DHA LXXXVI
(10/21/2004)

Calendar

DHA Board meetings: First and third Wednesdays each month, 12:00 noon at Kountry Kookin' Cafe in Viborg. (Note change.) Members and interested people welcome.

Catered Supper, with music, and metal wall-art raffle, Nov. 6, 6:30 p.m. at the Museum.

Museum open Fridays 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Museum open Sundays (and federal legal holidays) 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (through October); starting in November time will be 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., including Veterans Day, November 11; Thanksgiving Day, 9 to 4; Christmas Day, Dec. 25; and New Years Day, Jan 1.

Volunteer Richard Skola is now the primary "On Call" individual, phone 605-766-5675. He lives in town and, when available, be able to host visitors in a few minutes. Lester Lauritzen, 605-563-2732, will continue, as secondary "on call", when available, but is nearly a half-hour away (and possibly snowbound in winter).

Mange Tak

For the contributions, purchase of supper and raffle tickets, at both the booth at PMH Oct. 9 and at the museum the several days open; and for the visits to view the museum, the items placed in the museum. Viewers will need return visits to view the additions.

How We Lived

Is one of the topics not yet specifically recorded in DHA news. Such information has been part of various interesting recollections, sent for and used in DHA news, but none have previously been developed specifically or at length.

Sacks

The historical use of sacks was brought to mind by the story about Fredrick Fredricksen, the "farmer" that "lived in a hole in the ground," and his use of gunny sacks for clothing and bedding. (April 17, 2003 issue) Gunny sacks were one of several types of sacks used in the farm and home through this writer's youth. No history is known of the description and use of sacks. If anyone can add to, or correct, the following information, please do so for history's sake.

Gunny sacks were used as potato sacks, in apparently one bushel size. They were a loosely woven material out of coarse, almost twine-lie thread, tan or brown in color.

Grain sacks were 2-bushel in size, and a tight weave of a finer thread than gunny sacks, in a white or off-white color. This material, to some extent, resembled denim in texture. They were used for small grains (oats, barley, etc.), and possibly for grass and legume seeds. For the latter, they needed their tight texture. Some of these might have had colored stripe or tow, possibly blue.

Another new, important, and fortunately not needed since, use of gunny (and perhaps other) sacks, occurred during the drought years of the 1930's. Due to the lack of rain, conditions were ideal for grasshoppers, which multiplied such as to threaten to wipe out entire crops, one or more years. The one year being recalled had apparently produced a potentially decent oat crop, which was threatened by the grasshoppers. The government(s) tried to protect farmers in a couple of ways.

One was poison. They set up a plant at Centerville (and likely elsewhere) and produced poisoned bait: bran, treated with poison, perhaps arsenic or Paris green. (No OSHA needed then.) It was spread where grasshoppers would eat it and die. I do not remember how, but the common endgate seeder would have worked if the bran had been dried before using. (Can anyone provide more details of how it was distributed and spread?) Available sacks, including gunny, feed, grain, or whatever sacks may have been used to distribute the bran, or it may have been available in bulk.

Another government help to farmers do deal with grasshoppers, was a catcher attached to the front bumper of cars (no pickups then). This was when bumpers bumped, and protected cars from damage in lesser crashes, and served for pushing stalled or stuck cars. No need for a cell phone then, to summon help. The next driver would stop and push your ;car to start it, or to town if it needed repair. This catcher was hooked to the front bumper. It was 8 or 10 or? feet wide. In use, the car was driving through the grain field (maybe hay or pasture too). Shaped like a trough, it caught the hoppers dislodged off the crop. Sacks were then filled with hoppers and piled out of the way to die and rot. Ours on the tail of an old straw pile. (Good fertilizer later.)

When seed corn came along, its sacks may have been made of grain-sack material, or something similar, but in only 1-bushel size, due to the weight of corn vs. that of grains and grasses.

Does anyone remember what kind of sacks were used for feeds, such as tankage, meat scraps, and bone meal (and possibly blood meal?), which were cooked and dried products of dead animals? These products had various uses as livestock and poultry feeds. Were these sacks gunny sacks, with a tighter material liner sack?

What early chick feed sacks were made of has been forgotten, but in the depression years, printed "dress goods material" sacks became a big feed sales tactic, which saved the farm family from having to buy separate material for women's' and girls' clothing, and for dish towels.

Which leads to sacks used in the house. Flour sacks likewise changed from plain material into print material sacks to also be used as yard goods.

It seems that flour sacks were 50 pound sacks. And that sugar sacks were 100 pound sacks. It also seems that sugar sacks may have been double, with a coarse outer sack for strength and a fine, tick, white sack on the inside to keep the sugar from sifting through. (True or false?)

About the start of the 1950s, sacking and packaging changed. People had smaller families, worked less hard, and were mobile, so did not need large quantities. Also, along with smaller packages, maybe because of smaller packages, cloth sacks gave way to paper, for use from seed corn to grocery items. And then plastic came along, to be the packaging choice of manufactures and distributors.

At first, plastic bags were a novelty, both sought after and used as promotions. This writer's mother was among those that occasionally sent for plastic bag offers from the WNAX radio (Yankton) "Neighbor Lady" program.

In the Museum

Collection by Roberta Rasmussen, in the museum entrance-office area.