17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, June 28, 1912: Mother went to Milton this morning. I had been talking hammock to her for the last couple weeks at least, and behold you when she came home if she didn’t have one.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Awe–It would feel good to relax in a hammock right now.
After all the work harvesting hay, it’s awesome that Grandma’s mother bought her something fun that she really wanted.
Based on the previous day’s entry, it seems has if hay harvesting was in full swing. A hammock must have seemed like the perfect thing to relax in after a hot day of making hay.
An aside—I’m a little surprised that you could buy hammocks in rural Pennsylvania in 1912. Sometimes I tend to think that stores had fewer products than they actually had a hundred years ago.
A Hundred Years Ago 
I am working on the history of the Presbyterian Women in this area – and since most women did not write down what they did, I am finding it a bit difficult to put a history together. Most of what I put together may have to be a generalization of that time period. The women just did what needed done, and did it, even today I am finding out most ladies don’t want recognition and just do what needs done. Your stories will fit in with what I am thinking of doing, Could I use your stories as reference and give full credit of course. If not I will understand – thanks for considering it. ~Patty
I wonder if someone in town may have been making them for sale. I also find that stores today do not have as many products as they had even ten or twenty years ago…. Yet have so many variations on some things it just appears that they have more now.
I also have a similar sense about how the product mix has changed in stores since I was young. It used to seem like stores had a huge range of products–but that the inventory probably turned over less quickly–whereas now there’s fewer products but more variation in features/colors.
A very nice gift! It seems that your Grandmother was a hard worker and nice to know there was a bit of time to relax as well!
I had the same thought. It seemed like the family (at least Grandma–but probably all of them) worked so hard–and it’s nice that they can now relax. What I nice purchase! I think that I like Grandma’s mother.
They had Sears and Robuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs. That would be something the feed stores and hardwares would have had. All the small towns had a 5 and 10 cent store so she could of gotten there.
It’s funny (in a very sad way), but I think that you could have purchased more things in the nearby towns of Milton and Watsontown in 1912 than you can today. Both had bustling downtowns but then with 5 and 10 cent stores, clothing and shoe stores, etc.
Oh, Helena, you are a kick — “and behold you” — wish I had known her.