Burlap Bag Revelations Members Memories of the Gunnysack

Faye Fox

Well-known member
I could just make a post about my feelings and probably get a lot of, likes and sorry to hear that and so on, but that isn't me nor is it the way I was raised. I was raised on cattle ranches, both Colorado and Texas, where conditions were harsh and barns were sometimes more comfortable than the ranch house. Sometimes a burlap bag filled with grain made the most comfortable place to sit.

I was never allowed to whine, complain, or sow seeds of dissention. My father loved verse both cowboy and other, my mother lived by the word found in the Bible. Both were from old time ranch families. My dad and one great uncle, encouraged me to express myself with verse. Verse expressing concerns was not considered complaining.

One great uncle and aunt were fiddle players and square dance callers on Saturday night and full time ranchers the rest of the time. They had 10,000 acres in West Texas and it was no country for complainers. Like my dad, they expressed themselves with verse if it would be considered complaining if just in plain talk. I could have said, "When uncle spits tobacco across the room, even though he hits the spittoon, it is disgusting and it smells and makes me sick to my stomach." Such would lead to, "Well leave the room or fix your bunk in the barn and smell horse manure."

"Flying tobacco, makes a girl puke and sick to her belly,
As it rings true on the spittoon, and reeks so smelly
So out to the barn, making my new bunk, so lucky
The aroma is better than tobacco spat, the smell of horse pucky"

That verse would more times than not, earn me a bigger serving of peach cobbler. My auntie made the best peach cobble, picked fresh from the tree. After the hands tricked me once into eating a green persimmon, I didn't complain but had a new verse saying, "Oh go suck on a lemon or better yet a green persimmon." That went over better than, "Oh, go stick it up your pie exit hole, Bill."

When shaking out an old burlap bag, one never knows what is going to fall out.
 
Last edited:
@Faye Fox I’ll betcha there aren’t too many of us who remember the real burlap bags and that some families wore clothes made from them, way back when.

I probably had 50 of them when I moved the first time in the late 70’s. I knew I should keep them, but I couldn’t , so I gave them away.

I even remember the smell of those burlap bags, Connie.
 
I still have old burlap and use it for covering plants to protect from late frost. It breathes but yet keeps the frost from damaging plants. I remember when I showed steers, the smell of molasses treated grain in burlap bags.

I started to write a book with my collection of ranch stories, naming it Shaking out the Burlap Bag, but it was too much work and my eyes are too bad. I had a pile of burlap bags and also baling twine. I made hanging plant holders that were nice because they drained nicely plus I could spray the burlap and really slow moisture loss in hot weather.

Burlap bags were also great for transporting chickens and other small animals.
 
We had them in Idaho, but my folks called them “gunnysacks”. My mom made me an “Indian costume” from one for the Thanksgiving play. I must have been an Indian in it.
She pulled the strings in the bottom, so that it had fringes at the bottom and the arm holes.
I remember that they smelled, too.
Maybe from the potato farms ? I think that is mostly what we got that came in gunny sacks. The onions had a similar one, but it was more of a mesh.
 
I still have old burlap and use it for covering plants to protect from late frost. It breathes but yet keeps the frost from damaging plants. I remember when I showed steers, the smell of molasses treated grain in burlap bags.

I started to write a book with my collection of ranch stories, naming it Shaking out the Burlap Bag, but it was too much work and my eyes are too bad. I had a pile of burlap bags and also baling twine. I made hanging plant holders that were nice because they drained nicely plus I could spray the burlap and really slow moisture loss in hot weather.

Burlap bags were also great for transporting chickens and other small animals.
You can use voice dictation.
Short stories you can call me and I will return a file. Stories should not be left to die.
 
We had a bunch of burlap bags around the farm, used for various things or just stored for future use. I'm not sure what they were originally used for, but I imagine animal feed. Sometimes, I didn't pay close attention to farm stuff. We had a bunch of horses, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and, at one time, my dad must have had a small dairy farm because we had 20 milking stations, although we were down to only one cow by the time I came along. Dad farmed several 40-acre plots, varying his crop, although I think potatoes were the cash crop.
 
Mama moved to the woods when I was 9 months old, she was a lifetime city slicker till then, So no burlap bags that I know of.
She also had an apartment house in West Atlanta her father gave here and my aunt, sometimes we stayed there.
She lost both by the time I was 12.
 
My mother told me that flour was sold in bags that were printed with colorful patterns, to be made into clothing during the Depression. She said, that luckily she never had to wear flour-sack dresses but that a lot of the kids she went to school with did.
I kind of remember this now that you mention it.
 
Mama sewed several of the burlap bags together to make cotton or tobacco sheets. They were used to tie cotton or tobacco up to be ready to take to the market.
I remember that very well. I'd ride to the tobacco warehouse with my dad and grandpa to haul the big bundles of tobacco for auction. The wonderful smell of "cooked" tobacco, all the activity, and the auctioneer walking through the narrow aisles of tobacco.

 
Back
Top