Travels with Foxfire: Stories of People, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia

by Phil Hudgins, Jessica Phillips

Overview

Since 1972, the Foxfire books have preserved and celebrated the culture of Southern Appalachia for hundreds of thousands of readers. In Travels with Foxfire, native son Phil Hudgins and Foxfire student Jessica Phillips travel from Georgia to the Carolinas, Tennessee to Kentucky, collecting the stories of the men and women who call the region home.  
 
Across more than thirty essays, we discover the secret origins of stock car racing, the story behind the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the vanishing art of gathering wild ginseng, and the recipes of an award-winning cookbook writer. We meet bootleggers and bear hunters, game wardens and medicine women, water dowsers, sculptors, folk singers, novelists, record collectors, and home cooks—even the world’s foremost “priviologist”—all with tales to tell.
 
A rich compendium of the collected wisdom of artists, craftsmen, musicians, and moonshiners, Travels with Foxfire is a joyful tribute to the history, the geography, and the traditions that define Appalachian living.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525436294
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Series:	Foxfire Series
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	628,286
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Founded in 1966, FOXFIRE is a nonprofit education organization. Foxfire's learner-centered, community-based approach is advocated through The Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center and grounded in the Southern Appalachian culture that promotes a sense of place and appreciation of local people and culture as essential educational tools.

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Chapter One
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Excerpted from "Travels with Foxfire"
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Copyright © 2018 Phil Hudgins.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

