Uncle Steve still is known to carry up a tourist’s bag occasionally, and pocket the tip. He doesn’t do it for a joke either. When the tourists later find out who he is, they’re rattled about having tipped him. It doesn’t rattle Uncle Steve though.
They tell how he got appendicitis a few years ago and went to Knoxville to be operated on. At the hospital, they took down his financial history before operating. They asked what he did, and he said he worked for an old widow woman over at Gatlinburg who ran a boarding house. Didn’t get nothin’ for it, just worked for his room and board. A price, in accordance, was agreed upon for the operation.
But when Uncle Steve began to convalesce, the doctors began to be flabbergasted. For here came a stream of the most astounding visitors to see this old man—Knoxville hotel managers, bank presidents, big politicians, land owners, Government officials. The doctors began to smell a mouse, and then they really investigated. But it was too late. He had already paid his bill.
Often older people bore you to death. But when we’re downstairs we kind of keep peeking around hoping Uncle Steve will come and sit with us. And very often he does.
WENT TO SEE ANDY HUFF
One night he and I went up to see Andy Huff, who owns the big Mountain View Hotel. They are direct competitors, but they’re old friends too. We sat and gabbed with Andy for an hour or so, and then Andy drove us home.
“How you standing the cooking down at the Riverside?” Andy Huff asked me.
“Well the cooking’s all right,” I said, “but the owner kind of gets on my nerves.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Andy Huff. “When you get all you can stand of it, check out and come down to my hotel.”
So I said I guess we’d stick it out this time, but I’d stay with Andy the next trip.