When I was a kid, my granddad always hauled stuff around in a “toe sack” — at least that’s what he called it and I grew up thinking the proper name for a burlap bag was a toe sack. I think everybody around Maysville used the term “toe sack.”
I looked the term up and dictionaries say that it basically a US regional term that means a kind of burlap sack or a gunny sack. I found one example of the term being used in Lightning Bug by Donald Harington — it includes the following sentence: “You do not think it until he comes through the door, carrying the empty toe-sack in one hand and the revolver in the other.”
My extensive research kind of concluded that maybe what I heard as “toe sack” was really “tow sack.”
Tow is the leftovers from flax when the linen fibers are removed. It is very rough and doesn’t spin well, but can be spun to make a coarse fiber that makes a burlap type fabric, and it’s sometimes used to make ropes. Tow is usually a pale yellowish color. That may be why I remember that kids with blond hair were referred to as tow heads when I was growing up.
From what I can tell, a large sack made from loosely woven, coarse material is called by various names in different parts of the country. The most general term seems to be burlap bag, used pretty much everywhere, but especially in the Northeast. The preferred term in the Midwest and West appears to be gunnysack. The word gunny in gunnysack means “coarse heavy fabric made of jute or hemp.” In the South, a burlap bag is often called a tow sack, and for some reason, in eastern North Carolina, the term is a tow bag. In South Carolina, and parts of Georgia, a burlap bag is known as a crocus sack and in the Gulf States, you’ll hear croker sack. Crocus is a coarse, loosely woven material once worn by slaves and laborers — it was common in colonial New England.
So I haven’t seen a burlap bag, or “toe sack” like they had when I was a kid for a long time. Those bags, or sacks didn’t have a handle and were large — usually to hold and transport potatoes, or grain or other agricultural products.
I guess I can now add toe sacks, or whatever you call them to something else that dates me — sigh….
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