What a Dollar Bought Up an Old Appalachian Holler (Two Things Cost More Than Today)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com My grandfather put a silver dollar in my hand when I was eight years old and told me not to spend it until I knew what it was worth. He kept a green farm ledger from nineteen thirty four until the year he died. Every hog, every bushel, every sack of flour and every nickel that came in or went out of that house, written down with the date and the price. So this is what a dollar bought up our creek in eastern Kentucky in nineteen sixty two, from his own hand. A penny for a stick of candy. Two cents for a pop bottle. Four cents for a stamp to Detroit. Fifty cents in the church hat every Sunday of his life. A dollar for a haircut he never once paid for. All the way up to a mule named Pet and a television nobody up our creek could own. Two things on that climb cost more back then than they cost you today, in plain dollars and cents. One of them, my grandfather paid for with my silver dollar on Christmas Eve. It took me most of my life to understand what he wrote down that night. Everything my grandfather knew about making a dollar do the work of five is in the book, ninety three of the old ways, with the reason each one works. What did a penny buy where you grew up? Tell me the store, and what was in the jar on the counter. https://burlsizemore.com