Remembering the Old Mill

It's hard to remember my first glimpse of Cohutta Springs (the old community). My father and his people were from Murray County. About once a year or so, around Thanksgiving, we would travel into Murray on our way up to Conasauga, Tennessee, to see Dad's uncle and cousins. They lived in an old unpainted house ~ one of those picturesque primitive cabins, complete with outhouses, that people like to recall in their travels through the South. On our way up there, Dad would stop by the old house where his grandfather used to live. It was in the old Adair community and is falling down now. We also went to see the old Coffey grist mill in the Cohutta Springs community. We had to cross a little flat bridge that was made of thick, wooden beams. The outside of the mill was shingled in thick wooden slabs that I thought very pretty. The bridge was still strong and the mill seemed like it would be there forever, I thought. A few years later, we visited it for the last time. It was dilapidated by then, and boards were already starting to fall into the creek.