Feather Beds & Bedbugs

An important item to everyone back then was their feather bed. Everyone who was anybody had feather beds on every bed.

These were placed on top of corn shuck "underbeds." The shucks were well dried, then stripped from the end knot with a dinner fork until very fine. Then the knot was removed. This procedure was repeated until you had what we called a "shuck tick full," meaning a bed-size bag left open in the middle of the top side for stirring up the shucks everyday as you made the bed.

At bed making time the feather tick was turned back halfway and shucks and feathers were fluffed up to make a good looking bed. If anyone sat on it, the work was undone because it left a huge dent, very hard to fix until you made the bed again.

Since all housing was crude, we and all people had a problem with insects, anything that crawled or flew. But worst of all were bedbugs. There were no insecticides like there are now, so about once a week all feather beds, bed springs, shuck beds, and all went outside to get cleaned.

The springs were burned off with kerosene torches, then washed down with hot lye water. But the bugs were in the cracks of walls and floors, so they came back as soon as anyone went to bed. When DDT came out, all bedbugs got it! That was a victory for everyone.

We received news one day that anyone who wanted to make a cotton mattress should come to a certain place and spend a day mattress making. I remember that I went with someone. I thought, "How strange, a mattress for a bed, full of cotton, no way to fluff it up." No way did I want that on my bed. Without feathers I would probably freeze. No way to sink up in it to keep warm.

Lots of folks felt the same way. "No new fad is taking over my beds," they would say, even though the mattress was free. It was many years before we had a store-bought mattress in our house. When we did, they were used with feather beds on top of them.

So many things we think of as necessary now never came to our house. For instance, paper towels, waxed paper, foil, toilet tissue, washing powder, bleach, margarine, salad dressing, packaged salt, mayonnaise, packaged meats, frozen foods, and ground coffee, to give you an idea. I'm sure there is an even longer list.

There were no TV dinners - no TV! Our grocery store had no refrigeration, so you can see the limitations. And yet, we survived, even drinking our milk raw. We had no monthly bills except for a little food and kerosene.