Foxfire

In the early 1970's, Eliot Wiggington, a graduate of Cornell made his way to the mountain region of Georgia to become a high school English teacher.  He quickly became frustrated with the students attitude towards his class and in a last ditch effort to engage his students, he decided to establish a magazine that would be created by and ran by the students.  That magazine would become known as "Foxfire,"  a bio luminescent fungi that grows on decaying trees and is commonly known to make the mountain forests glow at night.  It is the "Northern Lights" of Appalachia.  The magazine became a folklore magazine, and is one of the best known records of Appalachian life, a culture that is largely oratory in nature.  The best stories from the magazines have been comprised into 9 volumes of books.  I have resolved to read volumes 1 and 2 over the next two weeks.

In the opening of Foxfire book 1, Mr. Wiggington wrote a passage that particularly appealed to me:

"The big problem, of course, is that since these grandparents were primarily an oral civilization, information being passed through the generations by word of mouth and demonstration, little of it is written down.  When they're gone, the magnificent hunting tales, the ghost stories that kept thousand children sleepless, the intricate tricks of self-sufficiency acquired through the years of trial and error, the eloquent and haunting stories of suffering and sharing and building and healing and planting and harvesting -- all these go with them, and what a loss.

If this information is to be saved at all, for whatever reason, it must be saved now; and the logical researchers are the grandchildren, not university researchers from the outside."

As a grandchild descended from this Appalachian culture, I do feel a sense of responsibility to preserve and tell the stories that I fear will die with my generation. 

Within these stories that Mr. Wigginton and his students compiled, there is a voice, loud and clear. The opening story is written not by a grandchild, but rather, a grandparent, and their words and phrases say it all:

"This is the way I was raised up"
- Mrs. Marvin Watts

"my dadie raised the stuff we lived one he groed the corn to make our bread he groed they cane to make our syrup allso groed they Beans and Peas to make the soup beans out of and dried leather Britches beans and dried fruit enough to last all winter he Killed enough meat to last all winter

he Killed a beaf and a Sheep and two or three hogs for the winter he diden have mutch money for anything  we ust had our briskets for sunday morning and when mother ran out of coffie she parched chustnuts and ground them one her coffie mill to make coffie out of  and when it rained and the mills coulden grind our bread we ate potatoes for bread  my dad usto weaved woal cloth to make blankets and cloths out of I have worn woal dresses and my dad has worn home made Britches out of woven wool to  my mother mother also knit our stockings and socks to"

This is the voice that needs to be captured.