25 Years Southern Highroads Preacher

Dony K. Donev, D.Min., Th.D.

Now, let me spin you a tale of my first pilgrimage to Cleveland, a place nestled in the crook of the Appalachians, where the hills whisper secrets older than Methuselah’s beard. It was New Year’s Eve, 1995, when I rolled in from the wind-whipped streets of Chicago. Cold? Why, it was colder than a banker’s heart in a foreclosure! Snow? Piles of it, heaped high as a politician’s promises! Blizzardy? I reckon the Almighty Himself was shaking out His winter quilt, burying the world in flakes as big as goose feathers. I stepped out of my baby blue Grand National, shivering like a plucked chicken.

My second jaunt to these parts came in the golden autumn of 1997, when I took to the Southern Highroads Trail. If you ain’t never seen that ribbon of road in the fall, with the leaves blazing like a painter’s fever dream – reds and golds fit to shame a king’s ransom – well, you’ve missed a slice of Heaven. I’ve driven that trail so often since, my automobiles could nearabout navigate it blindfolded. There was that old Buick, a candy-apple-red 1.6 CRX, spry as a jackrabbit; a pair of Volvos, sturdy as Swedish hymns; and a Dodge that grumbled but never quit. Why, those machines know every twist and turn of that road better than I know my own signature.

It all began in earnest during my first semester at seminary, a trial that’d make Hercules himself throw up his hands and take to whittling. Picture this: a load of 26 credit hours, 13 papers to scribble (each one a literary ordeal to rival the labors of Job), 13 Sunday morning preaching appointments down in South Carolina, and a mere 12 weeks to wrestle it all into submission.

Some Sundays, I’d stand in a pulpit near Clemson, preaching three times till my throat was raw as a buzzard’s breakfast, then climb into my car and tear back up Southern Highroads that very night, the stars winking like they knew my hurry. Other times, I’d be at revivals, driving down every day and back again after we’d lingered at the altar well until midnight. The Southern Highroads became my confessor, my companion, and my taskmaster, and my trusty steeds.

My cars learned its ways by heart, carrying me through the dark. A winding path that stretched like a ribbon tossed across the hills of Appalachia, a spirited jaunt, kicking off in Clemson and sashaying through Seneca and Westminster, before hightailing it straight to Clayton, where the mountain hills stand like old philosophers. Back in those days, that South Carolina stretch was a speedster’s dream and my little CRX Si loved them curves like a fiddler loves a reel!

Nowadays, they’ve gone and fancied up the road with new bridges and turns, especially near the new resorts and golf clubs, where folks swing clubs at little white balls and call it a good time. But back then, it was wilder than the Wild West, full of twists that’d test a mountain goat’s nerve. My CRX danced through those bends leading up to Clayton in 30 minutes or less with the glee of a schoolboy let loose on a summer’s day. Now, I ain’t saying I broke all the laws of man and nature on the Southern Highroads, but I reckon that road and I had an understanding. It whispered, “Go on, son, give it a whirl!”

After crossing downtown Clayton, I pressed the pedal hard toward Hiwassee. Thirty minutes, maybe less. The road was much clearer back then. The three 10-mile-an-hour curves past the scenic view were much gentler then. Beyond them, the passing lane opened up, and the car held steady at 80, sometimes 85, for a good stretch. I once dreamed of a great white cross on the hill at Clayton’s edge. Now it stands there atop the hill, shining like a lighthouse in the night.

Hiwassee meant something to me later, not then. In the ‘90s, I passed through fast, aiming for Young Harris and Blairsville. Murphy was a place I circled around on purpose. Decades on, I learned Young Harris was Methodist, married to a Mormon woman. Back then, they were just one red light towns, brief midnight shadows on the dark no moon road, gone quick as I drove, weary from preaching all day. My 75-mile half-way point there was a green painted gas station that is now long gone. An RV dealership sits there now or maybe a repair shop.

The night always hung-over Blairsville like a cheap suit, wrinkled and heavy with the promise of trouble. I swung my car right at the fork where First Baptist now sits always bypassing Murphy. Back then, that corner was just a pumps-and-gravel affair, the kind of place where a man could fill his tank and his thoughts with nothing but the hum of crickets.

My next destination was the Big Bear gas station at Decker’s Market, a lonely outpost where the road met nothing but shadows. From there to Ducktown’s Piggly Wiggly, via the twisting snake of Wolf Creek, it is exactly 14 miles as the crow flies. This old preacher, with a Bible in one hand and a lead foot on the gas, could carve that stretch in ten minutes flat.

Time’s a thief with a mean streak. The Piggly Wiggly’s gone now, selling nothing but broken dreams instead of canned beans and green okra. Ducktown’s got itself a red light right at the front of the store, blinking red and waiting for something that ain’t coming back.

The Southern Highroads climbed and fell, a hard stretch of asphalt past the Whitewater Center, now just ashes and memory. Then it dived sharp into the Ocoee. I would be half asleep by then, eyes heavy, but my hands knew the wheel. Each turn came clear -left, right, left again – with a rhythm burning into me like an old saint’s prayer. The road didn’t care about the years or the sermons I’d preached. It just stretched on, leading me through the ghosts of shadows laying over the white waters of the Ocoee and toward a horizon that always seemed one turn away. Until the last turn by the dam and into the four-lane leading into ol’ Cleveland.

Now, I ain’t no hero, mind you, just a fellow, preaching His Word and rattling along them Southern Highroads like a pilgrim with a cause for over a quarter century now. But if you ever find yourself in Cleveland on a snowy New Year’s Eve or a crisp fall day, take a drive on that Southern Highroads trail. And you’ll see why my cars, bless their iron souls, never forgot the way.