Review by Bob Terrell

Here is a book that all Yankees who have moved into these hills in the last
40 years should read. It is also recommended for those who have grown up
here, perhaps as city or town dwellers, because it explains our true country
heritage and is something of a sidesplitting history of real mountain
people.
Its title is "Tales From the Porch," written by Curtis Blanton, who grew up
in Addie and Ochre Hill, Jackson County, 55 to 70 years ago and recalls the
true mountain vernacular that our forefathers spoke. He calls it "Balsam
Mountain English."
As a native of Addie, I can relate to the vernacular and the authenticity
with which Curtis writes in a style we could call "factual fiction."
Blanton will keep you rolling in laughter with homespun humor but at the
same time will teach you a lot of backwoods philosophy.
His book is a collection of stories, some true and others only half that
way, filled with side-of-the-road stuff that people can easily understand
after "studying on it."
Curtis spent the first few years of his life living in a home on a
mountainside overlooking Addie and then moved across the mountain behind
them to Ochre Hill, where he remained until he had finished school and went
to work. Now, at the age of 70, he has retired from the U.S. Department of
Energy at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and lives in Norris, Tenn.
"I wanted to do something special after retirement," he said, "and this is
it."
Indeed, it is special. It's classic for the time and place. He captures his
subjects exactly as I remember them while growing up in Addie.
Curtis will be in Sylva next Saturday autographing his book from 2 to 4 p.m.
at City Lights Bookstore, and it will be worth the trip out there to get
one.
Those who buy the book will learn aplenty about growing up here. About
things like wampuscats, fire-and-brimstone sermons, thumb-sucking mules,
draft dodgers, black snow and walking girls home from church. That was a
treat! Made you feel good all week.
"I am very proud of my heritage," Curtis said, "and I have always been
beholden to those wise, witty mountain men, many of whom could neither read
nor write. They gave me and many others all we needed to take the next step
on the highway of life, leading anywhere, in any direction."
The book's cover is neat. It is a picture of Curtis' lifelong friend, Jim
Sellers, sitting on his front porch, rocking, with Doubletop and Sugarloaf
mountains in the background. Sellers' pen-and-ink drawings illustrate the
book.
Many of the stories came from "loafers" who sat on a hard, wooden bench in
Ode Robinson's store in Willits, true mountaineers who could spin yarns all
day about occurrences on or near Black Rock, Sugarloaf, Doubletop, Rocky
Face, Dark Ridge, Waterrock Knob, Yellowface and Rough Butt Bald. They came
from sessions on back porches, camping, hunting and fishing trips, or from
fellows who stopped you in the road and told you stories.
These time-honored, traditional, storytelling men came from a way of life
that we will never see again, and I miss it. So does Curtis. You can tell
that by reading his book.
After studying on what he wrote, I enjoyed moving from one story to another.
All in all, he sums up the good of living together as good neighbors.
And to my Yankee friends, you may not know what he's writing about half the
time, but it'll do you good to learn it.
This is the opinion of Bob Terrell.