OCTOBER 113 



About the tweiitieth Davoii[)oi't and Dubuque ex- 

 perienced snow, and it lay over the woods and 

 rocks in the Ozark region of Missouri, while freez- 

 ing weather ranged from the Texas Panhandle 

 to Atlanta. 



A Grinnell record made some thirty years ago 

 today reads: ^'Some houses are already banked.'* 

 The banking of houses was at that time a labor, 

 one might almost say an art, familiar to many a 

 village lad. It ranked with the making of soft 

 soap, tallow candles, twisting paper tapers, gath- 

 ering thoroughwort, curing hams, selecting sweet 

 corn to dry, melting snow for soft water, mulch- 

 ing grapevines, trimming raspberry bushes, as an 

 occupation classified as 'Svork," but not without 

 possible characteristics of a sport, if rightly man- 

 aged. The process of laying and finishing off 

 thirty or forty yards of banking might last several 

 boys working at intervals after school, for a num- 

 ber of days. The tools and the materials were 

 simple, almost as primitive as the purpose — to 

 shut out the winter cold. Spades, spading forks, 

 shovels, pitchforks, rakes, hoes, wheelbarrows 

 were the implements; barnyard refuse, in later 

 years flax straw, fallen leaves, ^^cMp-dirt," loam 

 from the garden and light strips of lumber with 

 a few heavier boards, were the materials. The 

 labor consisted in '^ assembling" implements and 

 materials, in lajdng a solid, well-packed wall of the 



