Old Appalachian Houses Were Full of Strange Features — What Were They For? (Mine Still Has Two)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com In the spring of nineteen eighty eight I pulled the medicine cabinet off the wall of the house my grandfather built in nineteen thirty one, and the wall started to pour. Razor blades. Hundreds of them. And at the very bottom of the pile there was a little fold of brown paper with my grandfather's handwriting on it. Old mountain houses are full of things like that slot. Cans under the bed legs. Cloth tacked across the ceiling. Tin lids nailed over the knotholes. A little hole cut in the bottom of the kitchen door. A hook way up at the top of the screen door. A small room on the end of the porch with its own door and too many windows. A ladder that never once came down off the roof. A door on the second floor that opens onto thin air. People laugh at them now, or tear them out. Nearly every one of them was put there because something out in these mountains was trying to kill somebody. Fire. Fever. Snakes. Floodwater. A cough that would not quit. Two of them are still working in this house today, and I will tell you which two. And I will tell you what was written on that little piece of paper. My grandfather wrote what he knew in the margins of an old farm ledger, but he did not write it all. That is why I sat down and wrote out ninety three things every Appalachian grandfather could do with his own hands, the way he would have told it to you. So go walk through your own house, or your mother's, or the old home place if it is still standing. When you find something strange that nobody ever explained to you, tell me down below what it is, what state the house is in, and about what year it was built. https://burlsizemore.com