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CITY OF DUBOIS Page 31
pine or maple. Thread was made from the flax raised on his own
land, and shoe wax was obtained from the pitch of the white pine
mixed with tallow and beeswax. The bristles he used on his shoe
thread for a needle came from the back of his hog at butchering
time. He procured shoe pegs by cutting a cross section from a piece
of dry maple of the required length of the shoe peg, and splitting
them and sharpening them with his own knife. The shoes thus made
were not very elegant, but they served the purpose. The pioneer was
not troubled with corns, bunions, broken arches, ingrown nails. His
shoes were made to fit the feet and not, as in more modern days, the
feet to fit the shoes.
PRODUCTION OF LINEN CLOTH
The pioneer knew but two kinds of cloth; one was linen
which he made from the flax grown on his land, and the other was
wool obtained from the fleece of the sheep kept on his farm.
The production of linen was a very laborious process.
The flax was sown in the early spring, and one of the beautiful
sights of the summer was to see a field of flax in bloom. The flower
was a delicate sky blue, and when waved by the wind in the sunlight,
looked like an ocean billow. When the flax was ripe in the fall, it
was not cut by cradle, but was pulled out of the ground by hand,
tied into small bundles shocked in the same manner as grain, and was
left standing in the field until it was thoroughly dry. It was then
taken to the barn for threshing, and the flax seed was threshed out
with a flail. After the threshing the flax was again taken into a
field of grass, and spread on the ground until the rain and sunlight
had thoroughly rotted the woody fibre. It was again gathered up and
tied into bundles, and stored in a dry place until flax breaking
time. The period of flax breaking usually came after the first of
the year.
The flax brake was an unwieldy instrument, built of
white oak and consisting of eighteen pieces of wood. Four of these
pieces were about two feet long and used for legs. Two pieces were
twenty-four inches by eight inches in size, used for the main heads,
and in these two heads the legs were inserted and four jaws which
were one and a half inches by eight inches wide and four feet long,
with one edge planed down until it was sharp. These jaws were
inserted in the heads by dovetails, with the sharp side up,
extending about an inch or an inch and a half above the head, and
were placed far enough apart so that the upper jaw blades would mesh
between the lower blades. The upper jaw was constructed of two heads
shorter than the lower heads. The rear head was held in place by
wooden hinges, made from two pieces of white oak inserted in holes
in the lower head, and the rear upper head had a pin on each end
which went through a hole in the two hinges. The movable head was at
the other end. These jaws were inserted in the upper heads in the
same manner as the lower jaws, with the sharp edge extending an inch
or more below the heads.
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