By Guest Writer: Myra Fercy
1930’s Clothing
Mama was an excellent seamstress. She could make dresses for all her girls from one pattern. She knew how to adjust the pattern, making it longer in the waist for the taller girls, and shorter and fuller skirts for the younger ones. She would make our skirts from the colorful 50# flour sack bags she would buy. Sometimes we would get chicken feed in printed sacks of 100#. If we were lucky enough to get three sacks the same, she would have enough to make us pantaloons also. We were probably the best-dressed kids in school, and didn’t know it!
4-H County Fair
Besides raising animals on the farm, we also had a big garden. We raised lots of vegetables, which we canned for future use since we had no freezer. Mom showed us how to can them in Mason jars. Some of these we entered in the County Fair through the local 4-H Club. We usually got a prize ribbon of some kind.
One year I was so proud of my glass jars of peaches I canned. I decided to enter them in the County Fair, sure they would earn some kind of a prize. Mom showed us how to place the peaches in the jar so they would lay slightly overlapped with the pit-side down, that it wouldn’t be seen from the outside of the jar. I must admit, they were very attractive.
After the judging was over, everyone was anxious to see what kind of ribbon they received. I did not get any prize ribbon on my beautiful peaches! Instead, there was one word written on the back of my entry tag. It said, “Cleanliness.” When I saw that, I was really upset. “Good grief,” I said, “you would think there was a fly or something in it!” I turned the jar over and over, seeing nothing unusual. When I turned it over one more time, I saw the reason whey the judge wrote “cleanliness” on the tag. There, among the peaches, was a long-legged mosquito. OH NO! No wonder I didn’t get a prize. The mosquitoes must have been really bad that year!
But I did get a prize on my jar of dill pickles. And my sister Gertrude got a prize on the dress she made. She was so proud. I can still remember Mom tell her to “be careful how you cut it out, at 59 cents a yard, we can’t afford to waste any material.”
Plowing the Garden in the 1940’s
I was at my Chiropractor with a nearly lame leg and foot recently. I told him it felt like a horse had stepped on it. That triggered an old memory.
This happened in the spring of 1940, as near as I can determine. I was tall for my age, with long arms and legs. When I was about 13 years old, my dad asked if I would help him with the horse as he plowed the garden. My only brother was 7 years old at the time, so I was the likely candidate to help our dad. He didn’t own a tractor, using his team of horses for every task on the farm.
It was a small garden plot, so Dad only used one horse, and he hitched Old Babe to the hand plow. My job was to talk beside the horse holding her by the brindle. This way I would lead her across the garden while Dad handled the plow. All went well for a couple rows. When we got to the end and we were turning around for the next row, I suddenly couldn’t move my foot. I let out a yell and jumped over to one side.
“Whoah!” Dad said, stopping the horse. When he looked at me, Dad was surprised to see I was wearing only one shoe. There was my left shoe on the ground in the newly plowed earth, under the horse’s foot! I had pulled my foot right out of the shoe, ruining my beautiful Saddle shoe. I could have cried!
Dad just tapped Old Babe on the front leg, she took one step and he retrieved my shoe. Then I took off the other shoe and finished the job barefoot. No harm done, I could still wear my shoe, after I cleaned the dirt off from it.
After a minor adjustment from the Chiropractor today, it was apparent that there was no harm to my foot. Once again I thanked God. All’s well that ends well.
