The other day I stumbled across a John Denver song on YouTube that I had never heard before, and then I started listening to other old favorites. Denver had a way of striking a chord on many different subjects. And ‘Grandma’s Feather Bed’ was one of them.
Part of it goes like this:
“But the best darn thing about grandma's house
Was the great big feather bed
It was nine feet high and six feet wide
And soft as a downy chick
It was made from the feathers of forty 'leven geese
Took a whole bolt of cloth for the tick
It could hold eight kids and four hound dogs
And a piggy we stole from the shed
We didn't get much sleep but we had a lot of fun
On grandma's feather bed.”
Sung by John Denver, Lyrics by Jim Connor
I slept in a "Grandma’s Feather Bed," but it was actually my great-grandmother's (Susan Clemmie Patterson) feather bed. She was my dad’s grandmother and we went to see her whenever we could. Great-Grandma lived in an old clapboard house in Slate Springs, Mississippi, one of those places that if you blinked, you’d miss it. The old house had partial plumbing; there was a toilet inside, but the outhouse still stood in the backyard in case of an emergency. Included was a yellowed Sears Roebuck catalog and a fly swatter. There was no bathtub—I remember taking a bath on one visit in a big metal washtub. Thankfully that was in the kitchen.
Great Grandma cooked up her vittles on a big wood stove in cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens. All that great-for-you stuff like cornbread, biscuits, gravy, sunny-side-up eggs cooked in bacon grease, fried chicken, ham, potatoes of every kind, homemade jam—once even homemade butter.
In the morning, sleeping in wasn’t an option. Great Grandma had grown up waking first thing and doing chores or cooking for the family. She wasn’t going to change her habits now, despite being a widow and having no outside chores to tend to.
Great Grandma had her big family Bible on the mantle of the living room fireplace. And she got it down every evening. All the names of who married who, of children, the dearly departed, fascinated me, and Great Grandma loved to tell about each one.
The chicken coop out back was a curiosity. I found porcelain door knobs in the nests to entice chickens that had long since flown the coop. Weeds overran the small pasture beyond the coop and outhouse. At one time, I imagined there were probably cows, pigs and horses out there.
But the highlight of my visit was the feather bed. It stood practically alone and massive in what used to be the parlor of her old house. (For the uninitiated, the parlor was where visitors were greeted when they came calling. A place for chit chat before heading in to the dining room or the living room.) This feather bed had to be nine feet tall. There was a step stool to get up in it. It was on a cast iron frame and was probably six feet wide, too. While it could have held eight kids, four dogs and a piggy, it only held me. Little brother wasn't born yet and older brother was too old to submit to sleeping with his sister.
Great Grandma didn’t have a dog, I don’t remember seeing a cat, and there certainly weren’t any pigs.
When I climbed up into that bed, I rolled around, crawled to the feather pillow, and generally felt like I was on a cloud. I do remember sinking down what seemed several feet in the middle, but when I got used to it, I slept like the proverbial log. At least until the feathers heated up and I woke up in a sweat. No need for Great Grandma’s quilt on her feather bed. At the time I didn’t think of the ‘forty ‘leven geese’ that gave their all for this wonderful bed. I just remember what a terrific time it was at my Great Grandma’s old house and that fantastic feather bed in the parlor.

Susan Kite is a member of Author’s Guild of Tennessee and has five published books in several genres. Check them out at https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00J91G0ZU/
John Denver photo is courtesy of Brigette Engl, Redfern, Getty Images. The old southern house is similar to the one Great Grandma had, but I didn't have any surviving pictures.