There is an unmistakable aura of mystery and romance associated with vagabonds, people with no fixed address who are always on the move. Right or wrong, the average mind tends to associate transient strangers with a sense of danger. Remember The Juggler who was expected to overnight in the jail (for protect the good folk of Benton) and Aunt Blanche with a flat tire on 411 locking the car doors against his offers of assistance (when he was PROBABLY just a Good Samaritan).

 The Goat Man, referred to in my two previous columns, was a bizarre slow-moving show who seemed to represent no danger to anyone, and in a less technological time than the one in which we live, he was a comfortable attraction whenever he and his goat "friends" appeared. He is an example of the vagabond life style at its best in American Culture, rather like the legendary Johnny Appleseed who sowed apple seeds throughout the mid-west in pioneer days.

 From her younger days, Linda Gamble of Benton has pleasant recollections of The Goat Man's encampments under the Highway 64 overpass at Ocoee; I, too, can remember seeing him there. One summer, she wrote, he had a three-legged goat which rode in his wagon. A special memory she shared with me is his sitting on her family's front porch telling stories of his travels, after her mother had fed him a big meal of chicken and dumplings and blackberry pie! I'm sure he--after such a home-cooked repast--had pleasant memories of the occasion also!

 An octogenarian reader in Charleston, SC (I am amazed how some of these columns get around!), who grew up in South Pittsburg, TN, reports that at an early age she was so enchanted by the stories she had read in the Chattanooga papers about The Goat Man that she had decided to marry him when she could and join in his adventures on the road. In fact, she says, she finally got to visit his camp on one his stops in the area and was charmed with him, but the goats were so odiferous that she decided she needed to go straight back home to mother!

Some wanderers, especially when they come in groups, are viewed with less welcome. I am old enough--though Linda Gamble may not be--to remember when gypsies regularly camped behind The Pines less than a mile north of the Highway 64 overpass. I think I have a slight memory of gypsies in wagon homes pulled by horses, but I know I have a clear view of gypsies camped there in trailers.

 The gypsy adventure most prominent in my mind began when a gypsy woman with a baby came to my grandparents' house in Benton, begging. All the adults at home filled the doorway, presenting a solid front against any advancement the visitor on the other side of the screen door might have tried to make. With firm tones they sent her away, securely hooking the screen door as they watched her depart. I was admonished to beware of the gypsies!

 Much later that day, when my keepers were certain the gypsies had gone, they let me go next door to J. N. Johnson’s Bargain Store, my closest and favorite School House Hill haunt with its display of candy and other edibles. Mr. Johnson, who had a mustache, was fuming and fussing and exclaiming over what had happened to him that day. It seems the gypsy woman with baby had entered his bargain-filled store, obviously reconnoitering, because an hour or so after he had escorted her out, a car overloaded with gypsies, including the woman and baby, had stopped directly in front of his building, and they had all piled into his merchandise-crammed emporium, immediately fanning out. Alone in the store, he tried to move about among them, but it was evident that they were purloining everything they could get their hands on in the confusion they were creating. Then, at a signal, they all rushed out and climbed into the car, which sped away. He ran out and stood in the road trying to see the license plate, then hurried back into the store and called the jail. But he got no satisfaction there; the person with whom he talked just dismissed it as inevitable when the gypsies were around--which made him madder than ever. If he weren't a Republican, they would have helped him, he always claimed bitterly. I can recall this story well because until he died in the early 1940s I heard him relive this experience at least once a month.

 The story is told that when the gypsies were in temporary residence at The Pines they quickly learned to avoid Kimbrough and Stamper's General Merchandise in Ocoee, for my Great Aunt Lillie Kimbrough, who could be a formidable figure, would meet them at the front door, offering to take their orders while they stayed on the porch. Of course, she had stong back-up in the store, a luxury which solo merchant Mr. Johnson did not have.

 If you have any vagabonds-in-Polk- County stories, please tell me about them at nowandthenbhm@msncom or Apt. 4-B, 300 W 6th St., Chattanooga, TN 37402