Letters To The Editor

Readers Add More Survival Skills We’ve Forgotten

Read the story referenced, 10 Survival Skills Your Great-Grandparents Knew (That Most Of Us Have Forgotten).

What about cooking – things like churning butter, making pies, cakes, bread from scratch, plus having to cook in a fireplace or a Dutch oven with no power or microwave. After Katrina hit and we had no power for weeks and because I have a lot of these cooking skills, we were not one of the people on my block who had to visit the restaurants or friends that had power just to eat.

Sue

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I was a city boy, growing up in Brooklyn and living most of my adult life in Baltimore. About six years ago I moved out to the Appalachian mountains in southwestern Pennsylvania. Here most folks are farmers and/or Amish. More than 80 percent of our community’s families are more than capable of hitting all 10 items on this list and then some. I am still learning and somehow doubt I would ever be able to master many of these skills, but it is comforting to live in a community where should things hit the fan, our entire community would go on, hardly noticing any meltdown of the system or the grid.

Robert

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I would add sewing, but also home building. It amazes me how our pioneer ancestors cleared the land with primitive tools, then built a house from logs they cut. They did it sometimes with just a man and his wife. Later they built their own furniture & made their own fabric, clothes and dishes. My dad learned how to build while working for the CCC as a teenager. He finished out our house and built two more rooms and a huge garage. He died before finishing the garage, so my brother finished it. My dad & brother also build cabinets in our house. They just knew how to do those things.

Donna