“Foxfire” Comes fo
Pigeon Roost
It's nut on the map. but a great many
readers know it as The Land of Har¬
vey Miller.
By ASHTON CHAPMAN
Harvey James Miller, “the sage of
Pigeon Roost," also known as “the
man with 1000 true talcs," was sole
contributor to the 142-page Winter
1974 edition (Vol. 8 No. 4) of Foxfire
Magazine, the highly successful pub¬
lishing project of the English classes
taught by Eliot Wigginton at Nacoo-
chee School, Rabun Gap, Georgia.
Harvey’s writings fit in perfectly
with the magazine's policy of preserv¬
ing the knowledge of folkways, folk¬
lore and crafts of southern Appalachia,
interviews with its elderly residents, the
constantly changing aspects of Nature,
the weather, the crops, the foods, etc.
Foxfire's Winter edition was com¬
posed entirely of selections from “a
three-foot-high pile" of Harvey's week¬
ly columns and news items printed in
The Tri-County News, Spruce Pine,
from 1950 through 1973. He began
contributing to the News when it was
established in 1926,
He has written regularly, for varying
intervals, for other papers, including
the Watauga Democrat, Boone;
Mitchell Ledger. Bakcrsvillc; Caldwell
Courier. Hudson; Johnson City, Tcnn.,
Press-Chronicle: Erwin, Tenn., Rec¬
ord ; Kingsport. Tcnn.. Mirror, etc. His
column, still a special feature of The
Tri-County News, under the present
heading. "News of Happenings that
Occurred Here and There in Lower
Mitchell County Area," has been re¬
printed in The State and other peri¬
odicals all over the country.
Fifteen hundred extra copies of Fox¬
fire's Winter edition were printed, with
(obo'Cl Honey James Miller in the Bornctt
lomily cemetery on Pigeon Roost, where his
grandparents are buried.
Ilettl Horrey Miller ond his friend Harry Got¬
land wind their woy up the long polh to the
Gorland home. < photos courtesy "Foxfire" Moga-
xine)
a different soft cover, to form the first
edition (others are expected to follow
soon) of Harvey James Miller’s first
book. Each page has two newspaper-
like “columns" bearing the dates of
original publication. A brief foreword
by editor Wigginton is followed by a
rather long preface by Miller. Also in¬
cluded are pictures of Harvey and other
‘Pigeon Roosters" made last fall by
Foxfire photographers, and some quite
old photographs belonging to Miller.
A Style All His Own
Harvey was bom in 1909 in a log
cabin overlooking Pigeon Roost Creek.
"The fact that he went only as far as
the sixth grade in the community's one-
room schoolhousc probably did his
writing more good than harm," said
Wigginton, "for he remains today al¬
most childlike (in the best sense of the
word) in his trust in other people, his
awe and curiosity about the neighbor¬
hood and the hills around him, his
openness, his total lack of artifice or
contrivance or sham, and his warmth
as a human being."
Harvey said recently that in his first
school year he became fascinated with
words. "For a long time I couldn’t
manage to hold a pencil or chalk and,
after learning my letters, I’d trace them
in the air with my fingers to form
words.”
Gradually he developed a bold, clear
handwriting and his news stories were
for years submitted in longhand, until
he acquired a beat-up second-hand
portable typewriter (later sold as an
antique).
His "style" is peculiarly his own. He
says, “I write like I talk," and rarely
changes even a word. Early in his
career editors learned that their at¬
tempts to correct Harvey's sentence
structure, grammar, punctuation or
spelling would, all too often, practically
destroy the spontaneity and naturalness
of what Harvey wrote as a result of his
THE STATE. MARCH 1975
