The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  Attaching the Handles

  Drawknives usually have wooden handles attached to the tangs. For our drawknife we “hot set” the wooden handles. Two handles were turned on a lathe, each handle being about 5 inches long and 1½ inches in diameter at its widest point. If you do not have access to a lathe to make your own handles, you can purchase wooden file handles at most hardware stores, which will work fine. Each handle has a metal ring on one end called a ferrule. The ferrule keeps the handle from splitting while it is being installed. We first drilled a pilot hole into the handle about 3 inches deep, then heated up one tang of the tool until the tip of the tang was just turning red. Remember not to heat the entire tool; just heat the tang from the bend to the tip, or you will undo your tempering. With one of the wooden handles clamped in a vise, the hot tang is forced into the pilot hole, burning a larger hole and creating a perfect fit. Push the handle down on the tang until the handle is about ¾ inch from the bend in the tang. The tang may have to be reheated a time or two to achieve this. Now remove the handle and cool off the tang by dipping it in water and pour a little water inside the handle to cool it off as well. Then place the handle back onto the tang and hammer the handle on the tang ¼ inch more. This will seat the handle securely so that it won’t come off. Repeat the procedure for the other handle.

  PLATE 181 A wooden handle being pushed into a heated tang, creating smoke

  Final Sharpening

  To get the final razor-sharp edge on the drawknife, a coarse whetstone should be used. Hold one handle of the drawknife in your left hand with the cutting edge facing upward and press the other handle firmly against your chest. Take the stone in your right hand and rub it back and forth on the bevel, over the length of the blade, until the high spots are ground down. Then do a few passes on the back of the blade as well. When that is done, use a fine whetstone and repeat the process until the cutting edge has a mirror finish. A very small and thin ribbon of metal may form on the edge of the blade, and this is easily removed by bending it back and forth until it breaks off. A leather strop works best for this. If you have ever seen a barber rubbing a straight razor back and forth on a piece of leather, this is what he is doing.

  PLATE 182 Sharpening the finished drawknife with the whetstone

  PLATE 183 The sharpened edge of the drawknife

  Using Your Drawknife

  The proper way to use a drawknife is this: While sitting on top of your shaving horse, press your foot down on the pedal in order to ensure that the wood you are working with is properly secure and doesn’t slip or wobble. Stretching your arms out to their full length, place the drawknife against the wood and pull with the blade facing your body. Make sure that when doing so you keep the blade almost completely parallel to the wood; that way you pull off only a small shaving, and the integrity of the wood is well maintained. If you do this correctly, the wood should be very smooth to the touch.

  PLATE 184 The finished drawknife

  Braiding a Leather Bullwhip

  ~Frank Vinson~

  Frank Vinson is my grandpa. I’ve stayed with him and my grandmother Eva Vinson quite a bit since I was a small boy. I’ve wanted to do a Foxfire article on him for a long time, and when he said he’d show us how to make a bullwhip, I brought friends of mine, Cecil and Adam Wilburn, over to our house for the interview. We kept the tape recorder running as he showed us all the steps in making the whip, and he told us something about his boyhood and adult life.

  —Cary Brown

  Back when I was just a small boy, I lived with my pa and ma. We lived in old log shacks that my pa built out of old chestnut slabs. We didn’t have goodies like kids have these days. We ate dried blackberries and apples; the only sweet thing we had was sugarcane. There was thirteen of us, including Ma and Pa; eleven kids, you know.

  I remember when my daddy told me to go down across the field and see about the cows. I’d cut my little toe about off with the ax, and I had to go barefoot, even though there was a big frost on the ground. My pa’d buy a cowhide in the fall and make us new shoes, and if we wore ’em out, we done without until winter.

  PLATE 185 I began to learn how to braid a bullwhip myself. I wasn’t too good at it at first, but I got the hang of it. Grandpa showed me how, and it didn’t take too long after that.

  He told me, “Frank, go get the cows.” I got down there and one ol’ cow was laying there with all four legs sticking straight up in the air. When I got back home, I was crying, and my daddy asked me what was wrong. I told him about the ol’ cow and it made him mad, and he whipped the living stuff out of me for crying over that ol’ cow.

