The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  In 1978, we were approached by Hume Cronyn—yes, the movie star—and Susan Cooper, an author, to consider a play about the people of southern Appalachia. Not long before this and still upsetting to many people in our area, the movie Deliverance was filmed here, depicting some of the local characters in such a derogatory way that most of us were dubious of anything Hollywood. Others thought about the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies and knew they were sometimes thought of as Li’l Abners. We were all very dubious about being a part of anything like either of these scenarios.

  However, Hume won us over. The play Foxfire was written with our input, and produced and first opened to the public in 1982. All the Foxfire staff was invited to fly to Minnesota and meet and visit with the members of the cast. In fact, we took with us a film that had been made of Aunt Arie—her daily life and conversations—so Jessica Tandy, Hume’s wife, could see Aunt Arie’s mannerisms and emulate them as much as possible without looking “hokey” or artificial. The play was a success and Hallmark made it into a movie with Hume, Jessica, and John Denver as the principal actors. I still see it being played occasionally on the Hallmark channel, and in this area, particularly Georgia and North Carolina, it is often a summer stage play. [Editor’s note: The Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Foxfire is available at Hallmark Gold Crown stores.]

  In 1986, spurred on by the interest we were getting from teachers and administrators around the nation, we began a teacher outreach program. School groups and individual educators were asking to visit our classrooms and have our staff and students talk to them about getting their students interested in experiential education. And they were inviting our students and staff to come to their schools and talk to their teachers, administrators, and students. The descriptor “experiential education” and John Dewey’s methods began to crop up. We started a newsletter and corresponded with them. Sherrod Reynolds became the coordinator for this program. That interest is still going strong with teachers from around the nation and even Australia and New Zealand, England, Scotland, Canada, and elsewhere. Students now come to Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, to enroll in Foxfire teacher-training classes being taught by Dr. Hilton Smith (another Foxfire staff member at one time) and his colleagues.

  Each year we would invite all our contacts on a spring Saturday and have a picnic and music and visit with them. We just wanted to have a good time with these people who had given their stories to us. We would bring them all together, and we’d be amazed! See, a lot of these folks were older and didn’t travel much, so students and staff would go pick them up at their homes or their grown children would come and bring them. They got to talk to one another, and we would have interviews galore right there with two older people who used to know and visit with one another. That was fun—watching the fellowship they had as they reminisced about the old days. The students were there, and it was like an old-time family reunion. We did all kinds of things at the Foxfire gatherings. We ate and talked and enjoyed one another’s company. The contacts looked around at the different cabins, and we showed them the traditional artifacts we had collected through their donations. We hosted those people, and they were the center of our attention.

  We lived on the Foxfire mountain for several years, and then an opportunity came for us to move back to RGNS to establish a middle school, at first for seventh and eighth graders, and then later sixth-grade day students. The Foxfire staff encouraged me to go for it. That was in 1988; however, I’ve never been far from Foxfire. It was an exciting, challenging, and fun time in my life.

  A Beautiful Life

  William M. Golden, 1918

  Life’s evening sun is sinking low,

  A few more days and I must go,

  To meet the deeds that I have done,

  Where there will be no setting sun.

  Each day I’ll do a golden deed,

  By helping those who are in need;

  My life on earth is but a span,

  And so I’ll do the best I can.

  I’ll help someone in time of need,

  And journey on with rapid speed;

  I’ll help the sick and poor and weak,

  And words of kindness to them speak.

  While going down life’s weary road,

  I’ll try to lift some trav’ler’s load;

  I’ll try to turn the night to day,

  Make flowers bloom along the way.

  My memories of yesterday take me back to a simpler time when kindness toward, caring for, and a sense of obligation to your fellow man was much more evident than it is today. During times of hardship, sickness, and death, neighbors were neighbors, and they came bringing food, providing support, and lending a hand with whatever chores needed to be done. When a family member died, the community came and filled the table with fresh-baked and home-cooked food prepared on an old cast-iron woodstove. Those meals were served with fresh butter and buttermilk made in an old-fashioned churn and cooled by the tumbling waters from a nearby spring. I’ve heard it said in the South, “If you give us a bowl of tater salit and a banana pudding, we can have a funeral.”

