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A step in the right direction
One day last week Ralph Hooper was busy planting grass in a field across from his house.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be especially interesting. Since Ralph retired from teaching fourth and fifth grade at the old Camp Lab School a dozen or so years ago, he’s usually busy gardening or mowing. What makes this particular landscaping effort noteworthy is its “undevelopment” aspect. In a summer when Jackson County’s landscape is changing exponentially, mostly due to second-home construction, Ralph is transforming a rundown trailer park into a hay field.
“I’ve wanted to do this for 35 years,” he said Monday.
While he had the desire, he had to wait a long time for the opportunity.
The 5 acres in question was part of Ralph’s family’s land until his great-grandfather Andrew Hooper traded it away to Edley Taylor for a milk cow. The parcel, which changed hands several times before Ralph bought it back last September, was turned into a trailer park around 1961. At the time of the cow swap, no one thought the acreage was worth much because it was swampy.
That all changed when one of the owner’s family members got himself appointed to the county road commission. According to Ralph, a small branch was re-routed and channeled to dry out the field. A few years later, the trailers were added.
“It wasn’t so bad at first because it was well kept up,” Ralph said.
He had just about given up hope of buying the parcel back when he saw the owner over there in May 2005.
“I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, so I went over and asked him one more time if he’d consider selling it.”
That gamble paid off, and Ralph was able to close the deal last September and begin encouraging the 10 remaining tenants to leave. Once they had all moved their trailers, Ralph was able to proceed with removing utility lines. Regaining the property occurred at just the right time, he said, because contractors last winter were desperate for places to put the dirt they were hauling away from the Lowe’s site in Lovesfield, which allowed him to re-grade and level the former trailer park.
“I got 180 loads of dirt at a bargain price – dirt cheap, you could say,” Ralph said.
As he told me about his current project, Ralph shared a lot of local history – he even has the original deed for where his great-grandfather acquired the property in 1841 after the Cherokees were forced from the area.
Of my three children, who are all Jackson County natives, only Elizabeth is lucky enough to have had Ralph Hooper as a teacher.
Fortunately for the rest of us, and even as a gated community is being carved out of the mountains across Cullowhee Creek from his new hay field, Ralph is still around to point us in the right direction.
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