Corn Shuck Mattresses

Corn Shuck Mattresses

Recently Winona and I saw an Amish man driving along Highway 43 with a new bed mattress tied on top of his buggy.  I do not begrudge his buying a new mattress, for I am sure that he and his wife need to sleep well as much difficult manual work as they do.  However, the sight of the new bedding and the horse and buggy did not seem to match.  I commented that one would think that the Amish would use feather beds or corn shuck mattresses.

I shared with Winona my memories as a boy of visiting my Carter grandparents in Kentucky and sleeping on a corn shuck mattress.  That’s right!  The mattress ticking was stuffed with dried corn shucks.  That mattress was in the back room off the porch where I slept when we visited Alex and Jenny Carter in rural Grayson County.  Grandmother told me that was Roger’s room (my Uncle Roger Carter) when he still lived at home.  Maybe that’s one reason he left home and joined the Army!

Winona reminded me of the time shortly after we were married and were still in college that we slept on a corn shuck mattress in the parsonage at the rural Highland Church near Portland, Tennessee.  We had gone there to be with Rev. Arthur Pickett and to preach for the Sunday services.  We spent Saturday night in the old parsonage next door to the church.  No one lived there at the time, for the Picketts lived in their own home in Nashville.  That night was really a miserable night as I recall.  Every turn on the mattress made noise as you would imagine; furthermore, we heard the rats running in the attic all night.

Seeing the Amish man with his new mattress got me to thinking about how easy we have it nowadays.  I remember my mother saying, “People talk about the ‘good ole days,’ but there was nothing good about them.”  I think that is especially true when it comes to the bedding we sleep on now compared to the days of corn shuck mattresses.