  In this section you will experience an example of how these family morals and traditions have survived the test of time. The story of how a group of high school students banded together and worked to fulfill the wish of a dying man, Sammy Green, will help to renew your faith in mankind. It is obvious, as you read this story, that many of the values of former generations are still being passed down today throughout these mountains we love.

  Madge Merrell and Jack P. Nix will take you back to the times of one-room schools, first automobiles, and just plain hard living. Times were tough, but love, faith, and family ties were abundant. You will also laugh through the humorous recollections of Lillie Billingsley and David “Lightnin’ ” Callenback and experience the sad and happy moments in the lives of Carlee Heaton, Coyle Justice, Vaughn Billingsley, Allen English, and Tommy Irvin.

  “A Beautiful Life” is sung by choirs and congregations across this country every Sunday morning. It speaks volumes about the morals and sense of responsibility of a past generation. While listening to these lyrics you can almost see an old dad cutting a load of wood for a neighbor in need or a loving mother providing care for a sick friend. As you read the following stories, remember that “life on earth is but a span,” so try to do the best you can.

  —Joyce Green

  “Praise the Lord, Sammy’s quit smoking!”

  ~An interview with Sammy Green~

  In December 2006, I went on what I believed was going to be a normal Foxfire interview. Much to my surprise, not only did I meet a unique and very sweet man, I just fell in love with Sammy Green. At the time, he was living with Sherri Gragg, a wonderful woman of no relation to Sammy who stepped up and took responsibility when it became apparent that he needed somebody to help out around the house now that he was getting older. Sammy lived with Sherri for about eight years and would tell you straight up, “I have went to bed hungry many nights, but not since I been living with Sherri, and I always have clean clothes to wear, too.”

  —Casi Best

  My name is Sammy Oscar Green, and I was born in 1933—May 12, 1933, so I’m seventy-three years old. I was born in Cherokee County, in Murphy, North Carolina. That’s my hometown. I never did get married, so I don’t have any kids, and I left home when I was sixteen.

  My parents were Sammy Winslow Green and Birdie Cearly. Daddy carried meal [cornmeal] and ground corn. After he got done carrying the meal, he ground corn the rest of the day on the water mill. Mama carried water for Mrs. Stewart; she’d get two dollars a day for it, so that wudn’t much money. Mrs. Stewart didn’t do nothin’; she didn’t have to. She was a millionaire. She had so much money in a nail keg that she put two smoothing irons on it to hold it down, and she didn’t put it in the bank. Son, they was millionaires; they didn’t have to do nothin’. That’s the reason she hired Mama to carry her drinking water.

  All of my brothers and sisters are dead and gone; they
ain’t none of them living but me. I had three brothers and two sisters. The second boy died at ten years old. He had the rheumatic fever, and back then we didn’t have any doctors, so there was nothing we could do.

  I never did get to get an education; I just got to go to school for two years. The school was so old back then that it was just about ready to fall down. It caught a’far’ [afire] and blowed up. Then they built a big, nice, new schoolhouse. We’d walk four miles there and back to school.

  Us kids would go to church for fun [laughs]. We’d haul corn till four o’clock that evening and go home and take a bath in a warsh [wash] tub. Some people don’t even know what a warsh tub is. Me and my youngest sister would beat my brothers and sisters home and wash in the water first. It’d make ’em so mad they couldn’t hardly stand it. Our parents would whoop [whip] ’em if they started to bother us, though. When we’d get ready, we’d have to walk six miles to the church and then six back. Now people’ve got cars and won’t even go to church [laughs]. Most all of my childhood memories are of church. My brothers and sisters, and me, all grew up together in our hometown. We never did anything to get in trouble; we was good kids.

  One time this man gave me a good squirrel dog. My brother Clint said, “That dog ain’t no ’count; that’s why he just give ’im to ya.” Me and Clint went huntin’, and me and the dog went one way, and Clint went the other. I come home with twenty-seven squirrels. I asked Daddy how many squirrels Clint got.

