Bartering 1989

According to my old Webster’s Dictionary, barter means to traffic or trade by direct change of one commodity for another – and this was just a way of life when I was growing up.

Money was hard to come by in those days and farmers would trade a day’s work for a day’s work.  This made the big jobs easier to handle when several men worked together and my thoughts go to job of hay baling.  It was quite an ordeal to handle all the chores connected to the baling of hay.  The grass or beans (to be hay) had to be brought to the baler from the many stacks in the field, then it had to be fed to the baler. The finished product (bales) had to be moved, loaded onto the two-horse wagon, hauled to the barn and then stored in the barn loft. Hoisting 75 lb. bales of hay from the wagon to the loft took some more effort.

As I’ve told you over and over, my mother and I used to walk to meet the peddler (the rolling store) and we traded butter and eggs – or maybe a chicken – be it fryer or hen, for whatever we needed.  This rolling store had a barrel the butter was stored in and butter sold by the pound.  In the floor of the store was a trap door – raising this he could deposit the chicken in a coop attached to the underneath part of the store floor. For the life of me I can’t remember how the eggs were hauled.  It had to be a special way to keep them from breaking.  We knew a man who owned and operated a rolling store and we’ve heard him tell this story more than once.  It was winter time and he had had truck trouble and had been broken down part of the day and was really late getting home.  It had rained lots and creeks were up – he had to ford one creek to get home.  When he forded the creek the chickens in the coop under the rolling store drowned – so when he got home it was midnight and he got his wife out of bed and they dressed six or eight chickens to keep them from being a total loss.  How many women today would get up out of a warm bed at midnight to dress chickens?  Duh!!

I’m told Trade Day at Collinsville – over in the valley just a few miles from The Windy Knoll – was started just this way.  Men would meet there and trade knives or whatever they had to trade and it eventually turned into a big thing.  Today every Saturday vendors come in with their wares to trade and sell and that’s been going on for many years.

I’ve written before about bartering for my dulcimer.  If you don’t know what a dulcimer is – it’s a string instrument that’s strummed or picked while it lies across the lap.  It’s a mountain instrument and was made even before the piano. Mine is an hour glass shape – supposedly shaped like a lady – and it has hearts cut out of the top because many romantic songs have been played on it.  Wish I could play mine better, but that’s a whole new ball of wax.

A number of years ago a lady came to my house with some quilt squares she had gathered in from her Airstream  Trailer (camper) members and asked me what she had to do to make the squares into a quilt.  I went into detail giving her instructions as to what to do to make the quilt to go in her Airstream motor home.  Well, would you believe a year later she came back bringing the same squares in the same condition they had been in before and asked me how much I would charge to make the quilt.  I knew they camped in Sarasota in the winters and I also knew he had made some dulcimers.  So I told her I would charge a dulcimer.  The next spring when they returned to Marietta, he delivered the dulcimer and I delivered the quilt.  Thus bartering was done.  They were happy with the quilt and I am certainly happy with my dulcimer.

John grew up in Crossville and has always been a small stature person.  He tells about when he was a youngster crawling under the many stacks of lumber around the mill in downtown Crossville to find hen’s nests.  Some time he would find a dozen or two eggs and at that time eggs were a penny a piece.  He said he could trade those eggs for a pound of candy at the Old Justice Store.  No wonder he likes sweets so well today.  John is definitely a sweet-a-holic.  It’s a must that we keep something sweet in this house to eat at all times.  That brings to mind another thing – there is only a small piece of cake left under the cake cover and that means I’d best be hunting up something to replace it.  I do a mean oversized pound cake and that just may be what I do to fill the sweet need for a few days.  I’ve made so many from this recipe, I could almost make it with my eyes closed.

I’m not aware of bartering going on today; however, it was a way of life for the Sand Mountain farmer at one point in time with his style of country living.