Sleeping Accommodations
© By Abraham Lincoln 

The bed I slept in was iron, rusted here and there; but some chipped, white, paint remained. 

Instead of a set of box springs and a mattress we had a set of flat springs that hooked into the iron bed rails and if you sank down, almost to the floor, then the springs were worn out. 

Between the mattress and springs mom would add one or more layers of newspapers to keep the cold air from seeping up through the mattress making the bed cold. 

The mattress was filled with feathers — mostly breast feathers so it was soft and a body would sink in until the cover was always even from one side to the other. You couldn’t really see a human body lying in a feather tick mattress. 

When you jumped in bed, found the covers from the night before, and covered up with them, your body had sunk as low as it was going to go. 

Nobody around our house ever made their bed like they do these days. The bed covers were left pretty much like they were when you got out of bed. 

And then if it was really cold outside, mother would throw a down comforter over you and that settled down on you too. The old saying, “as snug as a bug in a rug” surely comes from those days when we all slept from sunset till daybreak on feather ticks and covered up with down comforters. 

Once or twice each year our feather-filled pillows became as flat as a pancake and were refilled with new breast feathers mom had saved. The breast feathers are small, soft and have tiny quills — most of these feathers have a natural curl to them 

Mother would have to unstitch the old pillow case and remove and the old feathers or use them to fill some other pillow case used when company came. Mom would fill the empty pillowcase with as many new and clean breast feathers as she could jam in and then sew the sides back together again. 

A newly stuffed pillowcase was very nice. It smelled different because it was clean and no hair oils had accumulated on it. But over time it would smell like the old one and those tiny quills would begin to work through the ticking and stick like needles. 

Sometimes we would put our finger on the pointed quill sticking through the ticking and try to push it back into the pillow but more often than not it was a losing battle and would be back again sticking you in a different place. 

The best thing to do was grab the offending pin feather and pull the whole thing out. At least that one would not be sticking you again. 

In the summer months and in the fall, the mattresses were too hot to sleep on so a lot of folks slept on the cool linoleum floor in the kitchen or, sometimes people slept outside under the stars.