this comment moves me to remark on childhood memory. i was a gradeschool child outside Toledo, Ohio during WW2. when we visited my father's aunt on farm where he had grown, all the mattresses were vegetation stuffed=== usually with corn shucks. they were lumpy, but...... you could discard and get nice new clean ones as seasons passed. other folks in the little town had the same mattresses. we also had lots of rag rugs from "stockings/hose" that had "runs" that could not be repaired.
no such stockings or even panty hose available today enough to weave anything. anyhow, i vote for straw rather than wool in the mattress Ann McElroy wrote: > > I can't imagine a person > sleeping on straw or even a straw mattress when they had wool with some > vegetable matter in on hand. I can't see them throwing it away for vegetable > content or for even some dung. Now I have no books or scalars to quote I can > think through logically what I would do.
