1 Frank
Frank Tattrie is unique among the unique.
Frank is a wiry, long haired, bearded, six four hillbilly who always wears a Red Fox hat. You know the kind where he just skinned and cured the fox with all its parts bunched it up and put it on his head, He added two black beady glass eyes that stare at you. You don't know weather to look into Frank's eyes or the Fox. Don't mistake me. This is not a scraggly piece of rat fur but an incredibly lush and thick winter coat Red Fox in pristine shape.
Frank knows everybody.
More important, everybody knows Frank.
Like the joke about the Pope giving audience in Vatican Square.
Frank has a private audience with the Pope and he takes him out on the balcony to see the great crowd of people gathered for the blessing.
A tourist turns to someone in the crowd and asks; "Who's that guy up there with Frank."
Frank is a mountain man's Mountain Man, a throwback to the real thing.
Frank has a part Cherokee wife who looks 100%. Black silky hair to her waist with all the features and skin except for her piercing green eyes. She also is drop-dead-gorgeous, sexy and totally devoted to Frank. He named her Red Fox for obvious reasons. Red Fox is also very smart, cleaver and self assured. She dresses 'native' with skin tight buckskins. She is always well endowed with her own Red Fox draped in the most provocative and enticing ways. A walking advertisement for Frank's business ... Furs and skins.
Frank had just turned 21 and was out trapping in the woods in the height of winter with snow having fallen to record depth. Prime pelt time. He met Red Fox. She was 18 and wasn't Red Fox yet but she had been poaching for a deer. She had just put an arrow through the brain of a young buck. He dropped in his tracks. No, she didn't do it with a primitive Indian Bow and Arrow. She did it with a state-of-the-art Fred Bear Compound bow and a silent feather carbon fiber arrow. She's a deadly shot from better than a hundred yards and didn't want to attract attention by firing a gun. One second the buck is trying to scratch out a meager lunch, the next second a pile of venison chops and roasts in the snow.
They instantly fell in love and Frank took her (and the buck) back to his cabin. She never left. They call it "taking a wife".
Frank had just finished a magnificent Red Fox spread for his bed. In his log cabin in the winter this is a very practical item to have, him being a trapper. That night with Red Fox, hence part of the reason for her name, Frank discovered a whole other reason to have his Red Fox spread. He and Red Fox made love with the most incredible passion he had ever experienced. She, on the other hand, was a virgin. She was also instantly pregnant.
"Frank, if we find making love in the furs so incredible maybe others would too?"
So it was, that Frank's ... and Red Fox's business became much more than trapping and skinning. It was slow at first and they made a lot of other fur items like you see on some of the Trapper type fur sites but the demand slowly grew by word of mouth until they were making a living from mostly the fur spreads for lovers.
Frank was a born trapper. His biggest problem from early on was not enough pelts for the demand. Everybody already knew his father Willard who got too tired and old for trapping. Frank was his youngest son who actually followed in his footsteps. Fortunately Frank went everywhere with his father as a boy so Frank knew everybody too. Frank never had a problem meeting demand and all his suppliers knew from the beginning that Frank was demanding of the best. They bartered and everyone knew Frank always made good on a deal. Whatever Frank needed he got, no questions asked. Good friends do that for one another.
He and Red Fox were always going to Mountain Man events, Black Powder matches, Pow Wows, State Fairs, Archery Meets, Fur Trade Events and the Bluegrass Music Festivals all over the country. They were always meeting new folks and making new friends. They met common folks, famous C&W singers, politicians (they're everywhere) and many others that might seem most improbable. It is at these events where they do most of their bartering and trading.
2 Roger meets Frank
One of the rare days that Frank was in town getting provisions he ran into the most improbable person that Frank would get to know and call friend. A Tall guy looking like a young JFK, dressed in a suite and tie that cost more than Frank makes in a year comes up to him and ... "Could you tell me some things about this area of the country? I'll buy you lunch."
Frank looks at him like he must have either escaped from a mental ward or is really lost. The latter turned out to be true.
"OK dude, you buy I'll talk."
Roger Wiley is a young Madison Ave. advertising and marketing executive .. yes NYC. First time in his life he has been more than 50 miles from NYC, not counting the Hampton's, Martha's Vineyard and Long Island. They are part of NYC. 'Old Family' of course. Frank's family has only been here running around in the Carolina/Tennessee woods since the early 1700's.
Frank tells him a bit about family history, oral southern hillbilly style story telling. Roger is both fascinated and baffled. Mostly by the time lines. This type of story telling could give a rip about time lines. It's all about who did what, who's related to who regardless of when and how they did it .. in no particular order. That is up to the story teller making his point. Rogers mind is spinning .. and fascinated .. so he keeps urging Frank on.
Roger finally asks Frank, now that he is catching the drift of 'what' to ask .. "Frank what do you like to do?" the magic door opening question.
"I'm a trapper and I make fur things."
Roger is floored. This hick is a furrier ... of sorts? "What sort of things?"
"Bed spreads mostly now."
"There is a market for that?" Rogers area of understanding. You can see the drool.
"Sur' 'nuf. Pays tha Bills."
"Could I see some of these?" Frank can't say no. Southern hospitality time.
"Ya might git y'ur fancy duds a bit dirty, but git in my truck and take a ride."
Roger had never had an experience even close to this and all to go see some fur spreads he could probably see in "the fur district" any day of the week. Roger was about to experience "The Twilight Zone." He would call it that for years to come.
They quickly left paved roads and were soon deep into the Appalachian hardwoods bouncing on narrow dirt roads up and over the hills. Frank would stop now and then, reach out the truck window and pull on a nearly invisible chord a few times. Drive some more, stop and so on. "Why are you doing that Frank?"- as he was pulling a chord. "You wouldn't wa'na git shot fer trespassin' would ya?"
Finally getting to a small bridge over a stream where the woods thinned out a bit to a small meadow, Roger sees one of the most memorable sights of his life. He's unknowing he'll return may times.
A modest sized log cabin that looks ancient (it is) but in wonderful and very livable condition with a new metal roof, the expensive kind. A 'newer' addition in rough board construction twice as big as the log portion with bigger windows. A couple of very small cabins of similar construction scattered about on the slope and in the woods and a small barn. Several small gardens with different crops, some with only flowers. Some fruit trees and berry bushes all over the place. A few small pens with animals, chickens, goats and a few pigs. A truly bucolic mountain home.
Then rack after rack of skins drying in the sun. All kinds of skins, furs, deer hides, goat and some unknown to Roger. City boy remember.
They get out of the truck and walk to the house. Hounds are instantly all around them, smelling up the stranger. Cats peering from their places. Cats have their places and none dare disturb, mostly on the broad and 'comfortable' porch where Frank and Red Fox's domain can be viewed, nearly in its entirety, and that's pretty much land.
There are three .. maybe four kids running around the buildings, pens and through the woods. They pay no attention to the stranger .. except for an older girl standing partly behind the trunk of a very large tree up a slope behind the cabin, intently staring down at Roger like she could read his mind. He was momentarily caught, like in a movie vignette. She is tall and lanky, the breeze lightly blowing through her sun bleached sandy blond bush of hair, barefoot in a loose fitting cotton dress.
Red Fox comes out of the house to greet them. Rogers jaw drops .. he apologizes for gawking. He was expecting a scrawny female version of Frank. She is in a form fitting buckskin dress splendidly and casually draped in furs of all sorts. Roger is instantly flustered and uncertain. All his stereotyping blown out the window.