  I helped build the towns. There wasn’t many families who lived up there—just a few here and there. Back when I built houses, I just used plain things like a handsaw, squares, and chisels. We didn’t have such a thing as a skill saw or a drill. That ain’t all I ever done—building houses. I ran the mail route, too. I had to use an ol’ horse and, boy, I couldn’t stand to ride a horse! But I did for a good spell—up to Highlands and to Franklin, North Carolina.

  And now [1982] I’m ninety years old, and I’ve been married seventy years, too. And I’ve got six kids of my own. The oldest is sixty-five.

  PLATE 186 Grandpa first cuts a hole, a ¼-inch circle, 1 inch from the end of each strip of leather that he will braid to make this whip. He uses four strips of leather, each 6 feet long and tapered from 1 inch wide (where the holes were made) down to less than ½ wide at the ends that attach to the cracking end of the whip.

  PLATE 187 He runs another strip of leather, about ½ inch wide and 12 inches long, through the holes in the four long pieces. He calls this a loop and will later use this to attach the whip to a wooden handle.

  PLATE 188 He cuts a ¾-inch-long slot near each end of the 12-inch loop. See the diagram on facing page showing how this is drawn together and worked into the braiding of the whip.

  PLATE 189 The steps for stringing the strips onto the loop, fastening it together, and tightening it are shown here.

  In a later step, the ends of the loop are slipped around and disappear into the whip as the four strips of leather are braided together. (Diagrams drawn by Cary Brown. They are not to scale but exaggerated to show detail.)

  PLATE 190 He begins the braiding of the bullwhip, braiding the leather tightly around several strands of cotton rope. (He prefers a thick piece of rope to give more bulk to the upper section of the whip but used a piece of unraveled clothesline in this demonstration. The rope is doubled and pulled through the leather loop so that it will not pull out as the whip is braided. Note one of the loop’s ends protruding from the top of the braiding to show how it has been worked into the whip.)

  PLATE 191 Have the leather loop with the four unbraided leather strands attached, clamped, or tied to a nail. Spread the four strips of leather out, two in each hand. (To get the knack of braiding the strips into the proper pattern, you may want to practice with four 1-inch-wide strips of different-colored fabrics.)

  This diagram shows the steps involved in braiding the whip. After each strip has been brought under and back over the other strips as indicated, pull the braid to a uniform tightness.

  PLATE 192 Grandpa is getting to the end of the braiding, and the whip is getting smaller and smaller in diameter. (The leather strips are tapered.)

  PLATE 193 Cecil Wilburn (center) and I are helping my grandfather measure out lengths of twine for the cracker. The cracker, made of many strands of tough string, is the object that makes the popping sound heard when someone cracks a whip.

  PLATE 194 Cecil holds the whip so that Grandpa can begin braiding the cracker in with the last 6 to 8 inches of the leather section. He uses the same braiding pattern he used for the whip.

  PLATE 195 Periodically, he cuts off three to four strands of string so that he is braiding with fewer and fewer strands. As the cracker gets longer, the diameter will be smaller at the tail end than the part around the braided leather. When he gets to the end of the cracker, he ties off the en
ds to keep the cracker from unraveling and cuts off the excess string.

  PLATE 196 Grandpa chopped a handle out of a piece of hickory wood. He smoothed the surface of the handle with a wood rasp. He then carved a groove around the narrow end of the handle. He attached the whip there by putting a slipknot in the loop, sliding it around the groove, and pulling the loop tight.

  PLATE 197 At the top is the finished bullwhip my grandfather made to show us how it’s done. Below is another bullwhip made by my grandpa.

  The Past Meets the Present

  A Closing Letter from Foxfire President Ann Moore

  Ann Moore joined Foxfire in 1976 as its bookkeeper and soon became an irreplaceable asset to the organization. Over the years Ann assumed many roles: circulation manager, editor, historian, administrator, and second mama to many students. The board of directors, in one of its wisest decisions, chose her in 2000 to become the president and executive director of Foxfire.

