The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1903-10-09
Miss Gentry viii Lend Her eourds.

WILL 1uIuISu 1OI llIO 4Ch1lCoSCO OCoIO
exhibit at the st. Louis Worlds
Fair one of the most unique and in
teresting exhibits that will appear in
the agricultural building. She has
made a study of the gourd family,
the uses of gourds, and the condi-
ton of their growth. She has made
a collection of all the different vari-
cites grown in Tennessee, and she
has collected some fine specimens
from foreign countries. With true
artistic talent she has ornamented
and arranged her collection so that
it is both beautiful and instructive.
In the earlier stages of our civil
zation when cooperage vessels, glass
ware, and toilet articles might have
been classed as luxuries, nature sup
piled the most essential of these ar
ticles from the gourd family. Our
great grandmothers were familiar
with the pungah gourd. and they
used it for many purposes. 1t was
the receptacle for keeping such
things as lard, molasses, sugar, cof-
fee, fruit, eggs, preserves, salt and
soap. 1t served the purposes of the
modern cans, boxes, jugs, bottles,
buckets, etc. Our legislatures val
ued it so much that they exempted
it by law from sale by execution for
debt. The pungah gourd has no
handle and the largest size is to
II inches in height and from IA to
IS inches in diameter. A large one
will hold one hundred dozen eggs,
and one lady of the early times says
she packed her silk wedding dress
in one of them. The next size has
a handle and was used as a water
gourd in the field, for carrying salt
to stock, etc. Then comes the
gourds with long handles, some
about three feet in length for dip
ping water from deep springs, and
others apprOximating in size and
shape the britannia or cocoanut dip
pers. Then follows the skins,
smaller in size, the darning gourds,
the dancing gourds, which were the
spinning tops of our forefathers,
and the baby rattlers, the smallest
in size. There are the whisky bot
tie gourds, in which the early set
tiers carried their bottled lightning,
almost exactly in the shape of the
old fashioned black bottles. There
is the quill gourd, in which the
women weavers kept their quilts by
the loom, and gourds in the shape
of squashes, that we're used to make
certain kitchen utensils, and some
times jewelry boxes and toilet ar
ticles. There are funnel gourds,
and the gourds that were hung on
poles in the poultry yard to make
homes for the martins, instead of
martin boxes. There is the tobacco
gourds, for storing tobacco seeds,
and for tobacco boxes. There are
swimmers gourds, substitute for
modern life preservers, the ''Hercu-
les Club" which looks like a base
ball bat, and snake gourds, which,
under the artistic hand of Miss Gen
try, have been made to look so much
like snakes that you can almost hear
them hiss. There arc gourds in the
shape of goose, turkey, duck, guinea
and chicken eggs that are colored so
natural that when one is placed in
the nest as a nest egg the fowl that
made the. nest would swear to the
maternity of the gourd. Then there
is the orange gourd, just like an or
ange, and the Turks cap, that makes
a beautiful pin cushion. Then there
is the vegetable lace" or "dishrae
gourd," the inside of which could be
used to ornament lady's hat OF to
wash dishes, etc.
Miss Gentry has in her collection
lady's hat which is strictly an agri-
cultural product. The body of the
hat is vegetable cream lace, the trim
ming is flowers made of grass rope
and corn husks, parti-colored, and
ribbons of cotton batting, natural
color, the whole ornamented with
peacock feathers
The gourd takes a beautiful fin
ish, and Miss Gentry has vanished
and ornamented her collection so a:
to make it exceedingly attractive, a:
well as instructive. She has a ban.
10 made out of gourd, and covered
with buckskin, and on a large sugar
gourd is bar of music of the ole
negro reel, "Sugar in de gourd.'
One who is familiar with the ole
time negro would associate with il
rabbit in de pea patch" CUBA di.
an Juba dat; An Juba killed d.
yaller cat" and the old time cottor
picking and corn shocking, and the
dance at night in the cabin on tn,
puncheon floor, or the summer time
negro dance in the moonlight on the
! lawn.
Negro Gin Burned.
A gin operated by several coloreC