The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book

by Inc. The Foxfire Fund

  She said, “Well, the bottom land is a floodplain, which you can’t grow nothing on. It is forty-five hundred dollars an acre.” Well, I had done bought some down there and paid twelve hundred an acre for it. I told her, “I ain’t got no problem with that. Let’s just go ahead and draw that up.” She said, “Well, it won’t work like that. There’s eight acres more up there against the road. It’s thirty thousand dollars an acre; you have to buy that, too.” That’s eight acres—two hundred forty thousand bucks—and that money then was money.

  I said, “Well, all right. I’m gonna take it—not even gonna ask you to come down on it, but one thing I’m gonna ask you is not to mention nothing about the deal to nobody. If I want it told, I wanna be the one to tell it.” She said, “Oh, that’s fine. I won’t mention it.” I went through all that tryin’ to buy other pieces of land. The news got out that I was fixin’ to buy that. Everybody would see you around town and go straight and offer more and say, “Hold on. I think I know someone who can get you a lot more,” and stuff like that.

  I guess we can just say that back in the older days it was a lot harder than it is today. Most kids don’t have to work. They only work if they want to, and we didn’t have any of them nice cars or airplanes. Yeah, you kids sure have it easy. One thing I can tell y’, though: Get a job and a good education, or y’ ain’t gonna be nothin’ in life.

  “You either moonshined or you sold corn to moonshiners.”

  ~Memories from Allen English~

  Allen and Betty English are members of a generation who have seen great change come to the mountains. Born in an era when most women birthed their babies at home with the help of a midwife, when wood served to both heat homes and cook food, when most people grew their own food, and before industry came to the area, Allen English spoke of a time when the rhythms of daily life were quite different from what we know today. In those days, he told me, families were close, sharing time together as a natural part of daily life rather than another item on a to-do list. Neighbors depended on one another in times of need, knowing that the time would come when those who had assisted would need assistance and those who had needed help would provide it.

  I met Allen and Betty several years ago, not as Foxfire contacts but as friends of my father’s. My dad shared with Allen an interest in hunting and fishing and an enjoyment of well-crafted guns. In fact, it was a relative of Allen’s who acted as a father figure to my own father many years ago and taught him a love of the outdoors that he has passed on to his own children. When I went to interview them on a July morning, I found them just as I remembered them from my younger years: Allen, cheerful and friendly, and Betty, sweet and hospitable.

  As he spoke of people who were happy simply because they were comfortable—by which he meant they had enough to eat, enough wood to heat their homes and their cookstoves, clean and sturdy clothes to wear, and bodies able enough to do the hard work required to put food on the table and keep the homes warm—I could not help but think of the financial crisis our great nation has experienced recently and wonder if we, as a people, will relearn the value and joy of gratitude for having enough. As we talked of his life and interests, I heard in Allen’s conversation the rare quality of a man who honestly appreciates life’s simple but great pleasures: fishing trips that bring home fresh and delicious fish to eat, hard work that produces a yard full of colorful flowers, time with family that leaves a legacy of happy memories, and an honest life well lived.

  —Lacy Hunter Nix

  Well, we grew up here in the country. I was borned in Tiger, Georgia. My parents lived in a log house, and I was born in that house in 1941. They didn’t have a maternity hospital, and Ms. Lizzie Keason was the midwife. She’s been dead for several years, but I can remember her. Before she passed away, I grew up old enough to remember her. She was the midwife. I have one brother and four sisters, and I was next to the youngest. I have one sister younger than me. My parents were Oscar and Clara English.

  We worked; we grew most everything we ate. At a young age, we very seldom went to town. We had to make our own entertainment, and we would make our own toys—wooden-wheel wagons. We’d roll ’em off the hills and stuff like that when we was kids. And we had the creek down here, and in the summer, why, we had us a swimmin’ hole. We had some neighbors, and they was some kids that would come around. Well, we did everything—stuff like horseshoes. Of course, we played in the creek, played cowboys and Indians when we was young, stuff like that—things today that kids don’t play or even know about.

  There’s one thing that I tell a pretty good bit. Bob Joe Scroggs, he lived over in a house right straight across from us over there, and we’d get a big tire, like a big transfer truck tire, and this was a pasture up there that was steep. We’d carry that tire up there, and he’d get balled up in it, and he’d come down the hill, and they was two fences an’ the woods down there, and he’d come plumb down that hill and through them barbed-wire fences. It didn’t hurt ’im, but he didn’t try it again [laughs]! Stuff like that was real excitin’, but you’d think, why would anybody in the world get in a tire and come down that hill like that and a-knowin’ that that barbed-wire fence was out there!

  We was on up pretty much in age, toward teenage, when we went to town to the movies and things. On Saturdays, we would go to the Saturday matinee up at the theater there in town. Really, we just had to sorta entertain ourselves, but we worked a lot even at a young age. We worked in the garden and fields and things like ’at, and it wasn’t somethin’ we dreaded, ’cause it just come natural that we did such as ’at.

