1930 - Annual Convention Report

              S I X T E E N T H A X X U A L C O N V E N T I ON 71
color is fairly preserved to this day. At the back of the house, a lean- to was
erected within my remembrance; it " was built of material taken from the old
Anderson home near by, which we demolished when we bought the land on
which this landmark stood. This Anderson house was the only one in which
1 ever saw one of the old- time fire- places with a fire in it— even then the fire
was there more for show than user" 7
The up- stairs of our house, reached by a closed stairway, consisted of
three rooms, one large and two smaller, all with plastered walls and ceiling,
the latter slanting to conform with the slope of the roof. At each end the
big chimneys, also plastered over, stood out in bold relief; one of my earliest
recollections is waking one Christmas morning and seeing two stockings,
pinned to one of these chimneys by Santa Claus. the only party that could
have stuck a pin into that plaster and brick. I also remember appropriating
both of the stockings, quite innocent of any idea that one might belong to
my little brother, but a hearty outcry on his part put me right in the matter
— he alwavs had a good voice. These rooms were warmed by stove pipes that
led up through holes ill the floor, on their way to enter the chimneys; there
was a small stove of heavy metal in the big room, but this was only in use
during the winter when anyone was sick, or when there was a baby in arms.
The rooms upstairs were very simple; there were muslin curtains on the
windows; the ceilings and walls were whitewashed, and the floors painted.
There were a couple of bureaus, stuffed chiefly with odds and ends of cloth­ing,
and there were a couple of washstands. but nobody ever washed up there,
since it could be done so much more comfortably at the sink in the kitchen,
where there was a roller towel handy. Each room was furnished with a bed
of course, and in the big room was a folding cot that could, and did hold two.
packed lengrhwise. Those old bed- steads merit a word of description, since
they have pretty well passed out of date. They were of different types, some
having heavy turned posts and narrow head and foot- boards, while others did
not specialize so much in po^ sts, but made up for it in panelled work at head
and foot. The side pieces fitted into the ends by bolts, whose heads slipped
into iron slots: some of the older types were held together by long bolts that
screwed into the side pieces, the heads of the bolts being counter- sunk.~ Who­ever
heard of a bed- wrench ? Well we had one and it was used to screw
those bolts tight. The bedding was borne upon three- inch slats laid cross­wise
that often fell down upon the most inconvenient occasions; a few used
rope stretched criss- cross, but this was regarded as more or less extreme.
Whatever the construction of the bed- stead, and no matter how it was held
together, it was always a standing challenge to bed- bugs to come and home­stead—
there was no closed season on bed- bugs in our neck of the woods, and
if they were not always exterminated, they were at least kept under control
The beds did not sport mattresses in that day; there was a voluminous
tick, as it was called, stuffed with straw that would persist in escaping from
the slit down the middle, and there was on top of this tick another generous
t i ck filled with feathers, the coarse feathers carefully stripped for reasons
that are obvious. The pillows also were filled with fine feathers. In summer
time a fellow just naturally insisted on the removal of that hot feather tick.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot; sometimes the lower tick would be filled with corn
husks that rattled most abominably, and sometimes the pillows were filled
with the fluff from the cat- tails that grew in the swamp.
The kitchen, plastered and wainscotted, with floor heavily painted to a
glorious yellow, was really the family room during most of the time not
spent in sleeping or in working outside. We owned a splendid cook stove,
one that I fancy immediately succeeded an older type that was called -'^ e " air­tight,"
for what reason I never could discover. This older type carried its