Making Beds

From Edna Mae:

"During the "great depression" of the 1930's on the farm my brother Jerry and I had mattresses filled with straw on our beds.  Each year in late July or early August the ticks were emptied of the old straw and then washed.  After a day of solar drying on the old clothes line in the back yard the ticks were filled again with fresh clean wheat straw.  It had been newly threshed a day before.  That night the beds would be so high we thought they nearly touched our bedroom ceilings and we really had to climb into bed.  Once in our beds we would try to stay in the very center for fear of falling out of bed.  I think we usually did during the first few nights after the mattresses filling was completed.  At first the mattresses would talk to us of rain and hot sunshine in rather noisy crackles but as time went by the straw became less noisy and each movement would be a gentle soothing crackle of the almost forgotten summer breezes to lull us to sleep.  As the colder days of winter approached the goose down feather beds were taken out to be fluffed and aired on the clothes lines.  These were then placed over the straw beds and covered with flannel sheets.  On top of these would be added comforters filled with wool bats or thicker cotton bats in addition to our quilts.    On the colder winter nights the feather beds would be warmed with hot water bottles or the old irons wrapped in cloth first then placed between the sheets by our mother.  When she tucked us into our beds we would sink into the fluff of the warmed feather beds and soon drifted off to sleep.  It was hard to leave such warmth for the cold bedrooms in the morning.  Once up we quickly dressed and hurried to the warm kitchen for breakfast.  Then off to school without ever thinking that these beds, the same kind our grandparents and great grandparents had used, would be a thing of the past by 1940 when all of us had tufted cotton filled mattresses.  Innerspring and box springs were to come later.