P., who can neither hear nor speak but has been a fine traditional chair maker.
Now they live with their wives in houses about a quarter-mile apart on the road their mother, Leatha, a spry, diminutive woman in her eighties, still able to sing old-fashioned gospel songs and songs of her own composition to her rolling piano accompaniment, stays in a third house between them with another of her sons, L. Most of the time they survived on subsistence farming, keeping bees, and doing work for others in Towns County-clearing land, construction, work rougher ‘n anyone else would do. He and his brother Vaughn have lived on the family land all their lives, with the exception of Lawrence’s few stints doing industrial work in the North and Vaughn’s hitch in the navy during World War II. Lawrence Eller also calls it the garden spot of the world, and there is far more affection than irony in his tone as he considers the creek-bottom, ridge, and mountain country where his family has lived, labored, and made music for over four generations. The place is known as Upper Hightower, because Hightower Creek arises here, and the mountain called Hightower Bald dominates the landscape. Pavement gives way to dirt as you head up into increasingly beautiful country. Goin’ to Georgia THE ELLER FAMILY AND ROSS BROWN: MUSIC MAKERS OF TOWNS COUNTYĪ SMALL ROAD turns north off the highway between Hiawassee and Clayton in the Blue Ridge Mountains at the northern most edge of Georgia.
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