Appalachian Grandpa's Poor Man Camping Tricks Make Expensive Gear a Scam (He Never Owned a Tent)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com In the winter of nineteen sixty three, when I was nine years old, I slept on a ridge above our creek at ten below zero. I did not have a tent and I did not have a sleeping bag, and I slept warmer that night than I have slept in some houses since. Across the fire from us, a man from Lexington with a brand new tent and a down sleeping bag sat in our fire at four in the morning with his teeth chattering. My grandfather Wendell Sizemore camped in these mountains for sixty years and he never owned a tent. Not one, not even after he could afford ten of them. These are the twenty five things he used instead. Corn cobs soaked in coal oil. Matches dipped in wax and kept in a snuff tin. A pine knot. A tow sack for a pack and a lard bucket for a pot. A coffee can stove. Bread bags over the socks and tallow on the boots. Newspaper under the coat and a hot potato in each pocket. An army blanket, hot rocks at the foot of the bed, a waxed canvas tarp, a lean to facing the fire, a green back log, and the long fire that burns all night. The carbide lamp, the grease lamp, the creek for a cooler, the pot buried in the ground, hickory bark for rope, the whet rock, the smudge, and the coal bed. All of them together would not cost you twenty dollars today. The store version of all of them will cost you more than two thousand. And four of them are flat better than anything you can buy for any money. I will tell you the real reason he never owned a tent. It was not money, and it is not the one you are thinking. My grandfather kept the farm ledger for most of his life, and down in the margins, in pencil, he wrote how a thing was done. A few years back I sat down with that ledger and wrote out ninety three of the things he knew how to do with his hands, the fixing and the making do, the way he would have told it to you if you had been sitting across the fire from him. If your people had a trick like one of these, tell me about it down below. What did your grandfather use instead of something you would buy at the store today, and where did he learn it? https://burlsizemore.com