Sleeping on a straw mattress was common during the Great Depression. If possible, sage grass was the best. We would take our pick sacks and go to the farm where sage grass was plentiful, break it off and fill our sacks running over with the good-smelling dried grass. It was a team effort. Mom would empty our last year’s grass, wash and dry the old mattress cover and before bedtime, we’d have a big, fluffy, fresh smelling mattress.

Not all our beds had straw mattresses, but Jewel and mine did for a few years.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president of the U.S. on March 4, 1933, banks had closed but he introduced several projects that put people to work. I am telling about the one where he sent trained crews to rural communities and cotton mattresses were made. We would go to Mt. Glory Church to learn how to make them. As I recall, all the materials were provided, and we provided the labor. Mom and Dad got one and Jewel and I moved out of the straw bed, too!

Another thing we raised was a special type of straw to make brooms. Brooms were made and many became quite skilled at broom making. Mops to scrub floors were made from dried corn shucks. They were very simple: they cut round holes in a board/plank about 16 inches by 6 inches, put husks through and scrub away.

I think I’ve alluded in the past to Cripple Deer Creek’s almost clear water. Only after a rain, when runoff from local fields made it unfit for swimming was it not perfect. There were no beavers to dam up the creek and make it go where they wanted. They ruined our swimming pool.

Fall has sprung and most oldies do not like cold weather. Autumn months are very pretty, but I like spring much better. Every fall it is time for me to pull from the bookshelf my seventeen-year-old book of poems from autumn. I read them sometimes when it isn’t autumn. 

One of my students and Beta club members game me a booklet of autumn poems. It has been a cherished gift and one I have read many times. Thanks, Kirby, it’s this kind of gift money can’t buy and it is a priceless gem to treasure.

This morning I have tried to write and article that will awaken memories of years gone by and give you joy and happiness in remembering. 

“For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow from the Long Ago. Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart, not apart! They who know the sorrows other lives have known never walk alone,” and that includes everyone.