11 Appalachian Heating Tricks Worth Gold in a Winter Blackout (Grandpa Never Paid a Gas Bill)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com The winter I was eleven, an ice storm took every power line on our creek, and the lights stayed out for eleven days. On the fourth night a young family walked up the hill on the ice, with their baby inside the father's coat, past three other houses, to my grandpa's door. Everybody on that creek knew which house had heat to spare. My grandpa never had a furnace, never had a thermostat, and never paid a gas bill in his life. The coal bank dug in the hill behind the barn. Wood cut two summers ahead. The night chunk of twisted oak that kept the fire alive until morning. Four bricks that lived in the oven and went into the beds wrapped in flannel. Three boys to a bed under six quilts. The parlor shut all winter. Walls papered with old newspapers to stop the wind. The kettle that never went dry. A house that faced south. Tomorrow's clothes warming behind the stove. And one short stack of oak that nobody in the family ever burned. He kept a ledger, and every winter he wrote down to the penny what it cost him to keep that house warm. I will read you the total for the winter of the ice storm. You will not believe how small it is. In the margins of that ledger he wrote how a thing was done and when to do it. I wrote out ninety three of those old ways. So tell me down below. Which one of these did your people do? https://burlsizemore.com