Why Holding On to the Old Ways

When I was younger, growing up in backwoods Arkansas, I had a lot of older people around me that would talk about things they used to do before the rapid growth of technology. I used to listen to them for hours, fascinated by how they were able to do so many things and how they did those things without technology.

But I forgot most of what I heard other than little tidbits.

When I was 14 I befriended an elderly lady that lived next door. She had been born in the 1890s and would talk for hours about how things used to be. She still made her own lye soap. She would take her bacon grease and use it to make her soap, then would use that soap to wash her clothes and dishes and then take the water from the wash and put them in her plants. She had the greenest plants I have ever seen.

She also taught me two practical jokes they used to play on folks. One was simply climbingonto a house roof (quietly) and placing an old blanket over the chimney. This would cause the chimney to back the smoke up into the house and smoke everyone out. The other was called a knock.

The knock was a simple but efficient prank where a waxed thread would be tied onto the front door handle then strung out to a tree away from the house. The prankster would then pull the thread taut and rub a chunk of resin on it. It wold make it seem like someone was trying to get into the house but when folks would look out the window they would not see anyone there.

As you can tell she was a bit of a turd growing up.

Today we seem to have lost much of our connection with simply living with the land and in the stead have moved on to living against it. I am not one of those Greenpeace, tree hugging folks, but I think by moving away from the land we have become lost as a people and as a society. I am trying to learn to live more with the land and learn the old ways of doing things so I may pass them on to those wanting to learn and understand them.

Hence, Holding On to the Old Ways.

In 2006 my lovely wife and I purchased an old house that was built in 1942 and seven acres of land around it. The house is much as it was when it was originally built... Hardwood floors, no air conditioning, ballast windows that raise and lower and very few power outlets. We did put in a new stove, refrigerator and water heater, but everything else is more or less original.

Now you ask, how in the hell do you live in southern Texas without air conditioning? The answer... easy. The house was built to allow air flow. If there is a breeze coming from the south we raise the windows on the southern side of the house and lower the windows on the northern side. this allows the air to slow through the house and the heat to move out through the lowered windows. Even now, it is 92 degrees with a heat index of 104. Inside the house it is about 83 degrees and with a fan quite comfortable. Oh, it helps that there are large trees surrounding the house and help shade it.

We are very, very slowly working on restoring the house to its original condition. It is leaning to the west a bit and we have to get it leveled and once that is done we can begin the interior work. As it is now any work we do on the windows or doors will not be straight once we level the house.

Anyway, that is one of the few reasons I have named this blog Holding On to the Old Ways. I hope to pass on things I learn and rediscover as a part of living here and I hope you folks enjoy.