Pine Bluff daily graphic. (Pine Bluff, Ark.) 1893-1942, 1914-04-12
CORD BEDS OF old
Traps In Whose BuIbous Depths
Sleep Was Once Wooed.
PUTTING ONE UP WAS AGONY.

The Job Required the Services Of
Two or Three Husky Men and Was
an Athletic Feat Beside Whiohla
Wrestling Match Was Chld's Play.
i#"I came across bed wrench at a
second hand curiosity shop uptown the
other day. said an old timer, land It
took me back to the bo 'ygirsY1 days at
pne jump. II fNff. =
Don't know what a bed wrench is?
OF course you don't. Nobody born OF
this generation does. That's because
they never had to put up a cord bed
stead-had the privilege of sleeping. in
the bed it held. - ast'.,. :, t|aa1s
THE cord bedstead was joy. Next
to putting up the stovepipe or putting
down the carpet with the base of a
fatiron for a hammer to pound the
leather headed tacks in with, the as.
! sembling of the cord bedstead of our
daddies was the job that called for the
most peremptory giving of all the.
! Christian virtues vacation until the
job was done.
1.-THE cord bedstead was the favorite
bedstead of commerce in those days.
Briefly described there were four
posts of any height or girth to suit the
person or his pocket. Anywhere from
three to four feet from the floor g hole
was bored in two sides of each pest
facing each other when the footboard
and headboard. posts were stood up to
be connected. The holes We're bored
with a thread to take the screw out on
the ends of the connecting pieces at
the sides and ends of the bedstead.
"These connecting pieces We're round,
and on what was to be the top OF them
when the bedstead was set up was
row of pegs shaped like so many mush-
rooms. A hole about an inch In diane
ter ran through each of the four con-
Meeting pieces. When the bedstead was
assembled by the fitting Of the con-
Meeting pieces into the holes in the
posts and screwed up tight and in
place by means of a Stout stick thrust
through the holes in the round pieces
the bed was ready to be corded up. and
then the wrench came into play =,
.'The bed wrench was something like
a stout wooden hand wise. The cord, q
rome like a clotheslne. but Of better
quality. was run around the mushroom
like pegs, which We're few inches
apart. and lengthwise and crosswise
from connecting piece to connecting
piece, like big meshed net.
But the cord couldn't be drawn taut
enough with the hands, and so daddy
or big brother Bill or perhaps the
hired man. grabbed the wrench, tan
gled it up somewhere in a part of the
cord where the tauteping up process
was to begin and by persistent lever
age around and about the bedstead at
last wrenched the cord to a condition
of satisfactory tautness, and the tu-
multi and the shouting died.
"For don't go away with the idea that
the work Of setting up that cord bed
stead was accomplished with the ease
and in the brief time that it takes to
tell about it. 1t generally required two
or three capable persons to tackle the
lob with any hope Of succeeding with
IT. for in the way of refractory disposi-
ton and demoniacal perversity the
cord bedstead of the daddies had the
breechy cow in the garden skinned a
mile. / have known the good wife to
take the children and go down in the
cellar while the old man and his aids
were dallying with the cord bedstead
in an effort to set it up and giving it
their opinion of it as it wahbled and
slidqand careened and skisaed at tense
and critical stagessof the gesnng of it
together.
sThen when it was all up good and
solid and the smell of sulphur got out
of the room mother used to come IN
and nut the straw tick on the web Of
he'd cord-the tick with the big slit in
It where we filled it with fresh rye
st-aw until it looked like a balloon all
ready to go up. Then she turbledf on
to the tick the feather bed. two or three
feet high, with its swelling fluff tof liEe
geese feathers and almost bars sVd,i
out of sight when you slowed yourself
away on it after surrounding the bed
with stepladder Then with the
sheets and the blanket and the quilt
and the comforter and the big, dubious
pillows the bed was ready to sleep in.