Max Woody – 5th Generation Chair maker

Partial Transcript: Max Woody remembers the last night at Old Fort Music, it was very sad. They started back up but the town became greedy and wanted money. Max talks about how Old Fort music started. So many old people would come in and it was sad when it closed. After Max left the town closed them down. In 20 years there were 53 musicians. Max talks about the CBS Early Morning Show coming to interview him.

Keywords: CBS Early Morning Show.; Old Fort Music

Subjects: Max Woody and Old Fort Music

Partial Transcript: Max talks about how Old Fort Music got started. A friend and his son sat down with Max and they started to play. The next week more people came they brought coffee, cold drinks, and baked goods. Soon they outgrew the shop. Sam Gray the curator of the Old Fort Museum allowed them to use that porch. People gathered in the yard in the summer. They became popular up and down the east coast. When winter came the mayor offered them an old automobile agency uptown. Max stipulated the musicians would not be paid and there would be no admission charge. Anyone could perform. After about 20 years some undesirable people got
control.

Keywords: Old Fort museum; Sam Gray

Subjects: beginning of Old Fort Music

Partial Transcript: Mar explains how they restarted after leaving Old Fort Music. The Friday after they left Old Fort Music a dozen or so musicians got together to play in a building that was let to them. They paid for the power, insurance, and some incidentals. There was a donation box and a door prize every Friday. It continued to grow; it is a real social thing.
The Old Fort Music built a big dance floor and with people with taps and cloggers, it got so loud the musicians couldn’t hear. Max and the musicians got out. The new place has a small dance floor there is tapping but no clogging. Max shares the story about the ninety-year-old lady who loves to dance. It is just a lot of pleasure.

Keywords: cloggers; taps

Subjects: Where they went after Old Fort Music

Partial Transcript: Max discusses how he has been able to make other things happen around town. A big finishing plant closed its doors in Old Fort 30 years ago. The town was devastated. He used to go to a sandwich shop in town. One day he told his friend that something could be done for Old Fort. It was rich with history and had many other fine points. He called the mayor and spoke to the secretary. The mayor called a meeting and invited Max to speak. They decided to start a Heritage Foundation and call it Old Fort Heritage Foundation. They got a charter and prevailed on the railroad to give them a depot for a visitor center and museum. Things started to pick up in Old Fort. A couple of Bed and Breakfasts opened up.

Keywords: Heritage Foundation; finishing plant

Subjects: The turnaround

Partial Transcript: Max talks about all the incidental things that happened. He shares the story about the group of senior citizens from Lake Norman who wanted to come and have a picnic. It was a cold and rainy day. Sam Gray opened up Morgan cabin and built a fire. They had a wonderful time and went home to talk about it.

Warren Wilson College has a lot of foreign students and they come down and perform. Word got around and Old Fort started growing.

Keywords: Morgan cabin; Sam Gray; Warren Wilson College.; Lake Norman

Subjects: Incidental things

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the time he was working at the State Fair and PBS came to do a show on his shop. He spoke to Gary Morton and they started a program called Old Mountain Christmas. A visiting artist from Charlotte came up and she covered the whole county promoting this.

The lady’s music teacher started a community chorus. There were hundreds of members. Max told Gary Morton about it. They came out to the museum and had suppers. Different churches would come in and bring food to the Morgan cabin. The food from the black churches always sold out. Max told Gary he needed to come up and film that, and he did. Old Fort went nationwide on PBS on the Thursday before Christmas.

Keywords: Gary Morton; Old Mountain Christmas; PBS; black churches; churches; community chorus; food; State Fair

Subjects: Old Mountain Christmas

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the summer picnic. After working so hard on Old Mountain Christmas the town decided to have a picnic to celebrate. The picnic was held on the grounds of the museum. The whole town turned out. Max decided to call it Pioneer Day. It has become an annual thing. It makes him feel good to be able to start something like that.

