Posting Prices

A proud bunch with their new feed sack shirts and dress. From left: LeRoy, Carolyn and Keith Walls in 1949. Chicken feed was purchased in 100-pound bags. The chicken feed sacks were white or assorted colors and designs. My mom used the white ones to make bed sheets, dish towels and underwear. The patterned sacks were used for dresses and shirts. Mom would pick out the patterns she wanted at the Exchange and the friendly Exchange employees never seemed to mind moving all the bags of feed necessary to get to the favored pattern. 

Photo by

  
Margaret Walls  

Written by 
LeRoy Walls 
CEO 

The Farmers Exchange was a main center of activity in Cabool when I grew up. In the early 1950’s the entire income for our family came from the dairy cattle, chickens and hogs raised on our 120-acre Ozark farm. Because of our farm produce and our huge garden, the grocery store in town was probably less important to us than the Farmers Exchange.

The word "exchange" which apparently came from the early trading post style, still applied in the early 1950’s. It was here that we got our seeds, fertilizer, hatching eggs as well as our cattle, hog and chicken feed. A big percent of our "milk check" was automatically applied to our account.

The Exchange posted, on a blackboard in the main front store area and also in the egg room, current prices being paid for eggs, chickens and walnuts as well as selling prices for seed, fertilizer and cattle feed.

It was an interesting place with 100-pound sacks of feed being mixed, bagged and taken to cars and trucks on two-wheel carts. The smell of the sorghum molasses being mixed into the cattle feed gave the entire building a pleasant and distinct aroma.

My favorite area was the egg room. Our neighbor, Lee Johnson was the one in charge. Here eggs were graded and chickens being brought in were weighed when sold to the Exchange. We brought our eggs to the Exchange in cases which held 30 dozen eggs. The selling price for eggs was about a penny each figuring out at 12 cents per dozen and $3.60 for a case.

The cattle feed we purchased came in burlap bags. When we had accumulated 25 of these "gunny sacks" we bundled them up and sold them back to the Exchange. I’ve spent as much as 20 minutes stitching up a hole in a gunnysack so it would be worth the usual nickel (5 cents).

12/31/1999