  Daddy said, “He didn’t even get a mess. How many did you get?” I said, “I got twenty-seven—got seven hits over yonder at one tree. The dog run to it seven times.” Clint went over there to the hole where I’d put them squirrels and pulled twenty-seven out. He said, “Mama, feed that dog plenty of cornbread ’cause he’s a good un [laughs].” He told me that he’d take the dog the next time, but I said, “Oh, no! I’m taking the dog.” I went again and got twenty-two squirrels. Mama said, “Shew, look at them squirrels a-comin’.” I had to skin all of ’em; Clint couldn’t skin ’em. Daddy was like me; he loved to eat squirrel. He could just run that hind leg through his mouth and that was it; all the meat would be gone [laughs]. Boys, we liked ’em thangs.

  PLATE 6 “There wudn’t many people that went to be baptized the Sunday that I did because it was just thirty-five degrees.”

  Me and my brother would go huntin’ and get back there in the woods and eat a can of Viennas [sausage] for dinner, supper, and then a can for breakfast. We’d keep stuff cold by keeping it in the spring. We’d hunt squirrels and rabbits all the time for food. Sometimes, we’d hunt deer, too. I killed two ol’ bucks in my lifetime. I never do get to hunt for ’em no more. I never have eat much deer meat no way.

  When we were growing up, Mama and Daddy stayed at home and just us kids would go to church. We went to Ranger Methodist Church. That’s where I got saved. I was around sixteen or eighteen when I got saved. There wudn’t many people that went to be baptized the Sunday that I did because it was just thirty-five degrees. That preacher said he’d like to have somebody to help him, but I guess nobody wanted to help with it being thirty-five degrees [laughs]. He was baptizing people by hisself, and I guess it’d be a hard job.

  I used to smoke, but I laid ’em thangs down one day, and I ain’t smoked any since. I told my preacher, “I ain’t smoked a cigarette in a whole week.” He said, “PRAISE THE LORD, SAMMY’S QUIT SMOKING!” [Laughs.] I guess that has been about forty years ago. I can smell the smoke from someone else’s smoke, and I just have to go, “Shew!” [laughs] because it smells so bad. Now I go to church over at Ole Country Church in South Carolina, and we got a good preacher, too; I love it.

  I’ve worked a little here and yunder, all in Georgia though. When I first left home I went and worked at a steel mill down in Marietta, Georgia. It was so hot that I had to quit working after three years. You just couldn’t stand it. I can just remember the sweat rolling off of ya. Me and three other boys carried the steel out. While I was there in Marietta, people were getting robbed. My first cousin got robbed. He worked in a church house, in a’ ol’ English church, and he couldn’t find his money. They’d even took his pocketknife—his eight-dollar pocketknife. Well, I had my money all in hundred-dollar bills. I had put three thousand dollars in a Prince Albert ’baccer [tobacco] can and put ’bout an inch of ’baccer over it, so if they got in my pocket, then they wouldn’t find but close to ninety dollars in it. I didn’t want ’em to steal that money after I’d worked like a dog for three years fer it. They woke me up one night. I didn’t see nobody, and I was glad, too [laughs]! They got the money from my pocket, but that ninety dollars is all they got. They never did find no money in that can. Nobody would’ve ever thought ’bout looking in a ’baccer can for money. I was smarter than they was. They wudn’t getting my money after I’d worked like a dog. That was the money that I used to come home on; I caught the bus back home. Marietta’s a long ways from North Carolina; it’s down there near Atlantar [Atlanta], Georgia.

  After that I come back home. I just went back to cutting pulpwood and logs again. I had done that all my life, so that’s all I knew how to do. I’d snake logs; that’s where a man would get up and pull the logs out to the big ol’ tractor area for the other workers. I also worked for a guy digging bushes. He said, “Sammy, if I make good, then you’ll make good.” The first day I worked for eight hours. He said, “You want me to pay you now so you’ll have some money to pay for your room?” We was staying in some little town nearby.

