$13 will get you a ride to the top of Boyne
mountain on the Gatlinbrug Skylift. Virtually unchanged since it opened in
1953, a single bar holds you in a yellow two-person bench seat hanging from a
steel cable that pulls you up. So our feet dangled 20 feet from ground, stream,
then mountainside before we realized that flip-flops are not ideal footwear. On
the way up we passed a teenager mimicking a girlfriend underarm with kisses. I
told him to quit screwing around when he replied,
“What,
can’t I have a pretend girlfriend? Yeah, I’ll remember you, seat 38, when you
get back down!”
He
weighed about as much as my left leg. But it would be classic to say that I got
in a fight at the Skylift.
Just before the top a mannequine hillbilly
instructed us to smile for the camera so you can buy the shot at the top. At
the top, from the bench seat, we were greeted by an attendant whom asks you
politely to jeticent the bench seat to the gift shop on the right. Loaded with
trinkets, souvenirs, pictures, tactical knives and weaponry, one can purchase a
take-home memoir of the Skylift for the pocket for the ride back down.
The Gatlinburg city lights burned energy-saving
orange just as any city would from 300 feet.
When our feet hit the ground with the help of
our attendant, we felt the evening spring air and the Skylift worth the money
and, unfortunately at $13 a ticket, someone else did too. When we left the gate
I looked for the brat kid but he was nowhere to be found, except maybe up the
street at the arcade, or the hill billy golf, or the air-soft pellet gun store,
or irritating their parents. Gatlinburg closes at 9:00 P.M.
