Vonnie Miller was born in Speed Mill Beat in 1920. His father and grandfather were farmer-basketmakers and he took up the craft as a young man. During the week, he made dozens of cotton baskets to sell in Aliceville on Saturdays. His father and brothers worked in the field during the day while he made basket bottoms. When his father came in at dusk, he would run the sides up. He often stayed up late on Friday night putting rims on the baskets and loading them onto the wagon. Mr. Miller quit making baskets when he started his own business. He bought and cut timber, which he calls “paperwood,” off of people’s land and sold it to a lumber company in Demopolis that sent it to paper mills. He continued to work in the woods until he got too old to do it anymore. Fearing that he would “go down” if he didn’t stay busy, he began making baskets again. At age 82 he continues to go into the woods alone, cut down white oaks the size of his leg, and drag them to the roadside where a friend with a pickup truck hauls them to his workshop. Bud Spiller, a merchant in downtown Aliceville, offered to help him sell his baskets and until it closed, Bud’s Auto was the place to stock up on Miller’s excellent baskets. Though his father also made feed baskets and square bottomed baskets in which people carried food to church, Vonnie Miller never made anything but cotton baskets until Spiller suggested he try making other sizes. Now he makes feed baskets and garden baskets of various sizes—all smaller versions of his cotton basket. Vonnie Miller baskets are not signed, but they are highly recognizable. All have round pattern bottoms with a hump in the center and usually have a faint reddish-brown stain, a result of his pressing it with rocks on a mound of red dirt. He makes the rim of his basket with a thin strip of heartwood wound around several times, giving the top a protruding lip. Most distinctive are the curlicues on the sides of the basket. As he finishes attaching the rim to the basket with a narrow split called a lasher, he weaves the end of the lasher into the sides in a decorative way rather than snipping it off and directly tucking it in.