Johnny Miller

Personal History

Johnny Miller was born in the village of Bulkington and would finish his school day by helping his father, Wilfred. Once he finished school he couldn’t start college, due to his distance to the closest one. Instead, he was put to work in the same apple orchard as his father.

When Johnny was in his early 20s, the harvest of apples began to fail. One year got so bad that Wilfred was in danger of being laid off. As Wilfred was mainly supporting both of them, this did not bode well for the pair. As Wilfred couldn’t retrain due to his age, Johnny took it upon himself to fix the issue. Since one of the variants of apple they were cultivating was failing due to a blight, Johnny tried to artificially crossbreed two apple varieties to make a new one. Working into the night and in the tavern, in the village, on most nights, working on his project. With some false starts and some failures, in his mid-30s, he managed to make a variety of apple that was not as susceptible to the blight. The new variant didn’t just supplant the losses but made a slight surplus of apples. His work was praised and a statue was made in honour of his achievement. The statue depicts Johnny in a walking stance, holding a copper apple in his right hand, and a bottle of apple cider in his left hand.

Legacy

After Johnny Miller’s death, and in the later parts of the The Great Rewind, the inhabitants of the village forgot who he was, but kept the idea that he was important. In the time when the history of the statue was forgotten, the people of Bulkington created a religion around what they thought it represented, which was the deity's message to work hard and celebrate later. This religion began to spread to other villages, to the extent where a majority of villages have the same statue.

Country of Residence - UK
Father - Wilfred Miller
Mother - Rose Miller (deceased)