That explains a lot, right down to why your granny was "stand-off-ish". There is only so much targeting of the folks you love possible before you'll start hiding just who that is. It's a mind-set where you believe it's better they think you hate them than it is they get targeted because you love them. In your own mind, you are "protecting" them by distancing yourself from them.
Were your mom's folks "mountain folks" too? I ask because it's starting to sound like a mountain hex-war. I've known of folks to do odd things, like hammer a certain number of nails into a certain kind of tree, in order to "turn" a hex or find out who hexed it to begin with for further retribution.
Old timers here used to bury their hair under rocks secretly whenever they got a hair cut to prevent birds from carrying it off for nesting material, where a witch might get hold of it for hex-flinging.
Out in the rest of the world, mountain folks are perceived of as one big happy culture area, but strictly speaking that isn't true. There is a subtle gradient from the far northern areas to the far southern areas of the Appalachians. I'm in the Central Appalachian area, my dad was from the northern fringe of that area, meaning there are differences detectable between the culture here and the culture where he was raised if you know what you're looking for, because his culture was this one but mixed with the more northern PA Appalachian culture...and as you go southward, other differences are introduced depending on how far south you go. That sounds more like the Southern Appalachian area which you start running into in upper east Tennessee strengthening as you go southward.
But the rest of the world has lumped us all into one big "Appalachian Hillbilly" culture, with a big introduction of Ozark culture mixed in, for entertainment purposes.
To the north, there is more of a German influence, centrally it's more of a Scots-Irish influence, and southward French and maybe a little Spanish influence creeps in, all of them influenced by their local Indian cultures for purposes of their witchery and attitudes. A lot of Appalachian witchery can be traced back to Native American cultures being mixed in with the witchery they all brought from the home countries.
There are differences in speech as well. For example, my dad's folks pronounce "oil" as "orel", "fish" as "feesh", and "creek" as "crick", which you also find a lot of up in PA. Here, you will often hear people pronounce "electricity" as "'lektwicity", and "plastic" as "plasket". A "bag" is often referred to as a "sack" or a "poke". Soft drinks are "sodas" here, where farther north they are "pop".
And of course there is the perennial disagreement between areas on whether "Appalachian" is pronounced as "Appa-LAY-shun" or "appa-LATCH-un". It's the latter here.
.
Were your mom's folks "mountain folks" too? I ask because it's starting to sound like a mountain hex-war. I've known of folks to do odd things, like hammer a certain number of nails into a certain kind of tree, in order to "turn" a hex or find out who hexed it to begin with for further retribution.
Old timers here used to bury their hair under rocks secretly whenever they got a hair cut to prevent birds from carrying it off for nesting material, where a witch might get hold of it for hex-flinging.
Out in the rest of the world, mountain folks are perceived of as one big happy culture area, but strictly speaking that isn't true. There is a subtle gradient from the far northern areas to the far southern areas of the Appalachians. I'm in the Central Appalachian area, my dad was from the northern fringe of that area, meaning there are differences detectable between the culture here and the culture where he was raised if you know what you're looking for, because his culture was this one but mixed with the more northern PA Appalachian culture...and as you go southward, other differences are introduced depending on how far south you go. That sounds more like the Southern Appalachian area which you start running into in upper east Tennessee strengthening as you go southward.
But the rest of the world has lumped us all into one big "Appalachian Hillbilly" culture, with a big introduction of Ozark culture mixed in, for entertainment purposes.
To the north, there is more of a German influence, centrally it's more of a Scots-Irish influence, and southward French and maybe a little Spanish influence creeps in, all of them influenced by their local Indian cultures for purposes of their witchery and attitudes. A lot of Appalachian witchery can be traced back to Native American cultures being mixed in with the witchery they all brought from the home countries.
There are differences in speech as well. For example, my dad's folks pronounce "oil" as "orel", "fish" as "feesh", and "creek" as "crick", which you also find a lot of up in PA. Here, you will often hear people pronounce "electricity" as "'lektwicity", and "plastic" as "plasket". A "bag" is often referred to as a "sack" or a "poke". Soft drinks are "sodas" here, where farther north they are "pop".
And of course there is the perennial disagreement between areas on whether "Appalachian" is pronounced as "Appa-LAY-shun" or "appa-LATCH-un". It's the latter here.
.