  I thought, “Well, it won’t be much, but I’ll do well to buy my dinner.” He gave me one hundred dollars, and I came near of faintin’ [laughs]. I said, “You mean I made one hundred dollars today?” He said, “Yeah. I told you, if I made good, then you’d make good, too.” He done what he said, too. When I worked with him, I bought me a tractor and paid three thousand dollars for it. The road patrol caught me and charged me forty-five dollars because I didn’t have no tag or lights. I told ’em that I didn’t think I needed all that. The next day the sheriff told me that I could drive my tractor up and down the road just the way it was. He told me the man that stopped me wudn’t no road patrol, and he wudn’t supposed to charge me. He told me he just made hisself forty-five dollars. I said, “Well, he shore did. That was the last forty-five dollars I had, and he took it.”

  One time a friend of mine, Garr Haney, tried to get me to shoot a game of pool. I said, “Garr, I ain’t never shot a game of that stuff in my life.” He told me to throw fifty cents in that pot, and he’d shoot it for me. He hit that ball, and the fifteen got to the hole and he said, “Stay there, baby; stay there, baby.” He asked me if I won it, what was I gonna do with it? I told him I was gonna give it to Mama to buy us something to eat with. He said, “That’s the best thing you can do.” He won me seventy-three dollars, and I bought groceries with it.

  My brother-in-law was a stealer. That boy tried stealing my gas. He stole it one time, and I decided I’d wait and catch him. I got me a tank and waited, and I seen him pop that tank, and I popped him. I shot him there in the hind part [laughs]; boys, he squalled [cried]. He never did come back to get his cans, so I sold ’em for ten dollars. They wuz brand sparkling new, too. I got part of my gas back! That boy was too sorry to work and then went up and down the roads stealing people’s gas. I never stole a drop of gas in my life. I learnt better than to do that.

  Before my mama died, I took care of her for about six weeks in the hospital. Then she had a stroke and passed away. After that, I took care of Daddy for about three years. I had to pay for their funeral bills by myself; I had nobody to help me. I think I spent about three thousand dollars for their funerals. I walked sixteen miles to buy their tombstones, and the boy let me have a set for two hundred dollars since I walked that fir [far]. I thanked the man a lot. That two hundred dollars was hard to pay, but that three thousand dollars for the funeral bills was the hardest for me to pay fir.

  One time when I come home from Marietta, my sister wanted to borrie [borrow
] five dollars to buy a pair of slippers. I told her she couldn’t buy a pair of slippers for five dollars, but she might buy ’em for ten, so I give her ten. I went on out to the poolroom and set there and watched my brother shoot two games of pool. He lost twenty dollars on ’em games. You just as well to pour a pan of hot whiskey in my face. I hated to see twenty dollars throwed away. I went back out to the bus station, and he come out there and me and my sister was there. She said she wanted to borrie ten dollars, and I asked what she wanted with another ten dollars. She said she wanted to get her a dress; she said there was a flowerdy dress up there in the store, and she wanted it to go to church in the next day. I told her she couldn’t get a dress and everything that goes with it for ten dollars. I told her she might get it for twenty. She told me that I didn’t pull her down; I raised her up all the time. I said, “You know what I just seen Clint do a while ago? He shot two games of pool and lost twenty dollars—go get your dress.” She got the dress and was in it for church the next day. When Shirley come home with her new dress, Clint was there. Clint said, “Sammy, they got a big ham up there in the store that they wanted to sell for ten dollars. Why don’t you take one of them ten-dollar bills up there and buy it?” Shirley said, “Yeah, I’ll go up there with ya.” So me and her went up there.

  PLATE 7 “I told him I was gonna give it to Mama to buy us something to eat with.” Sammy’s aunt, Ada, and his mother, Birdie Cearly Green

  I told ’em at the store that Clint had told me that they had a ham for ten dollars, and they said, “Yeah, git ya one of ’em, and while you’re at it git ya one of ’em fat hens out there, and it’ll be good for supper.” I said, “Shirley [Shirley was holding the hen], you better hold that chicken way out away from you; that chicken’ll mess you up sure ’nuf [enough].” Kenneth Stiles [store owner] offered me a good deal on some meat, and I told him that if he could tell me how I could get home with my mule and keep ’em from running away from smelling all that meat, then I would buy it. He told me to hold the mule real good, and he sent his wife in the store to get some old newspapers. He rolled that meat ’bout six inches deep and laid the meat down in the wagon and laid rocks around it to hold it down. He told me, “That mule won’t ever know that that meat’s on the wagon, Sammy.”