Keywords: Old Mountain Christmas; Pioneer Day; Summer picnic

Subjects: Pioneer Day

Partial Transcript: Max shares his family history. 3 Woody brothers came over from the old country and settled in Goochland Virginia. They migrated south. At that time everyone was either a woodworker or a metalworker. You either made it or bartered for it. All the people from the old country knew how to do all this. One brother settled on Cane Creek out in Bakersfield. Out of necessity, he built all his tables and chairs. It was a long process. Max worked for about six years with his grandfather. Max had a determination to make chairs. He learned from his grandfather. He explained how he went about learning, by asking questions and listening to the old people. In turn, he likes to do that for the young people.

Keywords: Bakersfield; Cane Creek; Goochland; Virginia; Woody brothers

Subjects: family history and chair making

Partial Transcript: Max explains his concern for the young people of today. He had some visitors from Wofford College and one was a doctor’s son from Rock Hill everyone in the family was a doctor. Wade Ferry didn’t want to be a doctor he wanted to work in wood. Max let him and a friend come down and stay for a month and make a rocking chair. Wade stayed and made Shaker furniture. He went back to Rock Hill, married his sweetheart, bought a home, and built period pieces for himself and other people. He became the curator of Historic Brattonsville. He is enjoying a good life. He didn’t want to be a doctor; he wanted to do something else.

Keywords: Historic Brattonsville; Rock Hill; Shaker furniture; Wofford College

Subjects: Making a change in a young person’s life

Partial Transcript: Max shared another story about a lady who stopped in the store to have something repaired with her daughter who was taking lessons in identifying trees. Max had a lot to tell her. When mother came back she told Woody how well her daughter had done.

Max met a man at Turtle Island and he told the man how to better sell his things. Max explained to ask the customer for a picture of what they want and make it, the piece is already sold. Max has been doing this for his customers. Max shares stories of other pieces he has made for customers.

Keywords: Turtle Island,

Subjects: how to better sell pieces.

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the Foxfire program. He met a man and his wife from France; he was an accomplished woodworker not in France but in England. Max invited them to his cabin. Max talks about Shindig on the Green and Bascom Lamar Lunsford.

Lunsford started selling fruit trees so he could sit on the porches of the old people and learn the old ballads. He had a better collection of music than the Library of Congress. He started a festival, Shindig on the Green and each year they would buy a rocker from Max and raffle it off. Max talks about the time he was sitting in a rocker listening to the music and smelled tobacco. He started talking to the man about his friends in London, Max described the gentleman and the man knew exactly who they were, the couple who had stayed in Max’s cabin.

Keywords: Bascom Lamar Lunsford; England; France; Shindig on the Green; ballads; Foxfire program

Subjects: Shindig on the Green

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the coincidental things that have happened. Max points out a small round plastic bottle and asks David to open it. It says “stool sample” on the inside. He talks about his engineer friend who retired and built a turning lathe in a Wells Fargo trailer. He pulled the trailer from Indiana to North Carolina to show Max. Max describes another gift he got from his friends in Alaska. Max has mementos from all over the world.

Keywords: mementos

Subjects: mementos

Partial Transcript: Max’s dad was crippled. Max talks about how his mom and dad met and the injury that crippled his dad. His dad took 10 years and his grandfather took 20 years from chair making to work for C&O railroad.

Max’s mother’s family was Arringtons from Haywood County. Max’s grandfather Arrington was a fine carpenter. He had a waterwheel and a grist mill. Max talks about the 1916 flood and how it wiped everything out for the Arringtons. Max describes how they packed everything up and moved to the Clinchfield cotton mills in Marion. Grandpa Arrington built cabinets and the children twelve years and older went to work in the mill. It took them all about a year to save up enough to buy Grandpa Arrington a Hit ‘N’ Miss engine. They all moved back to Haywood County.

Max’s grandfather and Max’s dad were in railroad camp cars in Marion. The railroad boys would go up to the cotton mill village courting. That is how his mom and dad met. When the Arringtons went back to the mountains they stayed in touch. Max’s mother came back and got a job and stayed with Max’s dad’s family. They married and after several years their job took them to Forest City. Max’s dad built them a house. There were mom and dad and two sisters. They had a nearly new Model T Ford and money in the bank. Max’s dad dislocated his hip while working on the railroad. Max talks about how his dad got worse and there was no compensation from the railroad. It took a year to take everything they had. His dad was hopelessly crippled. He was only twenty-seven years old.