  The families back then was real close together. On Saturday night, a lot of times, we’d just get together, and you’d talk, and there’s one thing we’d always do in the wintertime. We’d grow popcorn, and we’d pop a big dishpan full of popcorn and stuff like that.

  School was somethin’; it was fine, but we were not really, in ways, excited, ’cause in ways we was sorta carefree kids. It took us a while in the fall to get used to going back to school and sittin’ there all day instead of out roamin’ the country. We’d have to do our homework, and that was number one when you come home. You did that first, and then you did your evening work. And, then, if there was extra time, you might get to play some, but that homework was first—doin’ your work and then your evening chores. And when I got older, I even milked the cow, and we had to feed the hogs. All that stuff had to be taken care of and get wood. If it was winter, you had to get wood in for the night. We burnt wood, and that was our source of heat and cookin’ also. Mother, she cooked on a woodstove, and, o’ course, we had a wood heater. That was the source of heat. That was one of the number one things; you had to have that done. I come along right amongst the girls, and my brother, he was much older, and he’d already gone out, so all that kinda work, I mostly did that. And the girls, they’d help in the house a pretty good bit, but my main job was to get wood in and stuff like that. Another job that I had was to always help Mother cook breakfast. That was one job that I did. And I still know a lot about that today [laughs]. That’s a good meal.

  They was very few people here when I was a child, and it was a farmin’ community. All these houses here now, they wasn’t here. There was an old gentleman that lived right here, right below the house. He had a small house, and we lived here, then one other one over there. And that was all the houses right in here, and now everywhere you look, they’s a house. Like I said, it was thinly populated, and we did farming. It was sorta more carefree, I guess. Everybody in the community was tight-knit people. If you needed help with something, you just called on your neighbor, and then you returned the help. As far as money, they was never any money changed hands—just help—and that made it seem like a tight-knit community. Back then they wasn’t so independent. People were more open to one another, but you see people today right around you, they don’t even speak. Used to, everybody was very close.

  We went to church. That was a big part of family life. We went out here to Libe
rty Baptist Church. We looked forward, when we was kids, to stuff like Bible school, reunions, and Christmas plays. We looked forward to that; it was special and different.

  Besides farming my dad did some heavy construction for several years, and in later years, he went to work with Game and Fish. My mother primarily stayed home until they opened the shirt factory [Clayburne Manufacturing in Clayton, Georgia], and she worked a few years up there, but she didn’t work many years. She was mostly a professional cook. Before that, they was some things that probably wouldn’t be approved of today; I know they wouldn’t be approved of today. Just like a lot of others, we come from a moonshining family. I mean, it was a way of life; it wasn’t something that we liked to do, but it was something we had to do. The plants [factories] only hired so many people, and they was a lot of people in the county, and they was just so many jobs. We did do that till we got older, and when we could find jobs, we’d quit. And, back then, you didn’t consider it as wrong; a lot of people did it. It was just a way of life for a lot of people. That’s a reason a lot of the farmers, they farmed and stuff like that, but you couldn’t sell corn to make a livin’. You either moonshined, using it to make the liquor, or you sold it to moonshiners. ’Course, you couldn’t make a livin’ in this country a-farmin’. It just wasn’t that big.

  It was very hard, but we always seemed to be happy; it didn’t matter if we had a whole lot, but we always had plenty of food, we had clothes and a good place to live. That’s something we never did hurt for. They’s some people that did, but we didn’t. By no means was we rich, but I’d say we were comfortable, and when you are comfortable and things like that, you are happy. That’s what probably made the family and the people around here happy. They didn’t have a lot, but that’s what made folks close-knit; they was comfortable. They had enough. T’day it seems like some people, they can’t get enough; no matter what they got, they can’t get enough.

  PLATE 26 “When I came back, why, I looked her back up, and then I married her.” Allen and Betty English

  My teen years were pretty good. A’ course, like some other kids, I did play some ball and stuff like that and went through that. Seemed like I was very glad to see that high school get over. As soon as that was over, I went into the service; I went into the Navy and then into [Army] Special Forces, and then, when I got back, why, I met—I knew Betty before I went in, but when I came back, why, I looked her back up, and then I married her. She was from Rabun Gap, Georgia, and I was from down in these parts. We didn’t date before I entered the service, but I worked just briefly at a service [gas] station in town, and that’s how I got to know her. In fact, I’d slip and buy her cigarettes [laughs]. And I had to pay for ’em! She might not approve of all that t’day, but I think it’s been fun [laughs]! Forty-nine years—last June the second was forty-nine years since we were married. It seems like when we got together that we sorta just knew we was meant for each other. And we’ve had a good life. We’ve got a son and daughter, and they are good people. I’ve got five grandchildren. [Editor’s note: At this point in the interview, Allen points to the pictures of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and beams as he explains, “That’s the great-grandkids. That’s the sweeties. We’re fixin’ to have one more great-grandkid in October. Two, and we’re fixin’ to have the third. It’s gonna be another girl.”] Our great-grandchildren live out in Peachtree City, and we don’t see ’em as much as we want to. We’d like to see ’em all the time, but we can’t. Well, there’s one thing about it: We can spoil them and send them back home to their parents! We’ve got one grandson, and he’s special. He was twenty yesterday; he was just twenty years old yesterday.

