Riding With the Popcorn Gang

For some reason, the changing of the seasons brings retrospective feelings for me every year. I tell everyone who listens that my favorite time of year is autumn. That’s not true. It’s actually the weeks leading up to autumn. The older I get, the more this time becomes a period for reflection on my life. I have a special fondness for the camping trips and dirt biking during late summer and autumn. I simply love motorcycling during the transition period between summer and autumn.

 My buddy Matt bought a 2009 Suzuki V-Strom a few years ago. Maybe it was a midlife crisis, but for whatever reason, he got a case Motorcycle Fever. I’m sure his wife is pleased… After looking at virtually every bike from Harley 883s to BMW GS 1200s, I finally sold him on the V-Strom. He had it for several months and we ventured out for several day rides. He later sold the Suzuki and replaced it with a Harley, but it was fun while it lasted.

Matt and I grew up in Rabun County, Georgia and rode dirt bikes together sometimes as kids. I believe he had an XR100 and I had a Honda XL75, followed by a DR125, then a couple of ATVs. We rode all over the west end of Rabun County.  Although I was a town kid, Daddy took me to an area called Popcorn almost every weekend, where he spent most of the day panning and sluicing for gold in Dickerson Branch. Later, we would buy a couple of acres just over the mountain at a place called Plum Orchard. We had a tiny camper that we parked on the property and spent weekends there for over ten years before selling the property during the late 1990s. Daddy began spending time over on Dickerson Branch panning for gold in recent years, and with Matt getting back into motorcycling, I find myself thinking of all the weekends I spent on Popcorn and Plum Orchard riding motorcycles, camping and fishing with my friends.

At the risk of sounding like my parents, things were safer and simpler back then. Daddy was usually busy building houses or boathouses on Lake Burton, and during the summers he would often unload me and my dirt bike with a gas can and I would head off for the day, usually checking in around lunchtime to let him know that I was still in one piece. I would meet up with some of my buddies, Alan or my best friend Billy most of the time, and we would explore the countless miles of dirt roads and trails in the Persimmon and Popcorn areas of Rabun County. We were generally respectful, used good sense while riding, and almost never got hurt while on the bikes. I only ended up at the doctor’s office twice in all of the years that we rode, and one of the ER trips was from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Looking back, we would all have been arrested if we even attempted to ride dirt bikes in those areas today. When I get nostalgic, I either ride some of the old logging roads in the area on my mountain bike or hike them with Daddy. Most of us were not “rich” kids by any stretch of the imagination, and our bikes proved it. Alan probably had the most eclectic batch of bikes through the years. His dad Joe always managed to find some obscure, quirky bike for Alan to ride. Several of his bikes were Honda Trail 90s and 110s. Neat bikes, but even when we were 12 or 13 years old, Alan was like 6’2” and 200 pounds.  He also had an old Kawasaki KE175, but his Trail 110s were great. When a tree had fallen across the trail behind us while we were riding one day, he simply picked up the bike and sat it across the tree on the return trip while the rest of us had to figure a way around the deadfall.

Many summers and weekends were spent on Popcorn and Persimmon on the bikes, and much money was spent on snacks and gas at the two old community stores on Persimmon. When I was growing up and riding over there during the 1980s, there was a store at each end of a straightaway on Persimmon Road. On the left at the turnoff for Plum Orchard Road was Welborn’s Store, or “Mae’s” as us kids referred to it. Mae Welborn was a wonderful old lady who ran the store with her sister, and both women always had kind words for us annoying kids on our loud dirt bikes. One quarter of a mile farther down the road was Carlos Nichols’ store, which by the time I was terrorizing the area was run by Mrs. Etrubia Hooper. She was one of the neatest folks I ever met, often cutting up with us and telling stories about the old days. Daddy has told me stories of Mrs. Hooper buying new Ford cars with alarming frequency down at Duvall Ford and hot-rodding around in them back in the late 1950s and early sixties. She might have even hauled a little liquor in them, according to Daddy. As Persimmon and Popcorn were always notorious for the moonshiners in the communities, there is likely some truth to the allegation.

By the late 1980s, my friends and I had all acquired the dream of every teenager… Drivers Licenses. The ability to go wherever we wanted while pretending to be adults. My dirt bikes quickly gave way to a 1967 Camaro. By that time, local law enforcement officers had finally cracked down on us kids riding around all day on the unpaved county roads and forest service roads on our dirt bikes. We didn’t really notice at the time, as we were busy chasing girls, cruising town and illegally drag racing anyway.

Looking back on a period of time more than half a lifetime ago, my childhood coincided with the end of an era in Rabun County. Although parents nowadays will likely cringe at the thought of having their kid running around all day in the woods completely unsupervised on a dirt bike, none of us was ever seriously injured, and we gained a large sense of trust and responsibility that children of later generations seem to not have.

Both stores on Persimmon from my childhood are long gone now, having closed down about the same time I started driving, and Mae and Etrubia passed away many years ago, their untold stories dying with them. The Popcorn Gang has also suffered tragedies. Alan and Billy died almost exactly a year apart, neither having reached their fortieth birthdays. They won’t be forgotten during my lifetime. Every time I ramble the backroads and trails on Popcorn, I think of the great days we had, the campouts, the hunting and fishing trips with them. Guys, thanks for the memories. You are missed.