This what the family cabin looked like when I arrived in 1972.
"How blessed are you to be from Ripshin???"
The post from Jan Mobley, one of my Facebook friends, made me stop and think.
I'm not really from Ripshin Mountain, located between Hampton and Roan Mountain, Tennessee; in fact, the place we call "Ripshin" is actually our family cabin on Ripshin Lake, which is located off Chestnut Ridge.
I first became acquainted with Ripshin about a year after my mother met Bill Thompson, who was a native of Johnson City, Tennessee, and later became my "Pa." His father, Harold Thompson, was a charter member of Ripshin Lake Corp., a syndicate of East Tennessee business people who bought the lake property created by Robert Nelson Campbell. Today, there are 32 property owners who form the association.
My mother met Bill through his sister, Julia Winter, who was dating a friend of ours named Phil Prater while we were living in Richmond, Virginia. Her first date was the night my sister's first child, Johnny, was born. In September 1972, we took the bus to Roanoke and Bill drove there from Johnson City to meet us. We then journeyed to the A-frame cabin at Ripshin. There was no phone and no television. You would think it would be torture for a 16-year-old used to the big city, but I found it peaceful. While living in Richmond, I loved being in the woods with my grandfather and Ripshin seemed the perfect place.
On that first visit to Ripshin in 1972, we piled into Pa's Jeep and toured the mountains, including the old Tweetsie railroad. During that trip, we found a kitten who had been stepped on by a horse. We picked it up and drove into Elizabethton to pick up some medicine to doctor up the poor feline. I sat in the car, waiting, and thought, "I could never live in this two-bit town."
Less than four months later, I began attending Elizabethton High School and Ripshin became the place where I would take close friends and girls I wanted to impress.
It became home for a brief time to me and my first wife, Cindy. We were even married atop Chestnut Ridge at Peters Cemetery. It was later my home for a brief time the spring after Cindy and I split up, her taking Layla with her.
It was the place where I took a young woman named Donna Perrenoud. She was the last one I took there, having quickly discovered she was the only woman I could ever truly love.
But Ripshin is far more than the cabin, and the lake.
It was -- and is -- a life-changing place for me.
It was the place where, in 1976, I sat across from my Pa (Bill) and he asked, "Buzzy, what are you going to do with your life?"
I was on the temporary disabled retirement list after suffering massive trauma to my left foot as a result of an accident on the USS Independence. After having struggled with alcohol and drugs and trying to stay in the Navy, the injury was putting me out of service.
"I don't know, Pa. Maybe I'll go to the vocational center and learn printing," I said.
"Why don't you go to ETSU with me on Monday and just talk to them," he asked.
So, I did.
And when I left, I was signed, sealed and delivered for classes, eventually earning a degree in Mass Communications and a career in journalism.
It was life-changing; it was only due to Pa believing in me; and it began at Ripshin.
Ripshin is more than a cabin and a lake. It is a place where transformation can, and does, happen.
And Ripshin eventually became the place where I gave my life to Christ, on Easter Sunday 1985.
It has been the launching place of a thousand beautiful memories and Holy Spirit-induced moments, and it is my prayer that it will be the launching place of more than a thousand more.
I was reading recently that Celtic Christians talk of places where the natural world meets the realm of the supernatural, where earth and heaven meet, a place in time and space where you know you have had an encounter with God. They call these "thin places."
Ripshin is one of those thin places.
It was the place where I took a young woman named Donna Perrenoud. She was the last one I took there, having quickly discovered she was the only woman I could ever truly love.
But Ripshin is far more than the cabin, and the lake.
It was -- and is -- a life-changing place for me.
It was the place where, in 1976, I sat across from my Pa (Bill) and he asked, "Buzzy, what are you going to do with your life?"
I was on the temporary disabled retirement list after suffering massive trauma to my left foot as a result of an accident on the USS Independence. After having struggled with alcohol and drugs and trying to stay in the Navy, the injury was putting me out of service.
"I don't know, Pa. Maybe I'll go to the vocational center and learn printing," I said.
"Why don't you go to ETSU with me on Monday and just talk to them," he asked.
So, I did.
And when I left, I was signed, sealed and delivered for classes, eventually earning a degree in Mass Communications and a career in journalism.
It was life-changing; it was only due to Pa believing in me; and it began at Ripshin.
And Ripshin eventually became the place where I gave my life to Christ, on Easter Sunday 1985.
It has been the launching place of a thousand beautiful memories and Holy Spirit-induced moments, and it is my prayer that it will be the launching place of more than a thousand more.
I was reading recently that Celtic Christians talk of places where the natural world meets the realm of the supernatural, where earth and heaven meet, a place in time and space where you know you have had an encounter with God. They call these "thin places."
Ripshin is one of those thin places.
This is from a 2014 blog post on Gathering Wool: Tales of a Black Sheep Living in Post-Christian America, my personal blog. This version includes some updates and corrections, which I have now made in the original post.
Copyright 2014, Frank J. Trexler III. All rights reserved.
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