredness of God’s creation.
Curtis is the proud father of son, Samuel, father-in-law of Sonja and grandfather (Poppy) of Carter Elizabeth Blanton and John Riley Blanton.
In 1994 they moved to Vienna, Austria, in association with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a major wing of the United Nations. They lived in Vienna for five years and traveled Europe extensively. While in Europe Curtis began reflecting on his growing-up days in the mountains of North Carolina and started scribbling what he jokingly called nozzles, because he remembered that was what his grandfather had called novels. He had no intention of publishing those nozzles, yet family and friends urged him to share them in memory of the tellers of tall tales who so graphically entertained the Western North Carolina boys and girls of yesteryear.
Upon retirement from the United States Department of Energy, Curtis and Janice built a retirement home in the lovely little town of Norris, Tennessee; then he hiked every trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
After seventy years, Curtis is still going to school, taking at least two courses per semester at the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning. He still considers himself a “mountain man” and loves to return to Western North Carolina to “lift up his eyes unto the hills” and feel the sacredness of God’s creation.
Curtis is the proud father of son, Samuel, father-in-law of Sonja and grandfather (Poppy) of Carter Elizabeth Blanton and John Riley Blanton.
©2010 - Porch Tales Publications
PorchTales@aol.com
PorchTales@aol.com
| Books by Curtis R Blanton |
Curtis Blanton was born in his mother’s bed on the side of a mountain between the communities of Addie and Ochre Hill in Jackson County, North Carolina. His old home place was dynamited off the face of the earth shortly after his family was forced to move away from the daily explosions at an adjacent olivine mine. His home was near a horse and sled trail, but not even close to a passable automobile road. He vividly remembers that shortly after he finished the second grade at Addie Elementary his Uncle Albert moved the family to Ochre Hill on a wagon pulled by a team of horses.
Curtis started the third grade at Beta, where he graduated from seventh grade. To earn spending money, he drove a school bus the last two years of high school at $40 per month. Participation in extra curricular activities was never an option for Curtis. When the bus left school he had to be on it, because work-till-dark farm chores were always waiting at home. He graduated from Sylva Central High School in 1954.
Following graduation, Curtis joined the United States Air Force and right off the bat was faced with the fact that he was both educationally and socially crippled - in a world much bigger than Jackson County. He believes the military was a Godsend, however, because for the first time in his life he began to appreciate the value of education and, realizing that he was neither helpless nor hopeless, he set out to educate himself - if possible.
In spite of the hard work and drudgery of mountain farming and lack of educational and social opportunity, Curtis considers himself “blessed beyond measure” to have grown up in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Those who travel along the Blue Ridge Parkway from Cherokee to Asheville will surely agree. Stopping at breathtaking overlooks from Waterrock Knob through Balsam Gap and beyond Richland Balsam, the highest elevation on the Parkway, one can get snapshots of where Curtis became a mountain man. In addition to hard work, it was in those very valleys that he learned the art of primitive camping and speckled trout fishing; on those ridges he spent untold hours squirrel, possum, and coon hunting; in the rich valleys he dug ginseng and ramps; in the distant cleared patches he rabbit hunted and in practically every community church on either side of the parkway he sang shaped-note gospel music.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |