My post last week about the creativity that can be found in the people who call the Appalachian Mountains home got me to thinking about another attribute that can be found here—the ability to make do with what you have.
The trait is by no means relegated to this region, it can certainly be found all over the world.
Sometimes this trait shows up in the simplest of ways.
When I’m planting and need to mark my row I try to use a stick from the woods like Pap did, but if I fail to get the stick before I need it, I pile up a little mound of rocks as a marker that my eye will recognize. Very simplistic example I know, but the older I get the more I recognize not everyone has the ability to make do in even a simple situation such as that.
The Deer Hunter is the literal King of making do with what he has. He amazes me on pretty much a weekly basis with the things he makes for us, the garden, or his hunting paraphernalia with pieces of stuff that’s been sitting around the house for ages. I know he does the same thing at work.
Pap was like that too.
We’ve been trying to replace some of the windows in Granny’s house over the last year. Most recently was the big picture window in the dining room area of her kitchen and the one in her living room.
All the windows are original to the house that was built in the mid 70s. Granny said her and Pap went to Cleveland TN to pick up the windows all at one time. She couldn’t remember who’s truck they borrowed, but said it was somebody’s 🙂
I was about five years old when we moved into the house. I have a few memories of playing around the house site as Pap and an assortment of family and friends built it. One of them is how scared I was to walk across the gangplank before the basement walls were backfilled.
As Granny and I moved stuff in the dining room for easier access to the window she reminded me one half of the window was actually plexiglass. Although I knew that fact I had totally forgotten about it and hadn’t thought of it in probably 20 years or more.
Granny said Pap and Uncle Henry accidentally broke the window pane as they were installing it. She remembered how anxious they were to quit paying rent and move into their new house. Pap’s quick solution to the problem was to insert a piece of plexiglass instead of heading back to Cleveland TN for another window. Pap making do with what he had easy access to served his family beyond his lifetime.
When the gentleman was about to start on the window Granny told him “Now one half of it is plexiglass.” After a quick knock on the pane he said “Why it is!.”
I don’t pretend to be able to figure out things like The Deer Hunter and Pap, but I’m sure thankful I was raised to believe where there’s a will there’s a way. Studying on what needs to be done will allow one to proceed solving the problem at hand and many times it doesn’t include a trip to the store or an appointment with a repair service.
Last night’s video: It’s Mulberry Picking Time in Appalachia.
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I’ve been making do all my life. It’s satisfying to repurpose something or make or fix something without spending a cent.
Making do reminds me of a black lady who wrapped her legs in newspaper before putting on her stockings in winter. She knew a thing or two about insulation against a cold north wind.
Nothing more satisfying than jerry-rigging something and having it work out. 🙂 If it doesn’t, at least you learned something by trial and error. Human ingenuity is a gift from God and seemingly boundless!
My daughters used to rig up the craziest contraptions in their dollhouse when they wanted to approximate furniture or whatever else they were “building” at the time. That was when they were small, but was a fun way for them to get creative and stretch their brains to help with future problems.
We made barbie houses out of my little sister’s Pampers Boxes, when I was a kid. Now they don’t sell them in boxes – what a cheat. The great thing was, when we were ‘bored’ with one, there were always more boxes & we could redecorate. This is how I raised my kids – they made a lot of their stuff. They learned how to wield a hot glue gun by the time they were 8. The older daughter got her own sewing machine by 9. Now she makes her clothes w/vintage patterns & historical methods. The other daughter like to glue popsicle sticks together. We have robbed our kid’s generation by giving them everything they could ever want. Even the poorer families where I live – their kids have cell phones, video games, etc…You hardly ever see a kid outside playing or working.
Like Patty said, when you come up poor you learn real quick to make do with what you have. One of the strangest things I remember doing was helping my father in law patch a tore place in the sidewall of a rear tractor tire with a car tag. We bolted the tag in place with flat head stove bolts with the heads being on inside of tire and then putting a liner in the tire to cover the tag and protect the tube. He used this tire for several more years before being able to buy new tires. It was a size 11×38 on a H Farmall tractor. This was in the 70’s.
Looking back as I grew up, I can well remember ” making do” at times and being told that if you make do with what you have then you will appreciate things even more when you get something. How true that is. Here at home when something breaks or needs fixing my husband will first try to figure out how to fix it and if he can we’ll make do with it. I remembered during the pandemic how would I get along without paper towels, then I thought well that’s silly, that’s what kitchen towels are for. I think we sometimes take so much for granted.
My mom taught all us kids to reuse and repurpose everything possible. However, as all us kids grew older and had families of our own, they all changed except me. My siblings don’t have that reuse and repurpose things like I do. My hubby doesn’t always do it either. I just believe differently. I believe we should be good stewards of the earth as God intended. I’m not talking politics, just we should take care of what we got for as long as we can.
My oh my do I remember our Mulberry tree from when I was a very young child growing up in the most beautiful town. It grew right close to the front porch of our house but was not as big as Miss Cindy’s. When I was about 8 or 9, my cousin and I would climb up on the roof and pick us a container of Mulberrys. Our house was like a ranch so we didn’t have to climb that far and what a treat for us as we returned to the kitchen with our bounty. We would eat some as we picked them but would wash them, put them in a bowl and pour a little milk over them. They were delicious!! Those sweet memories are among many my cousin and I talk about to this very day. Corrie will have all those beautiful memories stored in the pages of her mind and will be able to recall them even if your video is lost. By the way, I love Corrie’s natural color hair – dark brown. I have enjoyed permanents through my life but they can lighten your hair.
We were brought up on making do. My father had been given some old galvanized small pipes and he didn’t have the money to buy me a swing set so he put together those pipes in an arrangement that had a teeter-totter (see-saw) then went up high enough to hang a trapeze and two swings from. I still marvel at his ability to make do.
We ate blackberries in a bowl of milk with a bit of sugar sprinkled on top. Thought we were the only ones that did this! Delicious – still do it once in a while, but my kids don’t like it. I found it so refreshing as a kid; coming back hot & sweaty from picking berries way out in our woods, while my dad cut our firewood. It would be late, so my mom would let us have this treat. Seemed to cool you right down.
Making do is a great Appalachian trait. I think I may not have done it in younger days, but as time went on it came more natural. My most recent “making do” is temporary, but working fine. I run a dehumidifier 24/7 in my basement. It started leaking and troubleshooting did not uncover the problem. I was all ready to just get a new one, but thought it over some. I then lifted into the utility sink which I rarely use, and problem solved temporarily. Sometimes we learn to borrow time until we have better options.
Making-do covers a wide country, from “rawhiding” through “cobbling together” on beyond to a “workmanlike job” up all the way into fine craftsmanship. A common thread is inventiveness, finding a way or making a way around a lack that would otherwise stymie everything. Some of it is foresight, thinking ahead to how such and such could be a substitute for something else.
My Dad was one of those folks. When he wanted something and couldn’t afford it, he made it. My brother is like that to. Me, not so much. I’ve always wished I were moreso but the inventiveness part is lacking. To myself, I’m down in the “cobbling together” ranks usually knowing when I start the job will have to be done again in the foreseeable future. And in the meantime it won’t look so good. Not like Pap’s plexiglass that served for decades.
I can remember as a boy seeing where people had flattened tin cans to make a patch over a knot hole. Cans were too useful to be garbage. I expect a lot of old timers never had garbage until way up into the 1960’s. I cannot recall my Grandma having any when my brother and me lived with her for about two years. I had never thought about that before.
The idea of ‘trash’ is so different now, Ron. We have a family dump on our property from way back in my great grandmother’s time (& before, I suspect). I go digging in it & find old canning jars, medicine bottles, wire, etc… The things people were purchasing didn’t make a lot of ‘trash’, if you think about it. Nothing came in plastic. Like you said, tin cans were repurposed (my granddad kept coffee cans full of nuts, bolts, etc). Glass jars were repurposed, or buried. Most other things came in paper or fabric, which rots down or is reused. Think, flour, sugar, coffee, even meat was wrapped in paper. My great grandmother didn’t buy dog food, the dogs & the hog, got all the dinner leftovers and I am certain she composted. And they just didn’t really have/buy a lot. That takes care of most of the household trash. In the barn they saved things for making parts to other broken things. they saved motor oil to stain their buildings. How do I know all of this, I live here & they left all that crap behind. Ha ha ha ha. Over the years, we have cleaned up 3 outbuildings full of this stuff!
I went to my family cemetery on Memorial Day weekend and saw the most creative make do green bean trellis I have ever seen. The folks making the trellises lived up a holler where plenty of tree limbs and sticks were available. They used their perfectly cut sticks for making teepees around all their green beans and it was a beautiful sight. I use bicycle rims mounted at the top of a PVC pipe for my green beans to climb on. I also use rocks and sticks to mark my rows. If sticks aren’t handy, I have been known to mound a pile of clumped dirt and hope it doesn’t rain too hard until the seeds come up.
Making do is a family tradition for us too. Over the years I’ve noticed that the ones who were best at it were the best at thinking “outside the box”. It was kind of a game too, to see how cheaply something could be fixed, or how creative the solution could be.
I use to tackle almost anything that was broken. I’ve repaired televisions, radios, dryers, washing machines, and etc. One day I was working on a washing machine and had already went to sears and bought parts for it. After working on it for half a day, I still couldn’t get it working. By this time I was really frustrated. I man handled the washer out the basement door and kicked it over the hill. Hauled it off a few days later. I then went back to sears and bought a new washing machine and had it set up in the basement by the time my wife got home from teaching.
Seems we are so dependent upon the grocery store, we have forgotten we could grow most of the stuff we needed at home. I think that is the main reason I enjoy this blog so much – it reminds me constantly of the things I take for granted. Thanks!
