ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 27, 1996 TAG: 9612270030
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: FLOYD
SOURCE: MARGARET BROWN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
The snow earlier this week made a mockery of the disaster. The ruins of a $600 cabin built from the remnants of an old still in Floyd lay underneath a white blanket. Scattered remains of burned books and household items were merely snow-covered lumps.
By Thursday, the snow's melting had exposed the blackened wreckage and battered remnants of a tin roof.
Annie Moon, 60, an artist and doll-maker living in Indian Valley, lost everything when her cabin burned to the ground on Dec. 7.
"In 15 minutes, I didn't own anything in the world," Moon said.
True. And not true.
At the site where her cabin stood, her English mastiff named Amos chewed on ice-covered chunks of wood. Ready to play, he stood 3 feet tall, maybe 165 pounds.
A few birds scrounged the ground for food, their feeding stations burned along with the cabin. An old truck guards the entrance to where the cabin stood. It's crammed full of precious pieces of junk and the few dolls not destroyed.
From below the site, other dogs barked for Annie to return to them and the schoolbus where she now sleeps.
"Aaa-ll Rii-ghttt," she yelled at the dogs below - a female mastiff named Rhoddy, one of her litters, and four "take-in" dogs rescued from others. Quiet descended for a moment.
Moon, in several sweaters, dark pants and boots, patrolled the site as if her belongings didn't lie in ruins around her.
"I got careless," she said. "It was about 8 a.m., snowing a bit," She left the cabin to check on a favorite rooster, "and when I came back, there was the fire. All I had to do was throw a blanket on the whole thing, and maybe, who knows?"
But she was afraid the fire would spread to her nearby neighbors, so she tied up her dogs and ran to warn them. By the time she returned ready to throw water on the fire, it was too late.
"I was in a total panic by then," she said.
She turned away from the ruins. "Always before I kept a fire extinguisher and a bucket of sand by the fire," she said. "But you know how you can get complacent."
A shrug. The cold wind ruffled her short black hair, but she seemed not to notice. A glance back at the ruined lumps - all that was left of the fabric and raw materials she used to make her dolls. "I'd just bought all this fabric from School House Fabric," she said.
Her dolls are folk art creations - mountain folks and rough Santas made out of scraps of fabric, wood and other whimsical items scrounged by Moon from here and there.
Somewhere under the charred debris are the ashes of $200, the only money she had in the world. All the food she'd stockpiled for coming weeks. And six library books. "One of them on inter-library loan," she said. "I hope they forgive the debt."
They might. Moon worked at the Jesse Peterman Library in Floyd to earn money to buy the materials to construct her cabin.
The dogs barked furiously again. The snow didn't hide the tops of several pine trees burned of all their needles. "Live trees burning. Flames 30 feet in the air," she said. "The fire department got here in a hurry, but it was just too late."
She also lost a litter of puppies in the fire.
"Rhoddy was pitiful," Moon said as she thew a block of wood for Amos to retrieve. "She kept trying to go into the cabin, and when she couldn't, she kept circling it, looking for another way in."
She stared again at the ruins with no apparent sadness. "I had 26 dolls finished, ready to sell," she said. "That was to be my spring living money. I'm only angry with myself."
But Moon won't be defeated. Not Annie Moon. Not in December.
"It's the winter solstice," she said. Dec. 22 was the shortest day and the longest night of the year. "Now it's time to celebrate the return of the sun."
Others are helping the artist as best they can. Neighbors give her rides to town. The Willis Methodist Church and the Indian Valley Church of God have taken up collections for her. Darcy Meeker, one of the coordinators of the Gallery of Local Artists, a Christmas-season shop stocked and staffed by a co-op of local artists in New River Valley Mall, has put out a jar to collect money for Moon.
"It's getting full," Meeker said. "This way Annie can see how much love and support is here for her." Others have brought cloth to the co-op for her to use. The artists' co-op also has a few of Annie's dolls for sale, whimsical pieces like "Lady Green Thumbs," a 10-inch doll clutching tiny burlap bags of seed with one over-sized green-thumbed hand and a gardening tool with the other.
Another doll, a man wearing flannel, is practically buried under his shaggy white hair and beard. Only two dark eyes peer out from underneath. A couple, Mr. and Mrs. Claus, perch in the window of the gallery, serene and happy in Christmasy colors.
Meeker said about Annie's dolls, "Each one has soul."
A new life in Floyd
Moon came to Floyd in 1986. "I didn't know one person," she said. The land she lives on now had been up for sale for only one day when Annie made the owner an offer. "Something meant for me to be here," she said.
At the same time, Moon decided to create a new identity for herself by changing her name to Annie Moon. She won't say what her original name was, but she felt strangely confirmed in her new choice of a name when she found out a great-grandmother was Cherokee and had "moon" among her family names.
The dogs barked again, and Moon yelled at them.
Although she has three children, a daughter and a son in Virginia Beach, and a son in France, she hasn't considered moving from her land. "My children have their own lives," she said. "And what would I do with all my dogs?"
So she has plans, even amidst the ruins.
In April, she hopes to have a huge sale at the Sickle Moon in University Mall in Blacksburg and the New Mountain Mercantile in downtown Floyd. After she makes the dolls for it, that is.
For that, she needs the raw materials she uses in her construction: cloth, broken jewelry to take apart and use, buttons, yarn and coat hangers to make the wire frames that shape most of her dolls. "I must have lost about 150 coat hangers in the fire," she said. "I'm afraid they're going to quit making them, so I collect them like crazy."
She's grateful for any contributions. "I look forward to the challenge of using what people give me."
Then there are the things to make living a little more comfortable: books on folk art, novels (especially psychological ones), and history. She will have to replace her bird feeders. Then there are the dogs to be fed and a phone to be paid for. She plans to put her phone outside in a tree.
Money will come from teaching doll-making classes at the YMCA in Blacksburg and at School House Fabric in Floyd. "Maybe I can do some home boutiques," she said. "I can teach the patterns I use."
Her art is still evolving. "I also make ragdolls," she said. "It's interesting to watch people pick up my ragdolls. They cradle them, touch their hair, play with their clothes. And I'm interested in puppets, too, for professionals to use to help people work out their problems."
She'd also like to create religious wall hangings. She's done some Noah dolls, even some Nativity dolls ("with Joseph holding the baby," she said with a smile), and is planning a rabbi doll.
Another blast of cold wind; the dogs barked, but Annie didn't notice. Too much else to think about. She'd been poking in the ruins. Maybe there was something left she can use. After all, she has dolls to make.
LENGTH: Long : 137 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Gene Dalton. Annie Moon holds some of her creations inby CNBfront of the remains of her Floyd County cabin. color.