Travelers' Rest

Travelers’ Rest in the north Georgia mountains was built around 1815 and later became a stagecoach inn for travelers at the end of a day’s journey (usually about 20 miles). Today it is a favorite historic site where wife, Carole, and I love to go once or twice a year. It was here in the early days, we are told, that travelers slept together in one bed, sometimes as many as four. On our tour, the site superintendent and guide quipped that the best travelers could hope for was that their new bed buddies did not snore or have bugs, also that they kept their clothes on, or at least, did not hang their undergarments on the bed posts in their faces.

I commented to the guide that I remembered a movie about those times, that, sure enough, strangers jumped into bed together. Also, that I remembered seeing a movie of a time not too many years before I was born when patrons entering a cafe would stand by the table of their choice to wait patiently (or not) until its occupants finished their meal. Later the guide and I talked about what all that might have meant in those days about the stability of people's mental and emotional health in the light of today’s counseling issues (hang-ups, insecurities, and unmet needs).

Don Loy Whisnant/Journey Notes 8G07
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