What if William Least Heat-Moon had just traveled around Appalachia?

When I recommended Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon’s story of his journey around the United States via its backroads, I mentioned that the book was one of the influences behind my dream career as I was finishing high school. Another influence? The Foxfire series, which has more in common with Blue Highways than you might think.

A high school project on steriods

Foxfire began in 1966 with a frustrated high school English teacher at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in Georgia. Looking for some way to engage his students, he talked with them about a magazine, which they decided to focus on the stories of local residents, whose folklore and ways of doing things were already fading. The magazine was a success and by 1972, anthologies of articles were coming out in a series of books. Several of those first books sat on my parents’ shelves, and I would poke through them, fascinated with the oral histories, collections of folklore, and instructions on how to do everything from raising a log cabin to making a fiddle.

Oh, how I envied those students who got to interview interesting people and write about them.

And that’s the reason I think of Blue Highways and the Foxfire series as being cut from the same cloth. Just as Blue Highways is, in my mind, more about the people than the places, so Foxfire has its roots in people, even when the focus of the article is on hog dressing.

Immerse yourself in burial customs, moonshining, horse trading, and “more affairs of plain living.”

Drawing on content from the magazines, the books cover a range of topics. Some chapters just focus on an individual–the most well-known being Aunt Arie, a favorite of Foxfire readers. I can’t define what sets her apart from the many other people interviewed throughout the series, but I do remember turning to the chapter on her again and again. She seemed to be someone you’d love to sit down and talk with.

But many of the articles are focused on crafts, lore, or nearly forgotten pastimes. Foxfire 4 includes a chapter on knife making based on interviews with two different men. Filled with step-by-step photos and carefully labeled illustrations, the chapter also includes informal narratives about the knife makers. Author Tom Carlton writes this about Troy Danner:

Several people told us that Mr. Danner used to be the best blacksmith in that part of the country. … He finally had to quit, though, because, as he said, “I just got old and wore out.” He said that at one time, he could stand for a whole day shoeing horses and putting wagon tires on wheels. Once he shod sixteen horses at his little shop in one day, “and boy you could feel the sweat run out of you too!”

“Knife Making” by Tom Carlton, Foxfire 4 (1977), p. 60

Besides that chapter, Foxfire 4 alone includes five chapters featuring interviews with individuals or couples plus chapters on wood carving; fiddle making; wooden sleds; gardening; bird traps, deadfalls, and rabbit boxes; horse trading; making tar; logging; water systems; berry buckets; and cheese making. There’s also a chapter with supplementary information related to stories from the previous three books in the series.

Tell me a ghost story.

As I flipped through my parents’ books, glancing through a story about log cabin building or skipping over a piece about ginseng, one of the chapters I turned over and over again was “Boogers, Witches, and Haints” in Foxfire 2. It was just the right level of scary for me, and I loved reading the stories as they were told by a number of people from Appalachia. My favorite stories were the “ball of fire” stories, especially one of a few told by Hoyt Thomas:

And one night it looked like th’world was afire back in there. Like a big forest fire, y’know. And it come on around, and at twelve o’clock it went right square up in th’middle of th’sky and made a question mark. Just as pretty a question mark as you ever looked at.

“Boogers, Witches, and Haints,” by David Wilson, Foxfire 2 (1973), p. 328

But you, dear reader, are probably thinking, “That’s not a ghost story!” So here’s one with a ghost in it.

When my gran’daddy was a little boy, he had a aunt that died. She run a old-time loom. Worked herself t’death.

She died, and th’old man tore th’loom house down where she worked. Wanted t’get it out a’th’way. And he was going’ a’courtin’ three weeks after she died–courtin’ with another woman. Gran’daddy said he heard th’boards a’rattlin’ just like th’old loom a’runnin’. Heard th’loom a’rattlin’. Said they had a big fire a’goin’–a big blaze–and she walked up t’th’door.

Th’little baby–her baby–they had t’hold him to keep him from goin’ to her. Kept sayin’, “There’s Mommy! There’s Mommy!”

“Boogers, Witches, and Haints,” pp. 332-3

The stories don’t give me chills like they did when I was a kid, but they were deliciously spooky then. And the photos still strike me. Besides portraits of some of the people interviewed in this chapter, there are simple black and white photos of cornstalks in a rainstorm, the sun hanging low over the mountains, a tree with a sign nailed to it: “AT THE END – YOU MEET GOD.” The photography is wonderful and somehow very appropriate.

Foxfire magazine’s still around.

While the last numbered Foxfire book, Foxfire 12, came out in 2004, the magazine is still around. When I started thinking about writing about Foxfire a year ago, I ordered the Spring/Summer 2020 issue. As times have changed, and many of the people who shared their stories 50 years ago are long gone, the magazine’s topics have changed. This combined issue included three articles on drug addiction and a history of Clayton First United Methodist Church in Clayton, Georgia. There were stories of craftspeople–just like the blacksmiths and weavers who were interviewed decades ago–only these were a photographer and a prop maker. Closest to what I grew up with were the interviews. Vivian Carver, born in 1939, reminisced about when she was dating her late husband:

Me and Olin knew each other growing up. Our first date, we were painting and fixing up the church. After we finished, we had a hotdog supper. …

“Remembrance: Interview With Vivian Carver” by Willow Fisher and Jacqueline Love, Foxfire, Spring/Summer 2020, p. 51

Sharon Stiles, about the same age as Vivian Carver, said this about growing up with her grandmother:

We helped her in the garden, we helped her bring in wood, we helped wherever, whatever she needed. We carried water, because we didn’t have water at the house; we got our water from the branch. [Without refrigeration,] we took our milk or our butter and kept it in the stream. Later, one of my uncles, who had a store in Hiawassee, [Georgia], bought my grandmother a refrigerator, so we didn’t have to go to the branch however many times a day you needed to take the food or needed water. And after my grandmother had worked for a while, she was able to make enough money to get us water at the house. That was a big deal. You didn’t have to go carry the water, you could go to the back porch and there was your water. You didn’t have hot water, you only had cold water, but at least you had water.

“Making the Mountains Home: Interview With Sharon Stiles” by Kami Ahrens, Foxfire, Spring/Summer 2020, p. 73

Times change. I know that. And I don’t expect people in Appalachia to live as if they belonged to an era long gone. But Foxfire, at least the glimpse I got through one issue of the magazine, has lost some of its enchantment for me. As a child, I was visiting with people who were very different from me every time I opened one of the books. Now I can read about a prop maker who uses a 3-D printer… just like one of my family members. It is, I suppose, a little too close to home, like seeing a McDonald’s in Rome.

Despite my melancholy over the changes that have been brought about by time, there’s a lot I still cherish about the book series. I may never have the opportunity to speak to someone who’s been to a “barn raisin,'” but I can hear their stories secondhand in the Foxfire series.