  —Kaye Carver Collins

  Ann Moore: A native Rabun Countian, I was born in May 1956 to two wonderful parents, Cecil S. and Ellie Ramey Henslee. While my father worked two jobs, day and night, struggling to pay the bills and put food on our table, my mom stayed home to raise my brother, Billy, and me, while also caring for Dad’s parents, Will and Dealia Henslee, and his aunt, Belle Henslee, all three of whom lived with us most of my childhood.

  As Dad was always seeking a better home for us at a less expensive rent, he moved us a lot from home to home in Rabun County, including into and out of several houses on the Rabun Gap–Nacoochee School (RGNS) Farm that you read about earlier in this book. Though we weren’t a School Farm Family, we were able to rent from the school when the houses were unoccupied by Farm Families. One home I particularly remember living in on the campus was on the old hog farm. The house was so cold in the wintertime, with little money for which to heat it, that all seven of us would sleep in the kitchen and dining room area on makeshift beds near the stove. My fondest memories of the school farm and of my young life are of spending many nights throughout those years with my aunt Lucy Webb and uncle Grover and my seven cousins, who were one of the School Farm Families. My wonderful aunt Lucy would spoil Billy and me by making us “cakey bread” (a flat pan of biscuit bread) and hot chocolate gravy for breakfast! Uncle Grover would strum his banjo for us in the evenings, and we’d all sing; we played cowboys and Indians with the cousins at an old corral on the hill behind their house that now overlooks Indian Lake on the RGNS campus. Oh, what I’d give to have those days back, but then my wonderful nephews and nieces—Ramey, Jamey, Joy, Matthew, and Madison Henslee—wouldn’t be in my life! What joy they have brought me…

  PLATE 198

  I recall nights spent at the home of my maternal grandparents, Leo and Mae Ramey, when I would lie in bed in the back bedroom under a pile of quilts, snuggled in for warmth, way too comfortable to slip out from under the covers in an icy cold room to use the chamber pot, much less brave enough to dart outdoors in the dark of night to use the outhouse that sat on the banks of the Tallulah Falls Railroad in Dillard, Georgia. I am too young to remember the train, as the service was halted when I was very small, but I do remember my grandpa Ramey’s stories of driving the “pitty-pat” (motor car that sometimes had to be hand pumped) down the tracks to the men whom he supervised. I especially remember the story of his near-death experience from one of the high banks caving in on him, for as a child, hearing that story made me realize that I might never have known him. His and Granny’s treat to us that I remember so well was a five-cent ice-cream cone from Barnard Dillard’s drugstore just a few hundred yards away from the house on what is now a four-lane, paved Highway 441. Granny Ramey tried to teach me to crochet, as she loved to do that; it was a necessity in her earlier life, along with knitting, but it became a pastime in her latter years. The one doily that I managed to make is still attached to that ball of yarn, wherever it might live today. Knitting was not my forte either!

  Though our family was dirt poor and times were often so very hard, there was always gracious food on the table and love in our home. My daddy slaughtered hogs and grew vegetables in the garden to feed our family; Grandma taught me to churn butter in the old crock [churn]; and my mama made sauerkraut (which I avoided like the plague) in that same churn. Mama also tried to pass down her delicious culinary skills to me, too, but to this day I have to have a recipe from which to cook more than a basic meal. Her talent of adding a dash of this and a pinch of that turns into an inedible meal when created by me! I thank the Good Lord every day that I received other talents and skills from my dear mama, since the homemaking ones were not something at which I excelled!

  Our family would listen to the radio together in the evenings after chores were done and, in later years, watch the old black-’n’-white TV. On Sunday afternoons, with no money for anything other than a bit of gas, Daddy would take us on drives in our old car to visit family members. My brother and I both, at age eight, began working outside the home in the surrounding community to help make ends meet. My summers, from age eleven to seventeen, were spent living and working at the old Boxwood Terrace Boarding House in Dillard. From seven in the morning till seven at night, I helped garden, milk cows, clean rooms, cook, wash dishes, and wait tables three meals a day. My after-school hours were spent working as a waitress at the Old Villager restaurant. Billy and I thought that if we could just provide for our own personal needs, life would be so much easier for our parents.

  As you can see, I was a child who 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 and influenced the person that I am today. My family has lived here for hundreds of years. I hear so much of my grandma Dealia in me at times, especially when someone tells me they’ve been ill or having trouble. “Bless your heart” will come right outta my mouth without hesitation, and I will immediately be reminded of my loving grandma and how I grew up hearing her use that expression and so many others that I still use today.

