The Strangest Appalachian Jobs That No Longer Exist (Daddy Worked Three of Them)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com In nineteen thirty six, the government paid a woman twenty eight dollars a month to ride a mule over the mountain with books. Nobody does that job anymore. Nobody does most of the jobs my people did. The bark peeler and the tie hacker. The iceman, the sang buyer and the lightning rod man. Central at her switchboard. The scrip clerk at the company store, the miller at the creek, the knife grinder at the back door. The depot operator, the circuit rider, the drummer with his samples, the cream tester and the fur buyer. The singing master, the mail rider, the water witch and the picture man. The nurse who rode eleven miles through the snow on a February night to deliver a baby for a family she had never met. That baby was me. My daddy worked three of these jobs himself. One on the railroad, one in a truck that took eggs in trade, and one way up in a tower above the trees. I will tell you about all three, and about the one winter my mother had to go and get him. Not one of those jobs paid much. But every one of them was somebody showing up for somebody else, when there was nobody else to show up. My grandfather kept a farm ledger, and in the margins he wrote down how things were done. I sat down with that ledger and wrote out ninety three of the old ways from it. So tell me down below. What did your daddy do, or your granddaddy, or your mamaw, that nobody does anymore? https://burlsizemore.com