  When I first got back from the service, I couldn’t find work and, for a brief time, I made moonshine again until finally I got on at Rabun Mills [Burlington Industries]. Then I went back to the shirt factory just a little while again, and then Atlanta Braves for about five years. When I worked with the Atlanta Braves, the Braves bought the old Camp Dixie for Boys in Wiley, just south of Tiger, and they built baseball fields and everything, and I overseen all of that. That was 1969, and they went through ’75. They built the fields and ever’thing, but it was primarily a tax write-off for ’em. They brought a lot of underprivileged kids here, but, of course, they had a lot of rich kids down there, too. They did sell it. Most of the land in the camp was bought by the Braves’ employees, and there’s still a lot of them down there.

  Then I went with Southern Company, Georgia Power, and that’s where I retired from. In the meantime, I did a lot of other things. I built custom guns; I worked on a lot of other people’s guns. That’s where, I guess, my real love was—doing work like that—but it just seemed like I had to stay with Georgia Power for security reasons—insurance and everything like that. How I got into gun building was, I used to watch my dad. He had a mechanical ability, and he worked on everybody’s guns in the community and around, from town and everywhere. He worked in his shop and in part of the house over there, and he never charged them anything. It was just something he liked to do. He’d work on ’em and fix ’em for them people, and I watched him. That’s how I really got into it. And I built “custom” guns. How I really got into building custom guns is, I would see ’em in them books an’ ever’thing, and I wanted one of ’em, but they were so expensive. And I said, “Well, if they could build ’em, I could, too,” and I built one of ’em. And then from that, I built some guns, and I put over eight thousand dollars’ worth of gold in one of ’em. Very expensive guns—us country boys, we couldn’t afford that [laughs]! People like Richard Childress bought my guns. He owned Childress Racing; people that are multimillionaires and people with the Braves’ organization bought my guns. I sell a lot of guns to New York; some of the buyers are Cornell [University] people. People had to have money because you couldn’t build those guns cheap. T’day, most of them that I build, I hunt with; they are just showpieces. Of course, I’ll hunt with one of ’em. I tell people, I say, “Shoot, I can afford to hunt with a pretty gun [laughs]!” Most people wouldn’t put that kinda money in ’em. They was a few people here in the county that surprised me that did do that—have me to build them guns.

  PLATE 27 “Shoot, I can afford to hunt with a pretty gun!” Allen English holding his personal gun

  One of the biggest changes here in the mountains is the people that moved in here—that’s, I say, the biggest change. The people that moved in here, they really wanted this kinda life. Well, when they got here, they didn’t really like it, and now they want to change ever’thang. The original people don’t mind the new people so bad, if they’d just leave their ways where they come from. Well, it’s just like the churches, the government, and just ever’thing. Just like our church; it’s a country church and always will be, and you’ve got people from Miami and Atlanta, you name it. And every one of those has dif’rent idies [ideas] from where they come from, what they want, and they want to change everything, and what you end up with is a bunch of people that can’t agree on anything.

  Of course, the way of life here changed; you don’t get up and go tend the crops anymore. You get up and go to a job, but, really, that is one of the biggest changes that has been in this country—the migration of people that have come here, and then they want to change everything, you see. The way I look at it is, if I went into a different area, I would at least go there, see what goes on, and see if I liked it. Well, if I didn’t like it, why, I wouldn’t go. It’s changed the way people relate to each other very much—very much. They have different idies, dif’rent things; a lot of them don’t get along, and it causes people to not associate with one another.

  I’d like to see Rabun County back up twenty years, but you can’t do that. It would be more of a slower, laid-back time. Like t’day, you have to make x number of dollars to survive here. Back several years ago, the money, a’ course you always had to have money, but it wasn’t the big, main important thing. Today you’ve really got to have some money, or you just don’t s
urvive, but, like I said, I’d like to see Rabun County more of a laid-back place, but we won’t see that again, unfortunately.

  One thing that I think the young folks should do is that they should communicate more together and be more sociable and stuff like that and not be so independent. They should do that. Of course, get an education, go to church, and stuff like that—stay away from drugs and alcohol and bad stuff like that. I’d like to see the young people go to church. I think they would be much better off. That would be my number one thing.

  One thing that I like—Betty didn’t ever foller [follow] it too much, but I love to hunt and fish. And I did a lot of hunting and fishing when I had time. I killed a lot of deer and caught a lot of fish, and I really enjoyed that. I still enjoy it and go when I can; ’course, age is catching up with me. I still enjoy it, and I’ve got a pond down here, and I play with it. I’ve got some big fish in it, and I catch ’em and smoke those fish. I love smoked fish. We love fish, and we love deer meat, turkey, and stuff like that. I do a lot of things, I say, for Betty. See all the flowers in that thing [points to several large flower beds outside]? That’s a hobby for Betty and I, but we’re gonna have to cut back on some of the things that we do like that. We won’t cut it all out, but we’re gonna have to slow down on some of it; it’s getting to be a pretty big job.