An Introduction by Ann Moore, Foxfire President and Executive Director Emeritus As I sit on the porch of the Moore House cabin with Max Woody, one of our oldest and dearest Foxfire contacts, during Living History Days at The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center—our “mountain”—memories flood my mind: memories of all our elders who lived the life that we continue to portray each year as we share our Appalachian history with others.
I hear the ping of the hammer as it hits the anvil in the blacksmith shop as the smithy teaches others to make items that were necessities for farm life in the early 1800s. I hear the church bell tolling as the teacher calls the children to class in the one-room schoolhouse, or as the preacher calls the congregation to church services in the chapel—the same building that also served as the school. I hear the laughter of the children as they play traditional games on the lawn of the Shooting Creek Cabin, while musicians perform old-timey music for our hundreds of visitors. While talking with Max, I am also watching Joe Williams demonstrate the art of making a berry bucket from the bark of native trees (something you will read about in this book). I think of the early years when what is now a beautiful creation that I admire at home was a utilitarian piece for our ancestors to collect fruit for feeding their family or to carry water from the creek for the family’s use.
When Max is busy talking with our guests about chair making, I listen to the mallets and froes in the distance as the men hew replacement logs for the historic Beck Barn while they reconstruct it for preservation in the Bungalow area of our beautiful village. I meander down to watch the logs lifted in place by the four men, and on my way, I stop at the Village Weaver’s cabin to admire Sharon Grist’s skill, as she demonstrates the art of weaving. Then I pause outside her door at the Gott Cabin to watch as the broom-maker, Carole Morse, shares her art with others. The warmth of a woven shawl or a hand-woven bedspread was welcomed in the cold, cold winters in the Appalachians, and the hand-made brooms were necessities for sweeping out the cabin floors or sweeping down the cobwebs in the corners of the logs. There were no vacuum cleaners in those days with which to suction up the dust!
As I make my way over from the barn to cross the well-worn dirt road to the Museum Cabin, I stop to greet T. J. and Jenny Stevens and boys, watching as T. J. throws pottery on the potter’s wheel, and Miss Jenny makes soap in a black iron pot over an open fire. Pottery and soap, again, were necessities that couldn’t be bought back in the 1800s, but were essential for cooking and cleaning. I then arrive at the Museum Cabin, our woodworking shop, to visit with Jerry and Isabel King on the porch, watching as they use the shaving horse to make beautiful, one-of-a-kind, yet useful hiking and walking sticks that were and are necessary for trekking through our mountain terrain. As I talk with them, I am listening to the amazing music of the dulcimer as John Huron performs for guests, or stops to demonstrate the making of the dulcimer or a banjo, the family entertainment on long winter evenings by the fire or for barn dances at the end of a long day’s or weekend’s work of raising a barn or home—another wonderful custom in our mountains where your friends and family and neighbors came together to help their fellow man.
While lingering on the porch to admire the work of my friends, I hear the children across the way, beating the laundry as they learn to do “the wash” the old-fashioned way with hand-made bucket and battling boards, and I smell the aroma of fresh-baked cobbler being cooked over the open-hearth in the Savannah House. I, of course, must ramble on over to sample the delicious food of Mary Bohlen. Samples in hand (and mouth!), I head back up the trail to watch a bit as Foxfire student, Katie Lunsford, interviews Beth Kelley Zorbanos on the gristmill porch, as she makes beautiful corn shuck dolls, a treasured toy of young girls in the 1800s, and still today—another article that you will read about in this 50th anniversary edition.
Fifty years—wow, what a milestone! I am so proud to have been a part of the history of Foxfire for forty of those years, for as I told you all in Foxfire’s 45th anniversary book, “I was reared in these Appalachian Mountains that I love so much—the customs and traditions and expressions preserved throughout the pages of
The Foxfire Magazine and
Foxfire Book series were a part of my everyday life here in Rabun County and influenced the person that I am today.”
While making that trek up the trail that leads thousands of visitors through the Center each year, I thought not only of the beauty of our mountain or the contacts who share a bit of history with us during Living History Days each year, I also thought of those students who cared enough about their heritage and culture that they chose to preserve a part of it for others—students that learned so much from their elders while helping to develop the educational process that is now known as The Foxfire Approach to Teaching and Learning—an approach that allows students to have an active hand in their own learning
I thought of the students with whom I shared summers with on our mountain while they studied the environment, learned to blacksmith, conducted interviews, learned photography or documented the music of our hills, while writing magazine or book articles, and I thought of the memorable times we shared at lunch, either playing volleyball or conducting a square dance for documentation, or watching as one of our contacts made handmade shingles or apple cider on the old cider press. I long for those days again, all while realizing that times have changed, and we can’t return to the past. However, here at Foxfire we can and do continue to share the work product of some of those students—the Museum—built by their hands with adult supervision, a collection of twenty-two historic and replication log structures that continues to provide educational programs on traditional skills and crafts. steeped in the Appalachian culture, like Children’s Heritage Days, a summer program that introduces ages 7-18 to traditional skills and crafts from an era long before the modern technological world brought them iPods and iPads).
Foxfire Magazine students are still on-site each June in leadership training courses, or writing books such as this one over the course of a summer; the magazine is in continuous publication at Rabun County High School, under the leadership of teacher Jon Blackstock and with the full support of Principal Joi Woods; an archive of historical significance for the region now exists as a result of that oral history collected by our students; guided- and self-guided educational tours are provided to thousands of visitors each year; and teacher-training courses in the educational approach are held on-site each summer, conducted by our Partners in Education at Piedmont College. Other events we conduct, “The Foxfire Mountaineer Festival” (www.foxfiremountaineer.org), our fund-raising event for local programs, and “Folk on the Mountain” folk art show, also continue to share a bit of the rich culture and heritage of our Appalachian region with thousands of visitors each year...
All of our contacts are special to us and have provided us with a never-ending education. We’ve learned so much from their wisdom and will be forever grateful to them for sharing their sometimes hard, but happy lives with us. So, in closing, I share with you just a few more quotes from some of our many beloved contacts over the past fifty years, others of whom you will meet in the pages of this book:
“I think your heritage is as much a part of ya’ as anythin’ else. It’s somethin’ that should be carried on and preserved in some way for the next generation.” —Connie Carlton
“I’ll tell ya’, be a neighbor and you’ll have neighbors. Now, I’ve tried that by experience. I do try t’ be good t’ ever’body, an’ I try t’ treat ever’body just as I’d have them treat me. I don’t care th’ goodness you do, you’ll always get repaid for it, double or fourfold…Th’ more you do for people, th’ more they’ll do for you. Always remember, t’ have a friend, be one.” —Aunt Arie Carpenter
“I have found that sometimes just talkin’ to people doesn’t do as much good as how you act in front of them.” —Matt Arthur, Sr.
“I sit here an’ study by myself when I have a lot of time, an’ I think about things. I’ve got so I can’t read my Bible much ‘cause I can’t see to read for long at a time. I think how thankful people ought to be that they’re living in this beautiful world, an’ I wonder how they can ever think that there is not a higher power. Who makes all these pretty flowers? We can make artificial flowers, but they don’t smell an’ are not as pretty as the flowers that we pick out there. We can’t make flowers like the Almighty.” —Aunt Addie Norton
Please listen and learn from
your elders, for as Jake Waldroop once told us years ago, “If people today would take an interest, they could learn a lot from the way things used t’ be.”
And, finally, here’s to the next fifty years, and a whole new generation of contacts, students, teachers, and leadership to carry on the Foxfire tradition!
Copyright © 2016 by Edited by Kaye Carver Collins, Jonathan Blackstock, and Foxfire Students. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
