Gifts Old Appalachian Folks Would NEVER Accept, Not Even at Christmas (Mamaw Sent One Back)

🔗 93 things every Appalachian grandfather knew. How many are left in you? https://burlsizemore.com In December of nineteen sixty one a small box came up our creek in brown paper and white string. My grandmother read the name in the corner, set it on the mantel, and would not open it. For seven days nobody in that house was allowed to touch it. On the seventh day she walked it two miles down the creek in the snow and sent it back. In these mountains you did not send a gift back. It was worse than a slap across the face. But there were gifts you did not take either. A knife, unless you paid for it with a penny. A dish that came home empty. Shoes from a sweetheart. A Christmas basket from the coal company with a slip of paper under the ham. A dollar on election day. Money at the door for a signature. A gift from a man who was not your kin. Every one of those rules was about the same thing. What a gift ties you to, and who it ties you to. It took me more than forty years to find out what was in that box, and what my grandmother had slipped under the string before she mailed it. She used to say a family that can fix its own things never has to take a gift it does not want. That is what the book is, all the mending and making do I could gather from the old people before it went into the ground with them. If your grandmother ever sent a gift back, tell me down below what it was, and whose hands it went back to. https://burlsizemore.com