The Tri-County Journal
& Chattahoochee Chronicle
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   Like father, like son is a phrase which means, I think, that what a father does a child is apt to emulate. Only partly did I follow my dad, Neal Justus. His love was farming, just like his father, Papa Jesse, and he remained on the old home place all his life. Many years ago, while digging Irish potatoes with Dad, I asked him why he did not go north for a better living. He stopped digging, straightened his back, and looked at the glorious fall foliage covering the broad face of Big Face Mountain.
   "Folks from Florida and Atlanta drive up here in droves to look at these colors," Dad said. "They build summer houses on the lakes. I enjoy living here year round and I remained here because I love this place." In fact Dad hardly ever left Rabun County if he could help it. His roots went back to 1830, give or take a year or two, when his Great-great-grandparents, William and Sarah Justice, rode a wagon down from North Carolina to settle in the divide between Wolffork and Germany Valleys. Generations of family members lived here, their sweat soaking into the soil as they worked hard for a living, and their bodies lay in the valley graveyards after their passing.
   Dad went to Florida and once back, he said, "I know now why people down there come up here. They want to get away from the flat, year round sameness of the land down there." He used to joke that if he had to drive as far south as Toccoa he felt that he was in South Georgia.
   Thus Dad was a stay at home guy, but I was the opposite. I left home because I saw no future there for jobs, and traditional farming was ending. Children were filling the valley, taking small chunks of the old homestead. I left home and in an Air Force career I saw a large part of the world. Since I was intensely interested in history, geography, and the natural world I enjoyed seeing many wondrous and amazing things: people of many races and cultures, mountain ranges and oceans, jungles, islands, great cities and quaint villages.
   My mother, Durell, got me interested in reading by the time I started in the one-room school in Germany Valley. She and I read many books in the Rabun County Library, most of them via the Bookmobile that made regular deliveries by our house. Thus I read of the Great American West, cowboys, Indians, wagon trains, and gunfights. I learned of whales and fishes in the oceans and Eskimos who lived in ice houses and speared seals through the winter ice. I read of ancient wars and modern world wars.
   When I began to do my share of exploring the American West I was familiar with many aspects due to reading true stories and Zane Grey's books. I sometimes thought I had been there before. But nothing can show in a book how it feels to stand on a high peak in the Rocky Mountains and survey the roof of the world while a cold wind strokes icy fingers across your face. Or how it feels to stand in a snow-melt stream and fight supercharged trout. Or lie in a tent at night during a heavy snowstorm and hear elk bulls bugling and coyotes howling.
   Dad remained at home and worked at jobs to support his love for farming. He was a great fox hunter who trained fine Walker hounds to be the best fox dogs in the business. He also loved to hunt squirrels and I learned to hunt them by tagging at his heels. He liked to hunt

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