  The lifelong lessons that my mama, now age seventy-five, taught me, like caring for family and others, sharing what little you have with those in worse need, respecting your elders, and always smiling through adversity, are instilled in me, as is my daddy’s work ethic. Daddy’s strong hands produced a lot of hard work in his short fifty-seven years of life, as he strove to provide for our family. The song “Daddy’s Hands,” written and recorded by country music star Holly Dunn, brings tears to my eyes, still today, ’cause when I hear it, it reminds me so much of my beloved daddy.

  Of course, like my mother before me and both my grandmothers before her, I was a traditional Appalachian young woman of the time, marrying at a young age: Just a month after turning the ripe old age of seventeen, I married my husband of thirty-eight years, Larry Moore, whom I had met and square-danced with for many summers at the old Mountain City Playhouse, the main source of entertainment back in those days.

  I am proud of my heritage passed down to me by my daddy and my mama, and therefore I have devoted my entire adult life to the work of Foxfire and the preservation and documentation by our Foxfire students of that Appalachian culture from which I come.

  I was a mere ten years old when Foxfire was born; at that time, I was too young to know about the program. Just three years later, I learned of it when I started eighth grade at RGNS. Tenth grade through twelfth grade, I spent my free class period working on the RAGANA [Rabun Gap–Nacoochee] annual staff with one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Billy Joe Stiles. We shared an office in the administration building with the Foxfire teachers and students. On a few occasions (when there was no annual staff work to do, of course), I would go on interviews with my Foxfire friends, thoroughly enjoying the stories I heard of “haints” and ghosts and growing up here in the mountains—a life I knew so well from stories from my own grandparents. Little did I know at that time that just a year out of
high school, I would receive a message from one of my other favorite teachers, Mrs. Melba Huggins, that Foxfire was seeking a bookkeeper. She was my role model when in high school, teaching me to type and do bookkeeping and operate office equipment, giving me all the skills I needed for the workplace. Foxfire staff members asked the teachers sharing lunch with them one day in the RGNS dining hall whom they might know that Foxfire could hire to replace their former bookkeeper. Mrs. Huggins recommended me and sent me a message to please go to Foxfire’s office that very night at eight o’clock for an interview. The rest, as they say, is history.

  As The Foxfire Magazine celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary in 2011, I celebrate my thirty-fifth year with Foxfire. It simply astounds me, even today, to think about the fact that a small magazine started by an English class at my alma mater, RGNS, in the northeast Georgia mountains, could still be in publication today and be the very cornerstone of this organization. Many, many changes have occurred at Foxfire since I began here as a young nineteen-year-old girl. I find it amazing, still, that I grew up with Foxfire as the organization expanded, taking on many new roles as the years passed by, and having now served as its president and executive director since 2000. When I joined Foxfire on May 1, 1976, had it not been for the mentoring of “Mama Margie” [Margie Bennett] as the students and I called her, I would have never survived this learning experience. At age nineteen, with all of the intelligent, educated adults on the staff, I felt quite out of place as the youngster among them. Margie and her husband, my dear friend Bob, took me right under their wings and taught me so much, guiding me through my new job. Years later, when I worked with Kaye Carver Collins and Robert Murray, two of the most wonderful people I was fortunate enough to have in my life, the mentoring continued. Though they encouraged me to move into the president’s role in 2000 when the board offered me the position, either of them would have been the more appropriate person for the role—Kaye, a former Foxfire student, community board member, staff person, and great intellect, would have brought so much more than I to the position; Robert, such a natural-born leader and so admired by the masses, as well as an engaging teacher and brilliant man, would have been a great president and leader for this organization. Their confidence in me and their support of me in this wonderful but sometimes stressful job has meant more to me than mere words could ever express. I tried to share my appreciation with Robert over the twenty-two years he worked with me, and especially before his passing in 2008. I continue to try to relay that to Kaye and Margie every time I have the opportunity. Both have continued to support me here at Foxfire by returning to work with me whenever asked; their work on this anniversary book is just one example of that.