Goose Summer

The following is from my book about my mother’s life as a girl at Etta Bend, Cherokee County, Oklahoma. The words are hers, Susie Latty Day’s:

In the fall come rare, sparkling days that are warm and bright, with very little wind, a day when natures seems to savor the last remnants of summer. Spider webs break loose from their moorings and float through the air. Many years go, stray goose feathers, resembling cobwebs floating through the air caused this time of year to be called “goose summer” or gossamer days. On our farm at Etta, Mama didn’t have geese, but she kept fifteen or twenty ducks. The ducks were the source of the featherbeds which made winter nights warm and cozy. The ducks laid their eggs during the night in the shallow water along the side of the branch that ran through our barn lot and pastures. When Mama wanted to save a clutch of eggs for hatching baby ducks, we girls and our little brother Henry had to hunt them early in the mornings because it was important to get to them before the crows did.

Mama set the eggs under hens. The hens were good mothers but their babies’ liking for water drove them crazy. The ducklings would waddle to the spring branch, jump in, and swim happily while their frenzied mother dashed up and down the bank, calling to them.

Periodically, grown ducks shed some of their feathers during the summer so Mama picked the ducks regularly. Alice, Georgia and I shared this chore. Henry did his part by helping us drive the ducks from the creek to the chicken yard the night before we picked them. On the day of the picking, Mama brought out chairs and a wash tub which she covered with a large cloth. We all sat around the tub. Each of us took a duck, turned it on its back, and placed it across our laps. We held the ducks’ feet in our left hands and tucked their heads under our left arms. This was a safeguard against getting pinched by an angry duck who wasn’t ready for his undignified position. 

Starting with the feathers near the tail, I grasped a handful and with a quick, short jerk, yanked them out. I plucked only those on the duck’s underbody which was painless for the duck, unless I chanced to pull a “green” feather (meaning one that wasn’t ready to let go.) When I did this, the old duck squawked loudly and scared me so that I almost dropped it.

Each time we deposited a handful of feathers into the tub, we raised and lowered the cloth over it carefully. The least fanning of the feathers caused them to fly from the tub. It was funny to watch the ducks who were plucked go waddling, flapping, and quacking off, in a hurry to settle their feathers and regain their dignity.

When our chore was finished, we took the feathers from the tub and put them loosely into pillow slips. After a few days of airing, the feathers were ready to add to a feather bed or go to make new pillows. Mama used heavy ticking for the final cases of featherbeds and feather pillows.

Goose Summer still comes round at the end of the season, and the silvery threads of spider webs floating in the air remind me of those childhood times with my mother and sisters . They are lovely, shining memories, those gossamer days at Etta.

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