SECRETS OF THE ROURKE FAMILY RETREAT
Jerry
A lot of people have been asking whether or not the Retreat located inside a mountain that was critical to the survival of the Rourkes and their extended family was based on reality or just a figment of our imagination. This home away from home served them well for quite a number of years – quite a number.
Shortly after moving to Georgia in the late 70s, we started exploring the beautiful countryside. We’d grab the kids, fill up the tank of our Ford LTD and take off for the day. One of these excursions took us into higher elevations and towns like Helen and Cleveland. Cleveland, by the way, is home to the original Cabbage Patch dolls where if you’re there at just the right time you may be able to witness a birth. As we drove, a very distinctive mountain loomed off to our right. It wasn’t the tallest mountain we’d seen in Georgia but, it was just different. For those of you who remember the beginnings of the SURVIVALIST series, you might be interested in knowing that in order to get close to its base, the last paved road before you hit gravel is named Chambers Road. It just called out to us as the perfect place for the location of the Retreat.
Mount Yonah or Yonah Bald is in the Chattahoochee National Forest and around 1960 was used by the Army for basic mountaineering training and is still used for that purpose. Later in the 1970s the mountain was also used by civilian rock climbers.
Yonah is the Cherokee word for bear. This area is well associated with the Cherokee. One of the stories associated with Yonah deals with Nacoochee, a Cherokee girl and Sautee, a Chickasaw warrior. The Cherokees were not at all happy with this union and warriors pushed Sautee off the mountaintop to his death. His lover, Nacoochee threw herself from the same cliff to be with him forever.
In the early 1500s the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto searched the caves of Yonah for a lost Indian treasure, de Soto never found the treasure but in 1834 the village he and his men inhabited during the search was discovered by gold miners. To his credit though, de Soto did discover the Mississippi River.
In our story, THE SURVIVALIST, John Thomas Rourke actually bought the mountain and spent years renovating and supplying his hideaway. He drew upon his knowledge of weights and counterbalances as used by the Egyptians to secure his home and equipped it with all the comforts and supplies anyone could have thought of. With hydro-electric power and generators, every type of appliance was available as well as television, stereo and in his day, VCR devices. Well stocked freezers were filled with not only food but also Rourke’s supply of cigars and ammunition and reloading equipment were in abundance. Rourke had included a huge library of everything from the classics to reference materials to children’s books.
One thing most readers miss when they’ve talked to us about the Retreat is the fact that wherever a character traveled from point A to point B and there were stairs to take, for example, if they were going to a bedroom or the kitchen, we always had the same number of stairs throughout. Check out SURVIVALIST NUMBER 3: The Quest. We did the same thing in some other books but it started with the Retreat. Writers do not remember everything and it pays to plan ahead -- even with stairs.
Reader Comments (1)
Brilliant! I had pictured the Retreat in detail, great to read your post!