I’m not familiar with root cellars, does everyone have their own or is there a community one?
I guess some close neighbors might combine efforts and build a shared one; but, for the most part, they are individually owned.
The reason they are called "root cellar" is because the bulk of what is stored in one is root vegetables, such as the various types of potatoes.
It is just as common that they be called "storm cellar" as nervous people head to one when bad weather threatens.
Back in the early 1970s, in two consecutive years, we had two huge killer tornadoes that for sure got everyone's attention and there were more cellars dug/built during the next couple years than have been built in all the years since.
My maternal grandparents old weatherboard house sat on top of a steep hill that dropped off sharply from behind the house.
After these two cyclones, my grandfather had the best, driest, roomiest, most hospitable cellar built that ever existed.
He had wide shelves along all walls stacked full of Mason jars full of canned garden goods; they always kept a garden big as a corn field.
Nobody around here even knew of air-conditioning; they would have thought something like that was a hoax and not believe anyone who might claim they had experienced such a thing.
Still yet, Kentucky is the humidity capitol of the world and sultry hot; it is so bad that people will sleep out on the porch with a bunch of old friendly dogs in the summertime.
My grandfather had himself a big featherbed in that cellar and practically lived in there all summer; 56° American in there, Winter and Summer.
The old man finally kicked the bucket.
Ten years after they picked out his tombstone, Granny and a couple of my aunts were canning sweet corn and had run out of Mason jars.
Instead of going into town and buying a bunch more (they needed a couple hundred), they decided to go in the cellar and dump a bunch of the stuff that was getting a bit of age on it.
There was a bunch of awful-tasting hideous green beans that had kept getting passed over so long as there was anything else in there to eat; they were at least ten years old.
Granny had generously given these beans to anyone unfortunate enough to happen along; her generosity hadn't made a dent in the green bean population.
Granny decided these awful green beans were the best candidates to sacrifice their glass homes to the newly cut corn.
They drug some old metal yard chairs in the cellar doorway and parked a big oval galvanized wash tub in between them.
They packed a few boxes of the green beans out there and began the task of twisting off the lids and dumping the contents into the wash tub.
When the tub would get full, two of them would each grab a handle and pack it over to the hog lot; I don't envy them poor hogs having to eat them awful green beans.
The old sisters had screwed off so many lids and dumped so many jars that it had become automatic to them; they had become bean dumping machines.
Until....., one of them got aholt of a jar that wasn't quite acting right.
The first thing she noticed and announced was "why, the seal is done gone bad on this one"; the other two were already clamping their aprons over their noses, knowing the smell when that lid came off was going to be atrocious.
Lid off and no awful horrendous smell; just a stale musty old buried money smell.
Before she could stop herself, the motions being automatic by then, she shook the contents into the wash tub, in with the nasty green beans.
There was a wad of hunnert-dollar bills come out of that jar that would choke a horse.
Them old women kicked that wash tub aside and absolutely tore that cellar apart; they didn't leave a single jar unexamined, closely unexamined at that.
They fount three more of them money jars by the time the search was done.
You can put a whole lot of rolled up hunnert-dollar bills inside a quart Mason jar.
My old granpappy was a tight old soul, tighter'n stripes on a watermelon and that's tight.
Him and Granny done without many things that would have made life easier for them.
And here was the evidence; all along, he had been richer that John D. Rockyfeller and them living like paupers.
Granny, bless her old hide, was not so frugally minded; her and them two old aunts loaded up and went to the Grand Canyon; spent every nickel before they turnt around and come back.
It's just as well they did; it kept my creep crook brother from getting his hands on it.
That's pretty funny unless it's your lawn. 