Keywords: 1916 flood; Arrington; Clinchfield Mill; Haywood County; Hit’N’Miss engine; C&O railroad

Subjects: railroad accident

Partial Transcript: Max’s parents moved to the west side of Marion into an old farmhouse and started farming. Max’s mother had eight brothers who came to help along with the help of neighbors they got along. His mom got a job, the depression hit and Max was born. They moved around a lot. They moved near the cotton mill. Max was born in 29. His dad could hardly do anything. He could do small things with shop tools. Max shares a picture of a chair his dad made for Max’s baby sister. He made axe handles, and hammer handles, and sowed plants. People bought his plants 1₵ each. They had no fertilizer. Max explains what he did to make fertilizer for the plants, manure tea. At three years old Max knew how to milk and feed the pigs and do work around the house.

At about four Max would get into his dad’s toolbox. When Max was fifteen he caught a train to Johnson City, Tennessee, and worked in a hardwood flooring plant. In the fall he came back home and Max’s dad died that winter. His neighbor had a horse and some bottomland. Max trained the horse to plow and he planted corn, before school got out, to feed the animals. When school was out he got a job working on Mount Mitchell building the parkway. Max talks about his daily routine of working on Mount Mitchell and taking care of the farm.

Max went back to school and graduated. He talks about what his homeroom teacher wrote about him in the school newspaper. He laughed but later in life figured out it was like the story of Briar Rabbit and the Briar Patch. Max talks about the English teacher who helped him with the two subjects he was short on so he could graduate with his class.

Keywords: Johnson City; Mount Mitchell; Parkway; Marion

Subjects: Max’s education and jobs

Partial Transcript: Max talks about his job in the furniture factory. He was saving his money and didn’t own a car. He was making 65₵ an hour. After three years he saved $850, quit the factory, and caught a bus to Charlotte. In Charlotte, Max picked up the used tools he needed. He paid $736 for them.

Max went to work in his basement but he still did not have a car. His granddad asked him “What the hell have you got there?” Max told him he wanted to make chairs. That Sunday Max thumbed a ride to his granddad’s house. That first day his granddad showed him what to do. Max watched and listened. That first day they assembled six chair frames. Max explains how to bend and shape the frame. He became his granddad’s partner.

Keywords: Charlotte; Furniture factory

Subjects: career in chair making

Partial Transcript: Max talks about going to Korea. He was a combat engineer. The last two weeks he was there before he rotated home he was at Heartbreak Ridge. He spent those two weeks getting the tools ready, no one else knew how. He made Staff Sergeant pretty fast.

When he got home he went back to work for his granddad and in his spare time he built a shop building that he moved into in 1955.

Max figures he has been making chairs longer than any other Woody.

Keywords: Heartbreak Ridge; Korea

Subjects: time in Korea and coming home

Partial Transcript: Max talks about what it means to make a chair in the old style of craftsmanship. Max explains what mule ear chairs are and has an example of a few that could have been made by his ancestors during the Depression. In 1932 or 33 Max’s granddad went to Old Fort where there was an NIRA, National Industrial Recovery Act, and PWA Public Works Administration shop. His granddad taught young men how to make chairs. They made them by the hundreds.

In 1971 Max became the shop teacher for the last three months of school. Max talks about the program and the fact that the program was almost a joke when he started. He told the boys to come back after Easter with something to build, something to repair, and something to work on. Max had a good time with the boys.

Max talks about the Ethan Allen incident that had happened at the school.

In order to graduate the boys took a simple test but Max asked them to write a separate paper on what the course had meant to them. He kept those papers when he had a blue day he took them out.

