this was his home all his life , no running water no inside plumbing , no of the comforts that we now days take for granted this is a story that was in our local paper about a man that lived a different way of life then the normal society did , he passed away on the 13th of Jan 2010 , this goes to show that there are people that still do live this way , weither we relize it or not , does that make them igornat , no it just makes them different. Heart attack, exposure claim ‘Wild man of Cataloochee’
Haywood County legend Arley Phillips, 77, widely known as “the wild man of Cataloochee,” died last week of a heart attack and prolonged exposure to the cold.
Phillips lived in the White Oak community under conditions seldom found in today’s world. His primitive home had no running water or electricity and is unchanged — except for wear and tear — from the time it became the family home. The Phillips were one of many forced to relocate when the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was formed. There is no insulation in the house and the construction of yesteryear allows plenty of places for outside air to circulate in both winter and summer.
photo courtesy Mitchell Phillips, ALONE — Arley Phillips lived his entire life in the White Oak community without electricity, running water and in the last 10 years, heat. Below is the primitive log home and outbuildings where Phillips spent his days. Phillips died last week at the age of 77.
Those closest to him said Arley hadn’t had a fire in any of the fireplaces or stoves in the home for 10 years. Food and beverages were consumed cold, and he always kept a water bottle in his pocket or bed. When long-time friend Jeff Teague found him in bad shape Monday, Jan. 11, the water bottle under his pillow was frozen solid and he had 10 blankets piled on top of him. The week before he became ill, temperatures had dipped into the single digits and remained well below freezing for more than a week.
“I’d been trying to get him to come to my place,” Teague said. “All he would say is, ‘what would happen then?’ You could bring him stuff, but you couldn’t take care of him. He took care of himself.”
Teague said he once asked him why he wouldn’t build a fire to heat up food or keep warm.
“He said a fire would burn you up one side and freeze you on the other,” Teague said.
Philips had lived alone in the woods for so long he had little to say to those who found their way to his corner of the world. Some who were seen as a threat could face a beating with a stick, said Phillips’ nephew Mitchell, who regularly came by with provisions. But when most stopped by, Arley would just hide.
Teague, Phillips and neighbor Bob Farmer were among the few people Arley would speak to.
“I remember when I first saw him,” Teague said. “I was 5 or 6 and we stopped by to drop off our garbage. He was sitting in the Dumpster reading the paper and eating peanuts. We used to look for him, and he would hide.”
Persistence paid off, and by the time Teague was 11, he and Arley had formed a special bond.
“We used to pal around. We wouldn’t have a conversation like you and I are having, but we would sit in the sun or fish. He would follow the sun and sit where it was warm. When I started bear hunting, I would ask him if he saw any bears, and he would point me in the right direction. When we found one, he would hear the dogs and beat me to the tree.”
Bob Farmer, Arley’s nearest neighbor, was one of several who would drop off food and visit a spell — if Arley was in the mood.
“Sometimes he’d talk. Sometimes he’d run. He couldn’t make a sentence because he’d been by himself so long. He didn’t like for you to come around his house too much. You wouldn’t believe in this day and time, someone would be living like that. He used to eat out of these roadside garbage cans.”
Farmer said at one time, Arley would stay in Cataloochee where campers who lived in nearby Haywood or Tennessee would feed him. His long stays in the park marked by limited contact with others earned him his nickname “the wild man of Cataloochee.”
“They finally got to where they would let him do whatever he wanted to do in the park,” Farmer said. In later years, Arley stayed closer to home and survived on the food provided by neighbors, including fresh milk and bread from Ruth Jenkins, canned goods, along with other provisions, including Prince Albert tobacco and papers to roll cigarettes, delivered by Mitchell Phillips and Teague, and contributions from many others in the community.
Mitchell Phillips, along with Tracy Best and others, built a 12-foot by 15-foot insulated room with a wood stove next to Arley’s home two years ago. They moved his cot into the room, moved Arley’s stored belongings away from a door so he could access the attached entryway to the new, warmer quarters, brought in a comfortable chair and provided several barrels with lids for a safe place to store food. Arley would have nothing to do with it.
“I asked him if he’d been in the new building,” Teague said. “He said, ‘no. I reckon there’s nothing in there but sow boomers.”
Arley got his drinking water from a creek below his house or a nearby spring. Food that might attract rats was kept in covered buckets. Those bringing supplies eventually learned what he would and wouldn’t eat. The items he didn’t like — pork and beans, spaghetti-os or mixed vegetables, for instance — were left where they were put, untouched. He liked peanuts until his teeth became so decayed he couldn’t eat them.
“He would cut his own hair and pull his own teeth,” Teague said. “He never saw a doctor.”
That changed, however, the day before he died. When Teague found him, he knew it was time for Arley to get help. While the emergency workers volunteered to bring their four-wheeler in to carry him out, Teague knew the experience would be too scary.
“It was 40 to 50 years since he’d been in a vehicle,” Mitchell Phillips added.
Teague, with the help of Mitchell Phillips, carried Arley through narrow walkways and unstable floors in the jam-packed house, down the slippery, snow-covered slope, across a creek and up the hill to a private road where an ambulance awaited.
Arley became anxious when he was put in the ambulance, but was calmed when Teague took his hand. Family and friends had high praise for the treatment he received at Haywood Regional Medical Center, whose staff abided with wishes to treat the case as a special circumstance.
Arley died at 6 a.m. the next day with Teague, Mitchell and Mitchell’s wife, Suzi, at his side.
Private family services were held in Cosby, Tenn., Friday.
“He was the best neighbor there ever was,” said Teague. “He would mind his own business and not bother anyone. If everyone would live that way, we’d have no problems.”
Suzi Mitchell said his was “an honor and a privilege” to know Arley.
“Arley was the real thing,” she said.
now I lay me down to sleep I hope I get to that birdfeeder before that bitch in the house squirts me with that Damn water bottle ,, Amen 