The Way It Was 3

The Family Farm 5

The story of Mama & Papa Hudgins

Moonshining Days 15

Stories from James Speed's life making illegal liquor

How Stock Car Racing Started 23

Dawson County folks talk about the precursor to NASCAR

Drive-in Movie Theaters 32

An American icon, reborn

Water Dowsers 39

The ancient art of finding underground water

Outhouses 45

An interview with "priviologist" Mary Frazier Long

Appalachia on Television 50

The story of Heartland

Georgia: First in Flight! 57

The story of Micajah Clark Dyer

Arts And Herbs 63

Doctoring with Herbs 65

The story of Eve Miranda, Medicine Woman

Wild Ginseng 75

Interviews with four men who still hunt it the right way

How to Turn Junk into Art 81

An interview with Jane Taylor

Artist, Flint Knapper, Fiddle and Banjo Player, and Naturalist 92

An interview with Joseph "Doc" Johnson

Food Fit To Eat 101

Dishin' Up Love 103

Interview with Lazell Vinson

Joseph Dabney 108

Winning the James Beard Cookbook of the Year Award

Peach Grower Dori Sanders of South Carolina 123

Recipes from her cookbook

A Sense Of Community 135

On Artistry, Ancestry, and African Americans 137

An interview with Ann Miller Woodford

Keeping the Land and the History 148

Stories from Wayne County, Kentucky

Forming the Great Smoky Mountains National Park 158

The story of Glenn Cardwell of Pittman Center, Tennessee

The Lone Commissioner of Lumpkin County 166

The life of B. Jones

The Great Outdoors 175

Catching Violators of Game and Fish Laws 177

Stories from Calvin Stewart

Turkey Hunting 186

The turkey-hunting tales of three Georgians

Legendary Bear Hunters from the Old School 195

Tales of bear hunting in Rabun County

Where Music Dwells 211

Music in Southern Appalachia 213

Bluegrass, country, and shape note singing

Grounded in Folk Tradition 226

The story of Hedy West

Lillie Mulkey West 235

Inspiring a new generation of folk singers

John Jarrard and Bruce Burch 238

Writers of country music

Southern Gospel Singing 247

Still afavorite for many

Lighter Moments from Gospel Groups 254

The Lord's work is serious business, most of the time

Stories And Their Tellers 261

Inventing a Time Machine and Other Adventures 263

Emory Jones, the great storyteller

Passing Down Memories 273

The story of author Dori Sanders

Dr. C. B. Skelton of Winder, Georgia 278

Practicing medicine and sharing humorous stories

In Pursuit Of "Hobbiness" 289

Eighteen Thousand Long-Play Albums 291

Jerry Kendall and his record collection

Tractors and Trucks 296

Carl "Feel Bad" Davis

Snaking Logs Through the Kentucky Woods 301

Mollis Thrasher and his mules

Family History 308

Jerry Taylor on tracing other peoples genealogies

Editorial Reviews

06/11/2018
Beginning in the 1970s, the Foxfire book and television series introduced Appalachian culture to an enthusiastic public; this latest installment continues the tradition with a group of comfortable, conversational vignettes from rural Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Hudgins and Phillips effectively serve Foxfire’s goal of preserving the Southern mountainous region’s traditions and folklore, with stories ranging from a lighthearted look at Carl “Feel Bad” Davis’s considerable tractor collection to the heartrending tale of a homeless medicine woman devoted to passing along her healing arts. Phillips conducted interviews, and the experienced Hudgins hews to the storytelling angle, basking in the banter over NASCAR’s link to moonshine running or the history of the bluegrass musical tradition. This low-key travelogue is especially timely, providing (largely nonpolitical) insight into the lives of hardworking people in coal country who desperately hope for better job opportunities. Some readers may be surprised by the breadth of material encompassed here; there are some chapters on African-American artistry and some on award-winning regional cooking (often including recipes). The collection ends abruptly, with no closing chapter, but anyone with an interest in Americana, history, or nature will appreciate these poignant and enjoyable stories of shared knowledge and traditions. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Say Foxfire! and we’re there. A new volume in the classic series of Appalachian storytelling, outdoors tips, and collected wisdom, this paperback original expands the usual Foxfire stomping grounds of the north Georgia mountains to the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.” —Garden & Gun Magazine

“You get pulled in. . . . Light-hearted proof that some of the old idiosyncratic spirit [of Appalachia] remains. . . . To this day, I feel sure that if I found myself alone in the mountains with nothing but a hatchet, a dutch oven and a copy of The Foxfire Book, I’d have a pretty good chance to survive. . . . [Travels with Foxfire] is still about making things. . . . The vignettes . . . coalesce around an idea best put forth by Jane Taylor, a native of Gainesville, Ga., in the chapter titled ‘How to Turn Junk Into Art.’ ‘I was very serious most of my life,’ she says. ‘Very serious. I was brought up that way. You don’t play. I was good at what I did, but I never really enjoyed it.’ She found a way to live her own life by her own rules, eventually learning to weld, in love with ‘gorgeous iron, broken, sad, beautiful.’” —Max Watman, The Wall Street Journal

"A welcome rekindling of the Foxfire franchise of books on Southern folkways. Journalist Hudgins and former Foxfire student Phillips continue the fine tradition of publishing collections of oral history around Southern Appalachian cultural mores. . . . In keeping with Foxfire tradition, there's a little bit of everything in this collection. . . . A lively model of modern folklore and a must for fans of the original series." —Kirkus Reviews

"Anyone with an interest in Americana, history, or nature will appreciate these poignant and enjoyable stories of shared knowledge and traditions." —Publishers Weekly
 
“An engrossing shout-out to the distinct and varied culture of Southern Appalachia. . . . Phil Hudgins and Jessica Phillips attempts to characterize the area in a colorful collection of over 30 essays. . . . The authors traveled throughout Southern Appalachia pocketing tales. . . . They also spoke with medicine women, game wardens, folk singers and more.” —Augusta Chronicle

From the Publisher

2018-05-15
A welcome rekindling of the Foxfire franchise of books on Southern folkways.Journalist Hudgins and former Foxfire student Phillips continue the fine tradition of publishing collections of oral history around Southern Appalachian cultural mores begun by teacher Eliot Wigginton in the early 1970s. There are modern wrinkles: Whereas an old-timer in the first edition would have described a ginseng-gathering folk economy with few practitioners and consumers, today the old-timers—i.e., men and women mostly born in the 1950s—recount an industry fueling a large Chinese market, so that, says Georgia master Tommy Hayes, "Some people go through the mountains like a vacuum cleaner," adding, "but what are you going to do the next year?" In keeping with Foxfire tradition, there's a little bit of everything in this collection: There are stories about outrunning the revenuers and the well-documented subsequent birth of stock car racing and thence NASCAR, of a "quasi-hippie" Kentucky police officer who once pulled "Elvis duty" to guard Presley on a run to an ophthalmologist's appointment: "He wanted to buy my revolver, but I didn't sell it to him." More to the point, that police officer has since become a man of parts befitting the Appalachians: He makes banjos, knives, rifles, and sculptures, talks philosophy and archaeology, and generally enjoys the self-sufficient life for which the high country is known. Hudgins and Phillips also profile a cook who won the James Beard Award for collecting recipes for smoked ham, buttermilk cornbread, and the like (with a few recipes included here for good measure); a native-daughter historian of the African-American presence in the Southern Appalachians; a game warden, a turkey hunter, a cave explorer, the list goes on. A bonus is a lightly learned but revealing history of the classic mountain song "Man of Constant Sorrow," itself revived with the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?A lively model of modern folklore and a must for fans of the original series.

Kirkus Reviews