Out of the Skillet … With an Excerpt!
Growing up in Southwest Texas I would hear the old folks talking about someone who was going through hard times. One bad thing would happen to the man or woman, and just when they thought they were through with it, another bad thing would happen.
The term the storytellers would use was "Out of the skillet and into the frying pan." Poor old soul, the old folks would say. She (or he) just can't seem to catch a lick of breath.
Well, when I was researching the Tennessee River route for the 1830s removal of the Cherokees, I discovered the source of this old saying.
I created Sarah and her husband's removal river trip from an amazing book I found that was written by Donald Davidson, The Tennessee; Vol. 1; The Old River: Frontier to Secession. Through it I was able to follow the treacherous route of the river below Chattanooga as it was before modern times. In Sarah's day that area of the Tennessee was called the River of the Cherokee, and Cherokee lore personified a river as an old man. (I, too, use that term when I capitalize "The River.")
This area once called the Narrows is now covered by waters backed up by Nickajack Dam built in the mid-1960s by the Tennessee Valley Authority; it replaced Hales Bar Dam built in 1913.
If you've ever seen the film Deliverance, you can get an idea of how rugged the rivers in the northern Georgia area once were. The four starring actors, Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, experience a terrifying canoe trip in this 1972 American thriller. The screenplay is by James Dickey, who adapted it from his own 1970 novel of the same name.
I was visualizing the riverscape in Deliverance as I wrote my chapter titled "The Suck, the Boiling Pot, the Skillet, & the Frying Pan." I placed my characters on a flotilla of flatboats and a little steamboat. All were mourning their loss of their Cherokee homes and none had ever faced such a journey.
Travel with me now to Chapter 26 of A Woman of Marked Character, Book One 1812-1848 and experience the terror with Sarah and her husband George, her friend Lettie, and boatloads of terrified Cherokees as they float the Narrows.
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Chapter 26
The Suck, the Boiling Pot, the Skillet, & the Frying Pan
Leaving Ross's Landing
June 2, 1837
Terrified, Sarah clung to George's promise of protection when he had asked for her hand. If ever she feared for her life, it was now as she clung to the side of the boat.
"Hold on, my dear!" he yelled clutching her shoulder, pressing her to him as the waters of the Tennessee raged and splashed over the gunwale. Late May rains were no asset in the raging torrent.
They sat on a low crate in the open front of a hewn-plank flatboat. Gray and weathered, the boat was fifteen feet wide by sixty feet long and manned by five foul-speaking boatmen. The head boatmen, the pilot, steered the boxlike craft from the stern, standing on the top of the wide cabin with a long rudder pole. Two pairs of men stood on either side of the cabin paddling long oars to steady the barge through the current, sweeping them back and forth, then lifting them as the current took control.
This morning as a bright sun blessed the day, the boats followed Sarah's parents' route, casting off from Ross's Landing along with the shallow-draft steamboat Guide. Over three hundred emigrants, rural people accustomed to walking and horseback, were crammed into the convoy of flatboats along with their possessions, plus boxes and barrels of supplies to last three weeks. Several smaller flatboats were lashed to each side of the steamer to avoid them drifting into the churning paddlewheel at the stern; the boats heaved and bumped into each other with the ebb and flow of the current despite desperate contortions and curses from the boatmen.
About eight miles downriver from Ross's Landing, Sarah and George's flotilla encountered Tumbling Shoals, a stretch of deep water with huge boulders strewn amid the swift current. The boats bumped and twisted with the rushing current as they entered the Narrows, where for centuries warriors stood on the cliffs above with bows and arrows, and picked off invading tribes in their canoes—and later white men.
Throughout this winding of the Upper Tennessee, early European boatmen had bestowed names to treacherous pools and rapids where the River of the Cherokee denied them a smooth run. Collectively, the thirty-mile stretch of obstructions was known as the Narrows; individually, the Suck, the Boiling Pot, and the Skillet. And just when the exhausted boatmen came out of the Skillet, they had to run the Frying Pan.
The boats wove through the shoals above where Suck Creek poured in. Aboard, Cherokee who knew ancient stories knew this series of pools as the Ufitiguhi, the Pot in the Water—the haunted whirlpools—and they froze in fear. Sarah had heard tales of how throughout generations these whirlpools grabbed and dragged canoes into their depths, swallowing warriors.
The Guide's captain slowed and yelled orders to the side flatboats to unlash and reposition. Now in pairs, each packed with fifty or more emigrants and several soldiers, the boats were released a set at a time with the steamboat to follow; on the open bow deck of one of the first pair, George held Sarah close as they raced into the Suck.
Here The River narrowed and channeled all his water into a ribbon 150 feet wide, moving fast as he prepared to reverse his path with a switchback to the south, swirling, whirling, sucking beneath his surface anything he chose: drifting logs, boats, or people.
Sarah raised her head and looked at the wall of stone in front of them. How wide was the hairpin curve? They were heading straight toward a wall edged with its jumble of fallen rocks. Afraid to see, she buried her head in George's chest, but she couldn't cover her ears, couldn't block the fierce roar of The River, block Lettie's screams and the boatmen's curses as they pumped and pushed with their oars.
Sarah felt the boats turn and squirm. They now rotated in the Boiling Pot's broad and deadly whirlpool. The boatmen paddled hard, urging the boats to face downstream. But the circling current grabbed and held them. With mad paddling and poling, they reached the edge of the pool where they entered the southbound flow. Weaving and wallowing as the current caught them again, they headed into the Skillet.
The boatmen made for a channel. If Sarah leaned a bit she could have reached out to touch the chiseled face of a jagged pillar as they sped by. She felt a bump, heard the splintering of wood and a boatman's curse as he pulled up his broken oar. Soldiers unlashed a spare from the cabin roof. Relieved that the boat wasn't breaking apart, Sarah took a deep breath as they entered a fast-moving pool.
She could see the Frying Pan with its wide expanse of projecting, ragged rocks. The boats shot through sideways. The boatmen cheered while horrified Cherokees heaved great sighs of relief as the boats wallowed their way to a sandy bank; grounded, they awaited whoever came through next.
"We made it, my dear. We made it." George wrapped her in his arms and she clung to him, her body shaking. She felt his chest tremble as he hugged her.
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Whew! We can breathe easier now that they are through the Narrows. But more tragedy awaits the removal party when they approach Decatur, Alabama.
Note the sentence above: "... individually, the Suck, the Boiling Pot, and the Skillet. And just when the exhausted boatmen came out of the Skillet, they had to run the Frying Pan."
That's how I learned the basis for that old saying from my childhood.
An Alfred Waud engraving showing persons traveling down a river by flatboat in the late 1800s.
My much-marked-up copy of the amazing book on the history of the Tennessee River.
Here for sale on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Tennessee-Frontier-Secession-Southern-Classics/dp/1879941015