Somehow, this seems to have become “Pop” week on the Boggy Thicket blog. Not sure how that happened, but since it has:
My paternal grandfather was a character, to put it mildly. He had a sly, dry, sense of humor, he loved to smoke his pipe and drink cold beer. He ate fresh sliced tomatoes and Bermuda onions with every meal except breakfast, and he could cure warts.
We now know that warts are a skin condition caused by a virus, a variant of the same the human papillomavirus (HPV) that is among the most common of STDs, and there are several effective products on the market for their control.
Long before science had a cure, Pop could “witch” them away. He would take the patient into a darkened room and would quietly rub the wart for a minute or two. Then he would tell them that the wart would disappear within 24 to 48 hours. I have no idea how or why, but they always did.
He cured one similar to the picture above from my hand when I was about 12 or 13, and I tried everything I could to get him to teach me how he did it.
Pop told me that it was an old family secret that he had learned from his grandmother. He said he couldn’t tell me because it could only be passed from female to male or male to female. He had already decided that my aunt didn’t have the gift, but in a few more years, he might pass it along to my sister or my cousin Shirley.
As far as I know, he never did.
I've had warts "witched away" but I was too young to remember how it was done....weird.....
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather did this when I was a kid. The warts would be gone in a few days. No idea how.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother did. Said it had to be passed to the oldest child she only had girls.
ReplyDeleteMy great grandfather Jewell could & was gonna show my daddy the oldest but passed before he could.
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