The Biggest Regret of Every Old Appalachian Man I Ever Knew (One of Them Was My Father)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com My father told me his biggest regret on his own front porch, on a Sunday evening, two weeks before he passed. In all the years I knew him, he had never once talked about regret. The men up our holler did not do that. Since I was a young man, I have written down, on the back pages of an old seed catalog, the one thing each old man on our creek told me he would do over. Not one of them was the regret you would guess. A blacksmith who carried his whole trade to the grave. A deacon, the most respected man on four ridges, who could not read one word. A man who talked all his life about the ocean and never left the county. Two brothers who did not speak for thirty one years over a fence line. A fiddler. A man who came home from the war and never said a word about it. A husband and wife married forty seven years without one picture made together. My father's regret is the last one on my list, because he is the only one of all those men who did not let it stay a regret. My grandfather Wendell wrote down how a thing was done, and never why. So I went back through everything those old men left me and wrote out ninety three of their old ways, with the why put back in every one of them. So tell me down below. What is the one thing you would do over? https://burlsizemore.com