You
know those feed sacks (and bird seed bags) that bulk grain products come to us
in, that seem to come from out of the past?
They’re out of the past because they are in bulk and don’t conform to
our modern plastic, zip-lock, glue, or taped closure technology. They are things in very large paper bags that
are sealed with a slip knot. It is
apparently a knot whose name is lost in the fog of Google; I can’t find a name
for it, lock stitch? It is the knot that
isn’t a knot if you pull the right string.
A long slip knot.
Well,
I feel sorry for everybody who hasn’t had an old man show them which string to
pull at the top of the bag; an old man with hands that look like splintery
drift wood, who can explain what will
work every time.
Today,
on the bird food bags, there are cheater strips of paper that make it pretty
easy, but it wasn’t always like that.
Many of us needed those old men to show us the way, back when the bags
weren’t “idiot proof” and nobody was worrying about coddling the idiots.
This
may seem pretty simple to you (those of you who don’t actually ever try to open
one of these sealed bags, or maybe those of you who have given up and just
slash away with scissors). But, at the least,
in a written instruction, it matters how you look at the bag, how you hold the
bag, how you think about up and down and right and left, and, front and back. That’s at least 2 to the third; eight
permutations.
Then there’s that sealing knot at the bottom, the one that has two strings, over lock stitch, double running stitch? I can’t find that one either. Getting that one off requires a different strategy. Next time.
Now
the important thing is for you to save that string in an ever enlarging
ball. That's the pic of mine.
