As she talked about life on the prairie with all of its dirt roads and mud holes she brought back much of my childhood.

“There were days when we couldn’t even get to the main road, and it was just gravel,” she said. “I remembered a project I once had. We were just beginning to see the end of the Great Depression. We were also beginning to have bailed hay. A machine called a bailer popped out those bails all tied with binder twine, a tough thin rope like heavy string. Dad pulled those twine off and hung them over a hook.”

She then told how she would crochet them with a very large hook into door mats.

She made squares or rectangles she would crochet each twine across, letting its end dangle then come across with the next twine until it was about 2 and a 1/2 feet long. They were placed at the back door to rub and clean people’s shoes of that mud.

Her neighbors caught on and several of them began to make them.

“We could sell them at the local 10-cent store and elsewhere for $1 each,” she said. “That was a lot of money back then.”

vvv

Really, where is this old world going at such a fast pace? Do we really need to explore space at such a fast pace, before we take care of so much here on planet Earth?

Let’s all pray for our leaders, that they not forget those who came before us and charted our way.

— Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie 66086; auntnorie@bdc.net.