Feather Beds
(Feather Tick Bed)

Now they sell them but Granny made ours, after Sunday dinner she cleaned them feathers that she plucked off them fresh chickens and stored them in a big flour sack till it was packed full and then she bought this striped material just for feather ticking. We girls would look outside and we would see Granny chasing them chickens around the yard and we would smile, we knew we would be sleeping on them feathers. She would put boiling water in a big tub and after she rung that chickens neck she would then remove it and stick that chicken in the tub of boiling water, the feathers came off easy that way.

It took a long time and a lot of screaming at us girls to get that bag filled, you can imagine three girls and a bag full of feathers. Granny sat at that old Singer Sewing machine with her little foot just going back and forth on the pedal, no electric thing for her she had her own power.

We girls got the big bed because there were three of us, of course there were beds everywhere. Back then you worked and you ate and you slept. When company came they ate supper and spent the night.

The next morning to make the beds, she would take the broom and reach across that bed and flatten it out, we were not allowed to touch that bed until bed time. Only in sickness did you sit or lay on a bed until time to go to bed. At night we would drown in those feathers, they wrapped around us in the winter to keep us warm and in the summer to keep us cool.