Keywords: Ethan Allen; NIRA; PWA; craftsmanship

Subjects: Teaching

Partial Transcript: Max talks about how it feels to be able to enlighten a child. Max says he sleeps better at night. It makes him feel good. Many of the young guys he taught come and visit him. The kids in school started putting furniture together and finishing it. The community got excited and would come by. Jealousy set in, they were pulled out of the shop and tasked with tearing down an old house.

Max talks about tearing down the old house which the principal considered education. It was the reverse of building. Max said it was very boring. On the way to the dump, Max would let the boys stop at the little store to get a Coca-Cola and a candy bar. He would also let them light up if they wanted. A lot of those boys are still around.

Keywords: Coca-Cola; candy bar; smoke; Enlighten a child

Subjects: shop class

Partial Transcript: Max talks about being a 6th generation chairmaker and his son who is a 7th and a grandchild who will be an 8th. Max talks about his youngest son and his job in Vietnam. He is a good chair maker, faster than Max.

Keywords: 7th generation; 8th generation; Viet Nam; 6th generation

Subjects: Max’s sons

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the legacy he would like to leave behind. He would like to be remembered as someone who had compassion for the little people. As someone who leaves good memories behind. He gives God credit for what he has been able to do.

Max talks about a friend who came by with a pretty girl and asked Max to go with them to the Spruce Pine. Max had already laid out his money for the next week. They went to Spruce Pine and spent what was left over. They had a wonderful time. Max talks about trying to buy a car from the pretty girl’s dad. He wouldn’t sell it and so she married someone else with a car and Max got his tools. Max feels God intervened.

Keywords: God; Spruce Pine; compassion; Legacy

Subjects: legacy

Partial Transcript: Max talks about the chair he made for Jim Graham when he was commissioner, it was going to be a gift. He died before it was done. It brought $2,000. A supporter of Jim’s from Max’s hometown bought it. Jim Graham’s daughter found out and asked to buy the chair. Max explained it was not for sale. When it was resold it wound up in Florida.

People don’t see the money in a chair when they come in. Max explains the process of building a chair. By the time you’re done, you need to ask for a reasonably good wage.

Keywords: Jim Graham

Subjects: most expensive chair

Partial Transcript: Max explains why people from all over the world come to him to buy a chair. Max says it is word of mouth. He guarantees them against anything besides fire and theft. If one breaks he will repair it or give you a new one. He has given them the money back for the chair if they get tired of it. Max shares a price list his granddaddy made. A chair selling for $400 now was sold back then for $15. They figured their wage at $1.25 an hour. Max talks about the one time they tried using a website to sell his chairs. They never sold a char off the website. Max went a number of years to the state fair in Raleigh. He took a lot of orders there.

Keywords: word of mouth

Subjects: people from all over the world buy Max’s chairs

Partial Transcript: Max talks about Art Pitzer who was the manager of the State Fair. He did a lot for Max; he even built a little house for him to work in. Doug Bryant who was on the faculty of NC State was retiring and they were giving him a dinner in Raleigh. Art Pitzer called Max and invited him. Max talks about the six couples who went out to dinner each night and planned a surprise retirement dinner for Doug Bryant. Max was deeply touched that he had been invited.

Keywords: Doug Bryant; NC State; State Fair; Art Pitzer

Subjects: Art Pitzer and Doug Bryant.

Partial Transcript: Max discusses being nominated for the North Carolina Heritage Award.

Keywords: North Carolina Heritage Award

Subjects: Award

Partial Transcript: Max talks about why it is important for young to understand the connection that people had with their hands, craftsmanship, and the connection with the land and community. That connection can change their lives.

Max shares another story about John Langley a high school principal and how one hundred members at the State Fair have to demonstrate their particular Heritage. Max considers himself a builder. John Langley invited Tom Wolf a noted woodcarver to come to his high school. Max talks about how the program has changed over the years. It is a great success. Max lists all the people who have come to the school. Max shares his experience with the community and the students who came to the workshops.

Over the years many of the students discovered talents they never knew they had.

Keywords: Tom Wolf; vocational shop; John Langley

Subjects: A great success