That is a good trait to have these days especially with supply chains like they are and also rising prices. When we don’t have a choice it can be amazing what kind of ideas we can come up with by using what we already have. Last night on Metcalf Mills channel, Justro used old VHS tape to put around his garden to ward off deer. Tipper, I like the idea of using rocks as your marker in the garden, I love rocks.
You hit on an Appalachian trait most natives understand. Making do with what you have. Our neighborhood inhabitants are changing ,
I can drive by and see if they are native or not by the stuff they have. New inhabitants would call it junk, but the families that grew up here see it as a resource. There might be a use for it at a later time.
Our parents didn’t have big box stores 20 minutes away or the funds to buy new.
I think people like your husband would be the ones to survive, if things were ever to be like the 1930s again.
You’re right, Jim, about peoples’ belongings….I live in rural CNY – farm country, at one time. We hold on to all sorts of stuff that might prove useful ‘one day’. Our town wanted to issue a new ordinance, concerning blight. We all are arguing; “what is blight”? What might be blight to you, ain’t blight to me! For instance, I have repurposed an old Fire Dept. training trailer/onsite office on wheels into a chicken coop. It ain’t pretty, but it raises my meat for the year. Now my neighbors think its unsightly, but I couldn’t get by without it. Who is right, me or my neighbors? (btw, its kept neat around my place & this trailer just sits like an out building, but I have fussy NYC seasonal neighbors that use their house like a doll house). We actually have a code, on the books, that if you are a farm you are allowed 1 piece of junk per acre you own. My FIL was having trouble with codes & he told the officer, “I can have 1 piece per acre, I got 305 acres, you start counting!” The non native families have fancy lawn furniture, pools, etc…that you never see anyone outside enjoying. Let me keep my ‘junk’, & I just might fix something for ya!
Repurposing old things on the farm is nothing new . Make it do or do without! Good motto to live by
Yet again you have hit on a topic that resonates with my life! I always say “I come from a long line of making do!”. Mama was a widow with 5 kids and ingenious in her ability to repurpose and repair. It’s the only life we knew and I am a better, well rounded person today for it! Be blessed!
I’m reminded of this:
“Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do, or do without.”
I think I am about the Queen of making do! I grew up fairly poor on a dairy farm. My mom grew up even poorer. We always cobbled things together or went without. My garden is all made out of ‘found’ items – cast off fencing turned into trellis, old swing set frames w/fencing over to grow peas, gourds, cukes on. Old cedar fence posts that are the bed edging etc… What I really want is a green house made from old windows- I had saved up about 25 of them (picking them up off the roadsides) and then my husband threw them in the dumpster 2 years ago. disappointment isn’t even the word. I use an old cast of Fire Dept. training trailer to raise my chickens in. But I am best at making do with food. I used to be a caretaker to a 101 yr. old lady, who lived with her 80 yr. old daughter. Cleaning, watching, and a bit of cooking for them. The daughter told someone, “Boy, that gal sure can do a lot with such a little, we’re eating like Kings”. I could root through her fridge & pull a full meal together in 1/2 hr. I would cook a dinner in the afternoon & then she didn’t have to only make a sandwich for her mom in the evening. Gave her a nice break. I think it challenges the mind & keeps you smart. Sure saves money. I also do that with the rocks, in the garden too, Tipper. Course where I live, it seems like all that grows are rocks!
We always “made do” when I was growing up. I can remember eating fish it seemed every night of the werk. My daddyvwas a commercial fisherman until he opened his own retail market
So so true…the sad thing about today’s children, and adults, is that the newer generation is able to purchase and/or obtain what they want and/or need and don’t have to think outside the box, so to speak. What is being taught in schools or not being taught is so harmful and I am not sure anyone realizes it…so much for the future. I am so grateful for what I learned or observed from my Grandparents, who came to the US in the late 1800’s and still use some of those skills and try to pass it on to my children and Grandchildren.
The Deer Hunter, my son, is hands down the best problem solver I’ve ever seen. He has this mind that gets hold of a problem and cogitates on it till a solution floats to the surface. He can fix anything! I think it’s because he thinks about it before he digs in to the problem.
He’s the best….I could be a little prejudiced!
Love this post. And fortunately for us we are accustomed to making do. Things are getting tough out there in the world with fuel and food. I live in my childhood home built in early 1940. When I need to fix something I will look around for the right tool or gadget and usually find it in a coffee can, or hanging on a wall in the barn or can house. It funny how everything had a “house”….can house, smoke house, wash house, spring house and of course the out house. I call it “Hillbilly Engineering” and am so proud when I fix something without going to town! I suppose the Deer Hunter learned his way with a good role model.
Thank you for including “cogitates”.
It was a word I didn’t know but realize I do it all the time…. and ‘a solution floats to the surface’ is very accurate.
Maybe not too applicable to this discussion but years ago when writing software, very often I would find a solution by reading/finding/researching as much as I could on an issue, then just STOP. Just let my brain work on the problem unconsciously without thinking about it. And more often than not, a solution would appear.
Somewhere along the way, I coined the phrase “I have to get out of my own way” to describe that practice.