Before Its Time

Gramma or Grandpop Moyer may have used one of these while they were in school. I know my grandfather did. This one was my grandpa's. I introduced you to it with nothing around it as a frame of reference. Sorry. It's not as large as some thought.

Throughout the lives of families, what we didn't have we found a way to create something. That's the story of this item.   Backpacks came onto the market in 1938. But that wasn't the first invention for carrying school books.

In the late 1890s, Grandpa fitted the straps to this "backpack" around his books, then wound the handle around, tightening and shortening the straps. Walking back and forth to school, he carried his books by the handle. It would have carried many McGuffey textbooks, from readers to Arithmetic texts.

Life is full of fun ways to see how inventive people were as they found ways to simplify their lives. If you lived long ago and didn't have a backpack but had a stack of books, how would you make your task lighter? Draw a picture of your solution and a paragraph about it. Have fun with it. There is no wrong response, only your great, creative answer.