Recently, I’ve been watching Storm Chasers, the show where lunatics try to intercept tornadoes and live to speak about it. After a tornado dissipates, the storm chasers often ride through the aftermath and survey damage. Depending on the strength of the tornado, damage ranges from a few downed limbs to completely flattened towns.
Of course, if our old farmhouse were, Lord forbid, in the path of a tornado, it wouldn’t stand a chance. During thunderstorms, Natalie says it’s both a comfort and concern to know our house is 118 years old. It’s weathered worse storms than this, she’ll say, but then again it was a bit younger when it did.
The house is your typical old farmhouse, built by a cotton farmer, Natalie’s great-great grandfather, out of old hand-hewn timber. In the inner layers of the plaster, we can still see animal hair, the predominate binding agent used in plaster in the 1800s. Apparently, the animal hair was effective, as our house still stands over 100 years later. Still, sometimes in the midst of a severe thunderstorm, the fact that our house is held together by hand-hewn timbers and animal hair is a little disconcerting. Hopefully, a big, bad tornado, will never huff and puff and blow our house built of sticks in.
Interestingly, the original boards and timbers have stood the test of time better than the brick chimneys. About 10 years ago, Natalie’s Poppaw cut down the two main chimneys down and closed them up. Unfortunately, the mortar was crumbling and the chimneys were unstable.
If ever caught in the path of a bad storm, we only have the lone closet for protection from windows. It’s amazing to think that this one closet, about the size of a phone booth, once accommodated a family of nine. In the past, what clothes folks had were apparently kept in wardrobes and trunks. In any event, when a strong thunderstorm rolls through, Natalie goes into emergency mode, and we crouch down in the closet with couch cushions over us.
So far, so good. Although the house sometimes sounds like it’s getting ready to blast off in thunderstorms, we’re all, house included, still firmly on the ground.
Now I feel great about your safety knowing you are living in a house held together with hair.
haha! Can’t forget about those sticks though – that really increases the safety right there! just kidding!
HA! Jason and I have had the same discussions! Our 100 year old farmhouse also has the horsehair plaster, hand-hewn wood, and a hand-laid stone foundation/root cellar. There is NO shelter from the wind here and everytime it blows, it sounds like the whole thing might just come down. But, . . . she has been standing here all this time, and I’m certain she’ll still be standing here after we are gone, . . . (but we did lose part of our new greenhouse in the last bought!)
Hopefully, our house still has a lot of life left in it yet, too. It withstood a couple tough storms this summer, but the hail definitely left its mark on the paint. We’re going to try to repaint it and replace some old clapboards soon, but we just haven’t mustered up the willpower to do it yet–it seems like I can always think up a lot of other things I’d rather be doing than chipping paint.