(Amy here...) Earlier in the summer, Evans Creek valley neighbor (local historian and genealogist) Ruth Wenger had let me borrow some of her books, photos, clippings, and other materials for my Fiat research. She needed some of these things back, so I stopped by her house recently to return them. I suggested that since my pace of life has returned to a pretty hectic pace with the start of school, perhaps now and then I could borrow these things just one at a time to continue my project on the history of Fiat. I truly enjoy learning about it! I told her that I was en route on an errand related to another project on monarch butterflies and our conversation turned to milkweed. She recalled that when she was a child, the government paid area children to collect milkweed pods. She thought they were for parachutes in WWII. Her late husband had also remembered the bags they were provided (similar to onion bags) and that the children would go out, fill them, hang them on the clothesline to dry, and she said that they got ten cents a bag. When I got home, I did some research on this... as it was a most fascinating conversation. I found an article, which I will share, but if you do a Google search and then click on images, you can see lots of groups of children proudly holding up filled bags of milkweed pods, as well as other newspaper clippings and ads from that era. Turns out the milkweed floss was actually used to fill lifejackets of the soldiers. One of the other articles I found said that it took two bags of pods to yield fill for one lifejacket. lacrossetribune/westbytimes/news/opinion/editorial/columnists/westby-area-historical-society/article_dfc74f4e-5773-575d-87a9-0b22a4115d71.html
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 11:17:42 +0000
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